“When I was a kid, we said that we were precluded from going to certain neighborhoods because of the color of our skin … Now the neighborhoods are the neighborhoods of ideas, you’re not supposed to be there because … of the color of your skin.” ~ Clarence Thomas
The final results are far from in, but Hillary won the West Virginia primary and by a 2 to 1 margin according to the exit polls (which could be wrong, but I doubt it).
What does that mean? Not much really, since Obama is going to be the nominee no matter what, but it is important to note that as West Virginia goes tonight, so go all of the “gun-toting, God-clinging, working-class” states in November, including Obama-loving North Carolina. States any Democrat needs to win. Especially West Virginia since no one has been elected president without winning West Virginia since 1916.
Good for McCain, bad for Obama and the Democrats, especially since there is a good chance they may have a very contested convention right before the election. Add in the number of Hillary-supporters who say they will not vote for Obama should he be nominated - 38% I read, although it will be much lower come November - and it’s looking tough for Barry and the Dems.
Still, anything can happen and it is an uphill road for McCain and the Republicans this year, but it’s far from a done deal either way.
UPDATE:
As reported here, some liberals are saying it’s about race. Not true, but as the report says, calling people who aren’t that sure about you in the first place racists sure isn’t going to win them over.
UPDATE:
Hillary 67% Barry 26%
Damn, that has to give the super-delegates pause. But only a short one because like I have said before, Obama is the guy no matter what because the party leaders and the liberal media elite have made their decision. White liberal guilt and the real fear of alienating their black base will keep them on this track regardless of how poorly he might do in the general.
Still, it’s a long way to the general and all sorts of things can happen. Barry could stumble and Hillary could be the go-to gal. McCain could keep alienating his own base and the Ron Paul/Bob Barr nutso coalition could cause additional damage to the GOP. Even Gore could pop in and say, “Remember me?”
Ugh, McCain is going green and buying into the global warming nonsense. I guess it is to be expected. He is, after all, a liberal who wants to get elected as a Republican in an electoral environment that is not that friendly to Republicans no matter how liberal they are. To do that he needs Independents and moderate Democrats and one way to get them is to track left on issues like the environment. Okay, that’s the way the game is played and I accept it, although I resent his lecturing me on my disbelief in global warming.
Still, he risks losing more of his base than he has already lost and if the end result is he loses more votes from his base than he gains from the middle and left, what has he accomplished?
I apologize for the lack of posting, but I was out of state working and just didn’t have time. To make up for it, here’s a few links I found interesting.
1. Obama versus McCain: Let’s Get It On. Best line is the last line: “If John McCain can’t talk the American people out of re-Carterizing themselves, what has he been preparing for all these years?” Yep, Carter all over again. And I called that one before the election too, just ask all my relatives who voted for him while I backed Ford.
2. I spoke with another Democrat while on travel who told me he would vote for McCain this year. He dislikes Bush, positively hates Reagan (no clue what Reagan did to him but the guy was almost pathological about him), and considered himself a yellow-dog Democrat up until this year. He didn’t give me any real reasons, but he is a working-class, gun-toting, religion-clinging white Kentuckian. Make of that what you will.
3. Dan Rather can’t seem to find work, but the real kick here is he applied to Fox News. They should have hired him in my opinion, can you imagine how fun that would be?
4. My Alma Mater gave out its first ever space law degree. I don’t know if that is something I should be proud of or embarrassed about. I am leaning towards embarrassment but, hey, it gives me an opportunity to post this. Via Ace.
5. It appears that my prediction about Obama’s response to any political attack was true. Of course, it’s not a race card in this instance, but calling McCain’s statement of fact that the terrorist group Hamas wants Obama to be elected a “smear” is going to be a standard practice.
8. The five greatest movie teachers, plus one. They all suck in my opinion, all the more so because they left out the number one movie teacher of all time.
9. Global warming does not exist. That is my official opinion and anyone who doesn’t agree with me is the equivalent of an Holocaust** denier. Hey, don’t get mad at me for saying that, I just stole it from the global warming enviro-nuts.
9. I’m assuming that you only need one search term, that being “gingers.”
10. Speaking of gingers, observe one ginger’s obsession with a Saab.
PLUS ONE:
With some commentary here, here, and here. Great line: “Can He Spell ‘Potato?’”
Correction: New best line:
“This faux pas is beyond weird; I know the guy is tired, but “How many states are there in America?” is the kind of question they ask you at the hospital after you’ve had a seizure to see if your brain is still working.”
Although this one is good too: “Maybe he needs to start wearing a flag pin so he could use the stars on it as a reference.”
** I’m not making fun of the Holocaust. I am using it this way to show how ludicrous it is to compare those two things, which the left does all the time.
I had dinner this evening with a very liberal friend who is firmly in the Hillary camp and when I asked who she would vote for should Obama win the nomination she quickly said, “McCain.” When I asked her why, she said, “Obama is just a good speech and nothing more.”
Take that for what it is worth, but one has to wonder how many Hillary supporters feel the same way.
Obama kicked Hillary’s butt in North Carolina. No surprise really with him winning over 90% of the black vote in a state with about 38% black voters. Lots of under-30s voted for him too - or the naivete of youth - but he lost big with working-class whites, including many of the working-class white males he had done well with in the past.
End result of North Carolina? Not much past probably winning him the nomination which he pretty much had sewn-up anyway. The Democrats will not carry North Carolina in the general nor will his monolithic black support help him much either, since blacks vote Democrat anyway.
Now on to Indiana. Hillary won, but barely, owing a big part of that slim percentage to the 91% black vote Obama captured. Again, Obama probably had the nomination sewn-up already so all this does is give Hillary pause about going on past Kentucky and West Virginia - both states she will win easily - and onto the convention. Again, the Dems will not win Indiana in the general and the same thing applies to the black vote there as it does everywhere.
And neither contest factors in the pissed-off Hillary supporters who have said they will vote for McCain over Obama - close to 40% in Indiana. A trend that will probably flow through all the states during the general although there will be some mending of fences between the two camps, of course.
All good news for McCain when you think on it, but there doesn’t seem to be enough Democrats thinking on it.
Bad for them, good for McCain.
So, all eyes are on Hillary. Will she stay or will she go. I hope she stays (and I think she will, but who knows) because watching the Dems tear themselves up is quite amusing and telling. Also, I can’t stand Obama so I do still hold some small hope he won’t be the nominee. Why, you ask, when his and her policies are pretty much the same - they’re both socialists after all.
Well, because Obama and his mentor Reverend Wright have done great damage to race relations in this country since he started running and I simply cannot fathom the increased damage he will cause during the general election. I would hate to see an election fought along racial lines (it already is as these primaries show), but frankly I don’t see how it will not be done that way. And it certainly won’t be McCain doing it; it will be Obama and his supporters who will call every attack on his policies and character and judgment a racial attack. And it will be because of continued stupid statements from the likes of Reverend Wright and the ever bitter and miserable Michelle “I had to pay back my school loans to Princeton and I am still pissed about it” Obama. It’s inevitable. There’s a whole deck of race cards just waiting to be laid out.
I could be wrong. I hope I am.
But I’m not.
QUICK UPDATE:
Here’s something interesting that sort of fits into my race card prediction above:
Question: Will white voters vote for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in the fall?
Answer: Some will, but I predict most won’t. It’s not his race. It’s his politics. No Democratic presidential candidate has received a majority of the white vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. In fact, only 3 have since the Civil War (Samuel Tilden in 1876, Franklin Roosevelt 4 times and LBJ). I doubt Obama will. Of course, racism — or “fear-mongering” — will be blamed.
STILL ANOTHER UPDATE ON THE RACIAL DIVIDE:
At The Campaign Spot where they list a nice little group of media-types talking about whites not voting for him because he is black and, of course, not because of his lack of character, poor judgment or his socialist policies.
I don’t know whether they are trying to shame white voters into voting for him or simply preparing their excuses for a loss in the general election. Either way, it is only going to get worse.
Now it would be a legitimate political attack on McCain if the two situations were remotely alike, but clearly they are not. On the one hand we have a two decade-old close, personal friendship with the man who married Barry and his delicate little flower of a wife Michelle and baptized their children, and on the other hand we have a politician who is courting his base by accepting the endorsement of some TV preachers who mean little to anyone outside of their viewership and who have had no influence on McCain’s life to date, nor will they have in the future knowing McCain’s maverick attitude towards his own party.
The left can try to make that comparison, but I don’t believe that Independents nor moderate Dems are going to buy it. I certainly don’t. But then again, I read on another blog that those of us who don’t are either hypocrites or racists, so take what I believe with a grain of salt being that I am a gun-toting, God-clinging white guy whose brain is wired differently from progressive liberals and blacks. It’s just my burden to bear I guess.
Still, my burden is not as heavy as Barry’s according to Michelle, who says he has almost reached his boiling-point over having to answer questions about his character and judgment.
Wow, his boiling-point huh? I wonder what happens when he reaches it. Does steam come out of his big ears? That would be cool it if did.
I really don’t know why the lovely Michelle and the great Barry don’t know this, but anyone running for president should expect to have his or her character and judgment questioned. I mean every damn person who ran for that office before was questioned in that manner, so why is Barry exempt? Oh yes, as Don Surber says, we should just go ahead and coronate the guy. He is bringing hope and change for heaven’s sake, so why the hell should we question him at all? That’s want his supporters have decided. He’s the guy no matter what his past relationships - terrorists, racists, shady Chicago slum-lords - and we should just shut the hell up and place that crown on his head.
One has to wonder though. What will Barry and Michelle do if he is elected? The questioning of a candidate’s character and judgment doesn’t stop after the inauguration. Hell, that’s when it really gets started.
Friends of Sen. Barack Obama, whose relationship with Wright has rocked his bid for the White House, insist that it would be unfair to compare Winfrey’s decision to leave Trinity United with his own decision to stay. “[His] reasons for attending Trinity were totally different,” said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named discussing the Illinois senator’s sentiments. “Early on, he was in search of his identity as an African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man. Reverend Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in helping him understand the black experience in America.
So he joined the church to find his African-American “identity,” as defined by Wright and his church (We sure know how they define it, don’t we?) - something that was necessary to win any public office in Chicago - but now has dumped Wright to help shed a bit of that identity to win over the white working-class voters he is losing every day.
Calling the man an empty suit is too kind really.
** Changed the title again. I just do that sometimes.
Did you watch the Democratic debate last night? I did. Hillary won it. Obama looked weak to me, stumbling over his words, much on the defensive over his controversial relationships with former terrorists and racist pastors, his elitist comments about working-class Americans, his non-support, support of gun rights, and well, a half-dozen other things. Sure, Hillary was weak too, but Obama, he looked positively “Nixonish.” Did he shave?
Granted he will have time to hone his skills by the time he debates McCain - if he debates McCain - but he has had more than a few debates so he should have done better in my opinion. Then again, this was the first debate where I actually saw them hit with hard questions they way they should be. Charlie Gibson sounded positively conservative last night. And George Snufflelufagous was pretty good, too. I am sure neither of these two guys are friends of the left today.
But the real winner was McCain. Who, unless he has some big gaffe, is going to wipe the floor with either of these two.
Here’s a good analysis of the debate and the Democrat’s position at this point. I agree with much of it. And he’s right that they didn’t ask enough policy questions. Much Damn near all of the left is complainingwhining about that today.
But then again, these two don’t differ much on policy, so what was to ask? It’s electability that matters now - policy comes later in debates with McCain. And I think this debate very much brought valid questions Obama’s electability to the forefront.
UPDATE:
To steal a phrase from Glenn Reynolds, “They said if George Bush was elected free speech would be restricted. And they were right. Only it’s the left calling for it and right after Obama is elected president. Why how positively fascist of them.
If so, then I, for one, would welcome our new robot overlord. I really don’t need a new savior and I already have a woman telling me how to spend my money so what use is Hillary?
Only a man who has a profound ignorance of and, dare I say it, a deep-seated contempt for our military would say something like this.
“McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.”
Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, West Virginia, and Barack Hussen Obama supporter, appears to be that man.
Keep it up Dems. I simply cannot see attacking McCain, a man who served his country honorably and spent five fricken years in a hell-hole of a prison camp, in this way as a winning strategy in the general election.
A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”
Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center’s Web site as a policy brief.
Both Mr. Kahl and a senior Obama campaign adviser reached yesterday said the paper does not represent the campaign’s Iraq position. Nonetheless, the paper could provide clues as to the ultimate size of the residual American force the candidate has said would remain in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat brigades. The campaign has not publicly discussed the size of such a force in the past.
Color me confused. I thought Barack Hussein Obama was going to withdraw all troops from Iraq. And didn’t he just misrepresent McCain’s “100 year” statement by implying that McCain would keep the war going for that long, instead of just stationing US troops there just like we have in Germany, Japan, and Korea? I’m pretty sure he did. So which is the truth? Is Obama going to withdraw all troops like his far-left anti-war supporters want, or is he going to keep troops there much like McCain has stated he would do?
Which is it, Senator?
In or out? This is not a tough question.
No tougher than whether you believe what Reverend Wright believes, anyway.
Then again, that was a tough one for you, too, wasn’t it?
1. Like I’ve said before, global warming is still very much in dispute.
2. This appears to be more about the so-called housing crisis than anything else. What is disturbing to me is that Americans think it is government’s fault that people were stupid enough to buy more house than they could afford and that it is government’s responsibility to bail them out of their stupidity. Nonsense. Plus, what does “going in the wrong direction” mean exactly? Well, it means different things to different people. Had I been polled and asked that question I would have said yes because I think that our open-borders policy is the wrong direction. I think retreating from Iraq is the wrong direction. I think electing a Democrat as president is the wrong direction. So when you think about it, the question is meaningless as are the poll results.
3. Obama’s support softens. I’m not surprised. When people get to really know him they don’t like what they see as much. He’s still the nominee though. Because of his glamour and not his substance, of course. Mark my words, if elected he will have a Jimmy Carter presidency.
4. British Muslims would have killed thousands in major terrorist attack if not caught. The threat is real, folks.
5. Male rock fans vote Republican? So Led Zeppelin influenced me in more ways than I thought.
6. Sounds like a nice place to me. I do love Asian . . . food.
