...more recent posts
Josh has some thoughts on a WaPo interview with Clinton. She appears to be saying she will stay in until the convention where she'll fight to try to seat Florida and Michigan. The conventional wisdom is that this drawn out democratic primary hurts the dems. But suddenly I'm not so sure.
My one horse race belief that hasn't changed throughout this entire show is that Clinton's negatives, while obviously quite high, are still under reported. A lot of people really hate her. It doesn't exactly make sense, but anecdotally this is what I have found. And it's why I've always been against nominating her (in a year when otherwise republican turnout might be quite low.)
But maybe her staying in the race actually helps Obama. Especially if it's real nasty and comes down to spilling some blood on the convention floor. Obviously this will dominate the news. And my new feeling is that all the Clinton haters out there will be drawn, like magic, into empathizing with Obama. This is going to be a lot of independent swing voters and center leaning republicans. They want to see Clinton go down. If they need to vote for McCain to do it, they will. But if Obama can do it, especially after a long fight in which it looks like she might actually pull it out, then he'll be the hero. And he really will have beaten her in a final way since I don't think she's viable in 2012 or 2016 if she really drags the party through this all the way to the convention. She's rolling the dice very big, burning all her bridges, and if she fails then it's over. I could even imagine her losing her Senate seat (okay, probably not.)
You can probably tell I haven't thought this through so much yet, but what do you think? Is Clinton hatred really that strong? Can a long fight with Obama actually rally people to his side rather than tear the party apart? The more outrageous, nasty, and underhanded her campaign appears to be, the better for Obama? He'll be the one who killed the wicked witch.
Again, note, I don't think *I* have Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I like all of her domestic policies. I'm just saying I think CDS is real, and can move a lot of votes one way or the other.
Or to say it all the other way: if Obama had won NH and just swept to the nomination, I think he'd inherit a lot of the anti-dem feelings that are out there. But since these anti-dem feelings have their strongest manifestation as anti-Clinton feelings, by engaging in a long bloody struggle and beating her Obama actually becomes a hero to these anti-dem forces and picks up a lot of middle ground votes that might otherwise have gone to McCain.