Intimations?

Divisions continue to run deep within the Democratic Party, even with Hillary’s impending primary defeat. Recent polls conducted among Indiana and South Carolina Clinton-supporters indicate that a majority would, come election-time, pledge their votes to the Republican candidate, John McCain. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), among national Hillary-backers, 28% indicate that, if Clinton were to lose her primary, they would support Mr. McCain (according to a recent Gallup Poll). These statistics do not bode well for the Democrats’ election-futures. As Nick Kristof remarks:

Suppose that 80 percent of people who voted for Mrs. Clinton in the primaries end up supporting Mr. Obama in November, but that 20 percent stay home or vote Republican. That 20 percent would amount to far more popular votes than Ralph Nader won in 2000.

Kristof does not exaggerate; if 20% (rather than 28%) of Clinton’s primary popular vote was granted to McCain in the general election, it would amount to approximately 3,040,000 votes, more than 100,000 votes more than Nader received in the ’spoiled’ 2000 Bush-Gore runoff.

The recent complaints and threats of Clinton-supporters are rather childish. To me, these actions reveal a large constituency whose involvement in politics is limited to a superficial desire to win, despite the cost to the integrity of the party and the nation. Had these Clinton-supporters truly comprehended what was at stake in the next election and the inherent differences between the competing party platforms (on tax-cuts, government revenue, universal health care, military expenditures, the appointment of Supreme Court justices and abortion rights, etc.), they would never announce their intention to side with a (continued) conservative agenda that has led the country to the brink of economic and social disaster (and offers no new solutions to ameliorate these problems). Perhaps the blame rests squarely with Hillary, and her aggressive, kneecapping-style of politics (and claims of sexism!) which has sent her backers into a must-win, Hill-or-bust frenzy.

With more and more insiders whispering that Hillary should give up her candidacy, it is possible that Senator Clinton will have a drastic change of heart, shut off the attack machine, and encourage her constituency to rally behind Obama in the general election. If not, hopefully sour-grapes voters will realize that McCain is not a Hillary stand-in and that extreme differentiations exist between the party platforms. McCain represents much of what Hillary (at least in her younger, idealistic days) has opposed. If we do not want our country’s future to be anything like the recent past, voters would do well to reassess these real distinctions.