Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Thoughts on "Junior" Super Tuesday

Hopefully, after today the nominee for the Democrats will be identified and Hillary will gracefully bow out. I am very concerned that if the battle for the Democrat nomination continues, the only winner will be John McCain and the GOP. I continue to believe that Hillary will prove unelectable if the Texas and Ohio Democrats are -let me be blunt - stupid enough to vote for her over Obama. Liking her policy positions means absolutely nothing if she cannot win in November. Recently, every poll has shown her losing to McCain – why don’t her supporters get that message?

I continue to get messages from Democrats who say they will find it very hard – if not impossible – to vote for Hillary should she be the nominee. I may, in fact, consider leaving the presidential ballot blank myself and voting for the rest of the offices (e.g., Mark Warner for U.S. Senate) rather than vote for Hillary. She cannot win anyway, so it's not like my vote would matter. Moreover, I am very, very concerned that many of the newly involved voters that Obama has brought into the political process will fade back into inactivity should Hillary win the nomination. They may well feel – and would be correct in my view – that the change this country so desperately needs will not occur and, in fact, the system is so badly broken that change is impossible. That would be perhaps the biggest tragedy of all.
Hence, all that we will see is the same old nasty and divisive politics as the country continues to slide in the wrong direction. Worse yet, we will hear incessant rehashed and expanded talk of Clinton scandals. This will be particularly true in light of all the dirt and scandals that may be thrown at Bill and Hillary. John Aravois at America Blog makes very good points in this regard. Here are highlights of his observations (http://www.americablog.com/2008/03/what-will-republicans-throw-at-hillary.html:

So, what will the Republicans throw at Hillary in the fall? Lots. But I'm not going to detail those things today because I'm, surprisingly, still pulling punches with regards to what I write about Hillary. I don't want to damage Hillary should she become our nominee, as increasingly unlikely as that appears. I don't want to write about very real scandals in Hillary's past, scandals that we will be forced to revisit for the next 8 months, and 8 years. I don't want to write about the rumors about Bill that no one has written about to date, even though the rumors include lots of details which are at least just as true as Obama being a Muslim. While Hillary's campaign is pushing known lies about Obama, such as the "Muslim" connection, most of the stories about Hillary are anything but lies. They're real stories that she will have to discuss publicly, again and again and again, to her and our party's detriment.

You will notice that neither Obama's campaign nor Obama's official, or unofficial, surrogates are talking about the Clintons' past or present scandals, the Clintons' negatives, what a Clinton run for the presidency will to Democratic congressional races and governor races across the country. The Clintons are counting on the fact that none of us will write about their negatives, because we're too nice. So they can get as dirty as they want, with impunity. So, the first question for Hillary come Wednesday, should she decide to continue risking our chances of winning in the fall even though the math says it's over, will be the question she's asking Obama today: What negatives will the Republicans throw against you in the fall? And as I've noted repeatedly, there are some negatives out there that most of you don't even know about - but everyone in Washington knows about them, in detail. That's because even Democrats who don't love Hillary, don't go there, for the good of the party. On Wednesday, the good of the party may dictate that we do.

No comments: