Obama's contempt for poverty issue, healthcare
should be an issue for everybody, but I especially would hope that black people would care about it.

Elizabeth and John Edwards were appalled by his cavalier dismissal of poverty as an important issue for his campaign and by the lack of universality in his healthcare plan. Thats why he bew the Edwards nomination.

He may be shaping up as a new, hip, Dem. version of Clarence Thomas. Seriously.

if you look at the crosstabs here for the general election matchups w/ McCain, Obama does as well as Clinton among 'white men' in FL; does a little worse than Clinton among 'white men' in Ohio; and does a little better than Clinton among 'white men' in PA.  The difference is among 'white women' in all 3 states, where Clinton does better than Obama when matched against McCain.  

Additionally, in all 3 states, Obama does as well as Clinton -- or better -- among men in general and among independents.  So, the entire reason Clinton performs statistically better against McCain in GE matchups is b/c of the better performance among Democratic women -- who, IMHO, are very likely to return to the Democartic fold in November if Obama is the nominee.

I'd like to see some numbers to back up the "guilty liberals" voting for him because he's black. I doubt there are any non-anecdotal metrics there, but it is sure a great way to downplay any white support that Obama does get -- or, to put it another way -- the support Obama gets that has NOTHING to do with race.

It's also pretty weak to base electability arguments on racism. If Hillary is the best candidate because of her positions, that's fantastic. But let's look at Kerry at the same time. Or Bush in '00.

Face it, polls NOW, when McCain is untouched, and both he and Hillary are pouring on Obama, surely the polls will favor anyone but Obama. I have no more evidence to back this assessment up than you do to back up that this poll shows anything of use for the general election.

But I digress. These posts don't exist to show how Obama is weak, but to show how Obama supportrs are weak.

While the previous poster likes Cleaver's quote, "Most liberal whites who are supporting Obama today have this strong rationale that if Obama wins the Presidency, they can rid themselves of all the Guilt of Past Racism & Slavery, and this would be the ultimate pardon for white people...."

That's a load of crap. For people upset over the "typical white person" line, it's even more crap. Unprovable crap. I don't think any serious observer of race in America -- hell, any serious observer of the human condition thinks election Obama will rid the world of racism. That's about as bad as saying "everyone who votes for Hillary is a racist." It's no more true or provable.

But what it is is part and parcel of what I see here every day. Constant attempts to denegrate Obama supporters as:

a) Stupid Robots/Sheeple aswoon over large vocabulary words
b) Stupid people unable to see that Obama is a plagerising, anti-American racist who is too liberal and a closet Republican
c) Blacks voting for blacks, or being threatened by blacks to vote for blacks (The Jesse Jackson/Lewis argument
or
d) Guilty whites who care more about guilty "agendas" than winning elections.

I'm sure there are going to be lots of responses citing mythic Daily Kos posters who say Hillary Supporters are worse, somehow, and that excuses this, but Jerome -- yet again, I expect more from you.

Maybe Obama's supporters of varying races support him for the same reasons you support Hillary Clinton. Not some "electability" metric -- after all, Clinton has plenty of electibility issues that seem to go unnoticed here every day. -- but because they truly believe he's the best person for the job?

(And voting for "electability" did SO WELL in 04, didn't it? Maybe at a time of crisis, Americans would like to vote for someone based on what they'd do the day after the election, not merely what they do leading up to it.)

Maybe if you expect readers to respect this site and respect other posters, (and respect you), maybe you should offer that same respect to those you'd likely agree again once this primary is over? Without it, it's not a surprise how often Obama supporters are treated like crud in these comments. It comes from the top.

"there are also blacks and guilty liberals that are voting for Obama because he's black."

And there also a lot women and false progressives voting for Hillary simply becuase she is a woman.  Others think that by simply byvirtue of her marriage to Bill Clinton, she will manage to resurrect the U.S. economy of the 1990s.  They care not whether she served on the Walmart Board of Directors while its General Counsel called unions "blood sucking parasites," that she was always pro-NAFTA and that she voted for the greatest foreign policy debacle in the nation's history and still can't admit she was wrong about it when so many others were right.  Then when she runs a crappy, glass-jawed top-down campaign based on her inevitability and begins to lose contest after contest, they think she is being picked on and the other guy is just an empty suit rather than a real representative of discontent with the party establishment and pro-war, pro-corporate stance of the Clintons.

Honestly, I am still scratching my head as to how you and Kos wrote a book together.  

in his life.. His father was a bigamist, who abandoned his various families, several times.

...Concerning blackness.

If you have just one drop of black blood, then you're black.

Thats exactly true. If you make it into race it just becomes pointless.

You tell me whow there will be a ever a hispanic president if you create this bad blood, if blacks dont vote for him/them???

I'm white. bye the way.

Tad,

You just made my case.

You are calling for us to get together, join hands, & go past race.

Unfortunately, reality is what wins elections. And the reality is, poll after poll have shown that many latinos & white reagan democrats will very likely abandon Obama.

I did not make it up. Nor did you or anyone.

That's reality.

As for Latinos, where did I claim that All latinos will not support Obama. My claim is MANY if not a significant enough number of Latinos will vote for McCain over Obama.

Again, who does not want a Racial Free, Color Free society? But many of us accept the real world.

We always try to make things better. But that will NOT happen overnight in 2008.

You are asking us to go with HOPE.

You Hope Latinos do vote for Obama.

You Hope White Reagan Democrats vote for Obama.

You Hope Asians come together & vote for Obama.

That's A Lot of Hope that stands on Very Shaky Ground ! Positive thinking alone will not change the minds of millions of people.

And No Fantastic speech would simply erase 3,4, 5 generations of attitudes of people.

That's reality. Whether you accept it or not.

I think your wrong about that.  There are a lot more pressing issues this election + Obama is going to have plenty of money to define his own position on guns during the campaign.  Since the Supreme Court is almost certain to resolve the contours of Second Amendment before the GE, he'll have a built in reason to articulate a moderate stance on guns.  

Also, I would note that Clinton's views on guns are identical to Obama's.  By your logic, shouldn't that kill her as well?

Perhaps - lord knows 2004 taught me to not overestimate the voting savvy of the American public - but who would win if we chose nominees on the basis of speculation of what an unanswered attack would do to them in swing states?

You mean to say, you HOPE that it will kill him in those states.  Right?

where Obama's strength is in these states.  His ability to put these states in play is based on his strength in the suburbs/exurbs, places where the gun issue does not cut, not in the lower income rural areas were the gun issue matters.

I don't think the gun issue matters at all for Obama, because he isn't winning those votes to  begin with.  

It sounds like Jerome supports Clinton because he is afraid of what the right wing noise machine will say about to Obama.

Yikes.  Its that type of thinking that led to HRC giving Bush a blank check on Iraq.
She was afraid of Rush Limbaugh so her fear guided her vote.

When fear guides you, you make bad choices.
Haven't you learned anything?

So you are saying Jerome that guns matter more than jobs to these people?

You can take MO off your list for Obama:

Missouri: McCain vs. Obama
Polling Data
Poll              Date    Sample    McCain (R)  Obama (D) Und    Spread
Rasmussen    03/24 - 03/24    500 LV    53    38    9    McCain +15.0
SurveyUSA    03/14 - 03/16    536 RV    53    39    9    McCain +14.0
SurveyUSA    02/26 - 02/28    632 RV    48    42    10    McCain +6.0
Rasmussen    02/11 - 02/11    500 LV    42    40    18    McCain +2.0
SurveyUSA    01/11 - 01/13    562 RV    51    40    9    McCain +11.0
SurveyUSA    12/13 - 12/15    547 RV    44    47    9    Obama +3.0

A one point lead is getting spanked?  What's McCain doing to Clinton in WA and OR then?

He's not getting spanked in Ohio.  Look at the numbers.  1 point

1) What huge holes are there in his healthcare plan?

2) How could you possibly even consider Obama as an unknown quantity or even a right winger in disguise? Seriously?

Have you even looked at his voting record in the Illinois State Senate and the US Senate?

They're so progressive it brings tears to the eyes.

I'm not sure if bringing up candidates that don't pay bills really strengthens your argument.

I'm sorry, as a public health policy professional I can't help but reply here. I'm not particularly invested in either Clinton or Obama, but I am invested in expanded healthcare coverage which, according to their plans, both Clinton and Obama will work for.

Neither candidate has an ideal health care plan. Both plans have real strengths and real weaknesses.

The major strength of Clinton's health care plan is the universal mandate; we are never going to achieve universal insurance coverage without one. But the major failing of her plan is that even with the premium-lowering mechanisms she propses (like moving to a completely paperless system), the premiums are most likely still going to be too high for lower-income people who are not quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. These people will need to have their premiums subsidized by A LOT if they are going to buy into the public coverage Hillary is proposing. And a mandate does not guarantee that universal coverage will actually be achieved (most likely not if the coverage is expensive) because people will simply not comply.

Obama's plan's major failing is that he doesn't have a mandate for adults, though he does have one for children. But the general consensus on his pooled re-insurance program is that it will likely lower premiums more than Hillary's plan, making it possible for more people to afford coverage. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean that people will buy it.

In my opinion, the best plan would be a combination of the two; Obama's re-insurance pool program combined with Hillary's mandate and other cost-saving proposals.

perhaps we'll remember that Obama voted AGAINST the Alito filibuster and planned to vote for Roberts until an aide suggested it would come back to haunt him.

Women wont vote for Obama based on the SCOTUS dogwhistle this year, just sayin'.

A lot of women, incredibly, are anti-choice.  They embrace the whole barefoot and subservient mindset, as God intended.  I was raised by these women and the men who kept them down, and they won't budge when abortion comes up...

He isn't, and cannot, block anything.

Older Black people, particularly older Black women are virtually the only Black people who do support her.  I'm not sure why that's surprising to you.

Also... you've been corrected on that story about the Edwards now a couple of times today.  No need to keep right on repeating something false.

but i still want to emphasize that we need the organizational infrastructure to take advantage of it.  i love the self-organizing aspect of the obama campaign, and have a lot of faith that this will be folded into the state party infrastructure if obama wins the presidency, but right now there is still a lot of resistance...

she will commit resources there because she has said it from the beginning of the campaign that she can win florida

When did she state she would not campaign in FL if she was the nominee?

And BTW, I was basically stating that the Obama campaign shot itself in both feet over FL.

But maybe Obama himself said something different from his campaign after FL voted? If you have a link showing him thanking the people of FL and being gracious it would be interesting to see.