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Thursday, March 6, 2008
Political games people play
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another Georgia Democratic superdelegate, party chairwoman Jane Kidd, announced this week that she’s supporting Barack Obama, the seventh of the state’s 13 superdelegates to commit to him. Hillary has three and three are keeping quiet.
That is one of the few crumbs of good news to come to the Obama campaign this week. To recap, it started going downhill Monday with jury selection in the Chicago corruption trial of Obama’s pal and former fund-raiser Tony Rezko. In a press conference, Obama suddenly appeared to be just another politician dodging questions about something messy.
And of course, there was the visit by his economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, to the Canadian consulate in Chicago where he apparently reassured them that Obama’s rhetoric on the North American Free Trade Agreement was campaign consumption in a competitive state.
The young, attracted to Obama’s campaign by his promise of “change,” will jump ship in a heartbeat once they sense that his rhetoric is just to win and that, in reality, he’s more of the same.
Going into both the Texas and Ohio primaries, talk radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, urged Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary to prolong the bloodbath. It might have worked here and there, but based on exit polls slightly more of those who crossed over voted for Obama.
I think it’s always a mistake for voters in one party to try to select the opposition. To be honest, I don’t know yet whether the stronger candidate against John McCain would be Hillary or Obama.
Young voters, for example, may turn out to be part of a powerful movement that could sweep him into office. Or if he’s revealed to be just another cog in the corrupt machine politics of Chicago, they abandon him in droves. He loses.
Hillary has high negatives, but the Clintons won’t get too far from the political mainstream, as defined by the polls. She won’t destroy herself.
McCain has it locked up. Size up the opposition. Is he better off running against Hillary or Obama? And, by the way, do you play games in the voting booth or elsewhere in politics?
