We’ll Get the Elites
Yglesias worries that some elite Democrats won’t get on the Obama bus when it leaves the station:
I’d say that the more legitimate concern about unity would have to do with elite unity. There’s a certain set of people who, say, donated to the Clinton re-election campaign in 1996, to Al Gore in 2000, to the DNC when Terry McAuliffe was chair, to some pro-Kerry 527 groups in 2004, and to Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign in 2008. These folks aren’t going to vote for McCain, but how invested will they be in backing Obama? That’s in part going to be a function of whether or not Bill and Hillary urge them to be deeply invested in backing Obama. And much the same could be said for other brands of elites — interest group leaders, random consultants and strategists, etc.
Maybe Hillary Clinton would strongly prefer being Vice President to being Senator from New York. If so, her sway over these kinds of people could be a good reason for Obama to seriously consider a unity ticket even though such a ticket has a bunch of other drawbacks.
From what I hear, Obama has already contacted the 100 biggest Clinton donors, and they’re all ready to give Obama money and throw their support at him – but only after Clinton drops out. And after June 3rd, when the Pelosi/Dean/Reid block moves to Obama, you can expect these donors to either encourage Clinton to officially give it up, or to start explicitly supporting Obama. Also, there’s no real reason to think that these elites are only interested in the Democratic party because they’re enamored with the Clintons. As for the interest groups leaders, random consultants and strategists, they’re mostly interested in self-preservation and trying to get into a Democratic White House. Patti Solis Doyle is already talking to the Obama campaign, and we can expect many mid-level staffers and consultants to ingratiate themselves with Obama soon enough. And even those interest groups will realize that if Obama wins, they want to be on his good side: no one wants to get frozen out of Democratic administration that can work with a super-majority in the House and 55-60 votes in the Senate.
It’s worth remembering in these discussions that the reason many fundraisers, consultants, strategists and interest group types are so close with the Clintons is because, since 1992, they’ve either been at the helm of the party, or their flacks (McAuliffe) have. To be a major Democratic mover and shaker in the last 16 years is to be a Clinton loyalist of some degree. There just wasn’t much else out there.
