May 17th, 2008
Mike Huckabee’s so-called joke about Sen. Obama being shot at is not only outrageous, it is also nonsensical. Here’s the quote, via PoliticalWire.com:
“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by CNN at the National Rifle Association convention, referring to “an unexpected offstage noise.”
First of all, it’s not funny to joke about the assassination of the first potential African-American president, given our nation’s history. Second, the joke is nonsensical because jumping out of the way when a gun is aimed at one seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction, and it is certainly a lot smarter than just standing there as a static target.
What the hell was Huckabee even thinking about when he made such a stupid comment? Of course, he was speaking before the NRA, a solidly republican audience, and thus appealing to the base of the party, so there’s that to explain Huckabee’s asinine attempt at humor.
May 17th, 2008
Here’s some evidence of what I’ve been thinking about may be possible with Sen. Obama as the Democratic nominee; and that’s that his candidacy represents such a game changer that all bets will be off come the general election, thus forcing republicans to play defense in areas of the country that they haven’t had to defend in a long time.
Here, let me let the NYTimes be more specific:
NEW ORLEANS — The sharp surge in black turnout that Senator Barack Obama has helped to generate in recent primaries and Congressional races could signal a threat this fall to the longtime Republican dominance of the South, according to politicians and voting experts.
Should Mr. Obama become the Democratic nominee, he would still have to struggle for white swing voters in the South and in border states like West Virginia, where he lost decisively to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential primary. In West Virginia, where more than three-fourths of white voters chose Mrs. Clinton, 20 percent of the white voters said the race of the candidate mattered in their choice.
But in Southern states with large black populations, like Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia, an energized black electorate could create a countervailing force, particularly if conservative white voters choose not to flock to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, predicts “the largest black turnout in the history of the United States” this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee.
To hold these states, Republicans may have to work harder than ever. Already, turnout in Democratic primaries this year has substantially exceeded Republican turnout in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Sure, Sen. Obama may not win the South, but that’s not the goal; rather, the goal is merely to force republicans to spend time and energy where they don’t need to, and for Sen. Obama to help candidates down ticket in the South and elsewhere.
May 9th, 2008
There’s been a lot of talk recently about “working class whites” not supporting Sen. Obama come the general election; however, as Gallup Poll reminds us, in recent years, the default position for white Americans has tended to be to support the republican party, over the Democratic party, and this trend may not be different this election cycle.
However, it is worth noting, as Gallup does, that at this point, Sen. Obama is doing as well among white Americas as Sen. Kerry did back in 2004:
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama’s current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry’s margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.
[…]
But it appears that the way Obama stacks up against McCain at this point is similar to the way in which Kerry performed against Bush in 2004 within several key racial, educational, religious, and gender subgroups. That is, the basic underlying structure of the general-election campaign this year does not appear to be markedly different from that of the 2004 election. This conclusion is based on an analysis of exit-poll data from 2004 compared to the Obama-McCain matchup in 4,000 Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews conducted during the first five days of May.
May 9th, 2008
Via the Young Turks, a reminder of what we’re missing while we look over there… no, here… no there… oh, just watch the video.
May 5th, 2008
The folks over at TalkingPointsMemo.com have compiled the weekend’s chatter about Sen. Clinton’s (and Sen. McCain’s) so-called gas tax holiday. Check it out, it’s a good summery of the issue:
