Something written about the election, that even I can understand.

Good work, Ian!

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Ian, thanks for the comment.

I've struggled this whole election to determine the answer to 2. Yes, the current polls show Clinton as a better choice now, but the Rush Limbaughs have not come out with all the nasty stories (Foster murder, lesbians, cattle deals), while Obama has had a pretty bad run of personal attacks.

Regardless, the rest of your points hold. Obama and his supporters need to work hard reach out to Clinton supporters. It would be nice if Clinton played a role in reaching out to them, too, rather than trying to prove that she was more electable. I think the events of the next month will show a lot about the character of both candidates.

..on the situation come November. Every day the economy spirals further down the drain, the harder it will be for McCain, whoever the Dem is. And there's the chance that McCain won't even make it to the election; he's a tired old man. On the other hand, if we're openly at war with Iran and terrorist bombs are exploding in American streets, then all bets are off.

One of the reasons most people never expected to see an African-American on a major ticket during the next 50 or so years is that it was assumed it would doom the ticket. That's how long it would take for the country to really get over racism, if it ever could. Obama's candidacy is not only a shock in that respect, it is a real gamble whether or not we politely decline to categorize a portion of the anti-Obama vote as racist.

As to your points, Ian, in a very good run-down of the electability issue:

1) Agree. They both are running as centrist candidates. Clinton may be more liberal but I can't get over the fact she is a neocon like Lieberman.
2) MyDD is pushing a dream ticket and has Clinton leanings. The fact that she is still in the race and polls better in big states is meaningful if it is correct that Obama cannot carry these states. MvDD argues she will carry more cross-over votes than Obama if she is the nominee or on the ticket, but I have seen no other supporting evidence. Quite the contrary - she loses 30% of the black vote right off and as much of the liberal vote. Nor does MyDD take into account increased voter turnout. To see how this could play out - and why Obama must rev up the non-white vote to win, see Poblano's report on this pro-Obama website: http://progressillinois.com/2008/05/11/features/obama-over-the-top
3) Clinton supporters are not racists and I don't think people are making that charge. The people she is appealing to as independents and ex-Democrats are racist and would never vote for a black man.
4) Disagree
5) This contradicts your point 7 below. If Obama's campaign managers are such seasoned pros and party hacks, they are hardly about to confuse a caucus strategy with a general election strategy.
6) Disagree. Sweeping the Senate and keeping the House is absolutely vital. The Republican Party as now constituted is a poison on the body politic and needs to be nowhere near government. It needs to die, frankly.
7) See 5 above.
8) Obama is keeping out blogs and others whether they kiss the ring or not. If he weren't, DKos would be welcome.
9) John McCain surrounds himself with neocons and Likudniks and that has been a fatal combination for tens of thousands of people.
10) If Obama is running a better campaign now (and he certainly is) he should be able to run a better campaign than Clinton in the fall. Yes, he needs to appeal to Clinton supporters, and I believe he already is trying to. What he really needs to do is appeal to Hispanics, Asians, young whites and similar constituencies that will need to show significantly higher turnout than in the past in order for Obama to win.

See the maps today at http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Clinton/Maps/May23.html which show Clinton taking out McCain 315-206-17 while Obama trails McCain 242-272-24.

Both Clinton and Obama have been improving against McCain in electoral college match-ups, and there are intriguing differences to examine. Obama's fundraising abilities are staggering, and show him far better funded for the fall than McCain. Republican leaders have been comparing Obama's funding and organization to George Bush's in 2000 and 2004.

A point you are not making, Ian, is that preference for Obama or Clinton breaks different regionally, not just by income, education, or race. The same demographic that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton in Kentucky -- high school only, white, lower income -- preferred Obama in Oregon. Obama's strength in these groups, regionally, will probably bear out again in Montana and South Dakota in two weeks, but not in Puerto Rico.

It would be helpful to cite some examples of "shutting out people who don't kiss the ring" in a separate topic. The Clintons have been known for similar tactics, and Bush notoriously so. With evidence, do you find Obama's practice here more, less, or different than anyone else? I mean, the Clinton insistence on loyalty reared an ugly head when Carville called Richardson a Judas for not calling Bill Clinton before announcing for Obama.

I think you are using "progressive" in a strictly economic sense. That makes them both centrist with Clinton more left by a nose in healthcare.

However, there other important aspects -- civil/human/constitutional rights and foreign policy. Both are in the toilet after eight years of Bush. I find Obama's voting record and statements much more compelling and trustworthy in those two respects than I find Clinton's.

2 to 1 in Democratic/Republican primaries, even before the Republican race was decided.

Obama will beat John McCain.

America will have a black man for president. Get used to it.

Saying Clinton is more liberal doesn't make it so. According to the political compass map, the two are almost indistinguishable, both right of center and both authoritarians, he slightly less than she.

I did inhale.

or not Clinton is more electable than Obama vs. McCain is rather pointless. Only one will face McCain and it is not going to be Mrs. Clinton. Anyone who believes otherwise can start bidding on bridge a few blocks from here. I am with Don on the final outcome of the actual matchup. The results of the few recent interim congressional elections in traditionally Republican districts show the Dems have a huge advantage on that score even before the downticket thrust is factored in. Supermajority?

I lost a URL, its was something like FiveThreeEight.com,
It was a good reflection on polling, and possibly more accurate than
the "professional polls"

Can I be pointed to to the correct URL?

Thanks

1) And yet time and again, he has shown better judgment than her.

Don't EVER count out the GOP candidate, regardless of the horse-race polls. I will be pleasantly surprised if McCain is not our next president. But right here, right now, I feel he will be.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

Ian,

I agree with you 100%

Great post.

Obama...I can't stand the cocky jerk and that's not to say anything of his supporters who are even more so.

And you just have to love Obama's/Obama's supporters "either you vote for my candidate or you are a racist" bit.

How many race cards are in a deck anyway?

And...are we going to have to watch race cards being flipped by a wealthy white guy with a good tan for four years?

I'm already fatigued, nevertheless,

I'll still wind up voting for the jerk, however, I refuse to drink the kool-aid his supporters keep serving.

Identity politics suck.

i remember saying months ago that i was supporting clinton, for which i was pretty handily flamed ratcheer on this very blog.

my oh my, how things change. and things have changed for me as well. i moved to edwards shortly before he dropped out and ultimately came around to obama after his race speech because sometimes all that's left is to hope for some inspiration.

now i'm back to the point i don't want either of them. neither one meets my needs. neither one comes close to envisioning the kind of country i want to live in. they are both too far to the right. neither is willing to take a look at the financial markets and hedge funds and all of that looming disaster.

his health plan sucks and she is, for reasons i really do not understand, entirely polarizing. or maybe that's just media bullshit. at this point, i don't even know. i just know that i'm pretty much out of hope and don't have much expectation that things will change at all.

i'm back to voting for the courts and that is why i'll vote democrat. i won't waste this vote for a third party candidate because it's mandatory that we not have another republican at this critical point.

That's about it for me. I would vote for any of the Democratic candidates, even Hillary, before I would sit back and let another corrupt, twisted Republican continue to drag America through the economic and moral sewer we're in today.

I just wish I could hear Obama promise to prosecute all the Bushies for their crimes. Just a hint?
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Good times for Smiley! :-D

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They are both making mistakes, welcome to the world of the human beings. But on a different slant, I don't think the repubs care, which one gets the nods, because they do not want the WH. The repubs know exactly how bad they have screwed things up and in order to blame the dems on the ramifications of those screw-ups, they have to lose lose the election. They will put on a good show, but with (deliberately?) having chosen McCain, they are going to do their best to lose the election.

As much as we may want to think (and I truly wish it were so) that our vote counts in some meaningful way, I think it is just a ruse. The real power in the world is money, which has no loyalty to anything but itself and those who have it. It is money that has bought up the MSM and is using that power to distort the facts in whatever way is necessary to make more money. The investments banks are another head of the same snake. And the repubs are the new political front for this money/power.

I am very glad I am a Democrat, and even with my cynasism, believe there are democratic elected officials who want very much to make this a better democracy for all. Maybe they will succeed, to which I will be very happy to have been proven wrong. But right now, I believe it is my cynasism that seems to be more supported by the facts.

As to it's final resolution - maybe a new paradigm where we take out one of those elements of the equation power=money. But that is a whole new story.

If, as you say, Obama represents the pre-Clinton Congressional coalition, he is certainly more liberal than Clinton. The Congress of the 80's was well to the left of that Dems in Congress since Clinton, and even the latter were well to the left of Clinton, as shown by how many times Clinton sided with the Repubs against his own party on major legislation. The Dem Congress of the 80's cut off aid to the Contras, without an explicit electoral mandate to do so and in opposition to a genuinely popular President; compare that to the current Congress on Iraq. Representing the Kennedy/Kerry/Daschle/Carter wing of the party is a hell of a lot better than the Clinton wing.

In fact, though, the implications of that alignment overstate the case. As you say, both Obama and Clinton are centrists, but I see no evidence in their actions that the Clintons are more liberal, and even in their rhetoric, it is of very recent and transparent vintage. Voting records? Pretty similar, but one huge difference sticks out, and that is Kyl/Lieberman. That's a bigger deal than the AUMF for Iraq, as Hillary really can't credibly claim to be falling for the same trick twice. Is everything to be reduced to mandates? Even while Hillary is talking about mushroom clouds over Tehran?

On electability, yes Clinton looks somewhat better at the moment, but it has not always been so, and at this stage Dukakis was looking fit to whoop Bush good. The problem with Hillary is she has always had very high strong negatives: people who absolutely will not vote for her no matter what. It doesn't give her much wiggle room. But the electability argument is moot anyway, as Hillary is not getting the nomination.

And, although it is not purely the people vs. the machine, the big donors of the party have more than once directly threatened the party if they do not go Hillary's way. Hillary has been getting a lot of small donations lately, though still nowhere near Barack, but she still owes her position more to big money that he does. Indeed, the striking thing about Obama is how little he really owes to anyone specifically. I can't think of the last President who can into office so unencumbered.

I agree that Obama's efforts to centralize party power under him should be resisted. He's trying to pull the same thing Clinton did, though he doesn't look like he's going to starve down ticket races like Clinton did in '96. One fundamental principle I think we should insist on is that one cannot be both the voice of the party and the voice of bipartisan compromise: which Clinton did, and which Obama looks likely to try. The voice of the party is partisan by definition. Also, the power of the Democratic Party should not be centralized.

Obama may shock the world, or at least our country. He may do all the things he says. He may accomplish a lot of things with our enemies that people keep saying he can't. I hope so. It's dreamy and naive to think so, but, we're overdo for a historical figure to step up to the plate and fix the mess we've made of ourselves... or that Bush has made of us.

Phooey -- we're a mess and we need someone to fix us, or at least someone who is willing to try.