The remaining Clinton supporters will come around to Obama
Marc Ambinder discussing the McCain's Clinton ad.
And this is important. If you believe the recent round of polling on reluctant Clinton supporters and Obama, there are somewhere between 4 and 8 points nationally for him to pick up among these Clinton supporters. If true, that's some low hanging fruit that moves the polls from Obama +4 to Obama +10.
(PS. That's one of the reasons they keep mentioning Biden's work on the "Violence Against Women Act".)
(PPS. Shouldn't it really be called the "Stopping Violence Against Women Act"?)
The thinking in Obamaland is that once many of the recalcitrant Clinton voters know about McCain's record on abortion and other women's issues, they'll come back into fold. The Obama campaign has polled this...
And this is important. If you believe the recent round of polling on reluctant Clinton supporters and Obama, there are somewhere between 4 and 8 points nationally for him to pick up among these Clinton supporters. If true, that's some low hanging fruit that moves the polls from Obama +4 to Obama +10.
(PS. That's one of the reasons they keep mentioning Biden's work on the "Violence Against Women Act".)
(PPS. Shouldn't it really be called the "Stopping Violence Against Women Act"?)
posted by mikevotes at
1:30 PM
9 Comments:
Congress-speak can get pretty weird, that's for sure.
Oh, and some of us caught your "Biden is articulate and clean" crack a few posts back.
By
MarcLord, at 2:31 PM
This is good news.
As I see it, there are two types of "Hillary supporters" that seem to be lumped together as one.
The first are merely disaffected Republicans who saw HRC as the safer, more "establishment" choice. These would have inevitably been drawn back into the McCain fold by his campaign's base-consolidation efforts.
The second group are feminist Democrats who were genuinely excited by the prospect of the first woman President. While bitter over the loss, their pro-choice sensibilities, views on Iraq, and economic interests will win the day - especially if HRC comes out swinging at McCain.
If Hillary doesn't come out swinging, she risks becoming the current version of Nader in the eyes of the Party, and her ambitions will become undone. The Democratic party is pretty open, but the ability of a candidate to generate votes for Republicans is not generally considered an asset.
There's always the possibly that we could be seeing a nascent schism in the Party, but what the foundation would be for that schism would go beyond HRC into something deeper and quite nebulous.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 3:01 PM
Marc, I couldn't resist the Biden crack.
Todd, We're there that many Clinton Republicans? I'm sure there were some who crossed over, but with her negatives among the Repubs, did she reach?
It's that second group where I would guess the real numbers are, and I would guess that their reticence has a ton to do with the way Clinton played identity politics with them. Slights (perceived or real) against her became slights against them.
I have two recurring thoughts on the matter.
1) If Clinton had quit after Texas/Ohio, when it became apparent she would not win, we wouldn't be in this mess. (and she wouldn't have the debt.) She ran that last chunk only for her own political reasons.
2)I do think the meat of this group will swing in, to some substantial degree, but I also think it's notable that Obama is still winning without them.
(And, I don't really see a basis for any long term party schism. I don't think Hillary can convert the feminist side issue people into a movement supporting the broader Clinton faction that includes the Bubba Bill Clinton cadre, and she can't do it without that apparatus.)
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mikevotes, at 3:33 PM
(And, I don't really see a basis for any long term party schism. I don't think Hillary can convert the feminist side issue people into a movement supporting the broader Clinton faction that includes the Bubba Bill Clinton cadre, and she can't do it without that apparatus.)
I guess I'm talking about this HRC controversy being the symptom of something deeper producing a schism, not the Party splitting into a Clinton faction. There's more to this than "experience" and race, but what it is baffles me.
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Todd Dugdale , at 3:47 PM
I really don't think it is. I may be way wrong, but I really believe that the majority of it now is women who identify their personal difficulties with Hillary Clinton. And Clinton lost, and their problems aren't alleviated, so it goes on.
It's not really about Clinton winning, because they're not clamoring for that anymore. What they claim to want is "respect" for the people who supported her. It's really about the individuals, and, frankly, I don't know how you'd ever satisfactorally give them that respect. Because of the way the movement tapped into individual emotions, I don't think there's any way that this last group will ever be completely sated.
This group, this last group, invested their personal grievances into the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that's not really resolvable by the Obama campaign.
Such emotional investment could certainly be abused, but I don't really see how you expand that into a viable lever. At most I see it as a factional group.
It's really fixated on Clinton, and it could be powerful if she pushed it, but the problem is, like the Perot folks way back when, there's no way any other figures can really cross that threshold to be make it a sustainable movement.
Probably sexist in there somewhere, sorry.
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mikevotes, at 4:12 PM
"...HRC controversy being the symptom of something deeper producing a schism, not the Party splitting into a Clinton faction. There's more to this than "experience" and race, but what it is baffles me."
It's less about experience or race, and more about getting to steer the boat. I think it's a glass ceiling issue.
Isn't it really about the anger over a stymied 'dynasty', the sense of having been denied something to which they felt deservedly entitled?
This is the sort of hurt that will carry on a long time, I feel. I frame it much as how women will tend to remember everything ever said in a relationship, and will tend to hold a grudge. That's sexist thinking, obviously, (and my apologies to female readers) but my own experience bears it out.
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r8r, at 9:19 AM
I'm not going to venture into your analogy, but you are hitting my point that there's an emotional content involved.
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mikevotes, at 10:26 AM
Most PUMAs are blind to the near fact of an HRC VP slot if she dropped out at Texas...
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Anonymous, at 5:01 PM
From what I understand, that wasn't an official offer, but I understood that was at least open to negotiation there as well.
By
mikevotes, at 10:51 AM
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