Angry Clinton Supporters Start Rallying for McCain

Clinton Supporters

Angry Clinton Supporters Start Rallying for McCain Online
By Sarah Lai Stirland EmailJune 04, 2008 | 4:04:24 PMCategories: Election '08

They're mad as hell, and Hillary Clinton's supporters aren't going to take it anymore.

Some Clintonites are so mad about Barack Obama's Tuesday victory that they've launched a web site to build support to launch a lobbying group to support Republican John McCain.



"We're going to run campaign ads to defeat Obama," says Ed Hale, a 63-year-old rancher and a Clinton supporter from Wellington, Texas. "We have doctors, lawyers, CPAs, the blue bloods, and then we have rednecks like me. It's a very diversified organization."

The split illustrates the difficult task the Democratic party now faces in rallying the troops behind Obama. Open dissent within party ranks provides Republicans with openings to exploit.

Hale launched the "Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McCain" group last Saturday. The campaign claims to have 5,000 supporters, and its website visitor counter says that it has already attracted 37,807 visitors.

"Last night, when they crowned Obama king, that's when I sent my e-mails out to people, and since then, we've gotten thousands of hits," he says.

Hale, a Vietnam veteran and a long-time Democrat, says that many of the group's supporters are Reagan Democrats, and their primary concern is foreign policy and defense. A call to the Texas Democratic Party confirmed that he was supposed to have been a delegate to the state convention this week.

He says that he wouldn't vote for Obama even if Clinton were vice president.

In addition, he says that he will not sign an online petition that former Clinton White House special counsel Lanny Davis sent out on the web Tuesday night -- calling for Obama to choose Clinton as vice president.
Lanny_davis_2
Former Clinton White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis has launched an online petition calling on Obama to choose Clinton for VP.


Rickie Banning, president of "Hillary Clinton Supporters Count Too," a website, says that she's received hundreds of e-mails from Clinton supporters who are angry at the Democratic National Committee, and who are registering as independent. Some of them say that they will vote for John McCain.

A sampling of the e-mails that she sent along show that many of the supporters feel cheated.

"If you ask me, I feel sad in my heart, and I think a lot of people do, but some people are really angry," Banning says. "People feel upset, and not listened to, and a lot of people feel like they're being thrown under the bus. "

Statistics compiled by Real Clear Politics show that in terms of the popular vote, Democratic voters split evenly between Clinton and Obama, though Obama reached the delegate count necessary to win the nomination on Tuesday.

For its part, the Republican National Committee is capitalizing on Democratic party leaders' criticisms of Obama in a new web video posted to its site Wednesday.

And Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Republican National Convention, says that he's received voice mail from Clinton supporters offering to help him.

He says he sent them to McCain's website.