Unscientific Diner Poll

My cousins gathered at a diner last night, and of course the Democratic Party primary in New York came up. First we commented on who is likely to win, and the consensus was that Hillary has a strong edge given her significant base in the state as its senator.

But when we moved onto whether or not each of us would actually vote for her, the discussion changed. Without abusing their confidence with specifics, I can say that the appeal of a female candidate to my female relatives is overshadowed by Hillary’s love affair with military force.

There are other issues, but her vote to pursue the Iraqi invasion and her continuing enthusiasm for that adventure has pushed my liberal family away from the Clintons, despite their positive feelings about the Clinton era. If you believe the poll numbers showing that the war has been eclipsed by economic concerns in the minds of the electorate, you wouldn’t expect this topic to sway votes. But it does.

Meanwhile, if John McCain is the Republican’s front-runner, those guys are in serious trouble. His line about the Democrats ‘waving the white flag of surrender’ is true enough but only if you apply it to their supine posture upon the approach of George Bush. The idea that people are going to perceive the eventual opposition candidate as a tool of bin Laden sounds as crackpot as it is, and added to McCain’s moral obtuseness, sets the stage for an electoral wipeout. Let’s see if he has the same slobbering glee about killing people from the air when he’s on the business end of the massacre.

Crystal balls are notoriously unreliable, but to suggest that people have forgotten about the ongoing catastrophe Bush brought us in the Middle East and the trillion dollars of our money that he’s spent on it is nuts. I see no evidence that a stimulus gift bag to be spent at Wal-Mart is going to save his friends’ behinds in November.