Making His Pitches

Just because we really WANT to win and we will not quit does not mean we SHOULD win and weshuld neverconcede.

At her Baruch College event in NYC just a few days ago, Hillary Clinton added her name to a Major League Baseball that was inscribed by the famous New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra with the quote: ???It ain???t over till it???s over.??? Bill Clinton also signed his name to the ball. A photo of it can currently be seen on eBay. This Yogi Berra quote summarizes the essence of the Clintons??? drive to win and their spirited campaign style. Don???t count them out from politics just yet.

Uh, Nins, somethings to consider ...

John McCain wrapped up the Republican primary early on. Thus, Republican voters had almost no incentive to go out and vote for him, unless to register their dismay that he was the Republican nominee. On the other hand, the Democratic primary drew interest to the very end. Hence, the higher number of voters in the Democratic primary. So, I think your analysis is faulty.

BTW, I am an Obama supporter and while I support your enthusiasm, I do not think we should start doing funny math to argue in support of our candidate's strength in the general election. I encourage you to try again.

Substance, what substance? Here's some change you can believe in:

The reason that half of the conservative Christian right hates McCain is because they think that they can not trust him. McCain started his career as part of the Christian right (there's a little-known fact). Once he landed in the soup as part of the Keating Five (which almost derailed his career) he positioned himself as a liberal and became a reformer for campaign finance in an effort to ressurect himself. For those of you who don't remember, the Keating scandal had to do with some shim sham corporations pumping money into McCain's coffers. So McCain became a reformer to shine up his tarnished image, and that was his first departure from the right.

Other, more serious betrayals of the right came later, after McCain got swift boated by Bush in 1999. The great Texas Republican political machine laid McCain to waste, and McCain was mad as hell. He started voting against the party line and against Bush. He suddenly supported abortion rights, opposed the Bush tax cuts, co-sponsored a patient's bill of rights with Kennedy and Edwards, and got on the environmental bandwagon with John Kerry. My gosh, he even tried to crack down on gun shows in legislation he put forth with then-Democrat Joe Lieberman. And in 2001, when Senator Jeffords of Vermont switched from Republican to Independent in an effort to counteract Bush's stranglehold on the Senate, McCain announced that he was considering becoming a Democrat, and went into a pow-wow with Senator Tom Daschle at his Sedona ranch. And did you know that John Kerry floated the idea of having McCain as his VP, which would have cemented his status as a newly-minted Democrat.

But instead of joining Kerry, McCain suddenly switched his affiliation, came out in support of Bush, and jettisoned his liberal image. Suddenly, it was the "old" John McCain from the 1980s back in the saddle, the neo-conservative, take no prisoners Creationist. Against abortion. For the war. The SAME man who opposed a Federal amendment banning gay marriage and openly met with gay groups now was pushing a gay marriage ban in Arizona. The SAME man who said in 1999 that he was opposed to overturning Roe vs. Wade, now suddenly in 2007 is promising the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters) that he will stack the deck in the Supreme Court with religious right judges and overturn Roe vs. Wade.

But the religious right isn't so sure about him. He's supported so many different opposing positions at so many times, that they are afraid that they are getting played in the name of McCain's political expediency.

Really, you can't blame them for distrusting him. Floridave mentions that "at least McCain is to the right of Obama." But the joke is on you. During the 1990s, McCain was to the LEFT of Obama.

Here's some data taken from the National Overview of 2008 Primary Results:

OBAMA BEAT McCAIN in THE POPULAR VOTE in FORTY STATES.

AL: 302,684 Obama / 211,071 McCain
AR: 79,411 Obama / 44,608 McCain
CA: 1,746,013 Obama / 1,093,560 McCain
CO: 79,334 Obama / 10,621 McCain
CT: 179,349 Obama / 78,741 McCain
DE: 51,124 Obama / 22,626 McCain
DC: 85,534 Obama / 3,929 McCain
GA: 700,366 Obama / 303,639 McCain
IL: 1,301,954 Obama / 424,071 McCain
IN: 630,399 Obama / 44,608 McCain
KS: 27,172 Obama / 4,587 McCain
KY: 209,778 Obama / 142,826 McCain
LA: 220,588 Obama / 67,609 McCain
ME: 2,079 Obama / 958 McCain
MD: 464,474 Obama / 163,677 McCain
MA: 511,887 Obama / 204,027 McCain
MN: 141,527 Obama / 13,822 McCain
MS: 255,809 Obama / 113,074 McCain
MO: 405,284 Obama / 194,304 McCain
MT: 102,373 Obama / 72,455 McCain
NH: 104,772 Obama / 88,466 McCain
NJ: 492,186 Obama / 310,427 McCain
NY: 697,914 Obama / 310,814 McCain
NC: 875,683 Obama / 381,616 McCain
ND: 11,625 Obama / 2,224 McCain
OH: 979,025 Obama / 636,256 McCain
OK: 130,087 Obama / 122,748 McCain
OR: 360,728 Obama / 280,030 McCain
PA: 1,046,220 Obama / 587,210 McCain
RI: 75,115 Obama / 17,468 McCain
SC: 295,091 Obama / 147,283 McCain
SD: 43,574 Obama / 42,657 McCain
TN: 250,730 Obama / 174,763 McCain
TX: 1,358,785 Obama / 709,477 McCain
UT: 70,373 Obama / 15,264 McCain
VT: 91,740 Obama / 28,488 McCain
VA: 623,141 Obama / 244,135 McCain
WA: 354,111 Obama / 262,295 McCain
WV: 91,747 Obama / 89,782 McCain
WI: 646,007 Obama / 224,226 McCain


Here are the states where McCain won:

AZ: 171,368 Obama / 233,299 McCain
FL: 569,041 Obama / 693,508 McCain
ID: 23,973 Obama / 87,341 McCain
NE: 46,291 Obama / 118,092 McCain
NV: 4,773 Obama / 5,651 McCain
NM: 67,531 Obama / 93,674 McCain


GRAND TOTAL: 16,928,770 Obama / 9,122,079 McCain

Some states are missing from the list. I did not include the votes of any states where one party held a primary and the other party held a non-head count caucus, because that is like comparing apples to oranges -- you can't fairly say that one or the other won. If you add all the votes, Obama is close to 18,000,000 and McCain is around 9,400,000.

Just think, Obama bested McCain like this, even though he was splitting the vote with his formidable opponent, Clinton, who walked away with half of the Democratic electorate.

The next time someone tells you that "Obama can't win the general election" you might want to refer them to these results.