Letters to the Editor

• @Tom - 2 of 2

  [Read the article: Obama, Clinton and the black-brown divide]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Much of Hillary's "base" comes from the "big state/small state" dichotomy. It's false. Of greater concern is the pattern that has been in place pretty much since the eighties: the fascisti take the Confederacy, we take the coasts, and the election comes down to, say, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

  well, yeah, but no Dem is going to win without Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The former has Catholic voters who compose the Dem base there and the latter has large voter bases of Catholic and hispanics which Obama hasn't reasonated well with. This is troubling to me, although I'm sure I'll be called a racist by someone for pointing it out. so be it.

  I will concede, for the sake of discussion, that even if Obama galvanizes the black vote like never before, and the young vote that typically spends the first Tuesday in November with a beer bong, that it's unlikely- in some cases impossible- that he will make inroads in Utah, Wyoming, or the deep south. But would she? If so, how?

  No, she wouldn't. No Dem is going to probably in my lifetime.

  I'm just concerned that Obama won't win some big electoral states that Dems HAVE to win.

  The reason I asked about where you've lived is that we have made homes in the intermountain west, Hawaii, the Ozarks, and California. It's my sense, totally unsubstantiated, that the redneck vote, the pickup folks who listen to Toby Keith, are more likely to listen to him than to her.

  I don't know how that works in Wyoming, but it's not true in the Ohio valley. Mrs. Clinton could actually win it and this has trended GOP for about 10-15 years in the same way the south did first. Here, it really IS the economy. People in the heartland are hurting and they remember they weren't in the "Billary" years. But the Ohio Valley has the advantage of being traditionally Democratic, albeit more conservatively so.

  I wish this were not so. Hillary bears the burden of sins not of her own commission. They persist nonetheless.

  that's going to be true of any Democrat. None of them will get less than demonized and ridiculed by both the RW and the supposedly "mainstreet" press. the real sin of the Clintons in Republican circles was beating them twice.

  It is my firm conviction that we- all of us who claim to be progressive in any way- must swear a blood oath that we will vote Democratic in November. I sure do.

  Angry as I can get with the Obama crowd like I'd really vote for a cowardly piece of dung like McCain.

  If you and I, after a vitriolic weekend, can have a conversation, then we have to believe unity, and victory, are possible.

  You and I are educated. That won't be true of most voters and is why this long ugly racially divisive primary is in fact terrible for the Democrats. That said with things as close as they are I don't believe either candidate should concede to the other now. What happens in Pennsylvania should decided it. (God forbid that Florida and Michigan revote by mail and the fraud that would invite)

  Being, as you might suspect, a word guy, I am swayed by the effect, disproportionate to rational analysis, that great speakers and writers have had throughout history. Churchill, when England was toast. Lincoln when a charge on a Pennsylvania field turned a tide that could have gone either way, or King and Kennedy (and LBJ, to give the man his due) finally bringing to bear the fruits of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Words matter, and genius matters.

  Right, but then you're talking about an electorate who originally voted for George W. Bush over a continuation of the most successful administration of our lifetimes because they thought he'd be a better guy to have a beer with.

  Unfortunately the GOP's been real good at painting articulate Democrats as out of touch elitists.

  Permalink Monday, March 10, 2008 12:19 AM