Fears grow that Obama can't win

[BlueStateSaint]

In today's UK Guardian.  Let's see if anyone in the LSM picks up on it . . .

Fears grow that Obama can't win

Analysts believe white working class Democrats will defect to McCain if Clinton is not the nominee

Paul Harris in New York
The Observer, Sunday June 1 2008
Article history

With senator Barack Obama poised this week to clinch his party's nomination for President, there are growing fears in some quarters that the Democratic party may not be choosing its strongest candidate to beat Republican John McCain.

Senator Hillary Clinton has been making that argument for weeks. Now some recent polls and analysis, looking particularly at vital battleground states and support among white voters, have bolstered her case - even as Obama looks certain to become the nominee.

Obama supporters reject this argument and point to his record of boosting Democratic voter turnout, especially among the young. But sceptics in the party, already nervous about nominating Obama after the furore over outspoken pastor Jeremiah Wright, are growing increasingly concerned. 'There is an element of buyer's remorse in some areas. The question is whether it gets really strong now or in September - or even after the election is over, if he loses,' said Steve Mitchell, head of political consultancy Mitchell Research.

Another boost to Clinton's case came late last week after a pro-Obama preacher gave a race-tinged rant against her at Obama's church in Chicago. In a recent sermon Michael Pfleger - a long-term Obama backer who is white - mocked Clinton as an entitled white person angry at a black man having beaten her. His angry, red-faced speech, in which he mimicked Clinton weeping, was played repeatedly across American cable channels and the internet.

It gets better! 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/01/barackobama.uselections2008

[Dixie*Darling]

Obama's faults are as obvious as the Kool-Aid stain on a liberals upper lip.
 

[Lord Undies]

Democrats are their own worst enemy (Thank Goodness!).  They haven't truly won a presidential election in 44 years.  Now they think a mega-liberal big-earred half-white/half-black marxist-quasi-muslim with an odd first and last name, and the middle name Hussein, who has z-e-r-o background/history and more baggage than Diana Ross going to New York, has a REAL chance to be their hero saviour.  It is going to be a historic landslide in November.

[Hawkgirl]

 

[NHSparky]

I'm not afraid of Obama losing, that's for damned sure.

[Chris_]

Robert Novak has McCain winning by a hair.  I guess Novak just wanted to be first out the gate with his electoral college analysis. 

McCain 270, Obama 268

[Wretched Excess]

there were apx 12 million votes cast in the dem primary in 2004, with the eventual winner, jacques kerry, getting about 10 million of them (he didn't really have any competition, admittedly).  he eventually lost the election, winning 59 million votes.

this year, 24 million people have voted in the dem primary, and obama has garnered 12 million of those.  2004 and 2008 are completely different scenarios, and I would hesitate to try to extrapolate dem turnout in the general from the turnout in the primaries, but you really don't have to do more than glance at these numbers to realize that this is possibly real trouble.

[Lord Undies]

there were apx 12 million votes cast in the dem primary in 2004, with the eventual winner, jacques kerry, getting about 10 million of them (he didn't really have any competition, admittedly).  he eventually lost the election, winning 59 million votes.

this year, 24 million people have voted in the dem primary, and obama has garnered 12 million of those.  2004 and 2008 are completely different scenarios, and I would hesitate to try to extrapolate dem turnout in the general from the turnout in the primaries, but you really don't have to do more than glance at these numbers to realize that this is possibly real trouble.

Half of the gain in numbers have come from Republicans.  For example, I voted for Hillary Clinton.  My son voted for Clinton.  Multiply that by two and a half million.  The rest of the gain came out of the fact there was no frontrunner.  People felt compelled to vote.  That doesn't usually happen and the thrill will be gone by November.   

[Wretched Excess]

there were apx 12 million votes cast in the dem primary in 2004, with the eventual winner, jacques kerry, getting about 10 million of them (he didn't really have any competition, admittedly).  he eventually lost the election, winning 59 million votes.

this year, 24 million people have voted in the dem primary, and obama has garnered 12 million of those.  2004 and 2008 are completely different scenarios, and I would hesitate to try to extrapolate dem turnout in the general from the turnout in the primaries, but you really don't have to do more than glance at these numbers to realize that this is possibly real trouble.

Half of the gain in numbers have come from Republicans.  For example, I voted for Hillary Clinton.  My son voted for Clinton.  Multiply that by two and a half million.  The rest of the gain came out of the fact there was no frontrunner.  People felt compelled to vote.  That doesn't usually happen and the thrill will be gone by November.   

oh, you don't actually believe that, do you?  by and large, the increase in turnout is a function of the fact that it was competitive down to the last primary, but you don't actually think that 'operation chaos" actually caused much chaos . . . .