domajot- welcome back! I was wondering where you've been. We've all missed you. I hope all is well with you.

Affter mulling it over (I'm slow soemtimes) It'm now wondering if we're not looking at this through the wrong end of the binoculars. To wit, we evaluate a candidate's policies as 'fait acompli'. upon his election and forget to consider how much of them he could actually, possibly implement.

I was thinking about his health plan, for example. Though it is more modest than Hillary's and thus would be more likely to garner conservative support , how much of it would acutally be left after running the gamut of Wahsington politics?
The much maligned Hillary actually made a lot of sense in her comment about 'nibbling away' at an initial proposal until the primary goal is lost in toto.

On the one hand, I agree that radical policy swings cause havoc. On the other hand, I'm concerned that being overly cautious will cause lethal roadblocks to any change at all.

Too much seems to depend on Oabma's powers of persuation, his charisma, his personality. Those are all vitally important, of course., but for him to succeed in finding the right path between too much and too little will require a lot of the hope that he preaches.

There might be a core of racist white working class Democrats who won't come around – especially older ones. This is why I think it's important for Obama to campaign hard through Appalachia and the white South. I live in Southern Appalachia and I've seen how reflexive even some Democrats are here to the notion of a black candidate: they think he's Jesse Jackson. When told he's more like Bill Cosby on racial matters they give him a second look. I suspect that a trip through the region would help win over these white Democrats.

I don't see McCain being able to survive against Obama. Against Clinton, maybe, because Clinton has more negatives than McCain, by far. But even against Clinton McCain does not inspire confidence. To me this is going to be a Democratic year. I posted earlier a link to a Pew report — it includes discussion of people's views of current events. Of 12 issues examined, the Dems have double-digit leads over the Republicans in nine of the cases.

McCain is almost certainly the strongest candidate Republicans could have chosen this year, though a big chunck of the party still can't see it. Clinton would have been the strongest on the Dem side as well – except for Obama. I think McCain is going to find it as difficult to campaign against Obama as Clinton has.

This is of course making a big assumption that Clinton loses on of the two big states in play Tuesday. If she gets both, that famous singer will have to remain backstage for a while.

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?Re…

Not only do Democratic defections nearly double in a McCain v. Obama race, but Obama loses a fifth of white Democrats to McCain, and he runs seventeen points behind Clinton among <$30K earners, reflecting continuing weakness with downscale voters. He loses 17 points among the quarter of Democrats who want to stay in Iraq, despite the fact that his and Clinton's positions on Iraq policy right now are virtually indistinguishable (apparently these people believe in Hillary's insincerity enough to know that she won't actually end the war), but he also loses five points compared to Clinton among those who want to bring our forces out of Iraq. He draws slightly less support from liberals and slightly more from conservatives than Clinton, which is rather baffling. Compared to Clinton, he also loses 14 points among Democratic women, which is a much larger figure of disgruntled women voters turning away from the Democrat and backing McCain than the three-point difference between Clinton and Obama among black Democratic voters. The story of the Clintons' permanently alienating black voters sounds good, but on the whole it doesn't seem to be true. Meanwhile, Obama's nomination definitely appears to alienate a lot of Democratic women, who perhaps resent the “upstart” (as he called himself the other day) taking Hillary's crown away from her.

Most remarkable of all is that Obama is weaker among Democrats in all age groups than Clinton. He is four points weaker, and McCain five points stronger, among Democratic voters aged 18-49 than in a Clinton v. McCain race. The losses are even greater among Democratic voters 50-64 and 65+. Democratic defections increase across income groups as well … And those “Obamacans” we keep hearing about? They do exist, making up 8% of Republicans (three points higher than Clinton), but they are hardly the stuff of historic realignment and they are outnumbered almost two-to-one by “McCainocrats.”

Obama ain't in the White House yet, and I sriously doubt that he'll ever get there, once the whit working class realizes that he is African-American they will either sit on their hands or go vote for the Republican.