Can The Democrats Win This Election?

Poll: 11% Believe Obama Is Muslim

By: Newsmax Staff

"A new Newsweek poll out this weekend shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may face serious obstacles in the upcoming general election.

Many Americans aren't even sure of Obama's religion.

Asked to identify his religion, 58 percent of respondents correctly said Obama was a Christian. But a surprising 11 percent said he was a Muslim. And 22 percent said they did not know what his religion was.

Almost one-fifth of white Democratic voters polled also said they had an unfavorable opinion of Obama because of his name.

Apparently, such bias is having an effect on Obama's chances to secure the presidency. Though the Democrats seemingly have significant landscape advantages this year with Bush's approval ratings in the tank and a weakening economy, Obama ties McCain in the poll, 46 percent to 46 percent.

Obama's woes are more apparent when voters are asked to give their party identification. More than half, 53 percent, say they are Democrats with 38 percent saying Republican.

But the poll data has a silver lining for Obama. Some 70 percent of voters says the country is ready for a black man to serve as president, up from just 37 percent in the 2000 election."

 

Hillary Baggage Too Much for Obama

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

"There is a growing effort by the Clintons — led by Bill — to convey a sense of entitlement for Hillary's newly minted vice presidential ambitions. The theory seems to say that she has earned the designation by her strong showing in primaries throughout the nation, particularly by her recent victories in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana.

Her supporters are demanding a place on the ticket as their right after a bruising primary season.

But ever since Aaron Burr rose from a vice presidential candidacy to contest Thomas Jefferson for the presidency in the House of Representatives, the person who came in second in the balloting for president lost his entitlement to anything.

There are no more rewards for second place. No silver medals in the presidential race.

A less arrogant argument from the Clintonistas is that Hillary's presence on the ticket is vital to its chances for success in November. Noting that a Democrat must carry the very states she has won, the theory is that a VP slot for Hillary would make Obama so much more attractive to these voters that his election would be inevitable. (Disregard that Obama carried some states that would look nice in the Democratic column as well like Illinois, North Carolina, Washington State, Missouri, Connecticut, and Wisconsin.)

But Hillary won these later primaries largely because the poison spewed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright led racially fearful voters to turn on Obama and find peril in his associations. Will Hillary running for vice president make Obama any whiter? Or Wright less offensive?

Let's not mistake racial fear of Obama for personal popularity for Hillary. Most of the blue-collar working class whites who backed Hillary Clinton, particularly the men, can't stand her.

Faced with a choice between race and gender, they decided to hold to their fear of the former and overlook their unease at the latter. One wonders if all these police officers and firefighters and construction workers would actually vote for Hillary against McCain were she the nominee. Wouldn't these Reagan Democrats continue their lifelong exodus from the Democratic Party and back the Republican instead?

In any case, it is a far fetched hope that Hillary's presence on the ticket would so ease their fears that they would back Obama in November.

Hillary Clinton will not help Obama win a single vote.

The feminists who supported her will all vote Democratic with the fear of McCain's likely judicial appointments uppermost in their minds. They are party regulars whose support for Obama would be automatic and axiomatic. Those more recent converts to Hillary, driven by fear of a black candidate with a nutty preacher, are not going to be assuaged by Hillary's presence on the ticket.

Bringing them into the Democratic Party fold is Obama's problems and must be his highest priority. He cannot subcontract the job to Hillary.

And Hillary comes with unique baggage all her own. Her very presence on the ticket makes all of the unanswered questions about Bill Clinton to the fore. They suddenly become relevant and answers become imperative.

1. What did Bill Clinton do for the $15 million he was paid by the emir of Dubai?

2. What did he do for the Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who he brought with him to Kazakhstan and introduced to its president after Giustra gave his foundation, which he controls, $100 million?

3. What did he do for InfoUSA, the direct mail list company that sold lists of vulnerable elderly people to criminally convicted telemarketers so they could scam them?

4. Did Bill Clinton know that Hillary's brothers were being paid to secure some of the pardons he granted on their recommendations?

Obama doesn't need this kind of trouble. Bringing Hillary on the ticket brings Bill with her, these days a loose cannon at best, a self-destructive narcissist at worst."

 

Denny: Some Democrats Say Obama Will Cause the “Unmaking of the Democratic Party”

There are winds blowing in a direction that just a few short months ago would have seemed inconceivable. These winds have picked up strength in the last few weeks and are now even beginning to be felt by some Republican strategists. There is no sign that these winds will die down anytime soon, and the growing consensus among some is that the winds will only grow in intensity and strength until election day.

I am talking about the anti-Obama Movement that has swept the Republican party, and is now taking root in the non-elite sectors of the Democratic party - particularly the pro-Hillary Clinton forces.

As I have written before, the Hillary forces are mad as heck and are refusing to fall quietly in line behind behind Obama because they believe the Obama campaign, many of his supporters and many pro-Obama news organizations have been overtly sexist toward them and their candidate, believe Obama has run an unfair, race-baiting, nasty campaign against their candidate, believe Obama is woefully inexperienced to become POTUS, believe Obama hasn’t previously demonstrated a record of bringing Republicans and Democrats and blacks and whites together, believe Obama has associated himself with too many unsavory characters, and firmly believe that he is a danger to the future of not only the Democratic party, but to the United States of America, too. For these reasons and more they say that they will not only reject the “anointing” of Obama by the ”in the tank” news media and the DNC, but are threatening to actually vote - and even campaign - for John McCain. They further state that this is the only way that they can wrest their party back from the elites so that the Democratic party can once again be Democratic, and once again be a fighter for the “working class” people of America.

These Democrats blame the likes of DNC Chairman Howard Dean and superdelegate Donna Brazile among other elites of their party for the choices they now feel they will have to make in order to retreave their beloved party back from the radical leftists who have taken it over.

Consider the following excerpts from a Democrat site called, ‘No Quarter’ in a post called, “Not now, not ever - A repudiation of Obama and the New Bolsheviks and an Interesting Possibility” copied from another Democrat site called, ‘The Heraclitan Fire.’

“Several scenarios suggest themselves when reviewing the previous information. They all have one thing in common; the Democratic Party will not survive this election. I was stunned when I realized this, I had assumed that the Republican party was about to disintegrate into its natural constituencies…but it now appears that the Democrats are going to beat them to it…If Clinton is denied the nomination by the New Bolsheviks with the support of the power-ghoul party secretariat, the Democrats can count on a huge proportion of the Clinton constituency turning their backs and exiting the party. I know that most of the professional political corps pooh-poohs this as fire-breathing partisan hype but I have witnessed a level of fury about this that is absolutely unprecedented in all my political experience. This is not hot-blooded, blowhard posturing, this is cold, hard, grim resolve – and I’m seeing it from all quarters – it’s very, very real. And it means that Obama doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning in the fall…”

And the following excerpt from ‘Liberal Rapture’ entitled, “Just Walk.”

“Dean and Donna Brazille have destroyed the Democratic Party. There can be no “healing process” because what Dean and Brazille have done is not a ‘wound’. It is a robbery. We need a justice process. Not a healing process. Please understand this one fact: If Obama is the nominee he will have been awarded it with a minority of Democratic votes and an elite cabal. That fact is the alpha and omega.”

“I know I won’t vote for Obama in November. I know I might vote for McCain. And I know I am at peace with it. I know the GOP will pull out all the stops to defeat Obama and I know I will support whatever they legally do. Obama is a dangerous fraud. We need at least 2 parties in this nation. Right now we only have one: The GOP. The Democratic Party is in full melt down. Fine. Justice should be served. If we, the majority members of the Democratic Party will not have our candidate nominated because a minority cabal gamed the system then we can do one thing: WALK. Walk any direction you like. Just WALK.”

And these two excerpts from an article entitled, “Barack Obama and the Unmaking of the Democrat Party” from ‘The Huffington Post.’

“Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party’s inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom “progressive” pundits and bloggers disdain variously as “Nascar man,” “uneducated,” “low information” whites, “rubes, fools, and hate-mongers” who live in the nation’s “shitholes.”

“In every presidential election they have won, the Democrats have solidified their historic link to white workers, not dismissed them. Obama and the champions of a new party coalition appear to think that everything has suddenly changed, simply because of the force of their own desires. In any event, Obama had shown no ability thus far to attract the one constituency that has always spelled the difference between victory anddefeat for the Democratic Party. The party must now decide whether to go along with Obama and renounce its own heritage — and tempt the political fates.”

And these two excerpts from an article entitled, “Democrats Look Back in Anger” from ‘The Patriot Room.’

“As things stand now, Barack Obama is lining himself up to be yet another failed DNC attempt at reclaiming the White House. There is simply too much anger within the party for him to even secure a solid blue state victory.”

“By attempting to play kingmaker for their man Barack Obama, the mainstream media and half of Washington have attempted to destroy the Clintons. In final analysis, they will succeed only in destroying both candidates. Sadly, many in Washington and the mainstream media, whether through greed or vanity, don’t have the intellectual fortitude to see the destruction of their party in the making.”

And these two excerpts from an article entitled, “It’s Official: The LEMMINGCRAT Part Begins” by ‘NO Quarter.’

“I wonder if these numbskulls have thought this thing through. The most recent polls suggest that at least 40% of the current Hillary supporters will not vote for Obama under any circumstance. Do Howard Dean and Donna Brazile think it is in the best interests of the Democratic party to have nearly 25% of registered Democrats voting for a Republican candidate? Do they honestly believe that Obama’s appeal with Independents and Republicans can make up for our defection? Or rather, their defection from the democratic process.”

“So to Howard Dean and Donna Brazile and Barack Obama I only have this one thing to say. You have alienated many people during this campaign season. And many, if not most of us will never forgive you. And a strong percentage of us are going to actively work against you. So I HOPE you are happy with what you have created. The only good news to any of this is that you will be taking your cult off the cliff with you.”

And finally, these three excerpts from an article entitled, “To the Hillary campaign” from NO QUARTER.

“I have been a lifelong Democrat and as such I can say that I have never been truly represented (I came to like Bill but I disagreed with a lot of his more conservative initiatives).”

“This time, however, it’s different. I have been appalled by the spinelessness of the Democrats in the 110th Congress and even more aghast at the candidacy of Senator Obama (see my journal for a more detailed look at this).”

“If Obama is nominated I will not support him, even if Hillary is on the ticket with him. In addition, I will leave the Democratic Party and, if it looks like a close election in the Fall… I will hold my nose and vote for McCain. Well, you may say, what’s one disaffected voter among millions? I urge you not to dismiss this lightly, I have come to find that there are many, many people who feel this way - we will not be coming together to get behind the party nominee, not this time.”

These are just a small sample of examples of Democrats being fed up with a party that they feel is simply not listening to them. They are angry, and are convinced that the only way they are truly going to be heard is to defeat him and his most egregious elite supporters so that they can reclaim their party once again, and thus become proud once again to be called Democrats."

 

Laura Ingraham: Soundbite Of The Week

"This liberal will be all about socializing--uh....um....will be about....basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies. "

-- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), to the president of Shell Oil during a House hearing.

 

Laura Ingraham: Lie Of The Day

"Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign communications director, when asked about the possibility of Hillary and Barack teaming up, claimed: "Nobody on our side is talking to their side and nobody on their side is talking to our side. It's just completely untrue." "

 

IMAO: Barely Veiled

"I realize I never commented on the whole Hillary mentioning the assassination of Robert Kennedy brouhaha, but we're all in agreement that was basically her way of telling Obama to not to expect to outlive Ted, right?"

 

Barack Obama In Quotes: Version 2.0 - From the Horse's Mouth

"You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." -- Barack Obama

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff." -- Barack Obama

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest..." -- Barack Obama

"And if that child should ever get the chance to travel the world and someone should ask her where is she from, we believe that she should always be able to hold her head high with pride in her voice when she answers, 'I am an American.'

That is the course we seek. That is the change we are calling for." -- Barack Obama

"I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though. ..." -- Barack Obama

"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. ...You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection." -- Barack Obama

"...I inhaled frequently. That was the point." -- Barack Obama

"I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying." -- Barack Obama

"I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations." -- Barack Obama

"...I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." -- Barack Obama

"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong." -- Barack Obama

"Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go." -- Barack Obama

"As Sen. Hillary Clinton was preparing to campaign here today, Sen. Barack Obama was meeting with voters at a diner and apparently pretty hungry.

'Why can't I just eat my waffle?' he said, when asked a foreign policy question by a reporter at the Glider Diner." -- Barack Obama

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen." -- Barack Obama

"It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: (White) People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time." -- Barack Obama

"I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." -- Barack Obama

"The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person..." -- Barack Obama

 

But a surprising 11 percent said he was a Muslim.

----------------------

Am I surprised?

This is about the same percentage of people who believe Elvis is alive.

 

John Hawkins: The Daily Kos Post Of The Day - White Guilt & Barack

"Over at the Daily Kos, diarist Shef makes the case for white guilt, mixes it in with a hefty dose of anti-Americanism, and perhaps most ironically, uses it to try to make a case for Obama while denying that he's doing so.

----------
Tracy Jordan, a character on 30 Rock, played by Tracy Morgan, convinces Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) that he can't read in order to get time off from the show. Tina Fey's character, outraged, says (and I'm paraphrasing) White Guilt should be used for good, like over-tipping or voting for Barack Obama. Fey makes this point, of course, in jest, but it highlights a certain kind of attack that's been made on Senator Obama, his candidacy, and his supporters.

This charge is that he plays on white people's guilt, and his supporters support him because they are feel guilty, not because he deserves to be president. This scurrilous reasoning reared its ugly head in the abominable comments of Geraldine Ferraro, and one's head would have to be in the sand not to see it elsewhere; it's an undercurrent to the attacks on any number of policies designed to benefit minorities.

...Back to Barack. I am proud that Democrats today have two potential nominees (one very potential nominee... whatever). One is a woman. One is black. This, in and of itself is inspiring beyond words.

....Guilt is the natural--and correct--emotion to feel when as a white person--hell as an American--one is confronted by America's original sin. For I, and all my white brethren, are the recipients, the beneficiaries of hegemonic system. My privilege--America's privilege--has been paid for through the blood and oppression of other peoples. This doesn't mean I ought to go flogging myself all the time (shame). It does mean that I ought to be aware and work to change the system as it is now. It means I ought to try to solve the problems that still haunt those on whose backs this country was made great.

When I call myself an American, I don't get to cherry-pick which parts of America's identity I bring along. For slavery is as much a part of America as The Emancipation Proclamation. Japanese Internment as much as the Bill of Rights. Guantanamo Bay as much as The Berlin Airlifts. So, by calling myself American, I give myself to a country that both enables some of the best opportunities for social change and justice in the world and requires deep guilt.

...So, I'll take pride in my White Guilt, and keep both eyes open. I'll take pride in my guilt and help my party and my liberal brethren fight for a better America. I'll let someone else be America's apologist.

Vote for Barack because you're white and feel guilty, but pretend that's not what you're doing! The Japanese internment balances out the Bill of Rights! Apparently, only white people in the country today benefit from our "hegemonic system." America has gotten where it is because of the "blood and oppression of other peoples." White Americans should feel guilty for...what, things that have nothing to do with them? Standing up for America is "being an apologist."
--------------------

After reading this, I can't say that I feel any "white guilt," but lots of contempt and a small measure of pity? Yes, I'm there."

 

Are you implying that correlation equals causality?