If Obama Wins

Came across this (below). I dont think it has much to do with Bear's or Rabel22's complaints, but it does chime in with the general theme, and it neatly serves as anecdotal illustration of one of things I was talking about.

Note, it's by someone who supports Obama himself, if after much doubting.

It's called Obama's Biggest Weakness, but it's much better covered by the title given to a blog post linking to the item:

The Case Against Obama Supporters

Quote:

By far the most important warning I heard here at TPMCafe last night came from Ken Baer:

We need to take seriously that outside of those cutting very cool YouTube videos and packing unbelievably large rallies, there is a significant silent -- at times -- majority of working-class whites, Latinos, seniors, and women who like Hillary Clinton and will vote for her. For Obama, he has upscale whites and African-Americans..."

Obama must have been making that same observation while watching the returns, for his own exhortation of the night turned on a moving account of his early commitment, as a community organizer, to fight for low-income people. Yet precisely because it came from his personal experience on Chicago's poor, black Southside, it underscored Ken's caution about who Obama's strongest constituencies are. Those of us who are old enough can remember that liberal Democrats have been here before, and paid dearly for it.

Yes, he carried other constituencies in states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Kansas that have few upscale whites and African-Americans. But Democrats won't carry those states in November, and Obama is in trouble if - and I'm not yet sure about this -- too many of his famously small $20 and $30 contributions come not from the people of the lower-middle and working classes whom Ken mentioned but mainly from people like the up-and-coming young white writers and journalists with whom I watched one of the recent Democratic debates from the tony (but not too tony) New York neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.

Every time John Edwards mentioned broken workers in mills he'd known, the young crowd watching the debate hooted derisively, "The mill!, The mill!" Every time Hillary Clinton mentioned her 35 years of experience, they hooted, too. Sure, the candidates' mantras had become tiresome. But the hooting got so annoying, too, that finally I quipped, "Don't you have to be at least 35 years old before you can make fun of 35 years of experience?" I bit my tongue rather than ask if anyone present had ever been to a mill.

Like other fence sitters here at TPM, I finally decided to vote for Obama, for reasons I've explained here. And I still support him. But I did it with reservations I explained here, too.

I fear that too many young whites with bright prospects have no really serious intention of redressing the growing inequities which the neoliberal world that employs them is spawning, not just between themselves and poor blacks on the Southside but, these days, between blacks and blacks, and women and women, let alone between cool young whites like themselves and the declasse, lumpy white and Latino workers all around them.
Not that my young friends defend wholeheartedly the system in which they're prospering. To their credit, it makes them uncomfortable. But they grasp at mostly symbolic gestures of a politics of moral posturing that relieves racial and class guilt and steadies their moral self-regard with smallish contributions to Obama, an Ivy alum whom they trust to help those people on the Southside without dragging them too deeply into it; without reconfiguring how we charter our corporations and re-construe the private and public investments that employ upscale young whites and well-behaved non-whites; and certainly without redistributing their own bright prospects and future prerogatives and second homes.

Some of the people I watched the debate with are too young to imagine themselves even wanting second homes. Yet redistributing their prospects and more is no small part of what we'd have to do in the coming world economy if any Democrat,-- including Hillary Clinton -- ever did win an election with a coalition of the long-dismissed and misdirected constituencies Ken reminded us about.

Unlike some of his supporters, Obama took his Columbia College core humanities curriculum seriously enough to go down and out in Chicago after Harvard Law School and to wrest a fine book from out of his entrails. Even more important, he felt and thought his way through and out of a lot of racial displacements and deceits, with a personal and public courage most of us whites can admire but will never be called upon to emulate and demonstrate, as he has.

Those are reasons enough to support him, and I do. But they are not reasons to have hooted at John Edwards or even, heaven help her, at Hillary Clinton.

In boxing the manager of the champ always sought the weakest opponent. The Republicans are beating on Hillary as Obama is the weaker candidate that they can easily beat up on the election time. The Republicans want Obama.

And as I have stated many times my objection to Obama is that he is a Chicago politician. as a southern Illinoian I have an innate mistrust of Chicago politicians.

Joe of chicago named a few southern pols who went to jail but if he had been truthful the list of chicago pols who went to jail would dwarf the southern list.

Unlike some of his supporters, Obama took his Columbia College core humanities curriculum seriously enough to go down and out in Chicago after Harvard Law School and to wrest a fine book from out of his entrails.

Quote:

Yes, he carried other constituencies in states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Kansas that have few upscale whites and African-Americans. But Democrats won't carry those states in November,

Yaknow how you guarantee that you're not going to win states in November?

By continually talking about how you aren't going to win them1!!!

[..] The 50-state strategy has to apply to the general as well as the primary and if it does, Hillary or Obama, we will flip some of these states.

talk72000 wrote:

In boxing the manager of the champ always sought the weakest opponent. The Republicans are beating on Hillary as Obama is the weaker candidate that they can easily beat up on the election time. The Republicans want Obama.

I'm not sure I understand talk's point.

The Republican are beating on Hillary as Obama is the weaker candidate...???

This reminds me of a Honeymooners episode where Ralph is trying to outsmart someone

"You know that I know that you know that I know..."

I really don't think the Republicans want Obama. I know I don't, and I have yet to hear any Republican pundit suggest that Obama will be easier to defeat than Hillary. Now we could all be playing rope-a-dope, and expressing fear of Obama to get you to vote for Obama .

"Please don't vote for Obama, anything but that!" Brer Elephant said to Brer Donkey

But I doubt Republican pundits and A2Kers are that much more clever than their counterparts who admit all the time that they fear McCain the most of the Republican candidates. Is that a trick? Are they really afraid of Huckabee and would prefer McCain? I don't think so.

When you hear Republicans saying they would prefer to face Hillary, believe them. I have on more than one occasion explained why as have others.

Obama versus McCain is the best matchup the Democrats could hope for.

True.

The Democrats would win every theme with an Obama nominee.

Not so fast Skippy

Obama opposed the war, McCain supports the war.

Funny, but Republicans use this same argument to support why McCain will win.

This will depend upon how independents actually feel about the war. Because they have expressed disapproval of the war doesn't mean that they share you deep anti-war sentiment. I'm sure some do, but many others have based their disapproval on how poorly the war has gone.

Now that the Surge has been successful and the war is going much better, the independents who have disapproved may now have different view, and particularly about the man who is seen as driving the change in strategy for some time now.

Now I know that you and your friends will argue the Surge has not worked because it hasn't led to sufficient political change, but this is the response politically crafted by the Democrats so that they could have something to argue when every expert in the country (conservative or liberal) was acknowledging it was working.

If I am right, that there are many independents who disapprove of the war because it was going poorly, their definition of going poorly was not that Iraqi politicians were stalemated but that people were being killed. The Surge has conspicuously reduced violence, and for many that will mean the war is no longer going so poorly.

Someone has said Americans don't hate war, they hate losing a war.

Obama change and hope, McCain old gaurd.

Anyone appears Old Guard next to Obama, but don't forget that McCain has had a reputation for independence for more years than Obama has been on the scene.

Obama exiting youth, McCain not so exciting or young.

This is Obama's most significant advantage, but it can be flipped around to Obama inexperienced and naive, McCain experienced and tested

Obama is able to counteract McCains appeal to the middle. Obama's ability to excite and attract independents has already been proven. This matchup goes advantage Obama.

McCain clearly has a proven track record of attracting independents. He probably doesn't attract the ones that need to feel excited, but again you are assuming that independents are really just Democrats who won't admit it. There are independents and even moderate Democrats who share certain philosophical tenets with conservatives. Usually it is fiscal conservatism or even hawkish foreign policy, but they feel put off by what they consider to be moral absolutism or intolerance as expressed by social conservatism. Even though McCain is more conservative than he detractors on the right will acknowledge, independents see him as somehow conservative-lite and closer to what they believe. It is far to early to determine whether either of them has a clear advantage in this area

McCains big problem is that he is opposed by the right wing of his party. For whatever reason, the right wing seems to be particularly anti-Clinton. An Obama nomination may mean that fewer right wing voters show up.

True right now, but by the time the general election gets underway conservatives will understand just how liberal Obama is and come to the call

I think either Obama or Clinton will be able to win the general election (and I will be fully engaged in making this happen in either case).

Hope springs eternal.

But Obama is uniquely positioned to beat a McCain candidacy.

Now that the Surge has been successful and the war is going much better, the independents who have disapproved may now have different view

The war in Jugoslavia also almost brought the world to a standstill with Russian military right there to defend the Serbians.

Jim Sleeper wrote:

Unlike some of his supporters, Obama took his Columbia College core humanities curriculum seriously enough to go down and out in Chicago after Harvard Law School and to wrest a fine book from out of his entrails.

He wrested a book out of his entrails??? Ewwwww! That must have been painful. And difficult. And messy. And yet weirdly fascinating.

Seriously, this has to be one of the single most stupid sentences written in the English language in the last decade (and I'm including everything written by Karen Hughes). I wonder what Mr. Sleeper might wrest from his entrails, but I suspect it would only be his own head.