The American Idol Campaign

A lot is being made lately of polls that indicate that Hillary supporters plan to vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. My first thought on this is that it simply proves how similar HRC is to St. John.

But with American Idol concluding tonight, I'm thinking this kind of talk comes from people for whom this campaign is just another Idol-style "show." People who haven't really considered the issues, and really just aren't aware of how devastating another 4 years of Bush/Cheney policy would be for America. These people are simply thinking, well, if MY fave gets voted off, I am going to vote for the other guy just so that YOUR fave loses, too! It's shallow and uninformed -- and unfortunately, typically American.

On the other hand, I've heard many analysts claim that these "I'll vote for McCain if I don't get my way" whiners are merely caught up in the heat of the campaign and they'll come around before it's too late. Let's hope so.

I believe that if the media actually would research this --God forbid!-- and report on it, they'd find evidence of similar sentiments in other recent campaigns. The question is, why don't they? Is there no record of similar exit poll questions from past election cycles? Or is the media really just this bad at doing their job?

Or is there some vast right-wing conspiracy at work here?

I get the impression that when reporters and analysts start talking about how many HRC supporters might vote for McCain rather than Obama, the conclusion that they want us to make is that OBAMA HAD BETTER CHOOSE HRC AS HIS RUNNING-MATE. (I'd say they want us to conclude that Obama should step aside, but that's just not realistic.) I really think it's just more "psy-ops"/"subliminal messaging" promoting the "dream ticket" nonsense.