<p>^^Understood!</p>
<p>ilsa belter - have you considered weighing the candidate’s positions on major national issues as a basis for deciding who to vote for? Or perhaps the recent history of the state of the Nation when different political parties hold sway in Washington? Because from my point of view, voting for the guy we’d most likely enjoy watching a ballgame with didn’t work out so well. Our last three “experienced” Republican Presidents have loaded our nation with debt without any valid reason - and that’s on the short list of things a President has a lot of control over. You could consider likely Supreme Court nominations, whether anything is likely to be done about global warming, health care, etc. Give it a try.</p>
<p>But from that kind of analysis it’s really, really hard to go from voting for either Clinton or Obama in the primaries to voting for McCain in November. If you’re a hawk on Iraq/Iran like ClassicRockerDad, I can see why you’d back McCain, but I don’t see why you would have supported Clinton. Sniper fire experience?</p>
<p>Woodwork:</p>
<p>A lot of the miners are of East European heritage as well. They see their struggle to survive as hard as anything the children of slaves have experienced, but they have not benefited from affirmative action. Instead, they see themselves as disadvantaged, just as they were when mine owners imported black laborers.
My H had a college classmate who went to work in Appalachia right after college for over ten years. I could hardly believe the tales of poverty she recounted. Later, I met a young man from a community in West Virginia that had never sent one of its own to college and where Princeton was not the name of a famous university but of a nearby town. Harvard? they’d never heard of it.</p>
<p>I believe that Obama supports the emphasis on income rather than race (at least I remember reading about it), but it will take a lot of effort to convince Appalachians of this. He really needs to make an effort there if he wants to overcome his image.</p>
<p>I certainly agree that the working class white voters represent the most important group that Obama must reach if he is going to win. I think he needs to choose a VP who relates well to this group, and who will help demonstrate that Obama cares about their concerns. I grudgingly admit that Clinton might be such a person, but I think she comes with a lot of negatives, too.</p>
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<p>They were all governors who had to make public yet difficult decisions, some of whom did not make their “base” very happy. Obama has no such record. He has been party line on every single vote he has taken in the senate, although there are a lot of votes that he didn’t even show up for. Nothing he’s chosen to worked on was really all that controversial prior to his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Going back to another thread:
How much of the Clinton to McCain buzz among women do you folks think is based on feelings like this?</p>
<p>Classicrockerdad:
Can you give even one concrete example? Could you have done that at the time of their elections? Bush was governor not that long ago - got an example there?</p>
<p>Just about every day, my wife comes home from her job and announces that she is going to quit. Yet, she doesn’t quit. I sometimes say the same thing about my job (although I like it better than she likes hers). I suspect that a lot of the Clinton supporters who say that they are going to vote for McCain are like us. They are annoyed and frustrated, feel that they have been treated shabbily, feel that sexism was involved, and more. They are probably right about that, too. Still, when the election comes around, they will do what they know is really in their best interests and in the interests of their country, and vote for Obama, just like we get up and go to work.</p>
<p>“Have you considered weighing the candidate’s positions on major national issues as a basis for deciding who to vote for?” I thought that’s what I was doing. “Give it a try.” Okay.</p>
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<p>Kluge, thank you for noting that my “hatred” for Clinton has nothing to do with racism. I believe that the basis for my dislike for the Clintons’ has been consistent over the years. We can go back in the past history of CC and find what I said then and say now. </p>
<p>However, with your kind permission, allow me to send the record straight about “oozing contempt” for her supporters. I think that you’re confusing my position of the normal Clinton fan with my position on the **rabid **Clinton fans. Most of my positions stem from a reaction to positions of others. I have quoted the “in-your-face” posts that described the upcoming tsunami of cold revenge to come. Should we compare the overly gracious reactions of conservatives after Kerry’s demise to the aggresive tone of the posts after the 2006 elections? </p>
<p>Since you are typically very good at expressing and analyzing nuances, I would hope you could refrain from reaching far-reaching conclusions that are based on partial data. For the record, I do respect the opinions of people who would have preferred Clinton. I admit to find many expressions of support for Clinton on this board to be well-balanced and well-founded. However, it is hard to respect the aggressive positions of some of the die-hard Clinton fans and the “oozing” vitriol that has been flowing from their mouths and keyboards. </p>
<p>If that matters, allow me to share that I enjoy tremendously the defeat of Clinton and the visible dismay of the fans who could not wait to come to this forums to **crow **about the all but inevitable victory of Hillary. Well, what was supposed to be an “in-your-face” turned out to be a dud! </p>
<p>And, lastly, do you think it would have been different had Clinton won? Would the Clinton fanboys have played nice?</p>
<p>It’s an interesting question whether Clinton’s supporters would have “played nice” or not. I think they might have, assuming she had eked out a win by convincing superdelegates to endorse her. I don’t see how she could expect to win the fall election without the support of African-Americans and other new Obama voters, and she would have had to be very nice to him and his supporters. Remember, she really wants to win, and she will do what it takes to win, even be nice.</p>
<p>kludge,</p>
<p>Don’t mistake me for a hawk in general. While I am a hawk on Iran (I don’t want to see nukes built that will actually get used), I feel more of a reluctant sense of responsibility for Iraq since it’s a mess of our own making. To leave the innocents at the mercy of the sectarian violence that we ushered in just seems immoral. It’s not like Vietnam where we were napalming villages. I don’t want to see another Bosnia! Our military intervention, although late, ultimately stopped the carnage there. </p>
<p>You should also know that prior to McCain’s 2006 vote to extend the Bush tax cut, which he initially opposed, he was consistently on the Concord Coalition’s Honor roll, receiving the top spot in 2003 ahead of Russ Feingold. He seems like a generally fiscally prudent guy to me but he felt that raising taxes during a recession isn’t exactly a “stimulus”. I think he will take care of the deficit. </p>
<p>That’s the advantage of having a record. You can look at it.</p>
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<p>While you do strike a good point I don’t think that will quite happen. I think a few might vote for Obama, but I think it is a lot more likely that most people will just stay home. Only the die-hards will get up out their bed to vote for McCain. While it annoys me that Hillary supporter’s will probably just stay at home I much prefer it to voting for McCain.</p>
<p>Fair enough Xiggi. I’ve been guilty of the same kind of reaction to other’s “in-your-face” posts, as you well know. :)</p>
<p>As to what would have happened if Clinton had won; I think Obama personally would have been better at handling the loss in a more positive way at this precise juncture, although Clinton still has an opportunity to turn the events of the past week into a positive, and I think she will. (I know you don’t think so - and I’m ready to be “in-your-face” when she comes out strongly in support of Obama and proceeds to work tirelessly for his election. 
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<p>But I think that some of the Obama stalwarts would have reacted in the same “If I can’t win I’ll take my ball and go home” vein as some Clinton supporters have. They’d have used a different meme - instead of “experience” they’d have used “dishonesty” or something about Bill Clinton instead. (It’s simply a fact that Clinton and Obama are so close on the issues that you can’t use anything substantive as an excuse for backing one but not the other.) But I think the actual basis would be the same - an essentially immature reaction to disappointment at a loss. I’d like to think that for most members of both groups it would be a temporary phenomenon. </p>
<p>As to what the Clinton supporters would do in response? Well, it’s easy to be magnanimous in victory, but I think their response to the Obama “take my ball home” types would be to accuse them of misogyny or, if they were black, racism. In my opinion, it’s not that simple either way.</p>
<p>“While it annoys me that Hillary supporter’s will probably just stay at home I much prefer it to voting for McCain.”</p>
<p>Yes, if you don’t like Obama, there are a lot of options besides voting for McCain.</p>
<p>I think it would have been far more likely for disappointed Obama supporters to stay home than it will be for Clinton’s supporters to stay home. Obama has drawn a lot of people who never voted before, or who usually don’t vote. I think most of Hillary’s supporters are people who always vote. I think most of them will go into the voting both, gulp, and pull the lever for Obama. (If there are any levers left these days.) But only time will tell, obviously.</p>
<p>If Hillary is chosen as VP, she will still have the power to motivate many Democratic and Independent voters so that they will actually go to the polls.</p>
<p>…to vote for McCain. :eek:</p>
<p>That’s my concern. I’ll bet there’s a lot of frantic polling going on right now to determine whether she would help or hurt more.</p>
<p>Apparently that ain’t going to happen because it would mean turning over not just tax records but the list of contributors to the Clinton Foundation and Bill is balking. I wonder why :)</p>
<p>1sokkermom: Where, exactly are you getting that feeling from? Given that the current situation is that many Clinton supporters and Democratic-leaning independents are seriously considering either not voting or voting for McCain, what possible reason could you have for thinking that the addition of a more centrist candidate (Hillary) to the ticket as VP would result in Dems and Independents going out for McCain? That’s absurd.</p>
<p>More likely is that the addition of Hillary would drive out a larger number of rabid Hillary-hating Republicans to the polling booths, though even that phenomenon has yet to be quantified.</p>
<p>1of42, I think there are Democrats who really don’t want any more Clintons. I don’t find it hard at all to imagine some Democrats going to McCain, or at least staying home, if she’s on the ticket. It’s not that she’s a more centrist candidate–something that in the abstract would seem to help Obama–but that she’s Hillary Clinton. As we’ve learned in this thread and others, people vote for and against candidates for all sorts of reasons, and not just the issues.</p>