"Dividing" The Dems At Obama’s Expense

The New York Times presented more Democratic “doom and gloom” yesterday (from here)…

All of this (re: Obama’s primary success) poses a challenge to Mr. Obama as he seeks to move the Clinton wing of the party beyond with (sic) the Clinton era without offending Mrs. Clinton’s considerable base of supporters. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina once again suggested just how cleaved the party is between young and old, white and black, lower-income and upper income.

That’s interesting, given the fact that Obama’s support among white voters equals that of John Kerry four years ago (here). Also, this tells us that Obama is better at retaining Democrats for the general election against John W. McBush than Hillary. Finally, this tells us that Obama’s support remains unchanged after the “bitter” nonsense that played out during the PA primary and has pretty much rebounded after the manufactured media controversy surrounding a certain African American preacher here.

I don’t know how “cleaved” the party truly is since Adam Nagourney of the Times doesn’t present any statistics to back up his charge (though I just did, of course).

But not to be undaunted, he continues...

“It’s going to be hard,” said Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska, and a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. “Part of what I’ve seen in this campaign is how difficult it is to unite this party: To unite voters in West Virginia with Democratic voters in South Central Los Angeles. That is what he has to do and what is going to be hard.”

“He has to learn to set aside grievances; and there are going to be plenty of them,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Can we disagree without being disagreeable? The answer is, no. We get disagreeable. And this has been a disagreeable primary.”

Concerning Bob Kerrey, I present the following quote from Wikipedia…

"Even before John Edwards was chasing ambulances in North Carolina and Barack was voting ‘present’ in the Illinois state senate, Senator Clinton was involved in major policy initiatives."

And as we know, Kerrey emphasized Obama’s middle name here and charged that Obama had attended “a secular madrassa,” whatever the hell that is (he later apologized...and by the way, voting "present" in the Illinois state legislature is perfectly acceptable).

All class, that Bob Kerrey (and here's even more nonsense).

(Former Senator and presidential candidate Gary) Hart recalled that after a similarly divisive primary battle against Walter F. Mondale in 1984, he made a point of throwing all his effort into trying to get his supporters behind Mr. Mondale. In that case, Mr. Hart was more equivalent to Mr. Obama than Mrs. Clinton, having drawn new voters into the primary system.

“I went to the platform and moved his nomination by acclamation,” Mr. Hart recalled. “And then I went out and did over 40 campaign events for him on my own. And I was not able to move the younger and independent voters, as the results made clear.”

Yeah, well, the problem in 1984 was the fact that Ronnie Baby’s popularity was starting to rebound somewhat and he suckered in the majority of those younger and independent voters. It was easy to buy into the narrative that the incumbent Reagan had found his stride and represented “morning in America,” the “shining city on the hill” and all of that blather, and Mondale was just some old, tired New Dealer who was able to zing the Gipper once in a debate but, otherwise, not present himself as an alternative that too many people wanted (ignoring Mondale’s vast experience in government and the fact that he would probably have proved to be highly competent at the very least).

But it fits Nagourney’s own story line to suggest that the Dems were too “divided” between Mondale and Hart to come together once more against a highly popular Repug president who ended up wiping out Mondale anyway.

I realize that our dear corporate media cousins are going to live off what I would call the “divided Democrats” myth at least until November, though I think it’s pretty obvious that the Repugs are hardly lined up behind “Senator Honor and Virtue” 100 percent.

I’d rather be in our shoes than theirs. And no “crackpot history” lesson from The Old Gray Lady will change that fact.

Update: And this turns out to be more good news for Obama.