Well, they do say "Politics make strange bedfellows"!
According to The Wall Street Journal [7], Carly Fiorina - one of the top financial and economics advisors to John McCain - met with 25 prominent Hillary Clinton supporters on Tuesday. Apparently, the meeting was initiated by the former backers of the Clinton campaign and not by John McCain's staff.
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.
It's apparent these Hillary backers are looking for a viable alternative to having to vote for Barack Obama after that hard-fought primary they just went through. I personally don't think it will be difficult for them to find some common-ground with McCain on several issues. The story goes on to detail some of their interest in doing just that:
Fiorina and participants said the town-hall style meeting covered a
variety of issues, from health care to foreign policy to workplace
rights. While many of the subjects could be described as of particular
interest to women, many were not. One topic that got little attention:
abortion rights. "John McCain has a very strong record of being
pro-life, as do I,'' Fiorina said. "They knew that. This was not a
one-issue crowd.''Siskind said Fiorina agreed to provide details regarding McCain's
stances on mandating health insurance coverage for birth control pills,
federal mandates for paid maternity leave and a reinvigoration of
federal legislation aimed at giving women equal pay for comparable work.Siskind said the group told Fiorina that if McCain would give some
concrete assurances of support on such issues, the people in the room
and the organizations they represented could help deliver "hundreds of
thousands and maybe millions of votes" to the presumptive Republican
nominee.
At the end of the day, I'm sure Hillary Clinton is going to tow the party line and maintain her verbal support for the nominee. But, this sort of migration to McCain by her supporters, especially with its financial implications, is the kind of thing that could help level the playing field to compete toe-to-toe with Obama and his '50 States' campaign strategy he's going to employ to try to bleed McCain of his funds.
It seems 'Nothin's easy" these days as far as Obama is concerned.
Read the full story here [7]
