When the final analysis is written about this year's Democratic nominating process, this statement will surely be proven right:
Before this year's historic campaign, poisoned at the root by overt and ugly sexism and covert and coded racism, Democrats have never been asked to choose quite so nakedly which absolutely necessary demographic they would like to do without. Here is the question, a cynic might suggest, that the Democratic Party must answer this summer: Do we want to lose because we drove away blacks or because we drove away white women?Early in the process, GOP strategists rightfully worried about Hillary's and Obama's big turnouts. What's needed, in my opinion, is something that happened right after George Bush's re-election. That's when the Nutroots pushed Howard Dean down the DNC's throats. From Day One, disaster was predictable, even inevitable. The Nutroots saw the Clinton/DLC connection as GOP lite. The Clintons saw the Nutroots as McGovernite losers. In other words, they hated each other.
In fact, it's more accurate to say that this rift first started with Howard Dean's presidential campaign. He repeatedly said that he represented the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." That rift got wider in August, 2006, when Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut. That night, a new type of Democrat was born: Lieberman Democrats. Brendan Loy typifies Lieberman Democrats, socially and economically liberal but hawkish about national security.
Let's return to the present. Pennsylvania's primary is a perfect illustration of the split that's becoming more apparent each day. Blue collar Democrats will vote overwhelmingly for Hillary. Rich, white liberals will join African Americans in enthusiastically voting for Sen. Obama. Once Sen. Obama wins the nomination, alot of Hillary's DLC supporters will leave the Democrats' coalition and vote for John McCain.
While it'd be wrong to think that these DLC types to abandon the Democratic in dramatic numbers, their defections would be catastrophic for the Democrats.
What's that got to do with this year's race? Sunday night, I talked with a political insider in Pennsylvania. This insider told me that Sen. McCain has a definite shot at putting Pennsylvania in the red state column, regardless of the candidate. That figures to be the case in other blue collar states across the country.
