Rush Limbaugh has been urging his listeners to vote for Hillary so as to prolong the Democratic contest. McCain clinched the GOP nomination a long time ago. So if you are a Republican in Texas, why not vote in the Democratic primary?
I saw a lot of that today while acting as a poll-watcher in two precincts in probably the most affluent area of Houston, River Oaks, where you cannot buy a house for less than probably 1.5 million dollars. I also saw it in my own precinct, adjacent to River Oaks and also affluent for the most part, combined with another precinct for voting and also caucuses/conventions. Both Democratic-only locations.
I don't know yet the results of the vote in the two precincts I monitored, where things could not have been smoother. One of the poll workers was an Obama precinct captain and we had no "issues" come up other than some complaints about a huge Obama sign that was fastened to school property.
In my voting precinct and the one combined with it for voting and caucus locations, HRC won narrowly. I don't know about the more affluent River Oaks precincts. My precinct caucus and the adjacent one went for Barack by about 56-44. What does that tell you?
This is getting really tricky because of all the mischief that may be going on. Are there more HRC voters who will vote for McCain if Barack
is our nominee or more Barack voters who will vote for McCain rather than HRC?
HRC is already running as McCain Lite, so I think the answer is pretty clear, not to mention that millions who believe in Barack and his ever-fresh message will be disillusioned the way some of us who had been "clean for Gene" were forty years ago after the RFK assassination. HRC is the new HHH and all that.
Anyway, I am pretty good at spotting Republicans and I saw plenty at the polls (Democratic only locations) today. Some acknowledged it openly. There were one or two who claimed that they were there to vote against HRC, but I suspect that most were quietly voting FOR her. (And I confess that I voted in the GOP primary here once for Pat Buchanan). They were there voting for her so that they can then turn around and vote against her.
The HRC campaign is all over the map. As I remarked recently in another diary, they are succeeding in getting some of the pundits to cite her wins in big states (NY, MA, NJ, etc.) as evidence that she can win the states that Dems have to win. Hello? These are states that we will win, even if we nominated Krusty the clown. The states to worry about are states that we might lose or may win, depending on our candidate.
And something that the Obama campaign might want to continually remind us of is that HRC has huge negatives. I've suggested before that some Obama people, maybe even the candidate himself, might suggest that we have a President now who can only appear before pre-selected audiences. Do we want to continue that kind of thing?
Possible losses: IA, NM, WI, MI, MN, NH (all either Gore or Kerry states or both, in the case of WI, MI, and MN)
Possible wins (none of which were won by Gore or Kerry): AR, CO, GA, LA, MO, NV, OH, VA.
Possibly the most unusual encounter of the day was when two young boys showed up with their dog and their dad. Dad went in to vote and I asked the boys who he was going to vote for. "Barack Obama!" "Why?", I asked.
"Because I told him to! But he's a Republican. He says that if you are not a Democrat by age 17 you don't have a heart, and if you aren't a Republican by age 40, you don't have a brain." "So how does he like George W. Bush?", I asked. "Not too well; Bush is too liberal".
This guy may have told his kids that he was going in to vote for Barack. I bet he voted for Hillary.
Don't you get it? They want to run against Hillary. White women will vote for him; white men will not vote for her. That's how we lost in 2000 and 2004.