Four More Years?

Here’s a scary thought: President McCain and Vice President Huckabee.

Don’t laugh, my liberal brothers and sisters. It could happen.

Sure, everybody is fed up with the war in Iraq and seven years of Republican cronyism and corruption. But as we learned in 2000, the majority doesn’t matter. It’s the electoral college that matters, and all you need there is 270 votes. The Republicans have demonstrated that they are good at gaming that system. Put their skill at that together with a dash of fear-mongering, a little precinct-level fraud, some careful vote suppression, a bit of racial pandering and add it on to their natural Baby Jesus constituency and you might wake up on November 5th with a nasty surprise on the teevee.

Writing in The Huffington Post, Earl Ofari Hutchinson says

In the South and the stretch of states from the heartland to the West there are 150 to 200 electoral votes. The recent endorsement by two Red State moderate Democratic senators of Obama means little. These states and their electoral votes are not in play for the Democrats. In fact, they haven’t been for decades. Though Bill Clinton managed to pry four Southern states from the GOP orbit, he did it because the independent insurgent candidate Ross Perot took thousands of votes from the GOP in 1992, and in his election and reelection bids he sold himself as a Republican lite candidate…

Obama, Clinton and Edwards will never be mistaken for Bill in the Red States.

(Read more of Hutchinson’s post here.)

No matter how bad the current administration is, there are many voters who will continue to go Republican on single issues, i.e., “I hate abortion, so I’ll vote for Thompson, even if he does appear to be sound asleep, and his whole presidency will probably be bad for me and my family.” Or “I’m scared to death, and Rudy says he’ll protect me, so I’ll vote for him even if he picks my pocket for four years.” In this way 270 electoral votes are gathered.

Don’t let up. Don’t attack each other or tear each other down. Stay united. Remember the goal for November. Stay focused on winning. Make the strongest case you can for your candidate, but get ready to support the Democrat who wins the nomination.

It is not in the bag.