I agree with Lunar. A tough primary isn't a bad thing, just ask Obama. He was able to paint himself as a moderate by beating Clinton who was perceived to be a liberal.
Whoah, woah. He managed to paint himself as an anti-establishment person by beating Clinton, not necessarily a moderate... perhaps a tangent, and perhaps an even more important issue, but Obama's alleged [?] moderate-status didn't come from beating Clinton. They were basically identical on 99% of the issues.
He ran to Clinton's left on a number of issues, such as diplomacy (meeting foreign leaders) as well as the generic value of change. I imagine that most of the hard-core liberals backed Obama during the primary, so this isn't exactly what I was getting at. Clinton herself seized this weird mantel of being the working-class, blue-collar hero that probably wouldn't have survived the general election, but there you go. Obama was the wine-drinker and Clinton was the one drinking whiskey and chasing it with beer.
Well he had to be perceived as some type of moderate in order to get 20% of the conservative vote in the election...
I disagree 100%. I feel, at the beginning of the election, yes, conservatives liked Obama, only because they knew Hillary well, and hardly knew Obama. But as we learned more and more about Obama, we started liking Hillary more and more.
My parents were not fans of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and my Dad constantly complained about them. But in early May, both went to the election booth and voted for Hillary, not just because she was better than Obama, but because they liked her.
If I could have voted in this election, I would have had a tough time...If it had been between McCain and Clinton. And, as you can see from my Political Matrix score, I am about as conservative as you can get.
