Winning ugly

No, not Hillary.  Her win in West Virginia was pretty impressive.  It's supposed to be over, you'll remember, yet she beat the "presumptive" nominee by 2-1.  For all I know, Hillary might want to get out of the race, but that's hard to do when you keep winning.

No, it's the Obama campaign that needs to take a step back--if indeed he is the "presumptive" nominee--and take a good look at what not only is the right thing to do, but also the smart thing politically:  doing everything it can to unify the Democratic Party.

Senator Obama himself seems to be aware of this--also the higher levels of his campaign, most of the time--but the word hasn't filtered down to the blogosphere, the grass roots, or the Obama network, NBC.  Chris Matthews called Hillary "the Al Sharpton of white people" tonight.  It hasn't even filtered down to leading members of Congress.  Ted Kennedy dissed Hillary yesterday by saying she wasn't enough of a leader to be Vice President.

Hillary is going to finish up essentially tied with Sen. Obama in the popular vote.  Half the Democratic Party supports her.  Treating her like the enemy--read a few of the comments at dailykos or TPM or Huffington Post--and the Obama campaign invites disaster upon itself.  Calling her supporters "racists" and "Archie Bunkers" isn't exactly the most brilliant move either.

Just for the record, it isn't just the "white working class" that supports Hillary.  With the exception of African-Americans, it's the entire working class--whites yes, and also hispanics and asians.  At least some of the Obama supporters--the triumphalists--seem to enjoy the thought of purging the Democratic Party of these lesser beings and replacing them with "all the new people we're bringing in." 

That would be the path of electoral catastrophe.  It wouldn't even be "winning ugly."  It would be "losing ugly."      

Comments

[Stellaa]

Brilliant post.

[John Petty]

Gee thanks.

jp