Some Dems Still Say No To Obama

If largesse is the measure, few local democrats are as staunch as Marcia Kimball. Over the past decade the well-heeled Center Harbor homemaker has donated upwards of $50,000 to party candidates and causes. Late last year Kimball also dropped $4600 – the maximum allowed by law – into Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It seems safe to take her at her word when she says she won’t be doing the same for Barack Obama.

“I wouldn’t vote for Obama if he was the last person on earth.”

Kimball campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 9 states and believes the NY senator basically had the democratic nomination stolen from her by a party leaders and a biased media. Kimball adds that she’d do anything for Hillary Clinton, save, apparently, what Clinton asked her supporters to do in her recent joint appearance with Obama in Unity.

“I hope you’ll work for Senator Obama as many of you did for me.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to hope that he doesn’t get to be President.”

Kimball is part of an anti-Obama push among some Democrats that’s come to be known as the PUMA movement. While Puma people use the sometimes deadly cat as their logo, the PUMA name is an acronym that stands for Party Unity My Ass. On dozens of PUMA blogs you can find many who share Kimball’s conviction that Hillary Clinton could yet reemerge as the Democratic nominee. While that possibility is clearly farfetched, some seasoned local activists insist it’s still possible. Deb Crapo of Rye served as state’s Democratic Party Vice-Chair from 1997 to 2002.

“I’m still holding out hope that my party can regain itself and that in August they will realize that Barack Obama cannot win this election.”

--What do you think it would take for this to happen that way?

“Either something pretty big, or the continuation or the continuation of small things building up; because I think every day Barack Obama is doing something that’s upsetting people.”

Crapo went on to note Obama’s evolving positions on Iraq, the wiretapping program known as FISA, and his recent call to expand the Bush administration’s funding of so-called faith-based initiatives. But like most anti-Obama Democrats, her main line of attack is more fundamental, if sometimes hard to articulate. For many it boils down to a perceived lack of experience. Others stress feelings of cultural estrangement from Barack Obama, and also his from wife Michelle. Stan Post of Lancaster is former state Democratic Party Secretary.

“I think they are kind of snobs, I do. I find them kind of elitist and I know that sounds wrong, but I have to like a candidate. You know I have to feel comfortable, and he doesn’t make me feel comfortable.”

Like the other democrats in this story, Post insists his unwillingness to vote for Obama, won’t dissuade him from supporting other party candidates, or cause him to vote for John McCain. Though as an older, self-described lunch-pail Democrat, he’s precisely the sort of voter polls show may be ripe for poaching by the Republican nominee. The last time Democrats crossed party lines in big numbers to support a Republican for President who wasn't an incumbent was in 1980, when about a quarter of all Democrats voted for Ronald Reagan. That migration, which helped to fuel a Reagan rout, came after a primary fight between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy that wasn’t settled until the party convention. UNH pollster Andy Smith says a tough primary doesn’t help party unity, but he says a tight general election can.

“If it looks like NH is going to be very close, like it’s a toss-up between Obama and McCain, then you can be pretty sure that almost all of the Democrats will vote for Obama, and all the Republicans will vote for McCain.”

The most recent state poll shows Obama with an 11 point lead. Other local surveys have shown a far tighter contest. But in a national poll released last week by CNN found that the number of Democrats inclined to reject Barack Obama in favor of John McCain is actually shrinking. Good news for Obama, perhaps, but the same poll found only slightly more than half of all Hillary Clinton supporters are now willing to vote Obama.