I spoke with a friend of a friend about the election for a bit today at breakfast. She's middle-aged, well-off, liberal on most things and passionately anti-Republican. "They've run this country into a ditch." "I knew Bush was lying in 2000." "People died for Bush's lies but Clinton gets impeached for what he does in private?" You get the idea. As for whom she likes for president, she's a Clinton supporter, but doesn't dislike Obama. "I really like the energy Obama is bringing to this race. In another year I would vote for him in a second, but I just think our country is in so much trouble, we need someone who knows what they're doing in there. In another 8 years I'd vote for Obama." At first I took this as merely an explanation of why she supports Clinton, but then I asked what I thought was obvious: "But you'll vote for him if he wins the nomination, right?"
Silence.
"But you just said you could never vote for a Republican," I returned, to which she just said "But he doesn't have enough experience." The unspoken implication, of course, was that John McCain does and she'd be tempted to vote for him for that reason alone.
Now, this brings me to a few points.
1. It's naive (not to mention cynical) to assume that the reluctance of some Clinton supporters to support Obama in the fall if he wins the nomination is about race. I've seen a lot written about the horribly racist Clinton supporters unable to cast a ballot for a black man -- Clinton's base is uneducated and racist so the argument goes. The thing is, Obama supporters who jump to the conclusion that his race is the number one reason people don't support him are the ones being ignorant. Are there some? I assume so, just as some support Obama because they can't cast a ballot for a woman. But people need to take the blinders off and realize that there are genuine good faith reasons not to support both of these candidates. In the case of my friend's friend it's about experience, plain and simple.
2. If Obama wins the nomination, his number one goal when picking his running mate should be to shore up his experience credentials. Many Obama supporters will say that Obama's community organizing experience in Chicago is exactly the sort of experience the president should have; that Obama has more legislative experience than Hillary Clinton, blah blah blah. It is all irrelevant. The fact is, Obama has not convinced the electorate that he has the sort of experience people usually associate with the presidency, whether executive, diplomatic, national security, the list goes on, he just hasn't. Democratic primary voters have thus far been quite unconcerned about this gap in his resume, but general election voters will need some reassurance and Obama's VP pick is the way to do it. Sorry Governors Kaine and Sebelius.
3. Having said that, I remain convinced that the relatively high percentage of people who say they would defect if their candidate loses the nomination is inflated and will fall once the nominee is chosen and we're able to unite against a common foe. My friend's friend is a partisan Democrat. She will come home to the party in the end, I have full confidence. But it does point to just what a perfect nominee McCain is for the Republicans in this Democratic year. He's really the only one who could inspire this level of even hypothetical defection and it's definitely something we need to watch out for. But I tend to be an optimist and agree with Senator Reid, that "The negative toll on Obama and Clinton will end five minutes after the nominee is chosen." It would be nice in the meantime if Clinton and Obama partisans didn't use the whole defection narrative as yet another club to bludgeon each other with. Just sayin'.
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