http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5550837.html
Clinton backers may find an alternative named McCain
By FROMA HARROP
Despite the hard contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,
party leaders keep telling Democratic-leaning voters that they have
two good candidates. They are right, but one of them may well be a
Republican.
Far from the pumped-up Obama rallies, centrists who voted for John
Kerry last time now say they are considering John McCain — especially
if the Democrat is the vaporous Obama. At least that's what many are
telling me — and I'm telling myself.
One friend said he'd vote for the New York senator, and if she's not
the candidate, then McCain. When I reminded him that he doesn't like
Hillary, he shrugged. Another acquaintance e-mailed, "Hillary is to
me extremely unlikable, but I do not regard likability as a
qualification."
The notion that many Clinton voters cannot be easily transferred to
Obama contradicts much "expert" opinion. But a Super Tuesday exit
poll suggested there is something to it. While 52 percent of Obama's
supporters were amenable to a Clinton candidacy, only 49 percent of
Clinton voters said they'd be happy with the Illinois senator,
according to the survey by Harvard University's Institute of Politics.
And at that time, the news media were still lavishing love on Obama.
That situation is about to end. "He's the fashion plate of the
moment," an editorial page editor remarked, "but fashion week is
over."
Sophisticated commentary now notes the growing creepiness of the
Obama campaign: Its aversion to substantive policy discussions. The
sermonizing — "In the face of despair, we believe there can be hope."
And the messianic bit — "At this moment in the election there is
something happening in America." (That would be he.)
Volunteer trainees at Camp Obama are told not to talk issues with
voters, but to offer personal testimony about how they "came" to
Obama. Makes the skin crawl.
Centrists generally do not find cults of personality entertaining.
The mass hypnosis reminds them of the mortgage frenzy — all these
people buying into a dream and not caring about the fine print.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, has given them a choice. This is
despite the best efforts of its right wing to pick a candidate
against whom any Democrat would be better. And the more the radicals
beat up on the Arizona senator, the more he looks like a contender to
moderate Democrats.
Why might this group like McCain? Count the ways. He had the fiscal
discipline to vote against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and
the decency to complain that they unfairly favored the rich. He's OK
on the environment, concerned over global warming and against oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He supported tighter
fuel-economy standards and opposes torture. John McCain is not an
embarrassment.
Of course, much could happen before November. To try to make up with
the right, McCain might hedge on the very positions that moderates
admire. He's already vowed to make permanent the tax cuts he once
opposed.
And there's the war in Iraq. McCain courageously slammed the Bush
administration's early handling of it, and the troop surge he
supported has calmed things in Iraq, at least for now. But he has yet
to adequately explain why going to Iraq was ever a good idea.
On the Democratic side, Clinton might prevail and thus offer a
serious alternative to McCain. Or Obama might decide to get serious
and apply critical thinking to real issues in a way that appeals to
wonky centrists.
What Democrats must understand is that their moderates now have
another candidate to consider. And this slice of the electorate is
big enough and grumpy enough to swing a general election to John
McCain.
Harrop is a syndicated columnist based in Providence, R.I.
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