I think we have to accept that most of the electorate does not think the way we on Free Republic think. If they did there would be no blue states at all, Gore would not have taken the popular vote, and Kerry would not have come within 60,000 votes in Ohio taking the whole country.
Speaker Pelosi might be doing real estate deals-maybe she would be getting one more face lift, but if she did she would be eating lunch out of hat. Hillary Clinton would be in jail.
In a world of electoral politics you have to deal with the world as it is and not with the world as it is within our own bubble. So, in reply to your observations about lesbianism and it's potential affect on female liberal voters, I quite agree that, if anything, she would gain more votes from this demographic. I am talking about the mushy middle, the females who see themselves in terms of their relationships and not in terms of political issues. These women should put the fear of God into Hillary and her supporters and, more importantly, into the professional politicians of the Democrat party. It is these professionals, in league with the media elites, who might turn against Hillary not because they're opposed to lesbianism but because they're opposed to losing elections.
My belief is that Obama would be a stronger candidate than Hillary and we would be hard pressed to beat him. Al Gore, a committed leftist, took a majority of the American voters. John Kerry came very close to winning the electoral votes and would have won had he taken Ohio. Therefore, a liberal posture is not a fatal impediment to reaching the White House, especially when one has a fair wind blowing at one's back created by the media. If we know anything about the media we know they will blow a tsunami to put the first African- American into the White House. On the other hand, Hillary is despised by nearly 50% of the country who have declared that they are resolute against voting for her. This cuts into Reagan Democrats, and the union Democrats, and independents and, the group we are talking about, middle-class women. This is where the race ultimately gets decided unless our Republican base has been so eroded that it will just be overwhelmed.
This is where my pessimism about the election comes in. If you look at the midterm on a state-by-state basis, it is clear that we were unable to hold any one of the four states which we must have if we are to retain the White House (Missouri Ohio Florida Virginia). Since then, the war has turned to for the better but the economy is looking very, very shaky. The Democrats have shot themselves in the foot in Congress and Bush is looking better. But we have so much ground to make up and the Hill is so steep that any conservative who gets out of the bubble must be very concerned indeed.
Never happen, at least not at this time in our history. When people are asked about voting for a black man or even a woman they will almost NEVER say they won't for reasons of race or in the case of Obama his name which is very M.E. sounding. People are terribly afraid to be even THOUGHT of as being even remotely racist so will not publicly say what they feel. In the voting booth, with the curtain closed and no one to know who the vote goes to, Obama gets no more then 40% of the vote and I'm being generous.
You make some good points and I’m going to think about them and respond later. For now, just a quick reaction to one of your points: that the leftist Al Gore got a majority of the votes.
First of all, he wasn’t perceived as being anywhere near as far-left as he actually is. He did a good job of covering that up. Obama has no such cover. Obama has no such non-left perception. Everyone perceives Obama as the far-left person that he actually is.
Secondly, the media pulled a fast one in 2000, declaring Florida for Al Gore early and erroneously, keeping many west-Florida conservatives from going to the polls, as well as many conservatives elsewhere in the nation. That early bad-call made it seem like Gore had the election locked up.
People will never fall for that trick again. I think every American now knows, go out and vote, regardless of what the hateful liars of the press tell you. (The Dems already knew that. I think the Repubs now know that too.)