There's probaly already 50 dairies just like this already posted through last night and this morning, but this is part of my coping strategy. Last night was a major blow, not a knockout blow by any stretch, but a major blow. I REALLY wanted this thing to be over last night and now as the CW goes, it will not be. So to help me get over this upset I am going to be an armchair politician and give my own analysis of what happend last night. We'll start out with my idea of what happend in Ohio and then what happend in Texas. Finally we'll wrap it up with what I think we (as a party) should do. READ IN THERE'S MORE. JUST CLICK IT.
OHIO: Ohio was much more a legit win. First of all I believe probaly about 45% of the vote came from staunch Bill Clinton democrats. Democrats who saw our standing in the world and there standing in everyday life in much better standing when Bill was president. They don't think of things in terms of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton... instead they just want to return to where they were in there lives 10 to 12 years ago.
Beside the Bill Clinton democrats, which I believe also includes much of the establishment, I think a couple other factors came into play. The first being NAFTAgate. While we all know that this is a non-story, I think to the non-political junkie in Ohio it was a big story. That along with the racially charged rumor that Obama was a Muslim and would take the oath of office on the Koran, I think played some part.
Another thing I think may have played a part was the "people powered movement". Now while I in no ways think that the people powered movement is a bad thing, I have a hunch that a couple Roseanne Democrats (politically uneducated in most cases) may have voted for Clinton in a mixture of racially motivated, NAFTAgate fueled thinking that also had a little to do with receiving 8 phone calls, 5 door knockers, seeing 50 ads, and getting tons of mailers. Just hear me out this. These democratcs originally registered in 2004 because Bush was such a bumbling idiot and just fucking shit up so bad, that they felt it was there civic duty to get him out of office and the only way to do that was to vote for John Kerry. So now we have this group of voters that isn't particularly democratic by nature, but voted for Kerry because Bush was such a collosal fuck up. These voters are now on the voters rolls and subject to calls, mailers, and canvassers. After awhile I think a group of these voters decided, "well since the national spotlight is on us it's our pop culture duty to vote. So you know what fuck these shify youngin' (mix in some racially undertoned thinking as well) I'm going to vote for Hillary just in spite. People who don't care about politics, usually don't like to talk about politics and like to be left alone when it comes to politics, I know this from personal experience. And I think we may have witnessed a little bit of voter backlash against so many people butting there heads into these peoples politics.
Another voter bloc that I think played a larger part in Texas then in Ohio and I'll go into it in my Texas analysis is the Republicans who voted because of all the hoopla surrounding yesterdays election and becuase there primary was already sewn up. The thinking of this process is actually quite simple and makes alot of sense. Markos advocated it on our side against there side in Michigan and I think we may have been struck by it yesteerday. What is the thinking? "If we vote for Hillary it will do much more good then voting for John McCain. By denying Obama the knockout blow, we will extend the democratic primary contest for atleast another 3-4 months. This will allow them to beat each other up, spend all there money, and as we've seen the past couple weeks let Hillary repeat right wing talking points at the detriment of Obama, her, and the democratic party. All the while McCain can just sit back, collect and save money and remain out of the fray". This bring us to Texas.
TEXAS. For Texas I'm going to quickly copy and paste what I just wrote up in Ohio. I think this played a much more significant roll in Texas. Hillary's strong point in Texas was ofcourse the outpouring of miniority support for him and I want to in no way diminish that. I think the hispanic turnout of Hillary was great for her and great for our party and had a big part to play with her Texas primary popular vote victory last night. The other thing that played a huge factor in last night's victory for her was the REPUBLICAN VOTERS. With Texas pushed into the spotlight the last few weeks, alot of voters have had alot of time to cotemplate just what kind of electorial action they would take. Now folks I want you to remember that this is Texas. This is the state that gave us George Bush. This is a republican, cowbow, yee-ha state first and foremost. And many of these cowbow yee-ha, "everything is bigger in texas" republicans listen to Rush Limbaugh. For the last week Rush Limbaugh has been advocating that his listeners go vote for Hillary. With the Republican nomination pretty much sewn up and many of these voters not big McCain fans in the first place, the decesion to vote for Hillary wasn't a really hard one. Like I said up under the OHIO section, a vote for Hillary was a vote for 3 to 4 more months of the democrats tearing each other apart at the throat. Spending all there resources and using Rovian tactics to destroy one another (this refers much more to Sen. Clinton), while McCain sits back, raises, and saves cash and remains above the fray. We didn't get 8 years of Bush for no reason people! While the republicans may seem like nimrods to us in every juncture of there life, they are geniuses on one thing.... electoral politics. They have been doing it to us for decades and they just did it to us again.
Conclusion So what are we going to do about this? Fight on ofcourse! There is no way the Obama campaign can called out what really happend last night without looking like sore losers and we've had enough of sore losers from teh democratic party for one primary contest already. So the only thing we can do is fight back. We need to make sure that Obama's delegate lead widens so when we enter the convention we have a better closing argument. What we really need to do though is as a party turn to McCain. Flip the script on Limbaugh and friends. Quit campaigning against each other and start campaigning against McCain. Not as a ticket, but as a party. The voters will decide who our President should be, they don't need any more help. So this is a heartfelt plea to all those in the Obama and Clinton campaigns (especially the Clinton campaign), no more Rovian tactics against each other plleeasee. Starting today with Bush's endorsement of McCain we need to make sure McCain doesn't live this endorsement down until November of 2008. We need to bring the full frontal attack of our engergized party against a third Bush term!