Earlier this week, Hilda, a Hillary supporter, emailed me the following:

From: Hilda

Subject: biased

Date: March 9, 2008 5:14:12 AM EDT

To: americablog you obviously love obama

i’m not going to read your blog anymore

and if obama is dem nominee i’d rather vote for mccain

I’ve received a lot of emails and comments like this from Hillary supporters. A recent PEW poll shows that 10% of Democrats who support Obama would defect and vote for McCain should Hillary become the candidate. But, a whopping 25% of Democrats who support Hillary would defect and vote for McCain should Obama become the candidate.

Are one quarter of Hillary’s supporters racists? (Latte-drinkers not looking so bad, after all, eh?) Have they simply bought in to Hillary’s incessant message that Obama, the possible Democratic candidate in the fall, is much less qualified than McCain? It’s probably a mixture of both.

(I was a bit surprised to read the other day that Hillary’s staff was forwarding this particular part of the poll to reporters. Is Hillary’s campaign suggesting that we let racists determine who we pick as our candidate? That if a certain segment of our society doesn’t like your race (or gender) then you shouldn’t be our nominee? No blacks need apply? No, no race-baiting here, I’m sure it’s just another coincidence.)

Someone in the party (and the media) needs to ask Hillary what her plan is to get those 25% back should she not win the nomination. Hillary can only tell Democratic voters so many times that McCain is more qualified to be president than Obama before her supporters (and lots more Americans) end up listening to her. Or is that her plan after all? If Hillary can’t win, then no Democrat deserves to win?