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Neil From Buffalo Makes a Confession

Posted by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist in At TMV.
Apr 19th, 2008 | Comments

Our friend Neil is a member of Hillary Clinton’s core constituency: A 66-year-old blue-collar worker and Roman Catholic with a high school education from Buffalo, New York, a gritty Rust Belt city, who was a Navy medical corpsman.

Neil voted for Clinton on Super Tuesday because he believed that she had the requisite experience and the “balls,” as bluntly put, to lead the U.S. out of the Bush Era swamp and restore its rightful place in the community of nations. He said that Barack Obama was vapid and that his hope-and-change message had no substance.

Neil was in town this week to pick up some house painting work and much needed cash to supplement his Veterans Administration benefits. He stopped by before beginning the long drive home and we retired to the back deck after dinner. It was the first really warm evening of spring in our Pennsylvania mountain backwater.

The Dear Friend & Conscience lit some candles. Darkness was falling and the peepers were out in force around the pond below the ridgeline when Neil paused between sips of green tea and announced that he had a confession to make.

“I’ve changed my mind about Obama,” he said in his rich stage baritone. (He had once done some theater.) “I’ve been listening to his speeches and reading up on him. I have to admit that I’m impressed.”

“And . . . ,” he continued before pausing for a moment.

“And . . . I’ve concluded that Hillary is untrustworthy and a liar.”

Untrustworthy and a liar.

That Clinton has lost Neil, and God knows how many other people like him, is shocking but perhaps inevitable.

Shocking because the Democratic presidential nomination was Clinton’s to lose. Perhaps inevitable because to my continued amazement she has made and cemented the case that she is indeed both untrustworthy and a liar, two oft-used descriptions of the man in the White House she had once hoped to succeed.

Just amazing, isn’t it?

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MJDaniels53

I know a seventy-something woman who voted for Clinton in the Ohio primary. Indeed, she was enthusiastic for her candidate. But two weeks ago, she told us that she's changed her mind. She's backing Obama, not out of any great enthusiasm for the Illinois senator, but because she has become increasingly turned off by Clinton's rhetoric.

Neil and this woman are only anecdotes, of course. But polling indicates that in recent weeks, a rising number of people are saying that they don't trust Senator Clinton and will not vote for her. Whatever happens in Pennsylvania, this trend must be alarming to both her campaign and to the superdelegates to whom she is so desperately trying to prove her electability.

Mark

Holly_in_Cincinnati

Should Barack Obama be the Democratic nominee, this will be the election where the Democratic Party loses most of its Democrats to John McCain.

elrod

Holly, that is the most ridiculous post you've ever made. I know there is a large anti-abortion, pro-Iraq war base in the Democratic base waiting to jump to McCain... Oh, wait a minute. No there isn't.

Mike_P

I'm sure there are similar stories of the opposite - supporters of Obama who've migrated to Clinton. However, I think Sen. Clinton's campaign, more than anything over the last month or so, reinforced all those "vast right wing conspiracy" talking points about her and her husband. That they will say anything, do anything, be anything to win. Power at any cost, even at the cost of rendering their own political party to shreds.

I think she has already become the Ralph Nader of this election cycle to many Democrats. And as we have seen, that's a reputation that sticks, no matter what good deeds you may have done in the past.

JoyP

I'm one who switched from Clinton to Obama for the same reasons.

MJDaniels53

I think it's safe to say that the bases of both parties will stick largely to their nominees in the fall. If Clinton is the Democratic nominee, which I just don't see happening, the lion's share of Obama supporters will go to her and vice versa. Substantively, on the issues, there is very little apparent difference between the two of them.

But I do think that in this process leading up to the nomination, Senator Clinton, whose race this was to lose, has seen a huge deterioration in her support. Most of that, I believe, is attributable to judgments on the part of Democratic Party faithful regarding her trustworthiness.

Mark

EEllis

Wow this is a new level for partisan blogging here.

Pyronite

It's called reporting. Personal anecdotes are used to symbolize and humanize larger trends.

No partisanship about it, unless it's something you do not wish to hear.

EEllis

Give me a break I can't believe even Shaun would try and say he's not partisan. Next you'll tell be Holly is fair and balanced. It reads like a PR piece from Obamas campaign. Where was the larger tend reported?

"cemented the case that she is indeed both untrustworthy and a liar"

I don't like Clinton at all but if you think this is reporting you are (I had to stop for a second) deluded.

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