Sunday, February 24, 2008

Yet Another Thing that Makes Obama Unique

Our last post, about attitudes of conservatives in the Republican Party toward John McCain, noted how conservatives are viscerally repelled by Hillary Clinton, while they respect and even like Barack Obama, although he won't get their votes.

That leads us to a further observation.   The attitude toward Mrs. Bill Clinton by dyed-in-the-wool conservatives is so profound that most of them want Obama to win the Democratic nomination even though they think Republicans could more easily defeat Hillary.   That's how much they want the prospect of Hillary in the White House eliminated even as a possibility.

Conservatives see her as the political equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.

What this means is that if Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he will be in the curious position of having a reservoir of goodwill toward him personally even from a group -- Republican conservatives -- who are not going to vote for him.   For being "the guy who saved us from Hillary," Obama will be the beneficiary of a sense of "we owe him one" from conservatives.  

Again -- that's not going to translate into votes on election day.   But it means that, if actually elected President, Obama could begin with a breadth and depth of goodwill across the political field, including even his opponents on many policy matters, that no president has had during the lifetime of any American living today.

And though it won't mean votes at the ballot box, it would help a President Obama, somehow.   At very least it might actually take us past the era of personalizing politics, and being able to have policy debates -- even battles, when necessary -- over the merits of the policies themselves.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hillary has no idea what hit her.

Obama masterfully painted her into a corner by associating her with the Bush/Clinton dynasty political soap opera saga.

He bracketed her in the "past 20 years" of political status quo that needs to be abandoned. Hence, the "change" message.

By dragging out her old man, Bill, she did it to herself. Obama just sat back as she drove her followeres to him and was smart enough to not say anything to drive them back to her.

Innately, his party primary voters, eligible crossover voters and independents have come out in unusually high numbers near the end of a state's primary election cycle and cast their vote for Obama in response to this carefully crafted "change" message.

This has made it difficult for pollsters to properly predict the percentages by which Obama will win since polls will be focused on those in a party most likely to vote in a primary. Maine, a caucus state comes in at 73%, not the mid-50's. Wisconsin, 58, not the polled 51-53.

The Obama camp knows the folks in their party inherently now if Hillary is their candidate, it'll be another 8 years of trying to impeach her, "will Jeb run in 2012?", "your president does this or that," what's Bill doing over at the U.N. or World bank.

He knows we all want to break the psychosis of the last 20 years. Masterful politics. Hey, JFK did it, and he only had Ike to work with, and everyone actually liked Ike (torch passing to a new generation, New Frontier, etc.)

This is a dream situation for a politician and will probably spill over into the general election, should B.O. become the dem candidate.

And, the message to the Pubbies should be "Don't get bracketed into the Bush dynasty or you're going to get pasted.

So, what does McCain do right out of the box? Accepts an endorsement from George Bush, Sr.

J.C. might carry Arizona. Wyoming is also a possibility. Remember Dole. 1 for 50. And the media tried to make it look like a horse race right up to election eve.

You might think B.O. is an empty suit and only a great orator, but he's a much better national political campaigner than you. And, what's beautiful to watch is you'll never know why, Hillary.