The myth of Clinton’s enthusiasm gap

What is enthusiasm in politics, and how do we calculate it?

Perhaps it’s measured by the quantity and intensity in tone of social media posts. It could be determined by the size of the crowds at a candidate’s speeches and rallies. Or maybe it’s by the volume of low-dollar fundraising contributions.

One thing it does not appear to be measured by is actual votes.

Consider the current state of the Democratic presidential race as it heads to New York: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by millions of votes, hundreds of delegates and still more superdelegates – a nearly insurmountable advantage in terms of what’s needed to win a nomination contest. A recent poll even showed that Clinton’s supporters are actually more excited by her candidacy than Sanders’ backers are about his.

Despite all of this, the prevailing public narrative is that there’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Clinton. Just do a Google search for “Hillary Clinton” and “enthusiasm gap” – you’ll find nearly 300,000 results along with a multitude of headlines like:

• “Hillary Clinton Races to Close Enthusiasm Gap With Bernie Sanders”

• “Lack of Enthusiasm From Supporters May Undermine Clinton’s Lead”

• “Clinton Struggles to Close Excitement Gap In Nomination Race”

So how does this narrative explain why Clinton has won 17 of the 21 elections with the highest voter turnout? Or why 91 percent of black voters in Alabama, 84 percent of black voters in Virginia and 71 percent of Latino voters in Texas voted for her?

It doesn’t, because “enthusiasm” here is defined almost entirely as a white thing.

Conventional wisdom aside, there’s no evidence to indicate that black or brown voters are casting their ballots out of apathetic allegiance to the Clinton brand, or that Sanders’ supporters are turning out as a result of sheer exuberance.

This is not to suggest that Sanders’ support among white voters is not impressive. It is. But this meaningless formulation of enthusiasm exposes an undercurrent in the public conversation that too often devalues the votes of non-whites.

It’s exacerbated when Sanders campaign surrogates like Tim Robbins insist that elections won in predominantly black electorates somehow don’t matter because no Democrat will carry a red state like South Carolina in the fall. At the same time, no one is denigrating his candidate’s overwhelming victories in Idaho and Utah, which are similarly unwinnable for Democrats in a general election, but where the voting population is virtually 100 percent white.

The voters of color that have propelled Clinton to victory in states like Virginia, Ohio or Georgia are among the most reliable Democratic voters anywhere – they are the heart and soul of the party, not an afterthought.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time in recent memory that non-white votes have been treated as inferior to white votes.

During the last presidential election, observers routinely asked the question illustrated in this CNN headline from October 2012: “Could Obama’s struggles with white voters cost him the election?”

According to this storyline, the president’s “white voter problem” would doom his re-election prospects if corrective action were not taken. It led to extensive coverage of the importance of this demographic group without comparably breathless concern about other voting blocs that could have determined the election’s outcome.

Of course, President Obama won a clear and convincing victory despite losing white voters by 20 percentage points, a margin that led to the landslide defeats of previous Democratic nominees like Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. The result was decisive not because of Obama’s “weak” showing among whites, but because of his strong support from everyone else in what’s become an increasingly diverse country.

Still, of Obama’s historic triumph, one leading publication declared “a broad mandate this is not” because the president had only won a majority of Latinos, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban voters, not white men.

The nation has moved forward since the 1980s, even if conventional wisdom has not. Let’s enthusiastically put these constructs to bed.

James Freedland is a Democratic political strategist based in New York City.