The American Spectator

Campaign Crawlers

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"He's an old white man from Washington with years and years and years of Washington experience. How is that change? How is that going to win Hillary supporters? It just made me even more mad."

As I spoke to Kiblen, a man walked by and asked her if she wanted a "John McCain for President" button. She accepted it, and immediately affixed it to her "Hillary" t-shirt. "That's who I'm going to vote for," she told me.

MANY DEMOCRATS I spoke to told me that Clinton supporters will ultimately decide that Obama agrees with them on most issues, including abortion, health care, and the Iraq War and get behind the ticket in November.

Kiblen told me that argument didn't matter to her, because she was voting for McCain merely as a protest vote. "It isn't about Hillary anymore," she said. "It's about sexism and the way they treated her." She also noted that Obama was "tanking in the polls" and she complained about his big ego.

She was dining with a fellow disgruntled Clinton supporter from North Carolina, who she met while registering at the convention offices of P.U.M.A. (a group of Clinton dead-enders which alternatively stands for People United Means Action or Party Unity My Ass).

P.U.M.A., as well as the group Rise Hillary Rise plan a series of protests on Monday and Tuesday as well as a march, and the turnout at those events will be an indicator of how large of a constituency they actually represent.

WHEN I RAISED this issue with one-time Clinton backer Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman from New York City who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan, she told me that Obama had a deeper challenge.

"To be honest, I don't think it's just a Hillary Clinton problem, I think you have a race problem, and that's what we're going to have to overcome in addition," Brewer said.

"If you talk to people in Idaho and Indiana and parts of Pennsylvania, I don't think they totally understand that when they get Obama, they get a whole package of people trying to make a better country for all of us -- and race shouldn't matter."

She pegged Obama's chances at 50/50.

Bob Vandereto, a delegate from Los Angeles, Califonia, was cautiously optimistic that Obama would pull it out because of a strong organization.

"[Obama] has the best political organization I've ever seen in 40 years of Democratic politics, and I have confidence that in the end they're going to squeak through," Vandereto said.

If the Democrats can't win in this favorable electoral environment, it's hard to see under what circumstances they ever could.

topics:
Health Care, John McCain, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Abortion, Environment, Iraq