Will Obama Add Insult to Hillary’s Injury?
The candidate's VP pick could spark a backlash.
Informed political observers have realized since June that Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t be Barack Obama’s running mate. As Obama prepares to announce his vice-presidential choice, however, it will be worthwhile to watch the reaction of the ill-informed and unobservant — which is to say, the independent “swing” voters who will ultimately decide the election.
Especially for those swing voters who voted for Hillary in the Democratic primaries, it may come as a brutal shock to learn that the former First Lady won’t be on the ticket in November. The shock will be amplified when those voters learn that Obama’s choice was the result of an ABC (”Anybody But Clinton”) process that excluded Hillary from serious consideration months earlier.
While running mate choices rarely influence the ultimate outcome of elections — Gallup finds only a small “bounce” factor involved in such announcements — this year may prove to be one of those rare occasions.
The potential for a backlash from disgruntled Clinton voters has been consistently derogated by elite political commentators, who climbed aboard the Obama bandwagon early and by March were declaring Hillary’s nomination a mathematical impossibility. Her belated rally in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania annoyed these elites, but did not dissuade them from their belief that the Democrats’ downside risk of alienating Clinton voters would be a non-factor in November.
Yet Hillary’s voters were not, for the most part, members of the political elite. She drew key support from blue-collar voters and older women. Already, as a recent Pew Research poll indicates, some 18 percent of those who backed Clinton in the primaries — which translates to more than 3 million voters — are already supporting the Republican candidate, John McCain.
The potential for that number to grow is very real, because many of Clinton’s supporters in the primaries were independent voters who, as American University political scientist Candace Nelson has observed, “are the least likely to pay attention to politics, least likely to be engaged in the political process.”
While Pew found that 72 percent of Clinton’s supporters now back Obama, another 10 percent remain undecided. It is among these independents who voted for Hillary in the Democratic primaries that a backlash could develop when the Democrat names his Anybody But Clinton running mate.
Political obtuseness
Pro-Hillary blogger Big Tent Democrat first pointed to the possibility of such a backlash:
When Obama does not pick Hillary, he will lose support among women and white voters. … His stubborn refusal to pick Hillary Clinton, his insistence in causing political trouble for himself with the VP pick, will make this a closer election than it should be. The political obtuseness on this critical decision is amazing to me.
That prediction was made in late July in reaction to Quinnipiac polls showing the Democrat leading in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. At that time, Obama was enjoying a poll “bounce” caused by media enthusiasm for his foreign trip.
Big Tent Democrat didn’t see the damage from an ABC running mate being enough to cost Obama the election, but that was before polls showed a post-Berlin backlash — and before it became apparent that Democrats could be facing unexpected trouble in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
John Kerry narrowly beat President Bush for Michigan’s 17 electoral votes in 2004, and the state should be considered safe for Democrats in a year when such poll indicators as the generic congressional ballot show Republicans in a slump.
Yet, proving Tip O’Neill’s adage that all politics is local, Michigan Democrats are hurting from reaction to Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s 2007 tax increase and from the scandal surrounding Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Recent polls have shown Obama’s lead as thin as 2 points in the state, and Karl Rove has named Michigan as one of the key “blue” states that McCain might switch to Republican red in November.
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Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party . A frequent contributor to the American Spectator, he blogs at The Other McCain.
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29 Comments
1. ic:If I were a Hillary supporter, I wouldn’t want the VP spot for Hillary. I would rather Obama lost the race so that Hillary could run in 2012. If Hillary, as a running mate, helped Obama win, then she can’t run on her own merit until 2016. I believe die-hard Hillarites would stay home or vote McCain this time.
Aug 16, 2008 - 12:46 am 2. Turfmann:You know that awful nanosecond that occurs between when you know you’re about to smash up your car and the actual impact? That’s where Obama is right now. He is stumbling and wheezing even more than he was during the last few primaries. His ill-timed vacation (What’s the matter with this guy? He can call Hawaii the western White House after inauguration) coincides with a foreign policy crisis a la Clinton’s 3 am piece – Obama hit the snooze button while McCain out performed GWB – and his continued blundering of the convention. Nomination speech in an outdoor stadium, 70,000 supporters shouting O-bam-a! O-bam-a! will go over great with Joesixpack. Give your opponent, whom you defeated by a razor thin margin, a floor vote? And her husband a prime time speaking slot? Are you nuts?
Hillary’s supporters are mad and I think they are going to stay mad. If McCain decides to go female with his VP pick, and the choice is a solid one, this could be over before the leaves turn.
It is truly a testament to the depravity of the liberal ideology that in this election season, with all the things that have gone wrong with the Bush presidency that some how, some way, the Democratic controlled Congress polls lower, much lower, than does Bush and that the best person that they could come up with for a presidential nominee is a hopelessly flawed Chicago politician.
Aug 16, 2008 - 3:10 am 3. SAF:IC is absolutely right IMHO. in fact it is possible Hillary supporters will come out in droves against Obama and vote for McCain just so hill gets a shot in 2012.
Another factor is the polls are skewed towards Obama because of the coward factor. The coward factor is a white person who would not vote for Obama doesn’t have the courage to say no in a poll because he will be branded a racist.
Aug 16, 2008 - 3:50 am 4. Beth:There are times I still marvel that we’re actually IN this predicament. I am a Hillary supporter and while I wouldn’t say that sexist reporting and sexism cost her the election, I do firmly believe the media being in the tank for Obama played a critical role. You note in the story the early “she can’t win” stories. She COULD win. She could have and perhaps would have had there not been the mindset developed and fostered by all the stories that the math didn’t work her way. Most didn’t bother to add that mathematically, Obama couldn’t win either; both needed the superdelegates. Then there was the whole “when will she drop out” story line. Why should she have? He hadn’t won yet! I think that completely shaped the outcome.
I haven’t decided what to do, come November. I’m a liberal, but I think Obama is very inexperienced (the 3 a.m. moment came and he blew it, plain and simple — HRC must be going crazy saying “I told you so” to intimates), arrogant and smug. Can I vote for McCain? Boy I don’t know. Most of my family is; they have no trouble going from HRC to McCain (the ones who weren’t already voting for McCain).
As I live in Illinois, my state’s going Obama. So this time I have the luxury of doing a write-in, which will probably be what I end up dong.
And one thing not mentioned here, b/c if probably won’t happen — if Obama chooses a woman OTHER than HRC, well, then watch out. He’ll lose lots more votes than if he’d gone with a guy.
Aug 16, 2008 - 4:30 am 5. crossover:Those that lived through the Carter years, know what is ahead in America if Obama wins! (The record is there and the causes are crystal clear!!)
All I can say to the younger generation is: Get a job with the government or a MAJOR FINANCIALLY SOUND MEGA-INTERNATIONAL Corporation.
Small businesses will be shutting down weekly by the thousands, due to massive inflation, unbearable interest rates and the public’s hoarding of cash! for those that have any cash?
Been there… know what it’s like!
You have NO IDEA the pain this country is facing… but like those of us that owned (and lost) a small business because of Carter…
Aug 16, 2008 - 4:38 am 6. hdgreene:24% interest rates!
YOU WILL REMEMBER OBAMA once you recover financially!!!
/when you recover financially!
So, the MSM will play it thus: if you are a conservative and vote against the liberal Sen. Obama, you are a racist. But if you are a Democrat (and a feminist) who votes for McCain then you are just a simple soul, not good at political calculus.
Aug 16, 2008 - 5:17 am 7. TomP:Oh yes, I remember the Carter years very well….and I fear the obama years will be far worse. The radical left seems to be in killing mood.
Aug 16, 2008 - 5:33 am 8. RightBrain:If Senator Obama picked Senator Clinton to be his Vice-President, he would also have to hire a food taster. And yes there is sufficient anger among the Clinton supporters to tip this toward McCain in a couple of critical states.
Aug 16, 2008 - 5:35 am 9. GARY:IWISH OBOMA WOULD MAKE UP HIS MIND AND PICK A VP I STILL THINK THAT HILLARY WOULD BE THE BEST BUT IF IT’S NOT TO BE LET US KNOW AND GET ON WITH IT. I WILL SUPORT OBOMA
Aug 16, 2008 - 5:55 am 10. Rotwang:The last thing Obama needs is Hill & Bill running a parallel Executive Branch out of the Naval Observatory. We need one President, not three.
Aug 16, 2008 - 6:22 am 11. Moultrie:I also had the mis-fortune to live thru the Carter years…thanks to Jimmah’s incompetence I came within a hair of personal bankruptcy when the 25 year old small business I worked for was put out of business. BHO would be worse than Jimmah by 10x. Nobody will escape the disaster that would be the Messiah in the White House!
Aug 16, 2008 - 6:26 am 12. David P:I love this, the more unsettling the convention line up, the better chances McCain has of becoming president provided he chooses an appropriate running mate, (non-minority) not Romney or Lieberman. My guess is that the jeers will echo out of mile high as soon as Bill or Hillary takes the stage, with tremendous repercussions. Count on the democrats to further alienate one another while solidifying Clinton supporters determination to not elect Obama.
Aug 16, 2008 - 7:17 am 13. Sandra M:Hillary voters.
How many were part of Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos?
How many thought her more experienced than neophyte Obama?
How many have read the Atlantic article about the chaos and mismanagement of her campaign and Thank God she’s not the nominee.? The millions of dollars she wasted, the lack of planning ahead. Aargh!
I am a white woman with a brain. I do not vote race or gender. Radical feminists are Marxists and despicable cowards. How many have come to the aid of Muslim women? How many excused loathesome Bill’s lies, infidelities and general yuckiness?
Note also that a year ago the press was talking about the unbeatable Clinton machine. The same press that told us that Saddam’s army was the 4th greatest in the world. I had Drudge as my home page until he showed Obama addressing a huge crowd and failed to mention that the crowd had shown up for a free rock concert and stayed to listen to Obama — Germany was more of the same. People came to a free rock and a free reggae concert.
I think Obama will lose. Hillary? If she were the nominee would also lose. We have seen behind the curtain and learned that the chaos and indecision of the first two Clinton presidencies were not all the fault of Bubba Bill.
David P: said McCain (can win) “provided he chooses an appropriate running mate (non-minority).” I guess you mean Bobby Jindal, who I hope will be our President after McCain.
Aug 16, 2008 - 8:06 am 14. TomJW:Obama won’t pick Hillary as VP. It’s more important to him that he survives his preidency if he gets elected than if he gets elected in the first place.
Aug 16, 2008 - 9:10 am 15. Obama and the Hillary voters « Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian:[...] Lifson Robert Stacy McCain sees trouble ahead for Obama when he announces his VP choice and it isn’t Hillary. While political insiders have [...]
Aug 16, 2008 - 9:36 am 16. Andrew Ian Dodge:Did anyone ever think Obama would pick Clinton as VP? I mean realistically it was a definite no go.
Aug 16, 2008 - 10:20 am 17. Rubicon:Personally, I think Hillary id positioning herself for 2012. At this point with the gaffes Obama has made, I think Hillary is actually glad she is not on the ticket with him.
Aug 16, 2008 - 11:37 am 18. what is "occupation":If Hillary runs in 2012, and an either Obama or McCain presidency has not done all that well or overcome some of the financial chaos we face now, then she will be a shoo-in at that time.
Based on the media’s anointing of Obama so early (they really did Hillary in very early with their “when is she leaving” type comments), and the act that the public has not gone “in the tank” for him as excessively as the media have, Hillary & many others now realize there is a flaw when it comes to Obama & the voters realize it.
The Rev. Wright issue, the Ayers issue, the “Frank” mentor in Hawaii issue, the “bitter & frustrated” issue in PA, the Ignorant issue just recently, all add up to a candidate who does not respect the people he wants to elect him so he can lead them!
Why elect a guy who calls people in America bitter, frustrated, overly religious, clingers, and ignorant? If he has no respect for us, why should we for him?
The independents will decide this race & I think they are just waiting until the conventions are over to make their choice. It may or may not matter now who either candidate picks for the running mate.
Perhaps world events will convince many to make their selection. If so, appeasing Europe &/or terrorists will not put any candidate in a position of esteem.
The issues for voters in this election, barring terrorist attacks, is the economy. And any candidate who plans huge tax increases, even on middle income voters, plus other tax increases that will slow down investment & therefore the entire economy, will not get “the votes!”
I am a DEM for McCain…
Screw Obama….
If i wanted a William Ayers, Rezko, Rev Wright piece of crap I would have voted for one…
I dont trust the messiah and my vote is going to John
Aug 16, 2008 - 12:27 pm 19. Dave ll:Obama is toast! His “50-state strategy” is a “puff piece”…as realistically substantial as cotton candy.
NOTHING he does with the VP pick will make ANY difference with disaffected Hillary voters. They are simply LOST to him!
And Kerry? Please…a defeated former nominee who is facing the biggest reelection challenge of his career?
Articles like this are about a day late and a dollar short. Something to fill a slow Saturday, but about as relevant as yesterday’s newspaper!
Aug 16, 2008 - 12:33 pm 20. Alan Srout:Do these look like 18+ million democrats that are going to vote for Senator Barack Obama?
Hillary Clinton Supporters For John McCain:
http://www.hcsfjm.com
Party Unity My A$$ PAC/People United Means Action PAC:
http://blog.pumapac.org
Democrats Against Obama/Nobama ever!
http://democrats-against-obama.org
Just Say No Deal:
http://justsaynodeal.com
Take a look around these sites for a half hour or 45 minutes and then you decide….(there are hundreds more linked to these, just look for links)
Aug 16, 2008 - 2:40 pm 21. Canadian Neighbour:I throw this out to everyone as nothing more than a silly fantasy of mine: What would be the end result if McCain chose Hillary as his running mate, (and she accepted his offer)???
Aug 16, 2008 - 7:17 pm 22. Rachel Peepers:Just about everybody here is right as rain, with David II getting the gold star for hitting the inner bulls eye.
Yet, of all the mistakes the Obama camp has made so for, by far one of the biggest, in Rachel’s humble, all-American-girl, blue-eyed opinion, is the Obama clan thinking that they, this Chinese-fire-drill-of-a-campaign, could salvage Hillary votes by letting the Clintons play starring roles at his convention.
In their oh so surgical albeit subtle way, Bill and Hill will be sabotaging the brown-eyed handsome man’s time in the limelight, and, like stealth commandos in the dark of night,laying the groundwork necessary to create a win/win scenario for themselves, regardless of who wins the election.
As I see it, it’s terribly ironic how the Democratic
Party has mastered the art of shooting themselves in the foot at their conventions.
Kerry’s performance in 2000 was laughable, positioning himself with all that brass as a war hero. The “Reporting for Duty” line was priceless because at that time Paul Hoffmann had told my father that the guys under his command in Viet Nam, the Swift Boat Vets, were planning to lower the boom on big bad John with spots that sliced and diced him so badly there was hardly anything left for the media vultures to pick on but bones.
For some reason, the Democratic Party has the knack for not knowing they’ve been hit with a right cross until their campaign has crossed the Rubicon. By then, though, illia iacta est. Or as they say in south Jersey, by then, the die is cast.
Aug 16, 2008 - 10:13 pm 23. Bruce:Is the DNC destroying this nation? A couple of thoughts: We the People in these United States have a deep running racist component and a long and disgusting history of political assassination. Our racist tendencies have not been corrected, only ‘politically corrected’. The public’s silence is not assent. Violent elimination of our political leaders by madmen or conspirators haunts our nation’s history. I forsee substantial alientation of some large swath of the electorate no matter how the upcoming election turns out. How much anger in how many people does it take to reach a political tipping point? For me, I fear for my country for the next four years.
Aug 16, 2008 - 11:50 pm 24. Dane:“Do these look like 18+ million democrats that are going to vote for Senator Barack Obama?”
To be fair, some of those sites are undoubtedly being run by or are in some way associated with the RNC. I know of no concrete metric to determine how which of the websites and posts by disgruntled Democrats are really disgruntled Democrats, the Internet being the anonymous medium that it is, so I take them all with a large grain of salt.
That being said, I’m very interested to see how the convention goes for Obama. I doubt it’ll be anything close to the scale of 1968, but who knows?
Aug 16, 2008 - 11:57 pm 25. Greg:Who on earth could possibly be surprised when Obama passes over Hillary? Blue collar Democrats who don’t pay attention to “inside baseball” talk? Come on, they surely must know that the two candidates despise each other. Even if you’re disengaged, that’s got to stand out over the noise. And the less engaged you are, the less likely you will be to expect any particular choice for a running mate. If that backlash actually occurs, it will be because people are reminded of what they don’t like. Not because they’re shocked.
Aug 17, 2008 - 9:19 pm 26. misanthropicus:Will Obama add insult to injury? We’ll see. But Bill Richardson is already back at it – the latest CNN ticker shows this.
Aug 18, 2008 - 6:36 am 27. jose:Yeah, I’m voting for McCain in ‘08 to get Hillary in ‘12. He won’t pick her and at this point, I’m happy he didn’t. I think McCain might actually pull this off.
Aug 18, 2008 - 10:49 am 28. barrybarryquitecontrary.com:Why would anyone think Hill & Bill are out of the running for the co-VP spot? These two are MASTERS of the dark arts in political maneuvering and BO is learning fast.
Hasn’t BO shown with his audacity of hype that he will do anything, anything, annnnyyyyything to be President of the United States? This certainly includes getting a 10-15 point convention bounce with Hillary in the co-pilots seat. Who else is going to give him that?
Who would energize the democratic ticket more than Hill & Bill? Are you kidding me, the Democrats & the MSM would declare a love-in so fast it would create a harmonic convergence the likes of which we havn’t seen since Woodstock. Mark my words, BO wants to win so badly he has his own “Chris Matthews” tingle running up his “leg” and Bill’s leg has been tingling for a long time now. The only thing that makes Hillary tingle is power, power and did I mention power?
With BO’s poor performance the past month or so and John McCain’s emergence to make it a virtual dead heat, the Democratic power brokers are going to shock the world when Bill announces Hillary at the convention as BO’s VP.
George Stephanopolous said today “If you gave me 50-1 odds on Hillary I’d take it.” Does he know something we don’t? He’s an insiders insider.
Aug 18, 2008 - 11:04 am 29. Janis:If you think you’ve seen it all, go Googling and type in “Obama Supports Public Depravity.” Janis
Sep 9, 2008 - 11:18 am