McCain Democrats?

McCain Democrats. That's a new term for me, folks. Apparently Gallup has done a polling mashup that includes some of the polling information I wrote about here earlier this week that indicates a sizable number of Democrats would vote for John McCain over the Democratic candidate they oppose at this stage in the primary process.

While my first inclination is to say "are you out of you ever-lovin' minds?!?" to these McCain Democrats, I suspect that this is more of an issue of timing than it is an issue of true McCain love on the part of Democrats.

If someone were to have polled Republican voters around the time of South Carolina and said "Who would you vote for if John McCain were the Republican nominee?", I imagine that there would've been some similarly breathless results of Obama or Clinton commanding a larger-than-life piece of the Republican electorate. Remember what Rush and Ann and many movement conservatives said about voting for Hillary Clinton if McCain were to win the Republican nomination?

And where is that sentiment now? I rest my case.

There's a tremendous amount of emotional investment in this primary on the parts of millions of Democrats nation-wide. It is only natural that at this stage the most committed Clinton supporters cannot concede an Obama nomination and likewise that the most committed Obama supporters cannot concede a Clinton nomination. What better way to prove your commitment than to say you'll vote for John McCain over the other Democratic candidate?

I feel these findings are also being influenced by McCain getting a free pass from the national media at this stage of the election. McCain the Maverick serves 'em up some BBQ and they eagerly pound away at their keyboards with sauce-stained fingers about how Barack's former minister hates America and how Hillary was in the White House on the most famous day of the Lewinsky scandal. Not a peep about the medieval America-hating beliefs of McCain's religious endorsements nor a critical examination of how the surge isn't working.

Once we swing into a general election battle and the public starts to get a double barreled taste of the constrasts between either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama and John McCain, I think we'll see these McCain Democrats shrink back to fringe numbers.