Hillary Finally Makes It Clear -- She Prefers Obama Over McCain

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 6:01 AM on March 28, 2008.

There’s been some discussion this week about whether Hillary Clinton, despite a record of reliable Democratic partisanship, might actually prefer that John McCain win in November if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. This occurred on the heels of a Gallup poll that showed that a whopping 28% of Clinton supporters are prepared to vote for a conservative Republican if Clinton doesn’t win her party’s nod, a far higher percentage than that of Obama supporters.

Yesterday, Clinton offered some very helpful remarks that pushed the narrative in the other direction.

Hillary Clinton pleaded for partisan unity on Thursday, urging Democrats not to abandon their party to vote for John McCain if their preferred candidate fails to secure the nomination.

Clinton was asked by a questioner in the audience here what she would tell frustrated Democrats who might consider voting for McCain in the general election out of spite.

“Please think through this decision,” Clinton said, laughing and emphasizing the word “please.”

“It is not a wise decision for yourself or your country.” The crowd applauded loudly.

“First of all, every time you have a vigorous contest like we are having in this primary election people get intense,” Clinton said. “You know, Sen. Obama has intense support. I have intense support.” But, she added, the “significant” differences between her and Obama “pale to the differences between us and Sen. McCain.”

“I intend to do everything I can to make sure we have a unified Democratic party,” Clinton concluded. “When this contest is over and we have a nominee, we’re going to close ranks, we’re going to be united.”

See? Was that so hard?

For a while, it started to look like the Clinton campaign was taking a few too many steps to help McCain out. Clinton said McCain had the experience to be president, while suggesting Obama may not. She said McCain passed her commander-in-chief test, while suggesting Obama did not.

Christopher Orr added this unpleasant list of recent data points:

1) Matt Drudge hyped a photo of Obama in Somali garb that he claimed (and the Clinton campaign declined to deny) Clinton staffers had been circulating.

2) Bill Clinton went on the Rush Limbaugh show on the day of the Texas primary — after Limbaugh had spent days urging GOP voters in the state to cross over and vote for Clinton in order “rig” the election and ensure that Democrats nominated the weaker of their two candidates.

3) The Clinton campaign has been circulating an article in The American Spectator alleging that an Obama adviser, former Air Force chief Merrill McPeak, is an anti-Semite and a drunk.

4) When Clinton attacked Obama on Jeremiah Wright yesterday, she did it at an editorial meeting of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the vanity publication of Richard Mellon Scaife, while sitting next to Scaife himself.

Given all of this, I think a lot of Dems were anxious to hear Clinton say exactly what she said yesterday: voting for a Republican presidential candidate would be a mistake for everyone, and Obama is clearly preferable to McCain.

The more people hear talk like this, the less inclined they’ll be to think Clinton is pursuing a scorched-earth strategy. More of this, please.

Tagged as: clinton, obama, mccain

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.