A McCain ad released today features a former Clinton delegate telling fellow Hillary supporters that she plans to vote for John McCain and it's okay for them to do so too.
Strategically, the TV spot looks to break what communication researchers call the "spiral of silence" phenomena, the tendency for a person to be less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if the individual feels that they are in the minority, for fear of reprisal or isolation from that majority. Derived in part from the classic Asch and Milgram conformity experiments, the theory holds that when individuals form an opinion and/or decide to voice that opinion, they scan their environment for what might be the majority position and often conform their opinion to that position.
Yet the problem is that most people are not very good at accurately figuring out what majority opinion might be. And often times, news coverage and media presentations shape or skew that perception.
In this particular McCain ad, the strategy is to communicate to Hillary supporters that others like them are shifting their allegiances to McCain, shaping the perception among this reference group of what might be the majority norm. If the Obama team is not able to send a very strong and concentrated rival message of common unity during this convention week, look for this advertising strategy to be very effective.
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All this will do is make the Democrats make Hillary publicly denounce him as a male chauvinist pig.
Maybe it will work. This kind of strategy would seem much more effective if a person that others already trust delivers the message, such as an elected representative or high-profile figure. But someone who purports to be a Hillary-turned-McCain supporter in a TV ad? Not sure. Guess it depends, like you say, on what kind of front the Dems present in Denver.
Driftglass compares today's PUMAs with a similar defection 60 years ago:
And quite rightly notes the Democratic Party "became a better, finer and more humane organization" as a result.
The thing I don't understand about this matter, and the one that makes me doubt the comparison to the Dixiecrats is that the Clinton supporters don't seem to have any policy reason to vote McCain over Obama. The Dixiecrats' motives were ignoble; but they led to defection in a fairly logical way. In the Clinton supporters' case, they seem to be gaining nothing. Voting McCain won't somehow, mysteriously, get Clinton into the White House, and McCain is much, much further from Clinton on any given issue that Obama is. Can anybody enlighten me on the logic here, or is my mistake in assuming that there is logic here?
"Maverick and independent streak"???
Wait... what? He voted 95% with Bush! How is that either maverick or independent?
Rational voters will have no trouble seeing through this. But as Adlai Stevenson said, "It won't be enough; we need a majority."
A lot of McCain's strategy will depend upon how Obama treats Hilary this week and how she attacks McCain.
Matt, the reason there are PUMAs is because the Democrats have made it clear that they think the Democrats will be a better, finer and more humane organization without the Hillary supporters.
To compare Dixiecrats with PUMAs is what I would expect from Democrats, because the only possible reason for a Democrat not supporting Barack Obama is that they are racist. Who could not fall in love with The One.
Phisrow, there are a couple of good examples of why in Matt Hussein Platte's and Decrepitoldfool's comments. There is the Democratic leadership stating the blue collar vote is no longer important. Then there is your own, "or is is my mistake in assuming that there is logic here" question.
And there's this from Vote Smart.
"Senator Barack Hussein Obama Jr. repeatedly refused to provide any responses to citizens on the issues through the 2008 Political Courage Test when asked to do so by national leaders of the political parties, prominent members of the media, Project Vote Smart President Richard Kimball, and Project Vote Smart staff."
Why doesn't Barack respond? Doesn't he want anyone to know what he really believes?
Here is a good write up about why not to vote for Obama.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_reed0508
And finally, personally, I don't see how anyone could possibly vote for someone who could say, "We are the ones we've been waiting for" with a straight face. That is unless your own arrogance and pride causes you to believe it? As you may guess, I think it's BS.
@Joel: I can see why those things would displease them. I just don't understand why somebody who supported Clinton and thus, presumably, at least on average her positions, would be willing to settle for McCain, who is so much further from her, rather than Obama. That is what confuses me.
I am not surprised that they don't like Obama, nor do I think that they are necessarily irrational in doing so; but I completely fail to understand how that makes McCain palatable. Could you help me on that?