California Conservative

On the day when Barack Obama introduced Sen. Biden as his running mate, the thing that nobody in the Dead Tree Media is talking about is how Obama’s dissing of Hillary will bring more division to the Democratic Party than ever before.

The fact that Hillary wasn’t given a token vetting won’t sit well with the PUMA crowd. That’ll have profound effects on this race going forward. Here’s proof that Sen. McCain plans on aggressively puruing Hillary’s supporters:

Erasing any doubt that McCain has his sights set on Clinton voters, the new ad uses Clinton’s own words to suggest that Obama passed her over because of the tough campaign she waged. The ad is titled “Passed Over.”

“She won millions of votes. But isn’t on his ticket,” an announcer says. “Why? For speaking the truth.”

The ad then shows Clinton criticizing Obama for speaking generalities (”You never hear the specifics); for his connections to Tony Rezko (”We still don’t have a lot of answers.”); and for being too negative. The announcer comes back on. “The truth hurt. And Obama didn’t like it.”

It’s inexplicable why Sen. Obama didn’t even vet Hillary as a goodwill gesture to her supporters. By not vetting her for his veep pick, he’s strengthened their resolve to not vote for him. Sen. Obama already faced an uphill fight winning enough support from Hillary voters before this. Now he’s made it that much more uphill.

If I’m in the PUMA movement, I’ve had enough incentive to not vote for Sen. Obama for months. Why not sit this out, let Obama get defeated, then let Hillary have another shot in 2012? Sen. Obama’s disrespect towards Hillary just steels PUMA’s resolve.

The Lady Logician pointed out that the McCain campaign was airing this advertisement this shortly after Sen. Obama’s veep announcement was an indication that Sen. McCain had put this together long before Sen. Obama’s announcement.

The polling I’ve seen shows that 20+ percent of Hillary’s supporters are steadfast in refusing to support Sen. Obama. If he was blowing Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama might be able to get away with that. With the race being a dead heat thus far, Sen. Obama’s margin of error is practically nonexistent.

Technorati Tags: Hillary, Obama, PUMA, Party Unity, Democrats, John McCain, Republicans, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under Activism, Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Hillary, McCain, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.