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COLUMNISTS
TODAY'S STORIES
14.05.2008
A Final Dagger Through The Unity Ticket Idea

Dick Morris makes a smart point in between excretions of venom:

There are two kinds of people who backed Hillary in the primaries: her original supporters and those who joined her later in the game. Her original backers are all solid Democrats whose arms would fall off before they would back anyone who is pro-life. They are true believers, feminists, pro-choice advocates, older party loyalists who would prefer Hillary, may have doubts about Obama, but will always fall in line and vote Democratic. The more recent converts are people who are turned off by Obama's connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and who worry that he might be a closet black radical. Their latent racial fears were heightened by the revelations about Obama's links with Wright, and they voted for Hillary as the lesser of two evils. Putting Mrs. Clinton on the ticket will do nothing to assuage these fears. One wonders if these blue-collar, downscale, racially motivated voters would actually support Hillary against John McCain if she were to win the nomination. They certainly wouldn't follow her into Obama's camp just because she was on the ticket.

For those who are interested, Mark Schmitt and I chewed over the unity ticket idea in a Bloggingheads discussion we had yesterday. Mark recently wrote an entry for The Plank on the subject, and I weighed in with this item yesterday.

We also waded into the McCain unmoderated debate proposal, Obama and race, Mike's Hillary-impeachment piece, and an interesting post by Matt Stoller about Obama's consolidation of power within the Democratic Party.

--Noam Scheiber 

Posted: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 1:30 PM with 4 comment(s)

Comments

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liberal reformer said:

I have been a supporter of Hillary since early this year. But the Unity Ticket is a bad idea. Hillary won't bring these downscale blue - collar voters aboard. Obama is going to pick an experienced Southern white male, just you wait.

May 14, 2008 2:06 PM

hemlock41 said:

Obama should not take for granted the future support of Hillary's feminist pro-choice advocates. (Morris calls them "true believers.")  While they most likely will fall in line behind the Democratic nominee, some may sit out if they're feeling affronted enough after the primary. And calling female reporters "sweetie" will NOT help Obama's prospects of assuaging their anger. He needs to drop the "sweetie" thing pronto.  I can't believe he keeps saying it to women on the campaign trail. (Ben Smith at Politico has a video up of his most recent "sweetie" utterance.)

May 14, 2008 3:10 PM

bigm said:

I'm no fan of the Unity Ticket, but Morris' analysis seems to make some false assumptions.

Wasn't it one of the TNR writers who pointed out the demography is destiny aspect of these primaries?  No matter when a primary was held, it was fairly predictable how it would result based on the demographic of the primary voters.

If that is true, and it appears to be, then there really were no "original" Clinton supporters and "those that joined her later in the game."  Her support was fairly consistent throughout.  As was Obama's.  Unfortunately for Clinton, Obama's consistent support was greater.

I agree that Clinton as VP is not necessarily likely to bring in significant blue collar support, but not for the horse-race reasons that Morris assumes.

May 14, 2008 3:17 PM

blackton said:

hemlock, I agree, it only takes going to a web site like Taylormarsh and the deranged posters there to see the problem, not sure if it an outlier or more broadly representative.

May 14, 2008 5:24 PM