There’s one good thing that has come out of the prolonged Obama-Clinton race.
There seems to be a big chunk of Clinton voters who say they’re dead-set against voting for Obama. They’ll vote for McCain before they vote for Obama. Basically, their order of preference was: (1) Clinton, (2) McCain, (3) Obama.
The thing is, had Clinton not stayed in the race, we’d never know who these people are. Those Clinton voters who say they’ll never vote for Obama would have been indistinguishable from voters who would vote for John McCain over any Democrat whatsoever.
But because Clinton stayed in the race, we know who they are. We know they’re receptive to Democratic arguments, since they voted for Clinton. It will be easier to convince them to vote Democratic than it will be to convince die-hard Republicans to do so. Just convince them that Obama holds the same positions on the issues that Clinton does.
It may or may not work, depending on whether you see Clinton as the centrist and Obama as the liberal (Clinton and guns, Obama and his bad bowling), or Obama as the centrist and Clinton as the liberal (see universal health care). But it’s a thought.
Maybe. But look at the comments thread on any prominent blog talking about the election, and the amount of hate directed at Obama and his supporters (which they call “Obamabots”) from ostensible Clinton supporters is startling. I wonder if what has happened is some sort of totally irrational schism opening up in the party where there’s no room for reasoned debate at all. I sure hope not.
Well, that’s also possible. Sigh.
I see them both as left-leaning centrists…neither one of ’em’s as good as Bill Richardson.