Activists for candidates in both parties are still trying to base their arguments on the claim that votes lost by an opposing candidate in a primary are evidence that that candidate cannot win in the general election. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been the most high-profile example of this claim with their persistent argument that Obama’s failure to win primaries in major industrial states is evidence that he cannot win them in a general election campaign. And the dead-enders remaining with the Ron Paul campaign are trying to spin out the notion (see the comments, not the toungue-in-cheek article) (more examples in the comments thread on PoliGazette) that a 15% protest vote for Paul in the Pennsylania primary is evidence that McCain is toast in the general election.

Problem is that both of these claims are bizarre and deluded bunk. Voters in a primary almost always set aside their differences in the general election. This is a side-effect of the debased state of American political debate. Loyalty to party is driven more by fear and hatred of the other party than by loyalty to a particular candidate. That fear and hatred toward the other side will not likely be overridden except in cases where the candidate from their own party does something truly egregious.

The likelihood of Pennsylvania Democrats suddenly embracing a Republican, even a moderate like McCain, is remote even under the best of circumstances. Activist Democrats and their more slavish allies in the blogosphere have already telegraphed their general election strategy, trying to recast McCain as nothing more than a third-term for George W. Bush. Even given the dishonesty of such a charge, it will almost certainly be sufficient to keep the BDS-infested Democratic base within the party no matter who the presidential nominee is. Democrats who vote for Hillary in Pennsylvania and Ohio are going to turn out to vote for Obama on election day rather than (as they will be told to see it) giving Bush a third term. The reverse also probably applies in Hillary’s favor.

The only thing that might change this for Democrats is the combination of back-room maneuvering and racial resentment. If the Clinton campaign enters the convention in Denver behind in delegates and the popular vote but gains the nomination by either hypocritical exploitation of arcane procedures to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated in spite of her original promise to adhere to party rules barring them OR by strong-arming pledged delegates to come over to her side, Clinton may be saddled with the allegation of having “stolen” the nomination by means that confirm the worst stereotypes about the Clintons’ vicious elbow-throwing style. Since the victims will be the very same black community that once honored Bill Clinton with the unofficial title of the “first black president”, the starkness of the betrayal might be enough to cause substantial elements of the Democratic coalition to stay home on election day.

The scenario beloved by Ron Paul’s tin-foil-infested brigades is even less likely, in the same probability range as the conspiracy theories some of them spew about Bilderbergs and the Council on Foreign Relations. The idea that a protest vote that has consistently managed only to outnumber the vote for candidates that were no longer running in the race somehow indicates the groundswell of a movement that is capable of taking over the Republican convention is beyond laughable. And the loss of minor cadres of gold-standard enthusiasts is not likely to be keenly felt by the McCain campaign in the general election, especially when the alternative offered to them is likely to be made to appear to be nothing more than a typical big-government Democrat proposing huge new spending increases and with questionable and corrupt personal associations. After all, the Republicans have tipped the hand of their predictable spin machine just as much as the Democrats. And the reasons it is predictable is because in both parties it is merely a reiteration of exactly what has been used before.

The bottom line is that the parties do not update their scripts any more, they just keep reading them out heedless of changes in reality. The reason they do this is simply because it works — it functions quite well to force their base to choose up sides in a predictable and controllable manner. And, with the exception of Clinton’s hard-knuckles high-wire act, there is nothing in the current campaign to justify the bizarre assumption that the party bases will not come home on election day.