I couldn't believe it. Even my heroine, Rachael Maddow -- smart, insightful, funny -- bought into the latest results of a Gallup Poll.
If there were any irony in her voice when she reported on the poll during her radio show this afternoon, I didn't detect it.
"Revenge" or "Revolting" poll results -- they‘ve been called both:
Twenty-eight percent of Hillary voters will vote for John McCain if Barack Obama is the candidate.
Nineteen percent of Obama supporters will vote for McCain if Hillary is the Democratic candidate.
While the numbers reflect a spasm in time when Democrats feel like they're in some sort of suspended animation and caught in the battle of delegates, super delegates, voting do-overs and all the rest; or feeling that Hillary better stop the attacks on Obama and get down to the business of attacking the real enemy, John "G.H.W." McCain; or are so frustrated over all of it that they’ll say anything to scare the candidates into knocking off the infighting and get down to business, they don’t reflect what Democratic voters will really do.
The 28 percent and the 19 percent add up to a FULL FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT of Democrats saying they will vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't get the nod.
Forty-seven percent!?! I don’t buy it for one second; not even a New York micro nanosecond.
When push the button or pull the lever in the voting booth, Democratic voters are going to shove Johnny GHW McCain into the dust heap of presidential candidate history.
By the time this interminable election season concludes in November, they will reconciled themselves to the ultimate Democratic candidate and vote for him or her.
Democrats, in all good conscience, couldn’t possibly go in to the privacy of that voting booth and pull the lever, push the button, or mark that “X” for McC, a man who will Bush’s third term, and every time he opens his mouth sounds more and more like a man who is three steps shy of a full staircase.
Democrats may be angry and frustrated at the moment, but they aren’t stupid; they won’t commit national suicide because of their own personal disappointment.
We Democrats are a patriotic lot. We won’t screw over the country in a peak of anger. We’ll do the right thing and vote for the Democratic candidate, and not hand the election to the Republicans.
No, they will do as I will do if my candidate doesn’t get the nod at the convention.
We will walk into that voting booth, head held high, possibly hand holding nose and vote for the Democratic candidate.
