Posted on 08/06/2008 9:53:23 PM PDT by Kaslin
Barack Obama and John McCain are running neck and neck.
Impossible?
It would seem so. Republican President Bush still has less than a 30 percent approval rating. Headlines blare that unemployment and inflation are up -- even if we aren't, technically, in a recession. Gas is around $4 a gallon. Housing prices have nosedived. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has been indicted -- another in a line of congressional Republicans caught in financial or sexual scandal.
Meanwhile, the GOP's presumptive candidate, John McCain, is 71 years old. The Republican base thinks he's lackluster and too liberal.
So, everyone is puzzled why the Democratic candidate isn't at least 10 points ahead. It seems the more Americans get used to Barack Obama, the less they want him as president -- and the more Democrats will soon regret not nominating Hillary Clinton.
First, Obama was billed as a post-racial healer. His half-African ancestry, exotic background and soothing rhetoric were supposed to have been novel and to have reassured the public he was no race-monger like Al Sharpton. On the other hand, his 20-year career in the cauldron of Chicago racial politics also guaranteed to his liberal base that he wasn't just a moderate Colin Powell, either.
Yet within weeks of the first primary, the outraged Clintons were accusing Obama of playing "the race card" -- and vice-versa. Blacks soon were voting heavily against Hillary Clinton. In turn, Hillary, the elite Ivy League progressive, turned into a blue-denim working gal -- and won nearly all the final big-state Democratic primaries on the strength of working-class whites.
Americans also learned to their regret how exactly a Hawaiian-born Barack Obama -- raised, in part, by his white grandparents and without African-American heritage -- had managed to win credibility in what would become his legislative district in Chicago. That discovery of racial chauvinism wasn't hard once his former associate, his pastor for over 20 years, the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, spewed his venom.
Obama himself didn't help things as he taught the nation that his dutiful grandmother was at times a small-minded bigot -- no different from a "typical white person." And in an impromptu riff, Obama ridiculed small-town working-class Pennsylvanians' supposed racial insularity.
The primary season ended with a narrow Obama victory -- and a wounded, but supposedly wiser, Democratic candidate.
Not quite. Without evidence, he unwisely has claimed his opponents ("they") will play the race card against poor him. In contrast, on the hot-button issue of racial reparations, he recently played to cheering minority audiences by cryptically suggesting that the government must "not just . . . offer words, but offer deeds." He later clarified that he didn't mean cash grants, but his initial words were awfully vague.
Second, many are beginning to notice how a Saint Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can't speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars
are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don't even put enough air in our car tires. In contrast, a lean, hip Obama promises to still the rising seas and cool down the planet, assuring adoring Germans that he is a citizen of the world.
Third, Obama knows that all doctrinaire liberals must tack rightward in the general election. But due to his inexperience, he's doing it in far clumsier fashion than any triangulating candidate in memory. Do we know -- does Obama even know? -- what he really feels about drilling off our coasts, tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, NAFTA, faith-based initiatives, campaign financing, the FISA surveillance laws, town-hall debates with McCain, Iran, the surge, timetables for Iraq pullouts, gun control or capital punishment?
Fourth, Obama is proving as inept an extemporaneous speaker as he is gifted with the Teleprompter. Like most rookie senators, in news conferences and interviews, he stumbles and then makes serial gaffes -- from the insignificant, like getting the number of states wrong, to the downright worrisome, such as calling for a shadow civilian
aid bureaucracy to be funded like the Pentagon (which would mean $500 billion per annum).
If the polls are right, a public tired of Republicans is beginning to think an increasingly bothersome Obama would be no better -- and maybe a lot worse. It is one thing to suggest to voters that they should shed their prejudices, eat less and be more cosmopolitan. But it is quite another when the sermonizer himself too easily evokes race, weekly changes his mind and often sounds like he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
In a tough year like this, Democrats could probably have defeated Republican John McCain with a flawed, but seasoned candidate like Hillary Clinton. But long-suffering liberals convinced their party to go with a messiah rather than a dependable nominee -- and thereby they probably will get neither.
I truly believe that only candidate John McCain could have beaten this year is a Barack Obama. It’s truly phenomenal when you think about it...almost a perfect plan. God?
The Insane, Hate-filled, Radical left has “Lamont’d” the Entire Democratic Party.
They “Won” a huge victory over THEMSELVES, and will now LOSE in a massive landslide.
Couldn’t happen to nicer bunch of asylum patients...
Hillary/Obama 2058!
The Dems can't figure out why Bush's ratings being so low doens't translate into more support for them.
They really don't get it.
The country is pretty well split, almost half and half. So obviously half the country is opposed to Bush. That means on a good day, he'll get no more than 50%. But half the Repubs are furious at him, so that cuts the other 50% in half, hence a 30 would actually be high for him.
But the Repubs who are mad at him are mad because, get this, he's too much like a Dem on certain issues. He's too heavy on the kinder-gentler and not heavy enough on the fire-breathing.
Someone who is mad at Bush for being too Demish isn't going to support Dems. Consequently McCain picks up the support of Repubs who like Bush, and Repubs who are furious at him, who are often the very same people as it turns out.
And, he picks up Dems who are worried that Obama/Clinton are too shallow for prime time, too ready to surrender for prime time, too ready to stab Israel in the back for prime time. He doesn't need to pick up very many Dems in a 50-50 country to win this thing hands down, and at the rate Obama is going, McCain is going to run away with this thing.
As mad as conservatives are at McCain, Obama should win in a landslide. But his refusal to back his own country in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined with his general cluelessness on drilling combined with his Pastor Wright tin-ear are going to cost him this election. You can see it already, and so can he.
It’s Bambi’s to lose and he’s losing it. He’s in Her way, and that’s a bad place to be.
Republican President Bush still has less than a 30 percent approval rating.
whatever that means, it has no practical impact and less meaningful than a weekend poll of registered voters: McCain vs Obama
I was thinking perhaps the “invisible hand” is in all of this. How dumb the media is to think that Americans would eat a shiny new bowl of crap over day old salami. At least salami is paletable.
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Absolutely correct.
We have become Balkanized by the fact that there are so many racists like Obama, Nagin and Sharpton out there.
Here in New Orleans, many of the local blacks hate WRNO, 99.5 FM Rush Radio. The radio station features an early morning show dedicated to exposing the widespread corruption and irresponsibility of Ray Nagin and the other horrible people running the city government.
The vast majority of black callers always refer to the station and its employees as "racist" for exposing Nagin and his criminal buddies.
It's disgusting to hear their voiced hatred when the truth about local government crime is exposed.
They are the reason that New Orleans is such a Balkanized place, and Americans are sick of their cr@p.
http://www.thenew995fm.com/main.html
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Wish I could recall exactly how it was phrased, but I heard today something about hilly being asked about her being put up as the candidate and she said she wouldn't be opposed to it ???
I know I got that wrong, but my recall is faulty.
Bottom line: She is chomping at the bit to be the nominee and would NOT decline it if presented with that at the cornvention !!
While channel surfing tonight I saw a clip of Hillary talking to some group. She was pretty much saying something like you were remembering.
hahahaa!
Great post, DV!
That basketball looks like a tennis ball, sort of.
Bet he’d like to pitch right ‘tween hilly’s eyes!! :^D
Thank you!
bump !!!!!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
If God was involved why are we stick with McCain?
Punishment.
Do you think Republicans will go for it?
;-)
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