The Sinking Ship?

Some new data to back up my earlier assertion that the Democrats are destroying themselves on their way to the nomination:

"Twenty-eight percent of current Hillary Clinton supporters say they would vote for John McCain over Barack Obama in the general election. Nineteen percent of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton."

More here. There is some talk that Senator Clinton is using this data to support her contention that she should receive the Democratic nomination over Obama. That's kind of interesting (and a bit perverse) since the Clinton Campaign is probably culpable for most of the acrimony in this race. (After all, Clinton is the one who went around saying that John McCain is a better choice than Senator Obama.)

Whether or not these latest poll results have implications for the general election is an open question. One the one hand, those polled may simply be reacting to the bitter infighting among Democrats, with the questions framed in such a way to induce them to take sides. Once a nominee is decided and the convention completed, rank and file Dems will happily be rank and file Dems. On the other hand, independents and moderates, who have tended to gravitate towards McCain in past years, might be turned off by the infighting and board the straight-talk express for good.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this pans out.