Daily Muse: HILL HATH NO FURY

Daily Muse: HILL HATH NO FURY
Posted on Wednesday, August 06 @ 11:17:03 PDT by dailymuse

Aug. 6, 2008
Charlie Stile of The Record has an intriguing column featuring an interview with a disaffected “Hillraiser,” Caren Turner of Tenafly.

Turner, a Democratic fundraiser and a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, is not a big fan of Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of her party. So much so that she’s thinking of voting for Republican John McCain.

And if Turner, a member of “The Group” (an informal committee of New Jersey’s top Clinton fundraisers), is in any way typical of other unhappy Clinton supporters, that could spell big trouble for Obama – especially in a close election.

Turner, who has been a Washington lobbyist for 25 years, does little to hide her disdain for Obama, saying she is “not comfortable” with the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“This is another example of a less-qualified male getting a promotion over a more qualified female,” Turner said. “I have been in Washington and doing federal legislation longer than Senator Obama has. That's not very comforting. Frankly, from a war perspective and a national security perspective, I don't feel safe with him.... I'm not comfortable with the people who he has chosen to affiliate with – the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, et cetera.”

Her chief complaint is the “misogyny that was expressed by the media during the entire election and the deafening silence by the DNC and the Barack campaign in the face of such denigration of women generally.”

Turner and other members of  Together4Us.com, a group of prominent disaffected Clinton supporters, met a few weeks ago with Carly Fiorina, one of McCain’s chief backers. Turner says she’s considering voting for McCain.

So why does this matter?

It’s been two months since Clinton suspended her presidential campaign, and endorsed Obama. Polls show about 25 percent of Clinton supporters said they would not vote for Obama. While it might be easy to dismiss those numbers as heat-of-the-moment sentiments that would change over time, the continuing discontent of Democrats like Turner and other members of Together4Us means that the discomfort with Obama still exists.

In the most recent RealClearPolitics.com average, Obama leads McCain by 2.8 percent nationally, showing whatever bounce he might have received from his world tour has faded.

Obama’s lead isn’t robust enough that he can dismiss high-profile defections like Turner. Politico.com notes that “in the two months since Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination, he has hit a ceiling in public opinion polling,” noting that he has failed to close the deal and break the 50 percent ceiling.
Even more troubling for Obama, a new poll today by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press suggests that Obama fatigue may be settling in with the public: “Close to half (48%) of Pew's interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin - 22% to 16% - people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the putative Democratic nominee.

In contrast, if anything, Pew's respondents said they want to hear more, not less about the Republican candidate. Just 26% in the poll said they had heard too much about McCain, while a larger number (38%) reported that they had heard too little about the putative Republican candidate.”

Could it be that McCain’s two ads that mock Obama’s fame -- “Celebrity” and “The One” – are having an impact?