That has been the meme for that past few weeks when people talked about the Democratic Primary. When Obama would lose a state by 20% or 30%, the media would go into a frenzy about him having a problem with that state's populace, ignoring the fact that there were two very active campaigns going on by two awesome candidates, and one campaign had the power of one of the most popular Presidents in American history behind her.
So let's ask about party unity. Where is it when it comes to the Republicans? Here is the results from last night's Republican primary in South Dakota, almost three months to the day after John McCain became the presumptive nominee:
This isn't a fluke election either. Let's look at all the races since McCain became the presumptive nominee on March 4:
McCain | Paul | Huckabee | Uncommitted | |
ID | 70 | 24 | 6 | |
NM | 86 | 14 | ||
SD | 70 | 17 | 7 | 3 |
KY | 72 | 7 | 8 | 5 |
OR | 85 | 15 | ||
WV | 76 | 5 | 10 | |
IN | 77 | 8 | 10 | |
NC | 74 | 7 | 12 | 4 |
PA | 73 | 16 | 11 | |
MS | 79 | 4 | 13 | |
Average | 76 | 11 | 10 | 4.5 |
McCain has failed to get about 1/4 of the Republican voters to vote for him. If this was Obama, then the media would be in an uproar analyzing things and asking about Obama's problems, yet they ignore McCain's failures to reach out to his entire party.
Think about this a little further. As I said in the beginning, Clinton and Obama have been involved in an active campaign against each other. They have been drawing in record crowds and spending obscene amounts of money. How much has Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul campaigned against John McCain in the past three months? With the stage all to himself, McCain still can't reach out to this 25%. Yes - the Republicans do have a unity problem.