In the 2004 Democratic primary, all the buzz was about electability, who was most likely to be able to beat Bush. Yet against all logic, this campaign has hardly mentioned electability, even after McCain won New Hampshire and Florida and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. Well now that John McCain has been all but coronated the Republican nominee, maybe FINALLY we can start realizing it is a major issue.
Now it has been painfully obvious for a long time that Hillary Clinton cannot beat John McCain in the general election, she is polarizing, he is the opposite, he will bring Republicans to the polls in droves, he needs that. He appeals to Independents, she pushes them away. 50% of Americans have said that they will never vote for her, that is not a good place to start a primary, especially against a candidate that enjoys broad support. Nearly every poll has shown consistently that Obama does much better against McCain than Hillary. In most polls Hillary loses to McCain, and a few have shown her losing by margins as bad as 51% to 39%.
Common sense should lend a clue here as well, Obama has amazing, unparalleled crossover appeal, and Hillary has the opposite. When it comes to a general election race against McCain, you have to fight fire with fire, Independents with Independents. You have to hold your base and take from their side, not the other way around. Well in this matchup Obama is fighting fire with a volcano; Hillary is fighting fire with paper. It is all very obvious to people who have been paying even the slightest bit of attention.
Aside from that, it is also clear that the very same mechanism which ensures that McCain would destroy Hillary in the general election, also ensures that Democrats will take heavy loses in red/purple districts all across America if Hillary is on the ticket. If she is on the ballot, the Republicans will be united by their hate for her, they will flock to the polls in record numbers, and after they vote Republican for the presidential race, they are likely to vote R, R, R, R, R all the way down the ticket, destroying Demcrats running for everything from Congress to local elections. For this very reason members of Congress and Governors from red/purple districts and states across the country have endorsed Obama. They know better than anyone that sharing a ballot with Hillary Clinton will be an electoral kiss of death for Democrats; Hillary Clinton amounts to an electoral Typhoid Mary. These leaders include Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. They believe in Obama, just like all of his supporters do, they know he is the best candidate period, but they also realize that nomination Hillary Clinton is the worst thing that could happen to our electoral prospects in November. In the VA-01 special election, the GOP even dropped attack mailers against the Democrat running there that had his face right next to Hillary's, and they won a strong victory. The GOP knows how to mobilize their base. This was just a glimpse of what is to come if we nominate her.
And an unlikely thing happened yesterday...I agreed with Rush Limbaugh. I never thought it would ever happen, but he said something truthful (like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day). He spoke directly to the electability of McCain against Obama and against Hillary. He said he wants Hillary to be the nominee so bad that he would fundraise for her so that she can get nominated and lose the election to McCain. Anyway, here are the highlights:
But the reason for raising money for Hillary is because that apparently my party is relying on fear and loathing of Hillary to get the nomination, to unite Republicans, who are, some of them, off the reservation. The Republicans do not seem to be relying on leadership in their party to unite the party. They seem to be relying on all these external things, nobody is going to vote for Hillary, negative turnout factor. What if she's not the nominee? We've got make sure she's the nominee if the Republican Party is to be unified. What more loyal thing could I do than to run a fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton?
And then from the day before:
She just polarizes people. I think she's going to gin up enough anti-Hillary turnout out there to perhaps be a boon to whoever the Republican nominee is.
Now, if Obama is the nominee, we are doomed, and you should get ready and prepared for it now.
Now that is candid. A lot of Hillary supporters will point to the fact the quote was from Rush, who is a career shitslinger, however they willfully choose dismissal over analysis. His statement wasn't sneaky reverse psychology, it was a common sense statement of fact, which is why you can trust it. If Rush looked out the window and pointed out that the Sun is bright, it doesn't all of the sudden make that any less true.
Anyway, the Obama team sent out a press release today basically laying all of this out, in a pretty comprehensive way. I hope it takes hold, I hope it stimulates that much needed discussion of electability, because if we nominate Hillary, we can kiss the presidency goodbye, and probably our Congressional majorities. We are at a fork in the road, and we can go one direction and find our next great president, our progressive version of Reagan, someone who can lead our country in a entirely new direction, only this time for the better. The other direction leads to electoral defeat, an embarrassment of the Democratic party, a bitter loss when we had the perfect storm set up for another huge win. We can't do that. We have a historic opportunity here, we cannot count on this chance coming up four or eight years from now, and right now we are dangerously close to throwing it all away because some of us or so shortsighted they can't see the clear train wreck that a Hillary nomination represents. This press release is a start. This semi-publicized new Time poll is a start, but we need to work as a progressive community to make people wake up and smell reality.
I should also note, if you want to help out with this, please donate to Obama's campaign, there is now a link on the main page of this blog. Let's see what we can get done!
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