Conventional ‘Wisdom’
May 15th, 2008 at 7:25 am by Susie
Exit polls out of West Virginia indicate that only 36 percent of Clinton’s supporters would vote for Obama if he were the nominee. A bare majority of Obama’s voters said they would vote for Clinton over McCain.
I linked to an explanation of this yesterday that you may have missed. Basically, if you subtract the number of registered Republicans and independents who voted for a Democrat in these open primaries, the number drops sharply.
In other words, the number of actual DEMOCRATS who say they will vote for McCain in the general election over the person they didn’t support in the primary is in the single digits on both the Clinton and Obama side.
I can tell you one thing. I am a registered Democrat who supports Sen. Obama, and if Sen. Clinton somehow manages to get the nomination, I am going to look at a third party.
Why am I so vehement on this issue? I do not think Sen. Clinton is morally qualified for office. In particular, her actions on the Bosnia during the 1990s should disgust anyone with a concern for human rights.
As has been documented by several respected journalists, and by former members of the Clinton Administration, Hillary Clinton persuaded her husband to delay intervening in the Bosnian genocide for several years. Apparently, she was afraid a war might distract from her domestic agenda, particularly health care. President Clinton would not intervene until the fall of Srebrenica, when the situation became too embarressing for him. In the meantime, 200,000 people died.
To me, being an accomplice to genocide, even if only indirectly, is an automatic disqualifier for the presidency.
In other words, the number of actual DEMOCRATS who say they will vote for McCain in the general election over the person they didn’t support in the primary is in the single digits on both the Clinton and Obama side.
i think it’s also too early to reliably ask the question. there may be a lot of obama supporters and a lot of clinton supporters who right now are anxious to tell people they won’t vote for the other side if s/he gets the nomination. it’s all tied up in the electability argument. if someone say, “i wouldn’t vote for ____ in the general election” in the context of a contentious primary race what they’re really saying is “the candidate i don’t support can’t attract people like me in the general election, therefore s/he is unelectable”.
i’m not saying the people polled are lying or don’t really believe it when they say it. i am saying that when caught up in the primary madness people say all kinds of things that won’t hold up when faced with the real choice of a democrat vs. mcsame