LOOK AT THE MAP: HILLARY TAKES THE JOHN KERRY STATES
This entry was posted on 2/6/2008 12:30 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Here is how I see it: Hillary won the traditional liberal-bastion states like New York and New Jersey (her home) and California--the kind of east-coast west-coast states that have traditionally gone blue in a national election. (Not counting Arkansas, which is also her home, and a couple of outliers like Tennessee and Oklahoma.)
But I live in a very red state, in the country, which is even redder--and I am telling you that the fact that Obama swept states like Kansas, Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, IDAHO for godsake (home to all the little skinhead-militia type utopias) in the Midwest, Georgia and Alabama in the south (where black vote is heavy but still a minority to white), and key western states like Colorado (a blow-out) tells me that THIS IS THE PICTURE OF A NATIONAL ELECTION.
If Hillary wins the nomination, McCain will bleed off all the Independents and moderates who have been voting solidly for Obama, as well as conservative Democrats who cannot stomach Hillary, which means we'd have yet another electoral map on election night of blue states lining up on the coasts and red states taking up the entire rest of the damn map.
The media's man-crush on McCain shows no sign of abating. The Time magazine cover story was a gusher written by a younger reporter dazzled by McCain's Vietnam heroism and "straight-talk" mythology. (He's very charming in interviews.) The Newsweek cover story I have not read in its entirety, but the opening graphs were about the same.
Media mysogyny and ambivelence toward both the Clintons will come into play against the courageous man who can't raise his arms on account of all the torture he had to endure. Clinton self-pity will not wash against that.
Another key fact to note here is that ANTI-WAR Republicans VOTED SOLIDLY FOR McCAIN. This tell me that there is some kind of mystical conversion taking place in the voting booth for anti-war Republicans that cause them to trust the man who said we should stay in Iraq for a hundred years and that, furthermore, there would be OTHER WARS.
Mark my words: It will happen that same way with anti-war Independents and conservative Democrats.
It does not have to make sense. People do not vote based on who can spout off the longest policy list. They vote emotionally. My mother is a die-hard Democrat, but she is enamored of McCain after having read his autobiography. She and others like her would be very tempted to vote for him against Hillary.
It's already conventional wisdom that all the Hillary-haters would energize a demoralized Republican party--even conservatives who can't stand McCain, so I won't go into that.
The only advantage I can see in running Hillary, is my certainty that somewhere right before the election there will be some new bogus terror-threat engineered by the White House similar to the ridiculous non-battle between Iranian boats and American battleships that was supposed to show how close we are to war with them, right when Bush traveled to the Mideast to drum up support for the idea that, well, we're really close to war with the Iranians.
Or, say, the arrest of a so-called terrorist sleeper cell in Florida that turned out to be a bunch of ya-hoos egged on by a government informant acting as entrapper--but that information only comes out months later.
Or the heightened security color alerts that came out right after the Democratic convention but that never appeared again.
There will be some kind of event dominating the media that will be bogus but treated as real, deliberately designed to give McCain the edge going into the election by whipping up fear and anxiety about another 9-11.
In a scenario like that, he might have an advantage over Obama, but I'm not guaranteed on that. Obama has a wisdom that shows itself at times like that, and Americans are getting a bit more savvy about these false scares, even if the media is not.
But all Hillary's hawkishness and so on would then play to her advantage against McCain, but I don't know if it would be enough to give her the election.
And if by some miracle she were to win by a razor's edge, at least half the country would be profoundly depressed and irritable and I don't know how much she would realistically be able to accomplish, especially if the Dem majority remains this slim. With her at the head of the ticket, it sure might in red state areas.
Look at the map. Think how you want it to look in November.
Do we really want another John Kerry?
There are plenty of states yet to vote, including my huge red-state of Texas.
All of you out there who are still undecided, I beg of you, LOOK AT THE MAP.
