The apparent decisiveness and deftness with which Obama and his team seem to be resolving with the Hillary Clinton problem is an impressive opening move in his general election campaign
For the next five months, the GOP will be trying to convince America that Barack Obama is nothing more than the culmination of everything "wrong" with affirmative action, liberal guilt and its consequences, race relations, and African-Americans in general in this country in 2008.
They will de-legitimize him as a candidate, as a politician, and as eventually he will be robbed of his status as human being. He will simply become The Great Black Problem In This Country to millions of Americans, and of course the GOP will point out not that shouldn't vote for him, but that it's so hard to agonize over what voting for him or against him means.
Even thinking about Obama is meant to be difficult. The GOP wants as much difficulty emotionally involved with weighing the pros and cons of Obama, every argument has a hidden emotional racial meaning according to the pundits. They won't say that, but it will be implied. Obama is the country's emotional baggage on race writ large.
The plan therefore is to make voting for McCain to be a guilt-free and hassle-free as possible, while making voting for Obama as uncomfortable and taxing as they can, even if the baggage for doing so is created out of wholly imaginary cloth.
-- ZANDAR 1
I think that once a few months have gone by, at least some of outrage that Hillary Clinton has generated among liberal pundits by campaigning to the bitter end in a race that she ended up losing by just over a hundred pledged delegates and roughly half a percent of the popular vote will seem, in hindsight, faintly hysterical.
-- ROSS DOUTHAT
Reading the dozens of blog posts about the apparent and imminent demise of Hillary Clinton's campaign, you notice immediately how most writers tend to fall back on cliche infested encomiums or sometimes humorously imaginative "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" screeds of hate-spewing bile. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground when talking about Hillary Clinton which is the way its been since at least her crack about not staying at home and baking cookies for her man during the 1992 presidential campaign.
That utterance placed her firmly on one side of the great cultural chasm that the man who vanquished her now promises to bridge. From what I can gather, the way Barack Obama intends to do this is by showing the rest of us that we are a bunch of red state goober chewin', tobacco spittin', flag wavin', gun carryin', bible thumpin', interbreedin' morons who cling to religion and hate the coloreds because we have yet to have experienced the healing powers of the messiah-lite.
Gee. I can’t wait.
-- RICK MORAN
In some ways, I think McCain himself doesn't quite realize how Bush-esque he is. He clearly doesn’t like Bush, and has been disliking him for a long time. But that kind of personalized, overblown disdain for Bush-the-man can wind up leading you to overestimate Bush-the-grand-strategist. To McCain, Bush’s policies have failed because of Bush. Replace Bush with McCain and shift tactics around the margins, and the same basic ideas should work out fine. It's a nice theory, but I don't think it’s a true theory.
If each of Obama's donors gave him a modest $250, he'd have $375 million to spend during the two-month general election sprint. That’s $186 million a month; $47 million a week.
During the same September to Nov. 4th period, McCain will have about $85 million to spend since he has decided to take taxpayer money to help finance his campaign activities.
Hamas [has] unendorsed Obama, a Christian who has had difficulty dispelling a rumor campaign suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent.
Now that Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton is exiting the Democratic presidential nomination sweepstakes, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama faces smooth sailing from prominent Democrats right? Not quite.
Because it now appears Obama is going to face political sniping from that man progressive Democrats love to hate, Connecticut Independent Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman. And it appears as if Obama doesn't intend to take that criticism lying down. Literally.
Ten years too late, true, but finally the Democratic Party has decided that sex really isn't private and perjury really isn't lying about sex.
Welcome back to reality, Democrats.
Welcome to the dustbin of history, Bill and Hillary Clinton.
-- DON SURBER
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