Clinton supporters are making a statement that they are NOT going to unite behind Barack Obama. There are a variety of reasons why; Michigan and Florida, poor treatment of Senator Clinton by the media, disrespectful behavior by Obama supporters, or simply doubts about Senator Obama and his qualifications. For these, or other reasons, many Clinton supporters are actively campaigning for Senator McCain. The site Just Say No Deal lists over 125 sites, many newly started, that agree that they will not be voting Obama in November. Some like Savage Politics are even raising money for Senator McCain. Many are planning to donate to the McCain campaign on July 4th to show their committment. Here are just a few of the numerous sites committed to NOT unifying the Democratic Party.
McClatchy Newspapers report N.H. Clinton supporters slow to follow her embrace of Obama. A lack of experience is a sticking point for many. Even after a long primary run that consisted of numerous candidate stops in NH, many Granite Staters still feel they don't know enough about Obama.
"I felt good about Hillary Clinton. I loved Bill Clinton. I thought he did a fantastic job," said Tammy Dowd, a secretary from Unity.
Her impression of Obama?
"Inexperience," she said.
In another part of the state, Andrea DeMars, a Manchester college student, had similar thoughts. "Clinton had the experience. Obama doesn't really have it," she said.
Obama badly needs to win over wary voters such as these, because New Hampshire is one of November's swing states. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry, a senator from next-door Massachusetts, won the state's four electoral votes with 50.2 percent, while in 2000, Republican George W. Bush carried it with 48 percent, the only Northeastern state he won.
Susan Rice's false statement about the Kennedy Khruschchev meeting leaves open two questions. Are Obama foreign policy advisors up to snuff to guide a candidate and potential president? Are Obama advisors making misleading or false statements in order to win votes? First, Dr. Susan Rice is a Rhodes Scholar, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, and has worked on the Kerry and Dukakis campaigns. It seems hard to believe that she would have thought that the Kennedy Khruschchev meeting really resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. If she did, it is a troubling gap in knowledge for such an accomplished international relations scholar.
Consequently, that raises the second question of whether this is a tactic to sway votes by misleading people. Was Susan Rice trying to cash in on the popularity of JFK by assuming most people would not know their history well enough to challenge her? This isn't Rice's first misstatement. She has been trying over the last few months to walk back Senator Obama's statement that he would meet with dictators of rouge nations in the first year of his presidency without preconditions. The tactic being to confuse people with a debate between 'precondition' and 'preparations'. Yet, Dr. Rice expressly stated, “Nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.” That is false, Senator Obama in a YouTube debate expressly stated he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela without preconditions, which drew criticism from people on both sides of the isle. This begs the question is this a bumbling foreign policy, or old school politics. A decission to say anything regardless of its veracity to put your candidate in office.
