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Slaughter Rule

8:47 PM, Feb 12, 2008 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB
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Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and her name has been tossed around as a possible secretary of state in the next Democratic administration. I think we can now assume that she won't be working for Obama in 2009. Today she writes at the Huffington Post:

In other words, many white men in the South may be voting against Hillary more than they are voting for Obama. That's not good news for the Clinton campaign. But it isn't necessarily good news for the Obama campaign either. Just because these voters prefer Obama to Hillary does not mean that they will vote for Obama over McCain, no matter what the polls say. It's very hard to believe that when the chips are down they're not going to vote for the guy who looks like them.

ABC News reports on Obama's Virginia victory today under the headline "White Men Boost Obama," but by Slaughter's logic, this is only because they're sexist. It's possible, but in the absence of any evidence to support the theory it's a strange observation for an academic to make. Perhaps Dean Slaughter is pondering a second career as a crude polemicist.

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