Big States
For those of you not particularly eager for a political discussion right now, might I suggest you pop on over to First Look and take a look at the first pictures of costumes from the upcoming film adaptation of Watchmen? The sprawling anti-superhero graphic novel is coming to the big screen, and the costumes have gotten the Batman Returns treatment, it seems.
And now on to political news.
Following the Texas and Ohio primaries, Hillary’s supporters are back and screaming for blood. A strong showing in Ohio and a razor-thin win in Texas seem to have trumped the fact that she made minimal gains on Obama in terms of delegate count, and it’s time for Obama supporters to gird their loins as they get attacked for yet another few weeks as idiots and cultists by the same people who will be begging for their vote should their candidate actually take the nomination.
At the heart of Clinton’s strategy is a simple notion that I honestly find offensive – that it doesn’t matter how many states you lose, as long as you win the “big” states.
Of course, the strategy has its proponents. It helped put Bill Clinton in office, after all. It also lost both Gore and Kerry their elections. But the fact of the matter is that when you decide to focus on “big” or “important” states, you alienate the other states. Your message doesn’t get played in them, and the voters wonder why they should care about you. In the last Presidential election, Virginia – my home state – was considered a “swing state” for once. The DNC made the decision not to campaign there because it’s a traditional Republican stronghold. Almost immediately the state went red.
I find I side more with the people who push the 50-state strategy – which happens to include Senator Obama. The notion is that all states are important, and all states should be campaigned in. As for the big state strategy, Robert Creamer has a better criticism of that at Huffington Post than I could ever hope to write. I will, however, say this – pronouncing your candidate the most “electable” of the potential nominees loses some of its effect when between the Chesapeake primaries and the latest batch, Senator Clinton went from a 10 point lead in the polls to a 2 point victory. Losing 8 points after practically living in the state for a few weeks does not bode well for electability.
As to why Texas and Ohio went the way they did, there are a number of theories. Some people suggest that the photo of Obama in a turban turned people off. Hillary flogs are particularly fond of what they’re calling “NAFTA-gate” as a reason. And over at The World According to AmericanGoy, he’s got his own theories.
What’s a republican voter to do? It’s simple – the republican voter will vote in the democratic primary for his state, and vote for the WEAKEST democrat nominee, that McCain could beat, to help his republican party.
It’s an interesting theory, and it’s made even more interesting by the fact that Rush Limbaugh has been encouraging his listeners to do exactly that – to vote for Clinton in open primaries because McCain is already the Republican nominee, and if they can’t have Clinton to campaign against then they can at least keep her in the race to make Obama “bloodied” by the time he hits general elections. So, tell me – does anybody have the numbers on how many Republicans voted in the Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas, both of which are open primary states?
March 12th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
There are no official statistics on the number of republicans who voted for Hillary. But judging from the comments on DIGG, it was a common phenomenon.