usaperspective
With Democratic Chairman Howard Dean calling for all super-delegates to begin making a decision concerning which candidate they will be backing. Clearly, the super-delegates are wondering which of the two Democratic candidates stands the best chance of beating the Republican nominee, John McCain. The super-delegates are looking at the fact that Clinton trails Obama in the delegate count, but that Clinton tends to win the bigger states, those with the most electoral votes come election time. The issue that has many of them concerned with Obama is the fact that he tends to win states that tend to swing in favor of the Republican Party come election time. The problem with this is clear, their is no split in electoral votes come election time, winner takes all. If McCain is able to win those states, Obama could find himself in a poor position. Believe it or not, the fact that 28% of Clinton supporters have said to be voting for McCain if Obama gets the nomination is also being taken into consideration. The super-delegates have a job to do and that’s to make sure that a Democrat is sworn into office in 2009. They will choose the candidate with the highest electability and ultimately the one who has the best chance at defeating John McCain.
What the Superdelegates are thinking
Posted: April 23, 2008 in Election 2008Tags: Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, John McCain
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American Perspective 
The word “Clearly” is not as good as getting a quote from somebody with credibility to back assertions about the superdelegate thought process up, but I’ll bite since these arguments get used a lot.
I don’t believe 28% of Hillary’s supporters and I doubt the superdelegates do either. Why? Because the most ardent Hillary supporters love to remind you of the fact that she’s a woman or how much their life stories have in common with one of the dozens of origin stories she’s built around herself. They are voting for Hillary because they value identity politics to the point of sometimes confusing it for feminism and McCaine is a crusty, ill-tempered guy who is on record as having said horrible things to his wife and the real topper is that his party refuses to let him get away with anything other than being PRO-LIFE.
Both McCaine and Obama are a lot more palatable to people who are concerened about campaign/finance reform and Hillary’s defenses of why she voted in favor of the Iraq war have made her look worse than a guy who at least stayed consistent on it. That said, I’m only wavering myself. I’ve always respected McCain but he’s been less consistent recently than I remember.
The argument that Obama does well in places with a lot of Republicans is not one I’d be making in favor of Hillary. The degree of loathing nondemocrats have held for her over the years surprises me even now when her attacks have made it impossible for Obama to run positive campaigns against somebody who is supposed to be on the same team. His GOP crossover and independent draw is one of his greatest assets.
We just got through 8 years of Hell and Hillary is playing by the rules that put the Bush administration in office. And don’t throw the negative thing back at Obama. He’s been throwing counterpunches for the most part and has refused to take part in the media pile-on that happens every time she gets caught in another silly lie that was meant to bolster image. And her image, dear god. How much of her campaign was pissed away on that? What democrat thought of her as a less than competent politician. But no, then she had to cry and be a war hero and all this other crap. I honestly thought she was losing her freaking mind at one point.
Do you really think she’s going to be convincing independents and GOPers who are smarting at the fact that they voted for these charlatans not once but twice after seeing her run the same style of campaign during her own party’s primary?
Hillary supporters, please. Most of us will acknowledge that she’s a tough, capable woman but she hasn’t shown an ounce of integrity or good judgment during the bulk of this race. And it’s not because she’s stupid. It has nothing to do with her gender. It’s that she has failed to take the American people seriously by continuing to indulge in the cynicism that she markets to her boomer vote as being “sensible.” I can’t blame her for being a bit insulated I suppose. While the rest of the country was going up in flames with her aid as a Senator, she and Bill were racking up 9 figures.
You want a woman president? Get Naomi Wolf up there. I’d vote for her in a NY nanosecond.
Don’t get me wrong, Clinton has her flaws as well. I’ve covered them in various artciles on my other blog. The thing most people think she lacks the most is her ability to represent a wide majority of the American people. Like Obama, she is an excellent public speaker but she lacks the widespread appeal that Obama has proven to possess. Obama captivates audiences with his speeches while Clinton does as well but not to the same degree. We can all agree that both parties have stepped out of line in their attacks towards one another. Both have been the aggressor at one time or another. On the down side, Clinton voted for the war, but so did a majority of the Democratic party at the time. Knowing what we thought we knew, it was a rather easy decision at the time. As far as the stats go, I know they don’t represent the entire population, but that number (28%) figures to be the general consensus given who the majority of Clinton supporters are.
What I want to know is why on Gods Green earth would 28% of Hillary supporters (we know once Hillary licks her wounds and supports Barack things will die down greatly) go from Mrs. Universal Healthcare, Anti-Iraq, to a man who wants to destroy the healthcare system and whose solution is to give everyone a 5K tax break instead and a man who is feeling good about how Iraq is going?
Seriously, I do not get it. Hillary and McCain are about as opposite as you can get. Hillary and Obama are extremely similar and even on the healthcare issue, Obama is being a lot more politically saavy saying he wants universal healthcare but by not forcing it, he’ll get more bi-partisian support.
So it really does make me wonder if most of the Hillary fans (47% of PA voters were women, mostly older women) are tokenizing her as a ‘woman’ above all other facts around this election? They are then somehow going to blame Obama for what the American population did – vote for him in more states, winning more delegates, more popular vote, and getting more people interested in politics while raising more money than in the history of politics?