Chuck Todd on Meet The Press described the female, middle-aged moderate and independent voters who aren’t sold on Barack Obama:

Nearly half of them supported Clinton in the primaries. In effect, we even slice it even more. We–we’re able to take a look at what our pollsters call “Hillary not Obama,” and it’s this group of voters that supported Clinton in the primaries, are not there yet with either Obama, supporting McCain, or sitting in undecided. And all of them look like, in this very respect, they’re Democratic voters on the issues, they’re picking a Democrat and generic matchups not just for president, but for Congress. So they are going to walk in that voting booth, and they’re going to vote for a Democrat for Congress, they’re going to vote for a Democrat for the U.S. Senate, which is why everybody knows that the House and Senate are going to pick up members. But these women are not there yet on Obama. Some of them are, are angry. Some of them–a lot of them live in rural and small-town America. And when you think about the primary campaign as it wore on, the Clintons campaigned in this area and had a message of “Obama’s not ready to be commander in chief, John McCain is.” Well, guess what? They believe, in our poll, John McCain’s ready to be commander in chief, Barack Obama isn’t. Obama needs Hillary Clinton at this convention to sell him to these voters. And, and not just to be convincing that she supports him. That isn’t it. She’s got to say, “Look, this guy’s ready to be commander in chief,” and mean it. It’s a big deal. Her speech is a big deal, far bigger than President Clinton.

Suddenly everyone is in the “prop up Barack Obama” business–Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and maybe Bill too. It raises two issues for The One.

First, can anyone other than Obama himself really reassure voters that he is the commander-in-chief they’ve been waiting for? Everyone not in a coma knows that Hillary is dutifully doing her part so as to avoid any later accusations that she booby-trapped Obama’s presidential run. So the debate will be endless as to whether she really, really means it and whether those fingers are crossed behind her back when she says all those nice things about the man she said just a few months wasn’t ready for the 3 a.m. call. And even if she really, really means it, people do have minds of their own– they might just have decided The One isn’t for them.

Second, the very act of so many people insisting that Obama is up to speed creates the “protest too much” phenomenon. So many people, all more experienced and knowledgeable than The One, insisting “No, no the kid’s really okay,” carries with it the potential to have the opposite impact. Voters may wonder why he needs all this validation (and why one of the validators in particular isn’t at the top of the Democratic ticket).

In the end, Obama will have to persuade voters he’s up for the job. Meanwhile, John McCain and his ads are out to persuade Clinton voters that McCain’s experience and toughness make him the more acceptable alternative now that Clinton’s run is over. After four days of the Democratic Convention we’ll see how the Clinton supporters feel.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:55 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.