Opps, wrong life story.
Posted on 05/12/2008 2:11:16 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WASHINGTON — For the first time, a major political party is on the brink of choosing a black as its candidate for president, but when Democratic strategists and other analysts look ahead, they don't see race as Barack Obama's biggest challenge.
They worry more, they say, about other issues: Will swing voters view him as too young? Too inexperienced? Or too liberal?
"I am sure there are people in Missouri that won't vote for Barack Obama because he's black, but there are not that many of them," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a swing-state leader who endorsed Obama early. "I don't think that's going be a deal breaker."
Instead, she said, Obama's most important test will come from Republican efforts to paint him as an elitist, a social and cultural liberal outside the American mainstream. "The key is going to be whether Barack can avoid getting on defense on social 'wedge' issues and can stay on the offense on economic issues," McCaskill said.
Polls suggest McCaskill might be right.
A survey released earlier this month by the independent Pew Research Center found that most voters described John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, as "a centrist whose views are fairly close to their own," even though McCain describes himself as a solid conservative. These same voters described Obama as the most liberal of the candidates still in the race, well to the left of what they saw as the midpoint of American politics.
And Obama ranked below McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, on the question of whether the candidate was "tough enough" to protect the nation's security.
Obama has "handicaps and potential problems, race being one of them, (but) it's not the only one," Pew Center president Andrew Kohut said. "He is perceived as a liberal. He is perceived by many voters as not well grounded on foreign policy and not tough enough ... and he has a potential problem, distinct from race, of being seen as an elitist, an intellectual."
Taken together, that's a formidable catalog of vulnerabilities. In an ordinary election year, and with a more traditional candidate, it might make a Democratic victory hard to envision. But 2008 is not an ordinary political year: Republicans are weighted down by an unpopular incumbent, a presumed nominee who supports an unpopular war and economic troubles that threaten voters where they live — in their homes, their jobs and their pocketbooks.
Moreover, Obama is not an ordinary candidate. A black man with an unusual life story, a liberal record and relatively little national experience, he has put together a campaign machine that out-organized, out-maneuvered and outlasted some of the toughest, most experienced politicians in his party.
As a result, leaders in both parties acknowledge that much remains unknown and untested about the coming campaign. Privately, some Republican strategists say that — in contrast with the relatively familiar partisan challenge posed by Clinton — the level of uncertainty is so high with Obama that they can envision him winning in a landslide — or losing by a similarly overwhelming margin.
Obama acknowledges potential vulnerabilities, but he and his strategists believe those will be overshadowed in the general election campaign by economic and other issues.
"Every candidate has strengths and weaknesses," Obama said Saturday at a news conference in Bend, Ore. "I no doubt have weaknesses, but I think I have enormous strengths as well. And in a contest between myself and John McCain ... I think this is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans."
To a significant degree, the focal point of Obama's challenge appears to be white working-class voters.
In a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released Friday, voters as a whole said they preferred Obama over McCain by 46 percent to 40 percent, with 9 percent undecided. Among white voters, however, McCain outpolled Obama by 45 percent to 41 percent. Obama's strong support among black voters helped account for his overall plurality.
Obama's deficit among white voters is not unusual for Democratic candidates. In 2004 and 2000, Democrats John Kerry and Al Gore lost the white vote to George W. Bush by wide margins, but the overall results were much closer. Indeed, Gore narrowly won the popular vote and lost the White House only after litigation over the electoral vote.
"The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years," Obama strategist David Axelrod told National Public Radio on April 23, after his candidate lost the Pennsylvania primary to Clinton. "This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes."
Still, Obama strategists acknowledge that one of their first tasks is reaching out to Democrats who tended to vote for the New York senator in Pennsylvania and other battleground states such as Ohio, Missouri and Florida: not only blue-collar, downscale white voters but also older voters, Hispanics and Jews.
Caesar, the Broward County Democratic leader, predicted that at least one group, Jewish voters, would remain in the Democratic fold despite a preference for Clinton as a nominee. "They will sit shiva for a couple of weeks," Caesar said, referring to the Jewish tradition of mourning, "and then their Democratic DNA will kick in and they'll be enthusiastic supporters of the nominee."
McCaskill said she hopes Obama will make time during the campaign to visit relatively conservative, largely white rural areas in her state. "People are hurting because of the economy; gas prices hit people in rural areas more heavily because they have longer distances to go," she said. "Barack has a good message on the economy ... and that's a tough barrel for John McCain to get around."
On the flip side of the demographic issue, Obama's ability to increase the turnout of black voters could boost Democrats in several key states won by Bush in 2004, including Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Missouri.
David Bositis, an expert on black politics and voting trends at the Joint Center for Politics and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., predicts that black turnout could be 20 percent higher this year than it was four years ago.
In Ohio, where Bush won 16 percent of the black vote, Obama could not only attract many of those Bush voters but bring out more black voters overall — enough, potentially, to erase the GOP's past margins of victory. In Florida, Bositis pointed to the 2000 election, when record black turnout was credited with helping Gore come within a hotly debated whisker of winning the state.
The notion that his race might not be Obama's greatest potential vulnerability is reflected in the fact that Republican strategists are working to paint him as a liberal. In recent weeks, conservative groups have aired ads suggesting the Illinois senator is out of step with middle-American values.
One GOP television commercial in Mississippi featured Obama's controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and accused a local Democratic House candidate of preferring Obama and Wright "over our conservative values."
Privately, some Republicans say they also hope to raise doubts about Obama's patriotism. McCain's television advertisements stress his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. One GOP operative, insisting on anonymity, said strategists have proposed an ad picturing a series of Democratic politicians, all but one of them — Obama — wearing a U.S. flag pin.
"Here's the tagline: What's he got against the American flag?" the operative said.
Not surprising, Obama supporters bristle at such talk. "Let 'em try," Kerry said. "I believe they are going to have great difficulty because of Barack Obama's life, and his demeanor, his manner, who he is and what he's done."
Republicans are unlikely to raise Obama's race in part because McCain, the Arizona senator, has promised to run what he calls "a respectful campaign." Also, GOP strategists are wary of the potential backlash — particularly among moderate suburban women.
Even if race is not explicitly an issue, historian Robert Dallek said, the black-white divide will be a factor.
"This is clearly an important moment in the country's history," said Dallek, author of biographies of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. "Just 45 years ago, who could have possibly imagined that an African-American could have been the nominee of the Democratic Party, which as recently as 1963 was the stronghold of southern segregation?
"It means this campaign is going to be, in part, a running national conversation about race," he added. "You can't escape it.
"But it will also be about Bush," he added. "The Democrats will not for a moment let voters forget that McCain is in the Republican Party, that he will be the third term of an unpopular administration."
Does a bear cr@p in the woods?
Don't forget "too mooslim, too eletist, and a poor bowler"
Obama is also Fiscally Retarded, he couldn’t pass an ECON101 test question, and McDole better have the whole test for him, or is he going to camp this summer too?
The easiest reason NOT to vote for Oborta is virtually ALL of American’s enemies want him to be our next president, and they have stated so in no uncertain terms.
No way I'm buying Barry has been the architect of his own success. Hillary would have wrapped up the nomination months ago if Senator Greenhorn was really calling the shots.
Give me $200 million of George Soros cash and I’d be the democratic nominee, too.
...too socialist, too racist, too anti-Israel, too married to that bitter hateful woman...
If ever there was a time for “NONE OF THE ABOVE” This is it! ! ! ! !
If there was ever a year we can’t afford to vote “none of the above”, third party, write-in or abstain from voting, this is it: Spend 15 minutes researching Senator Barack Hussein Muhammad Obama and you’ll understand what I mean!
Why is it that when whites vote their race there’s something wrong? But blacks are going for the schwatze deifel by over 92% ???
What a rat voter tells a pollster in the light of day, and what he really believes while sitting in a saloon in the evening are two different things.
No democrat I know will vote for obama. Racism is rampant in the rat party and obama will reap that harvest in the fall.
Note to Ms. McCaskill; Obama IS an elitist, a social and cultural liberal outside the American mainstream. Why is the truth about this candidate seen as a ‘Republican’ smear?
Too weak?
Too naive?
Too dumb?
Too racist?
Too radical?
Too pagan?
Too unAmerican?
Somebody set us up Obama.
I do hope they bury their dead within a week after the election, or the smell may clog their nostrils.
I believe the reality is, many Causcasians would vote for a “Good Black Man.” The majority of Caucasian Americans have enough sense not to vote for an anti-American, anti-White, covert muslim, marxist elitist, gun hating, tax raising and half black/white Fool.
They cannot and will not vote for a divider who uses the illusions of granduer to promote his campaign.
Few Words,
NSNR
Barack Obama:
FOR Gun Confiscation
FOR Infanticide (not abortion, mind you, but out-and-out infanticide)
FOR Massive Tax Hikes
FOR Defeat in the WOT
FOR Nationalization of one-seventh of the US economy
And FOR a heck of a lot of other most Americans find reprehensible.
Barack Obama is the most out-of-the-mainstream candidate for President I can think of.
Ain't no such thing as NONE OF THE ABOVE. Vote for McCain.
If you don't like it, work hard to nominate a Conservative next time around. We fought and we lost. Now it is time to deal with the consequence of losing, which is going out and supporting a candidate who we don't really like all that much.
But McCain is much, much, much better than Obama. Anybody who says otherwise is stupid or lying.
An intellectual and an elitest are two very different things. Apparently this dim bulb doesn't have a clue about that.
Not to argue, but it's odd that the "moderates" never seem to have to deal with the consequences of winning.
Opps, wrong life story.
Well, they didn't like Ronald Reagan all that much, if you will recall. And George W. Bush did kick the Maverick all around the back-yard back in 2000.
Every now and then we win one, and the "Moderates" fall in line and support the nominee. Now it is our turn to ride in the back of the bus.
Look at the Republican nominees since 1952. We have won more than we have lost...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Barry Goldwater
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bob Dole
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
John McCain
To my mind, that is a W/L/T record of 8/3/1. I call Ford a tie, since the party was a basket-case that year. Since he was up against Reagan, you could put that one in the loss column if you prefer. The other losses are George H.W. Bush, Dole and McCain, of course.
Being black,young,and stupid will not hinder him in the least for the idiots who vote for him.
Add in W.
I understand your sentiment, believe me.
But back when Dubya won in 2000, it was clearly seen as a victory for the Conservative side of the ledger, wouldn't you say?
Similarly, but to a lesser extent, in 2004. If he were able to run again today and won, I would have to put it in the "TIE" column.
Things to remember, Playing with his crotch, 57 states, no record, and a co-president (his wife).
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