Will Barack Surmount the Highest Hurdle?

The Economist
poses the conundrum that will make the rest of the campaign even more interesting than it has been up to now:

He is on the verge of proving that a black man can win the Democratic nomination. But winning the presidency is a different matter. The national electorate is whiter and more conservative than the Democratic one. And there is no precedent for what Mr Obama is attempting: no major party has ever offered voters a black presidential nominee. So it is anyone's guess what might happen. But one thing is sure: race will matter.

Mr Obama presents himself as admirably post-racial. Many voters see him that way, but some do not. Some 90% of blacks voted for him in Indiana and North Carolina. His margin of victory among blacks has increased from about 60 points in the early primaries to more than 80 in later ones, notes Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics.com, a political website. This colossal gap can hardly be attributed to the policy differences between the two candidates, which are small.

In Indiana this week, 29% of blacks told exit pollsters that the candidate's race was important to them. The true figure may be even higher, however. “It matters. He gives our children hope. He's a role model,” said Estelle Brantley, a black teacher, as she waited for Mr Obama to appear in Indianapolis. She and her friends then burst into a chorus of “Give the people what they want”, an uplifting song by the O'Jays.

Uh, if it were singing there'd be no dispute which group would harmonize the best. But electing a president is a lot more serious than a sociological exercise and a lot of liberals are libtards reflexively, because they simply don't think at all and let their feelings [usually guided by pop psychology] do the work their judgmental faculties [usually quick but inaccurate] should be pondering over. They'll vote for Obama because people everywhere would "like us again," as one plaintive lib put it.

I personally couldn't care less about what the clueless EUtopians think about the USA. They've downsized themselves from ruling the planet a hundred years ago to a rapidly shrinking demographic blip on the world population spectrum, with policies that are dictated by faceless functionaries in Brussels. They left history's mainstream with a whimper after two big bangs, and envy America with an arrogant hauteur that seeks to hide that envy behind condescension and patronizing shallowness.

However, it's not just Rev. Wright's bombastic silliness [HIV originated from eating "bush meat" in the Dark Continent] that will drag down Obama. His strange wife and his self-revealing "bitter" & "clinging" remarks reveal a deep level of patronizing condescension toward those who meet paychecks or punch a time-clock or worship or hunt. The elitist perspective that "The Academy" purports to say is the only perspective, the arrogant attitude that "the science is settled" on ID & AGW. But it goes deeper than that. And again, just because the two Left Coasts don't think it's important, patriotism does matter.

The sad fact is that most big state universities are a lot like U of Illinois Chicago who hires unrepentant criminals and gives them tenure. Of course, Bubba pardoned two Weatherwomen who were responsible for killing a cop in Nyack, NY and now one of them teaches at Hamilton College. I bet Alexander is spinning in his capitalist grave next to Trinity Church on Wall Street.

Ayers & Dohrn are only two of many ex-SDS criminals teaching today. A guy named Mark Rudd who made the cover of Time Mag in '68 stayed a year later in my house in Ann Arbor back in my crazy political youth. He now teaches in New Mexico. However, Mark is probably there for the peyote buttons, as he filched all my ganga while he was my houseguest! He was there for an SDS rendezvous and Ayers also attended, along with Tom Hayden & other anti-war types who verged into terror tactics the year I was asked to join the State Dept. [The FBI hadn't done their homework.]

Ayers was going with Diana Oughton when I knew him. She became a 'splodin' dude in Greenwich Village. Lucky thing leftists are such klutzes with bombs and technical stuff. Timothy McVeigh knew his bomb-making, and being a non-leftie, he paid a heavy price.

As Mark Rudd told me way back then, "No fault on the left."

The Republicans are going to use these leftist connections even though Obama claims they are irrelevant, because it appears that Dohrn was Michelle Robinson [Obama's] "mentor" when MR[O] was an intern in the late '80s at Sidley Austin, a brownshoe law firm who used felon Dohrn as a paralegal. And a year later, Obambi came to intern there, while Michelle was already on board. Soon they were a couple and the Mad Pastor married them soon after. This will come up, although the MSM is in the tank so deep that their biggest chunks do not even hide their partisan stance toward Obama.

And while the Dems are full of lots of slime/distraction they can throw at the Repubs. It's just that generally the Repubs' mud sticks to the wall because

1] the Dems have the edge on more sleazy monetary transactions [Rezko?] &

2] the Repubs are more competent in most complex multifaceted operations, given that more military & corporate backgrounds requiring actual skill-sets are to be found in the Repub ranks. Call it the Shrum rule.

The Dems DO have a slight edge on pop psychological tricks, & can gull the gullible & inexperienced young.
Plus they have identity politics, which in '08 is a two-edged sword which will cut them more than their opponents.

Read Jeffrey Goldberg's outstanding analysis in The New Yorker [google him & it will come up] on the Democrats to understand why they always delude themselves more than the average voter, who is smarter than they think.

I know some of this because I worked on the National Staff of two Dem prez campaigns & have seen their sausage-making techniques first-hand. Plus a few Senate & House races.

Also, Hillary may not accept a VP slot simply to avoid a lot of the true facts the Repubs have accumulated on her many quasi-legal or illegal missteps in the past.

But the Repubs will use the moral rot that infects Obama behind his smooth facade to their advantage. Even if the Scream Machine Dean says it's "racist." Of course, it's Rev. Wright who is the racist bigot, and Obama who blissfully deluded himself for 20 years that it wasn't happening right in front of his lyin' eyes.