Friday, May 2, 2008

Operation Chaos update

At AOSHQ, Gabriel Malor argues that Hillary Clinton would be the tougher candidate for November:
She's the stronger of the two in the general. McCain will wipe the floor with Obama. Typically Democrats do not win without Pennsylvania. Guess who absolutely bombs in Pennsylvania? Democrats always make a fight of Ohio and Florida. Guess who got whooped in Ohio and Florida? And why? Because a large segment of Democratic blue-collar voters cannot bring themselves to vote for Obama.
Quinnipiac has a new poll that confirms this: McCain does better against Obama in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania than against Clinton. These are crucial states if we want to get to the magic number.
I'm not sure that those numbers will hold up in the fall. Hillary starts out with ultra-high negatives, and I don't see the elderly McCain as a good matchup against the 46-year-old Obama. No offense to Gabriel, but I trust Rush Limbaugh's judgment more:
[T]he purpose of Operation Chaos is not to secure the nomination of either of these two. It is to keep exactly what's going, going, and that's chaos. Because the end result is that neither of these two are going to be electable by the time this is over. . . .
Operation Chaos has anticipated all the possibilities, here. If I could just ask all of you: Trust the commander. Just chill out. We know what we're doing here. . . .
Operation Chaos was started to revive Mrs. Clinton because she was in the tank, and we wanted the campaign to go on.
Exactly. The longer the nomination fight continues, and the closer the contest, the worse the damage to the Democratic Party -- regardless of who the ultimate nominee is.

At this point, Obama is reportedly within about 300 delegates of the nomination, so conservatives should be pushing all-out on Hillary's behalf. (Sidney Blumenthal thanks you!)

There's no point getting ahead of the game by trying to guess how this plays out in November. As usual, Rush is right: Stop worrying about the final outcome, and keep your mind focused on inflicting maximum damage to the Democrats right now.

1 comment:

  1. One thing the Democrats learned is from 2000 and especially 2004 is that widely hated candidates CAN win... as long as more voters vote against the other guy (or gal, as the case may be.) In 2004, the war was already a fiasco, the economy was already falling apart... and George W. Bush won. (In 2000, AlGore actually got more votes nationwide, and even in Florida more people INTENDED to vote for Gore on election day than for Bush even though in retrospect it appears that Bush really did get a few more actual votes.)

    Hillary's negatives may be high, but they are about as high as they can get. And we know what lies and innuendos will be told about her. Obama is, as we saw with the bogus Rev. Wright brouhaha, an unknown quantity who is much more swiftboatable than Clinton. But either candidate can get 50% plus 1 electoral votes in a race against McCain.

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