When John McCain lost in 2000 to President Bush, his followers were left to wander in the wilderness during President Bush’s first term. They had chosen the wrong horse and Bush’s loyalty-obsessed handlers wanted to make the McCain team pay. By the time the second term came around, there was some loosening but not much.
There are stories percolating now that some Dem campaigns are telling others — “you are with us or you are against us;” “if you help X, then you are dead to us. . .you are nothing;” “you will get no job — no breaks whatsoever if you help X.”
On the Republican side, I’ve been told by some helping one of the two governors that McCain’s team has offered threats that are staggering and at one level, hard to believe — but I know in at least one case, it happened.
This is bad news folks. If confronted about these kinds of behaviors, I’m sure that all of the candidates would individually disavow them. People could even be fired if they were recorded or reported in any manner that was beyond dispute.
But frankly, the country needs to have the kind of election it is having — with no heir apparents, no slam dunks, and lots of debate and discussion.
The final four look to me to be Romney, McCain, Clinton and Obama. All sides need to be respectful — and each needs to understand that very decent people with different frames of reference are trying ot make an important choice about who the next president should be. Let them do it — and respect differences in a civil way.
No one should be threatened or penalized or brow-beaten or harassed to support one candidate over another. Those are tactics deployed by thug regimes — not America, or at least not the America I want to live in.
— Steve Clemons
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