the Republicans will do to him in the General. Just look at the ad that's coming out in S.C. -devastating.

Unelectable:  Can not be elected.

BO get's blown out of the water.  You want to see something to show you proof?  Just look at the electoral maps at the top of the main page.

"...I suspect people will be singing a different tune."

You're not getting the point.

Look, the simple fact is that Hillary is now occupying the moderate segment of the Democratic Party, and Obama is occupying the far left wing of the Democratic Party. This has nothing to do with their actual policies: if anything, Hillary's are distinctly more progressive. It has to do with what portion of the Party is attracted to which candidate.

In any actual general election, it's the candidate who can appeal most to the center of the larger electorate who has by far the best chance of winning. That candidate is, clearly, Hillary: she wins the crucial swing Reagan Democrat vote. That, de facto, makes her the moderate in the race, compared to the perceived extremist, Obama.

The extreme wing of a party really has nowhere else to go in the general election, unless there's a credible third party alternative -- certainly not a possibility this cycle. While some may sit out the election if Hillary wins, it's not half as destructive as if Obama wins, because many of her voters can easily vote for McCain instead -- as they have in the past notoriously voted for Republicans over Democrats. And every vote switched from a Democrat to a Republican is literally twice as powerful as that of a Democrat who just sits the election out.

Well to TxDem08 and CoyoteCreek I will say this:

Come back here in 7 months and lets see if the polls still show that HRC's supporters refuse to vote for BO (or vice versa). What percentage of HRC voters say they won't vote for BO? 28%? Lets see if that number is 28% in November, then we'll actually know whether my suspicion is wrong. And IF my suspicion IS wrong then NEITHER is electable, since NEITHER is winning without the other's key demographics.

That electoral map above--which showed HRC losing worse than BO up until a few days ago--is based on polling now, when:

1. The Democratic nominee is still undecided and split

2. McCain has basically run unopposed for 3-4 months

BO and HRC are both losing to McCain according to that map, so using your logic, I guess they should both pack it up and quit and we can elect McBush tomorrow since neither is electable? If you don't think that, then obviously you think that polling/map will change come November....but, uh....what? I'll will only change for HRC but not BO? You think she'll win PA, but not BO even though both--right now--show up for McCain according to that map?

Great diary, bigdaddy.

Jonathan Chiat has a great piece that supports your argument:

[The] asumption that a candidate's primary base will be the same as his general election base strikes me as seriously flawed. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, will her electoral base consist of blue-collar whites? No, it will be highly similar to Obama's, with a major reliance on minorities and white liberals.

[...]

Right now Obama is having a hard time winning blue collar whites on the economy in large part because he has an opponent with a virtually identical economic platform. When he has an opponent who's tethered himself to President Bush's highly unpopular economic policies, winning over blue collar whites on the economy will get a lot easier. Extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business.

Full text:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank /archive/2008/04/23/on-obama-s-electabil ity-contra-judis.aspx

The diarist makes decent points.  The true base of the Democratic party are blacks and women.  Without dominating these two demographic groups and turning them out, Hill or Obama stand no chance in swing states such as Missouri (e.g. Claire McCaskill only won because of these two demographic groups), Michigan, and Ohio (which is not a swing state at this point according to Survey USA for Hill as she's ahead of him by double digits; Rasmussen has her down five points at this point).  Hill's impressive showings among blue-collar males and Obama's dominance among independents is less impressive because they will surely bleed a lot of these voters to McCain in the Fall.

Hill's argument is that she is more likely to recapture the most important part of Obama's base, black voters, than he is with respect to her most important base, white women.  The exit polls do not dig deeper into the actual demographic groups claiming to defect or stay home come November.  Essentially, she is making the point that even though the percentage of the black electorate that she may lose if she is the nominee is greater than the percentage of the white woman electorate that Obama would lose if he is the nominee, since there will be more white women voting in these battleground states than blacks, Obama would actually bleed more voters in terms of the raw numbers.  I agree with Hill.

Both Candidates will easily beat McCain for several reasons:

A. Though we don't have a comparable PUSA race, often in 'bitter' primaries there are threats in polls of the losing side defecting.  This rarely comes through.  If either candidate simply retains 33% of those claiming, today, they will vote for McCain that candidate will get a 4% general bounce.

B. Obama, and to a lesser extent Hillary, are currently beating McCain head-to-head.  If the nominee wins by more than 2% it is a near impossibility for the electoral college to differ from the national vote winner.

C. Democrats hold a lead over McCain in 8 of the 10 most important voting issues.  Voters have not heard McCain and when the do they won't like it.

D. McCain has not been attacked while Clinton and Obama have been put through the ringer by each other and the media for weeks.

E. John McCain could be outspent 2-1, especially if Obama is the nominee

F. John McCain will not be able to turn out evangelicals in the way Bush has.  That is the only way Bush has won the last two cycles.

G. John McCain turns out 0 new voters.  Obama increases Youth and AA turnout and Clinton increases Women's turnout.

H. John McCain looks terrible in debates, and will look worse if he has to stand next to Obama.

I. John McCain is extremely flub prone.  In the past month he called the economy a fabricated mental problem for many Americans (and he calls Obama elitists).  And, he made the same Sunni-Shi'a mistake three times.  In one year he has offered "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran," "100 Years in Iraq," "There will be more wars," and half of those occurred when the media was paying 0 attention to him.

J. Both Clinton and Obama are roughly tied, or ahead, with McCain while running against each other.

A majority of this country thinks Hillary is dishonest.

The people will NEVER vote for a candidate that they don't trust.

People will walk over burning coals to vote against Hillary. It may be unfair but it's the truth.