Democrats on the fence?

posted at 2:20 pm on June 12, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Not every Democrat has found the Barack Obama nomination to their taste, according to Politico. Their Congressional delegation has both defectors and agnostics, which seems rather strange for what has been heralded as a phenomenon. The Republicans have their holdouts as well, but then again, no one attempted to cast John McCain in the role of secular Messiah:

The presidential race may be topic A, B and C in Washington these days, but some people are just too busy to think about it — particularly, it seems, centrist Democrats from conservative districts, who aren’t exactly eager to align themselves with Sen. Barack Obama.

Rep. Travis Childers, elected just weeks ago in a Mississippi special election, hasn’t endorsed anyone in the presidential race yet. “We have had our head down at work, trying to get our feet on the ground up here,” said Childers’ chief of staff, Brad Morris. “The presidential politics just has not been on our mind.”

Rep. Heath Shuler, a freshman Democrat from right-leaning North Carolina, has also been too busy to endorse. After Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton carried his district in the North Carolina primary, Shuler said he would cast his superdelegate vote for her at the Democratic convention.

Now that Clinton is out of the race? “We’ve gone back to his work up there in the House,” said Shuler spokesman Andrew Whalen. “We’re not really too focused on the presidential [race].”

Politico’s Ryan Grim balances his story by noting that Chuck Hagel and Ron Paul haven’t endorsed McCain, either. Grim doesn’t mention that Paul still has his presidential campaign active, which would tend to preclude him from endorsing someone else. Hagel has had his name come up for the Democratic choice of running mate, and since he’s retiring, perhaps he’s leaving open that option on purpose.

The Democrats mentioned in Grim’s piece don’t have those excuses. Dan Boren has categorically stated that he will not support Obama under any circumstances. Heath Shuler dropped back seven and punted rather than give his conservative constituents any more reason to boot him out of his seat in November. The same is true for most of the Blue Dogs. They don’t buy the post-partisan rhetoric coming from the Obama campaign, or more likely, figure their constituents aren’t buying it.

Obama himself doesn’t seem troubled by these fence-sitters at the moment. The campaign claims they can work across the aisle, and use the one instance — earmark reform — of legislative accomplishment from Obama as proof. If he can’t get his own caucus behind him, however, Obama will start looking a lot less like a post-partisan phenom and much more like a hard-Left academic with a very narrow base even within his own party.

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