In watching the returns from the Pennsylvania primary last night, and in reading some of the news stories today, I'm a bit irritated by the response to Obama's "loss" in Pennsylvania. There's been a heavy focus on the fact that Obama spent a lot of money in Pennsylvania, but couldn't win it.
Clinton was always expected to win Pennsylvania. But a few weeks ago, Obama was down 20 points in Pennsylvania. Last night, the spread was only 10 points. That's a pretty large gain for only a few weeks.
And the pundits keep making some sort of connection between who wins a state in the Democratic primaries, and who could win a state against McCain in the general election. As if the fact that Clinton won Pennsylvania means that Obama couldn't win that state in the general election. As if 95% of the Democrats who voted for Clinton wouldn't choose Obama over McCain.
These pundits claim that if their candidate were to lose the nomination, a large number of people would vote for McCain or else would just stay home. This seems absurd to me - this has been one of the largest primaries in history, and after that, I can't imaging that many people would sit out the general election. Even if some did, the numbers of people voting in the Democratic primaries, versus the Republican primaries, has been almost 2 to 1 - even before McCain cinched the nomination.
The argument that when either Clinton or Obama takes the nomination, the other's voters are going to sit out or vote REPUBLICAN is ludicrous.
4.23.2008
pundits have no sense
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
What really irks me is that so many pundits and journalists (who's job it is to know better) keep claiming that Hillary won Texas. She didn't. She lost. It's a two part process. She won only the first part. He won the second part by a large enough margin to negate her win in the first, therefore winning overall.
Apparently in exit polls something like 90% of voters said they will not support the other candidate in the general election. I think those responses break down into three categories -
1. People (esp on the Clinton side) who don't really mean it but say it to try to scare the party into installing Clinton ("if the superdelegates don't install Clinton, McCain will win!!!!").
2. People who say it and think they mean it, just out of spite. ("I'll show those Obama people!!").
3. The small number of people like me who say it and mean it because they don't buy into the anti-McCain smearing points and actually think he would be a better President than Hillary Clinton.
Post a Comment