Media outlets and posters to the fray have come to the conclusion that Obama and Hillary were the same. They had similar policies and experiences. The Democratic primary was about personality and identity politics. Obama supporters are crying foul at Clinton supporters wanting to defect to McCain due to Obama’s lack of experience and rightly state that there were no experience differences between the senators. They say that these defections are racist in nature. What hogwash!
One could make the same counter argument to Obama supporters as to why they picked Obama as there was no substantive difference between them. No one is accusing Obama’s legions of picking Obama because of his race despite the fact that many people said so. There are tons of interviews of Obama supporters that reflect t the view that “we want to send a message to the world for picking a black president.” It’s not that they did not like Clinton, it was that Clinton was not black. After all there have been several strong world leaders that were women like Thatcher of Great Britain and the current German Chancellor Angela Merkel. There hasn’t been a black world leader from a G8 nation.
Obama supporters would deny his nomination was based on affirmative action by the electorate or a cult of personality of course. The irony is that their arguments for defecting to McCain over Obama have as little merit as choosing Obama over Clinton. If there was so little difference between Obama and Clinton then why pick Obama? Clinton’s supporters are accused of being racist because 20% of Clinton supporters voted based on race (never mind Obama’s pastor’s racist comments at the time of this often cited poll) yet Obama got 95% of the black vote in several states. It seems to me that blacks voted based on race much more than whites did, yet whites are racists.
It could simply be that Clinton supporters don’t like Obama’s liberal views, after all Clinton did work hard to try to appeal to the center of the electorate and Obama did not (he tried to but failed by looking like a phony with his bitter comments). Boring! No one wants to read about that, it’s just easier to accuse Clinton supporters as racists and Obama’s supporters as reverse racists.