The Hillary-Obama rift among the Democrats continues to heal.
The McCain campaign dispatched its top female surrogate Tuesday to meet with about 25 disaffected supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton in Westchester, N.Y.
Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. and a top adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain, met with the former Clinton backers at a private home for more than an hour and a half. Fiorina said in an interview that over glasses of iced tea and finger food, she fielded questions from Democratic women she described as “intensely uncomfortable with the notion of a President Obama.”
The Westchester meeting came at the behest of former Clinton supporters, some of whom have said – adamantly – that they won’t support Obama. Polls show Obama winning the majority of support from women voters while about a quarter of ex-Clinton supporters are leaning toward McCain. The meeting wasn’t stocked with typical voters, however. These were prominent activists and fund-raisers, including several known as “Hillraisers,” who raised more than $100,000 for Clinton during the primary season. “I didn’t ask how many of them were Hillraisers but certainly a number of them were,’’ Fiorina said.
Mark Penn, in an interview with GQ:
What does it feel like, now that it’s really over?
Well, you know, it’s obviously disappointing. I think that she had really found her stride. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it—we were winning primaries, and the leadership was all against her. I think the voters were out there very strongly pulling for her. She got more votes than anyone ever running for this office. Ever. And yet the superdelegates just decided that it was time. I think the voters didn’t. [laughs]
…What happened was that there was a second extremely well-funded media-beloved candidate who entered the race at about the same time, who then had equal resources and, you know, an attraction, and received unbridled glowing coverage.
… Because the normal stories that would have been written about someone just never appeared. The truth of the matter was, there seemed to be an unlimited market for anything on Hillary and very little market for writing a story on Barack Obama and say, for example, his attendance in the Senate. There has still been no story written about something like that—as basic as something like that.
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Obama ran a great campaign, then.
Well, I think, look, he had tremendous help from the media. No one has gotten media coverage— If he had gotten fair media coverage…
…Look, there’s no question that the Obama campaign took comments that could not in any way, shape, or form in an objective reality be seen as racist, and they told surrogates to characterize them that way. And I think that was the… And not only that, but when you look at who was making the comments, people who devoted their lives, you know—President Clinton was there in Little Rock—who devoted their lives to kind of repairing the breach racially in this country, it was doubly, it was really doubly unfair and troubling.
Also note this interesting item from that interview:
Besides hitting back quickly, what other things could have turned the ship around?
Well, I think you also have to realize that there are some other things here that people don’t talk about as much. And I think you have to realize that it was always anticipated that if things didn’t go well in Iowa—and Iowa was the toughest place—that there would be $25 million left in the kitty in order to go into the next round of states. Instead, the cupboard was bare.
That came as a surprise to you and the senator?
Well, it certainly came as a surprise to me, ’cause you know, the group that did the budget had set a goal of raising 75 million and keeping 25 million aside. In fact, over a hundred million was raised, and 25 million wasn’t there.