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• Sunday, February 10, 2008 05:16 PM

  Alien Nation?

  you are not going to win a GE by alienating Clinton supporters.

  And the best way of alienating Clintonites is by beating their candidate, right? That's the frustration of it, from my perspective.

  Even if no Obamaniacs said a word, and Obama wins the next ten contests, the Clintonites would still seethe with fury, call us idiots and cultists and lemmings and everything in between, as they've been doing for weeks, now. But one of the oft-derided qualities of Obama cited by his detractors -- his willingness to honestly talk to people, to reach out, to compromise and accommodate -- I think that would be an asset in that situation, a way to win the peace.

  Would it be enough to win the alienated Clintonites, if Obama's able to secure the nomination? Only they know for sure. Some of them seem unremittingly hostile to Obama, including the bizarre threat to spite-vote for McCain if Obama won the nomination -- I understand why Obama Independents might make that threat, but Clinton Democrats?? I don't get it, unless you're Clintonite first, and Democrat second (the very definition of a cult of personality), or else some GOPeons earning their bones sowing anonymous discord among Democrats (not very hard to do, admittedly).

  But "Let Hillary Win" just isn't an acceptable way to avoid alienating the Clintonites. Either your candidate is able to beat Obama to the nomination, or she's not able to.

  With the handful of aces up her sleeve, I still think of her as having the edge over Obama, despite his successes. He's run a far better campaign than she has, but she's got plenty of insider clout left to leverage herself an election with. And, unfortunately, that's very likely to alienate Obamaniacs. So, simply beating Clinton would alienate the Clintonites, and winning ugly (e.g., superdelegates, or the MI and FL delegate issue) would alienate the Obamaniacs.

  Seems like the only sporting thing would be for Clinton to win fair and square, out in the open, and not by gaming the system. If Obama goes down in an open electoral battle, so it goes. But if Obama goes down because of backroom dealing by superdelegates (I mean, Bill Clinton's one of them, right?), then that stinks, and the only ones who get hurt by that are the Democratic Party as a whole, and our chances in the general election.

  We'll see how the campaigns handle the coming weeks, and by their words and actions, we'll know them.

  —Slackie Onassis Read Slackie Onassis's other letters
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