Over on the homepage, you’ll find a look at Democratic worries that Hillary Clinton winning the nomination will hurt their red state candidates in lower office races. I’d urge you to read the whole thing, but I would call your attention to a few items in particular. First, a poll result from June:
But the poll also found that rural voters remain more conservative than the nation as a whole, and it is accurate to say that Hillary Clinton is about as popular as illegal immigrants among these voters. When asked to rate their warm or cool feelings towards figures on a “thermometer” from 0 to 100, the “warm” (positive) rating for all three top Democrats was in the low thirties, but the “cool” (negative) rating for Obama was 34, for Edwards was 36, and for Hillary Clinton was 52. The only comparable cool ratings were given to George W. Bush (44) and illegal immigrants (55).
Also, a couple of comments from the most entertaining and plain spoken strategist in Democratic politics, Dave “Mudcat” Sanders:
“For Hillary to go out into rural America, and tell us she’s going to help us, and tell us all the wonderful things she’s going to do for us, it takes gall,” Sanders says. He goes on to say,
If the Clintons had gone to the mat for universal health care the way they did for NAFTA and for crazy one-sided trade treaties and had listened about the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot told them about, we would still have our health care and our jobs. It takes gall for her to say she’s going to help us. She’s got a record of killing us…
…“When Hillary Clinton talks about the ‘unintended consequences’ of NAFTA – hey, I was I was born at night, but wasn’t born last night,” Sanders says. “Unintended consequences, my a**. Everybody in rural and small town America knows they were unconsidered consequences. They didn’t give a s*** — all they cared about was holding on to their power!”