If Obama loses to McCain in a close election, and the key swing vote is liberal female Clinton supporters, the message these women will have sent to the rest of the country won't simply be that "it was our turn." The message will be that the Democratic Party is a party of white women, by white women, and for white women . . .
With a substantial percentage of Clinton supporters telling pollsters they will vote for McCain, commentators and bloggers everywhere are trying to convince them why that would be a mistake (I should clarify that the voters in question are liberal or moderate Clinton supporters, like this letter writer, and not the more conservative element of her support, which consisted primarily of registered Democrats in the South and Appalachia who usually vote Republican in presidential elections, and probably would be voting for McCain in this one regardless of who won the Democratic Primary).
The main argument is that voting for McCain would be voting against the very political values Hillary Clinton embodies, and that, after all, Obama and Clinton have similar stances on a majority of the issues. The best expression of this argument that I've seen might be the satire piece titled "Loyalty Oaths for Clinton Supporters Pledging Their Votes to McCain."
While the issue-based argument against voting for McCain is probably the best and most straight-forward one, I would like to offer a less philosophical, more realist reason this group should think twice about voting out of spite. A mass defection to McCain could seriously damage the Democratic Party - not just in this election, but in the long term. Clinton supporters vowing to back McCain should ask themselves if they really want to give everyone else the impression that, from now on, anyone who beats a white woman in a Democratic Primary will be accused of sexism and blacklisted by a segment of the party.
If Obama loses to McCain in a close election, and the key swing vote is liberal female Clinton supporters, the message these women will have sent to the rest of the country won't simply be that "it was our turn." The message will be that the Democratic Party is a party of white women, by white women, and for white women. Please don't let me be misunderstood - I don't have anything against white women, I'm glad they are gaining more major political positions, and I'm almost certain that we'll have a President from that demographic in the near future. But if Obama loses in November solely because he is not a white woman, the rest of us will be asking ourselves if the Democratic Party really represents our political values.
I'll start with my own demographic group. The Democratic Party already has a well-known disadvantage among white male voters. Bush won among white males by a 60-36 margin in 2000, and by a 62-37 margin in 2004. In most recent polls, McCain has roughly a twenty-point margin over Obama among white men (and the McCain-Clinton matchup numbers were similar). Do Clinton supporters really want to risk alienating the minority of white men who usually vote Democratic? It would be particularly short-sighted for the party to push away younger white men like me, who will permanently equate the Republican Party with the Bush administration, and have embraced Obama because he represents a revitalized, modern Democratic Party we are proud to be a part of.
And it is hard to imagine black Democrats of either gender reacting well to the news that liberal white women - people who have rallied behind the Democratic Party nominee in every other election since they came of voting age - had switched parties for the first time for the sole purpose of preventing a win for the first major black presidential candidate. Do Clinton supporters really want to risk alienating the Democratic Party's single most faithful constituency? By the way, if Clinton-McCain voters want to avoid accusations that race is a factor in their vote, they should find better reasons than "he doesn't have enough experience" (in light of the fact that Obama has four more years of legislative experience than Clinton and six more than John Edwards), and "he's too young" (considering that Obama is a year older than Bill Clinton was in 1992). This article discusses how the lack of good reasons given by Clinton supporters as to why they oppose Obama has spawned the assumption that racism in involved.
Finally, blocking an Obama victory could raise questions about party inclusiveness among members of other non-white ethnic groups, like Hispanics, Asians, and South Asians, which are emerging as major political forces. Would-be candidates from those groups - say, the Democratic Bobby Jindal out there who has been thinking about running for office in an area with a prominent Indian community, like Queens, Northern Virginia, or North Carolina's Research Triangle - might be discouraged from running as a Democrat if a large segment of the party refuses to rally behind Obama. He might ask himself: if a minority candidate with Obama's unbelievable political skills and charisma still can't pull it off, how can I?
In summary, liberal and moderate Clinton supporters have more than one reason to think twice about voting for John McCain. In addition to the fact that they would be voting against their own political interests, they should also realize that a Clinton-supporter-driven Obama loss could seriously damage the Democratic Party.
[This is my first diary on Daily Kos; it is cross-posted, under the title "A party of one (demographic)?" on my blog outragedmoderates.org, which I've been running (sporadically at times) since mid-2004. You know how the old adage goes - if you can't beat group blogs, join 'em.]