Hillary Supporters unite....no bashing please! only smiles

[MassJester]

Me too.

Do you think anything will change 4 years from now?

It seems to be up to each individual state.

So Texans - let your party know how silly your system is!!!!!!

That's the frustrating thing...no, I don't.

 

[KikiFan]

(See Video)[/URL]

Yay! I couldn't see the video either. But the news just warms the cockles of my cold Hillary loving heart.

Found this on Slate:

Conflicting Signs
Clinton is either badly trailing Obama or performing above expectations in Mississippi.By Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin
Updated Friday, March 7, 2008, at 3:32 PM ET

Two new polls from Mississippi report that more than 20 percent of white voters plan on voting for Barack Obama in the primary Tuesday, but they have drastically different pictures of the race overall. An American Research Group poll shows Obama leading Hillary Clinton by 24 points, thanks to near-unanimous support from African-Americans, who make up 55 percent of ARG's voting pool. Insider Advantage (PDF), on the other hand, has a much closer race, with Obama ahead by only six points. This is partly due to less support among African-Americans and a surprisingly high percentage of independent voters who favor Clinton.

One last note: ARG reports that 48 percent of white voters say they would never vote for Obama.

I'm not sure what to think about this but maybe just maybe Miss isn't as cut and dry as some think.

 

[KikiFan]

Also found this on Slate I think this is important. We keep hearing how Hillary is damaging the Dem's chances by not surrendering now. But this article points out otherwise. It's a good read.

The Long Goodbye
It's too early to talk about Hillary's withdrawal.
By David GreenbergPosted Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 11:33 AM ET
Despite Hillary Clinton's victories in Ohio and Texas yesterday, she still trails Barack Obama in delegates. The Obama camp, claiming she won't be able to close the gap, is spinning the case for her to withdraw. Though self-serving, their argument is framed as a concern for the Democratic Party. At this late date, the reasoning goes, the Democrats need to stop squabbling and unite behind a nominee who can take on the Republican nominee, John McCain. Shouldn't Hillary graciously concede and end this endless primary season?

Like the calls for Al Gore to concede the presidency to George Bush in November 2000, this anxiety about the imagined consequences of a protracted fight misreads both history and the calendar. In 2000, pundits seemed not to know that contested elections in previous years—notably the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon—remained officially unresolved until barely a month before Inauguration Day, and so they talked as if each hour of uncertainty brought the republic nearer to doom.

The calls to wrap up the Democratic primary race show a similar amnesia. To suggest that March 5 marks a late date in the calendar ignores the duration of primary seasons past. Indeed, were Hillary Clinton to have pulled out of the race this week, Obama would have actually clinched a contested race for the party's nomination earlier than almost any other Democrat since the current primary system took shape—the sole exception being John Kerry four years ago. Fighting all the way through the primaries, in other words, is perfectly normal.

The year 1972 is when the current primary system came into being, and to review the races ever since is to behold a panorama of Democratic infighting that makes the Clinton-Obama fisticuffs look tame. Back in 1972, following the watery collapse of Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie in the New Hampshire primary, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota emerged as the Democrats' front-runner. But as he marched through the primaries, large swaths of the party worried that he was too far to the left and rallied behind other candidates—they just couldn't agree on a single one to rally behind. Well into June, some Democratic leaders were openly mounting a "stop McGovern" movement. Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the 1968 nominee, actively competed in the June primaries, while Muskie, having suspended his campaign weeks earlier, made a sudden cross-country tour to woo delegates and cast himself as the alternative to McGovern. Only after the South Dakotan won the June 21 New York primary did he effectively seal the nomination—and even then he opened the convention without the backing of his main rivals.

The 1976 primary was equally protracted. Jimmy Carter, then a former governor of Georgia, surprised everyone by staking out a lead with a win in Iowa, but his grasp on first place remained tenuous as Arizona Rep. Morris Udall and Washington Sen. Henry Jackson—men with more experience and stronger national followings—pressed on. Jackson finally bowed out on May 1, but at that point Idaho's Frank Church and California's Jerry Brown jumped in the race. Carter continued to stumble. On June 9, he lost not only to Brown in California but also to an uncommitted slate of delegates in New Jersey. Only a decisive victory the same day in Ohio helped Carter prevail, as he lined up key endorsements the next day from antagonists such as Jackson, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Udall conceded June 15.

Four years later, Carter, as the sitting president, should have had an easier time. But Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy launched a primary challenge that galvanized the Democratic Party's liberals. By June, Carter had won enough contests to amass a lead in delegates that seemed to guarantee him renomination. Yet Kennedy refused to withdraw. He publicly carried on his campaign through high-profile speeches while allies worked behind the scenes to poach Carter's delegates. "If Mr. Kennedy is feeling no great financial pressure to get out of the race," the New York Times reported on June 11, "he also appears to be feeling no great pressure to withdraw to avoid splitting the Democratic party." Days before the convention, Kennedy announced he would break precedent to become the first Democrat since William Jennings Bryan to address the convention before the first roll call—the gesture of an active candidate, not a peacemaker. He ultimately surrendered at the convention itself.

A swift resolution eluded the Democrats once more in 1984. Starting with an upset in the New Hampshire primary, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart mounted a surprisingly effective challenge to former Vice President Walter Mondale, who had long been the presumptive nominee. Mondale retook the lead in a March 12 debate when he punctured the image of Hart as a bearer of new ideas with the line from a Wendy's commercial, "Where's the beef?" Hart, however, refused to quit, scoring primary wins in Wisconsin, Ohio, California, and elsewhere. Though trailing in delegates, Hart sought ways to stay alive after the primaries, threatening a challenge to some of Mondale's delegates. At length, on June 25, he effectively threw in the towel, appearing with Mondale to announce the end of his delegate challenge, though he still had his name placed in nomination at the July convention.

In the last two decades, Democrats have arrived at a nominee faster—yet the contests still dragged on longer than popular memory suggests. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis is remembered as having sewn up his nomination rapidly. But he didn't earn the label of presumptive nominee until April 21, when he beat Tennessee's Al Gore in the New York primary. And Jesse Jackson—whom the press never treated as a viable candidate, despite numerous primary victories—stayed in the race into June, when Dukakis nailed down the delegates he needed.

June was also the magic month for Bill Clinton in 1992, as Hillary has been reminding us recently. Clinton had been confident of getting the party's nod since March, when his chief adversary, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas, suspended his bid. But Jerry Brown, again playing spoiler, dogged Clinton throughout the remaining primaries, forcing him to limp rather than sprint to victory, as the New York Times put it. Both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 fairly coasted to the nomination after their victories in Iowa, but even they were still enmeshed in battle in March: Gore's challenger, Bill Bradley, kept fighting until March 9, and Kerry's strongest competitor, John Edwards, didn't drop out until March 3.


Although the intraparty warfare sometimes got ugly in these races, and pundits warned of its harmful consequences, there's little evidence to suggest that it ever made a substantial difference in the fall election. In 1976 and 1992, the Democrats won. In 1972, 1980, and 1984, they surely would have lost anyway. In 1988, Dukakis met defeat because of his weak general-election campaign, not his springtime battles with Gore and Jackson. It's true that Gore had attacked him over a Massachusetts prison furlough program and that George H.W. Bush infamously followed suit, making Willie Horton part of the annals of negative campaigning. But providing ammunition to the other party is a hazard of even short primary campaigns, and the Republicans will surely need no help in depicting Obama as unready to fight a war on terrorism or Clinton as Lady Macbeth.

We should also bear in mind that Obama holds a much slimmer lead over Clinton than McGovern, Carter, and Mondale held over their closest challengers—or, for that matter, than any of the nomination-bound front-runners in the elections since. As of this writing, Clinton is actually tied with Obama among Democratic voters nationally in the Gallup daily tracking poll.

As long as this primary season has lasted, it's still—amazing to say—relatively early in the calendar. In all likelihood, the Democrats will arrive at a nominee by June. But even if it takes a convention to settle the race, there will still be more than 10 weeks until Election Day—a span, we would do well to recall, that is a mite longer than the veritable lifetime that has already seemed to have elapsed since this year's Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3.

 

[punkin]

Yay! I couldn't see the video either. But the news just warms the cockles of my cold Hillary loving heart.

We Hillary lovers have no hearts, you know.

 

["Got Disney"]

His campaign as made some 'rookie" mistakes.

This is precisely what concerns me. Running a Presidential Campaign is equivilant to running a Corporation. From what I know Obama has never even been a night manager at Mickey D's. Why should we entrust him to lead the country?
Under NORMAL circumstances this would not really bother me too much. But this country is in such a horrid mess, in so many areas, we really can't afford "rookie" mistakes.
Now is NOT the time to roll the dice and hope (no pun intended) for the best!

Same here ...at this time I would rather see old politics running the show. What I mean by old is someone that has been around a long time and has the knowledge of how things go and get done, like the Clintons cleaning up after another bush...than someone like Obama that has a lot less of the political knowhow and is new and untested.

If it was an election right after Bill Clinton was in office and we were not in this economical and war of times than Obama for Pres would be great. Someone that has been around for less time on the political front would be okay.


But it scares me to have someone in although his intentions are great his lack of seasoning on the political front makes me very nervous.

Cant see the video?

try this......javascript:void(0); hmmmm that does not look like it will work....so go here and go to the bottom of the first paragragh and look for "see video"...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub.../pennsylvania_democratic_presidential_primary

 

["Got Disney"]

It would be soooooo great if Hillary got the popular vote today. They said record numbers showed up there today...lets hope that there were a lot for Hillary. They said people started lining up at 6am. That is very hard for older people to do.

Why do you think that Obama has more of the upper middle class votes????? We are upper Middle class ($120,000-150,000 )and we are not for him

2 of my best best girlfriends that I hang with ...are in the $60,000 range...one is for Obama, one is for McCain and than there's me Hillary...we make for an interesting conversation when we do our ladies night out after a couple of glasses of wine but we love each other and we laugh about the candidates and call each other the names that each candidate does...like My Obama friend says she will not fill my wine glass up until I show my Tax's....than I say..okay okay Hussein I will show them to you April 15th...With McCain it's all about staying in the war comments...we have fun at it ...nothing like the madness here on theses boards

 

[punkin]

Things are different if you can't see the person you are talking to. They take on a kind of un-reality and you feel less social inhibitions in telling them off.

 

["Got Disney"]

so true easier to say to someone not in front of you...

So what do you think about the remark made by (Rep) Steve King about Obamas middle name...What is up with some people..... They just need to move away from his middle name and move on to more important complaints.

 

[JARNJ3]

[QUOTE="Got Disney";23672159]It would be soooooo great if Hillary got the popular vote today. They said record numbers showed up there today...lets hope that there were a lot for Hillary. They said people started lining up at 6am. That is very hard for older people to do.

Why do you think that Obama has more of the upper middle class votes????? We are upper Middle class ($120,000-150,000 )and we are not for him

2 of my best best girlfriends that I hang with ...are in the $60,000 range...one is for Obama, one is for McCain and than there's me Hillary...we make for an interesting conversation when we do our ladies night out after a couple of glasses of wine but we love each other and we laugh about the candidates and call each other the names that each candidate does...like My Obama friend says she will not fill my wine glass up until I show my Tax's....than I say..okay okay Hussein I will show them to you April 15th...With McCain it's all about staying in the war comments...we have fun at it ...nothing like the madness here on theses boards[/QUOTE]


I think the liberal elites like the hope and change message.

Blue collar workers? They are meat and potatoes type people - don't want fancy words - but want action - to make their lives better........

Wyoming only has 12 delegates - but it would be nice if she could stay close in the popular vote.....

Clinton lowers expectations in Wyo.

By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 39 minutes ago

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - A day before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were to compete for a small scattering of delegates in Wyoming, Clinton cast herself as the underdog and said the odds are not in her favor. Clinton's campaign has sought to set low expectations for the Saturday caucuses in Wyoming as well as next week's primary in Mississippi, states where her campaign believes Obama has a better shot at winning.


"I said, 'Well you know what, I'm going to go to Wyoming anyway — I know it's an uphill climb, I'm aware of that," Clinton told an audience of more than 1,500 at a community college in Cheyenne. "But, you see, I am a fighter, and I believe it's worth fighting for your votes."

She set a similar tone while campaigning in Mississippi Thursday night and Friday morning. She said a win for her in that state would be a heavy lift because of Obama's appeal there. Twelve delegates will be awarded in Wyoming's caucuses, followed by 33 on Tuesday in Mississippi.

The relatively small number of delegates in these states, not seen as important weeks ago, have gained value now that the race is down to a numbers game, following Clinton's triple-win this week in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, where she narrowed the gap with Obama.

While Clinton has dispatched her husband, the former president, and her daughter to Mississippi and Wyoming, she has limited her own appearances in the two states. The New York senator, whose voice was hoarse when she ended her day in Casper on Friday, planned to take a rare two-day break over the weekend.

After that, she was scheduled to begin next week campaigning in Pennsylvania, evidence that she is more focused on what her campaign has said is its next crucial contest. The state's primary is more than six weeks away.

Earlier Friday at a town hall meeting in Mississippi, where some in the audience were undecided or leaning toward Obama, Clinton raised the possibility that she might run with the Illinois senator on the Democratic presidential ticket.

Clinton said: "I've had people say, 'Well, I wish I could vote for both of you.' Well, that might be possible some day. But first I need your vote on Tuesday."

It was the second time this week that she has hinted at a joint ticket with the Illinois senator; he has not ruled it out but says it is premature to be having those discussions.

Obama is expected to do well in Mississippi largely because of his increasing appeal among black voters. Mississippi's population is 37 percent black.

"I know that I may have an uphill battle here in the state, I appreciate that," Clinton said.

Perhaps mindful that her audiences in Mississippi and Wyoming might view Obama favorably, Clinton has leaned more toward criticizing the Bush administration and has mostly refrained from direct attacks on her opponent, other than a few veiled references to him with phrases like "reality versus rhetoric" and "solutions over sound bites."

She told audiences in both states on Friday that the Labor Department's report on Friday showing a loss of 63,000 jobs nationwide in February is an alarming sign of economic troubles.

"The economic policies of the Bush administration are failures. People are out of work, and the work they have doesn't pay what it used to pay," Clinton said in Hattiesburg, Miss.

The Labor Department's report also indicated that the nation's unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent as hundreds of thousands of people gave up looking for jobs. The jobless rate was 4.9 percent in January.

Job losses were widespread: in construction, manufacturing, retailing, financial services and a variety of professional and business services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere, including education and health care, leisure and hospitality and the government.

Clinton, who supported the bipartisan federal economic stimulus plan, has said the plan's immediate tax rebates are not enough to avoid a downturn. Among other things, she proposes extending unemployment insurance and investing in so-called "green collar jobs."

 

[punkin]

What did he say? I must have missed it. I really find the whole middle name thing a non issue. So his middle name is Hussein. Who cares? Did people named Adolph during WWII get such scrutiny?

 

["Got Disney"]

What did he say? I must have missed it. I really find the whole middle name thing a non issue. So his middle name is Hussein. Who cares? Did people named Adolph during WWII get such scrutiny?

I tryed to find the video but cant...it was clearly racist IMO if you see the video you can see it in his face......



Home » Politics
GOP Rep.: Al Qaeda Would Cheer Obama Win

Iowa Rep. Says Terrorists Would "Dance In The Streets" And Declare Victory In War On Terror

.hideit {display:none}if (ANSW.Trigger.altClickSupported()) { if (document.getElementById('hideit'))document.getElementById('hideit').disabled=true;}

(AP) An Iowa Republican congressman said that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency. An Obama spokesman said such comments "have no place in our politics."

U.S. Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.

"The radical Islamists, the al Qaeda ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror," King said in an interview Friday with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.

"His middle name does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that."

The Illinois senator, born in Hawaii to a white Kansas woman and a Kenyan man, is a Christian and has said he has little connection to the Islamic religion, though he acknowledges he spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.

In criticizing King, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said, "These comments have no place in our politics." He called on John McCain, the apparent Republican nominee, to "repudiate them like he has previous offensive comments from his supporters."

Last month, McCain denounced an introduction from Cincinnati talk-show host Bill Cunningham, who referred to Obama three times as "Barack Hussein Obama."

 

[KikiFan]

We Hillary lovers have no hearts, you know.

Yup! We're also "over the top"

[QUOTE="Got Disney";23672009]Same here ...at this time I would rather see old politics running the show. What I mean by old is someone that has been around a long time and has the knowledge of how things go and get done, like the Clintons cleaning up after another bush...than someone like Obama that has a lot less of the political knowhow and is new and untested.


But it scares me to have someone in although his intentions are great his lack of seasoning on the political front makes me very nervous.
[/QUOTE]

I wholeheartedly agree. This is too critical time in our country for someone one so unproven. Bush is leaving a huge mess and it's going to take someone with a lot more experience to unravel it.

[QUOTE="Got Disney";23672159]It would be soooooo great if Hillary got the popular vote today. They said record numbers showed up there today...lets hope that there were a lot for Hillary. They said people started lining up at 6am. That is very hard for older people to do.
[/QUOTE]

I don't know. 6am on a Saturday morning?? That sounds like senior citizens to me.... definitely not college students!

[QUOTE="Got Disney";23672551]
So what do you think about the remark made by (Rep) Steve King about Obamas middle name...What is up with some people..... They just need to move away from his middle name and move on to more important complaints.[/QUOTE]

You know what I hate most about it? It forces me to defend Obama. It's ridiculous and racist.

 

[punkin]

You know what I hate most about it? It forces me to defend Obama. It's ridiculous and racist.

Not to mention just plain stupid. Look the guy is catering to people who would never vote for either Hillary or Obama.

 

["Got Disney"]

I don't know. 6am on a Saturday morning?? That sounds like senior citizens to me.... definitely not college students!
quote]

Yes for sure Sat morning after a Friday night.... however it's not the time of getting there it's the time that they got there hrs before the caucus started. Getting there early is fine it's the waiting it out that is harder.....

Obama has less than 100 more than Hillary and if you count MI and Florida only 3,000 more votes at this point. If she can pull out Pa the same way she did in Texas and Ohio with the popular votes we are in good shape. And if they re-due Fl and MI we should still be in good shape. The only thing I worry about is that it is sooooo far away. To bad it was not all done on Last Tuesday

 

[punkin]

Looks like Obama is winning the early reports. Not surprising but I was hoping for better.

 

[JARNJ3]

We Clinton supporters have energy and passion for our candidate too!!

POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
For Clinton's Fans, 'Our '68'

By Ronald Brownstein, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, March 7, 2008

SAN ANTONIO -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign found its back against the wall last week, Amy Rao headed straight for the Alamo.


Hillary Clinton has sparked particular passion among women who have made their own difficult ascent in the workplace.


On the Saturday before Tuesday's Texas primary, Rao spent much of her afternoon lugging Clinton yard signs and fliers down a long street of funky, stylish houses in a quiet suburb just north of downtown San Antonio and its fabled old mission.

Walking with a friend in the warm, hazy sunshine, Rao worked through a list of addresses provided by the campaign. If no one came to the door, she left a flier. Whenever someone answered the bell, she pursued conversions with a friendly but resolute persistence. "I have never worked this hard for a candidate," Rao said between stops. "I wake up in the middle of the night and say, 'What else can I do?' "

Did I mention that Rao, a compact, energetic woman with five children, lives in Palo Alto, Calif.? Or that she was among 40 Bay Area women who flew to San Antonio on their own dime to volunteer for Clinton last weekend? Or that when Rao is not buttonholing strangers in Texas she is hard at work as the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley computer storage company with $140 million in annual revenue?

There is a tendency to credit all of the energy in the Democratic presidential race to Barack Obama. And he has unquestionably inspired great passion. Fifteen hundred people turned out in February just to greet the aides opening his headquarters in nearby Austin. That office was so crowded last Sunday that some volunteers were dialing voters while standing in hallways because every desk was filled.

But Clinton's gritty wins in Ohio and Texas are a reminder that she has built deep, durable connections to Latinos, seniors, working-class whites, and, above all, women. In fact, although Clinton still trails Obama in the overall popular vote, she has now won more primary votes than any Democratic nominee in history, according to political analyst Rhodes Cook.

Clinton has sparked particular passion among women who have made their own difficult ascent in the workplace. Shortly before Rao started canvassing last Saturday, she sat among dozens of mostly female volunteers in Clinton's San Antonio office calling voters with a palpable sense of urgency. Determination, if not desperation, defined the mood.

Nancy Patterson, a 54-year-old communications technician from San Antonio, had taken a week's vacation to volunteer for Clinton. "I like Obama, but he needs to wait his turn," she said. "I feel if it was the opposite -- a more experienced man and a more eloquent woman, [the voters] would go with the man. But because she's a woman, [experience] is discounted."

Patterson remembered working in an office where her supervisor kept a copy of Playboy on his desk, and she saw in Clinton's rise an echo of her own struggles. "I know what she had to put up with," Patterson said intently. She pounded her fist on the table. "She's giving her all," Patterson said. "I want to give my all."

Even after Clinton's twin big-state victories on Tuesday, Obama retains a solid delegate lead and remains the likely, though not certain, nominee. But Clinton's resurgence reconfirmed that these two compelling candidates have divided their party almost in half, with mirror-image coalitions of stony stability. For months, analysts have asked how Clinton might reach out to Obama's supporters if she wins. Given the loyalty that Clinton's supporters demonstrated on Tuesday, it may be time to ask the opposite: If Obama wins, what suitable role can he offer her in the Democratic campaign or his administration? Each may need the other precisely because neither is likely to decisively beat the other.

Those are decisions for a later day. In the meantime, even those caught in this maelstrom are marveling at it. Making calls from Clinton's San Antonio office on Saturday, Maria Meier, a young Los Angeles-based political consultant, looked for comparisons to the epic competition 40 years ago between Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Eugene McCarthy. "At least in my lifetime, there's never been a presidential race like this," Meier said. "They say 1968 was like this..."

From across the table, another young volunteer cut in. "We were too young for '68," said Ingrid Duran, who had flown in from Washington, D.C., to help. "This is our '68."

So it is.

 

["Got Disney"]

Looks like Obama is winning the early reports. Not surprising but I was hoping for better.

Yes it would have but it is expected for her to loose. Remember it is a caucus and they always favored Obama. She will not walk out empty handed and she will also loose Mississippi but we have Pa And she will win big there unless over the next month something changes to change there minds.

She is expected in both places to be beat 2 to 1. Mississippi due more to the High number of black voters.

 

[punkin]

Really? 2 to 1 in Wyoming? In that case she's doing rather well. She is behind 17% right now.

 

[JARNJ3]

From the Washington Post:

Downside of Obama Strategy
Losses in Big States Spur General-Election Fears

Democrats in Wyoming will hold caucuses today and -- following what is now a familiar pattern -- are expected to give Sen. Barack Obama the majority of their 12 pledged delegates.

The Illinois Democrat's strength in a Republican state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 is the latest example of an ingenious strategy that neatly addresses the advantage Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) enjoys in Democratic strongholds where she and her husband have long-standing ties.

But Obama's losses Tuesday in Texas and Ohio -- coupled with his Feb. 5 defeats in California, New York and New Jersey -- have not only shown the strategy's downside. They have also given supporters of Clinton an opening for an argument that winning over affluent, educated white voters in small Democratic enclaves, such as Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, and running up the score with African Americans in the Republican South exaggerate his strengths in states that will not vote Democratic in the fall.

If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee but cannot win support from working-class whites and Hispanics, they argue, then Democrats will not retake the White House in November. "If you can't win in the Southwest, if you don't win Ohio, if you don't win Pennsylvania, you've got problems in November," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Clinton supporter.

Even some Obama advisers see a real problem. "Ultimately, all that matters is how the nominee stacks up against John McCain," said one adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity, referring to the senator from Arizona and presumptive GOP nominee. "Right now, Barack is not connecting with the children of the Reagan Democrats. That's a real concern."

"It's now a battle between the base and the new young Democrats and Democrats who are more energized than they've been in the past," agreed Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), an Obama supporter. "I don't know how that's going to play out."

With the campaign moving next week to Mississippi, another Republican state where Obama is expected to do well, these questions will only grow louder as the Clinton camp tries to minimize the importance of those states while raising the stakes for Pennsylvania on April 22.

Obama and his allies counter that California and New York are firmly in the Democratic column and that, as the party's nominee, he could carry them just as easily as Clinton.

David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said he is not going to be goaded into shifting from the current strategy, which is to get as many delegates from wherever he can. And he rejects what he says is the Clinton campaign's attempt to give greater legitimacy to certain states -- especially Pennsylvania, where Clinton is expected to have an advantage because of her support from the Democratic establishment there and because its demographics are similar to Ohio's.

But many Democratic elected officials are worried. "No one's jumping up and down in Okeechobee, Florida, saying we've got a perfect ticket," agreed Rep. Tim Mahoney (Fla.), a moderate, unaffiliated Democrat in a swing district. "If you're a Barack Obama, you're going to have to figure out how to reach out to white, middle-aged men."

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who like Mahoney has not endorsed either Obama or Clinton, is concerned about Obama's poor performance among Latino voters in California and Texas. "It's unfortunate," he said, "because Barack Obama has done very well with Latino voters in Illinois, and I know his heart, and it's for an inclusive agenda."

Obama rejects the charge that he has failed to reach important segments of the party, noting that he has shown he can crack Clinton's coalition of working-class voters, women and Latinos with his wins in the bellwether state of Missouri, the swing state of Virginia and the Rust Belt redoubt of Wisconsin. He also showed that he can expand the battleground into the coveted Mountain West, with his convincing win in Colorado.

I don't buy into this demographic argument," Obama said. "Missouri, Wisconsin, Virginia -- in many of these states we've won the white vote and the blue-collar vote and so forth. I think it is very important not to somehow focus on a handful of states because the Clintons say those states are important and that the other states are unimportant."

To be sure, Team Obama's small-state strategy may have been the candidate's only option against a far-better-known opponent, and it has worked. In the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests that Obama's campaign staff had hoped to merely survive, Obama and Clinton just about broke even. He won more delegates in Kansas and Idaho than she won in New Jersey. Her big win in California -- with its net gain of 41 delegates -- was negated by his wins in Georgia and Nebraska.

"Senator Obama went where he had to go," said former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack (D), a Clinton backer. "They had a well-thought-out strategic plan, and they carried it out with real discipline."

In the ensuing weeks, Obama appeared to consolidate his support among the rest of the Democratic coalition. He prevailed in the diverse state of Missouri, won over rural and working-class whites in his Virginia and Maryland routs, and then prevailed easily in Wisconsin.

David Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist, said the strategy had an upside beyond the compiling of delegates. Obama was building a case with superdelegates that his appeal to nontraditional voters would have a ripple effect down the ballot in swing states such as Colorado and Iowa, where some of those superdelegates will be running for reelection. And by building organizations in all 50 states, Obama can make the case that he has an infrastructure primed and ready for the general election.

Then came Ohio and Texas, and all the old fears of Obama's narrow appeal came flooding back.

"A lot of the states he's winning are states that we're not going to win in November," said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), a Clinton supporter. "It's not a strategy that bodes well, in my opinion."

A Clinton campaign memo on Wednesday noted that of the 11 core Republican states that have held primaries or caucuses, Obama has won 10: Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana. In 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic nominee, lost each of these states by 15 points or more.

Obama aides still insist that it is a strategy that will work. Even after Tuesday, when he lost three out of four contests, Obama maintained his delegate lead. Indeed, his strength in the parallel caucuses in Texas may have actually given him more delegates than Clinton, even though she won the popular vote by 51 percent to 47 percent. But his campaign faces a legitimacy test that is beginning to resonate throughout the Democratic establishment: Can Obama win the big prizes?

With Pennsylvania looming, Obama has few good options. Some advisers say he should stick to a plan, hatched before Tuesday's defeats, to spend some time in the next weeks traveling to Europe, Israel and Asia to bolster his credentials for the general election. But if he cedes the state completely, he destroys his strategy of winning big in the small states and staying close in the big ones.

Axelrod and other Obama aides said they have learned their lesson from Tuesday. Rather than accept Pennsylvania as a tiebreaker, they will play down their chances there and keep the focus on states such as North Carolina and Indiana, where they think their chances are better.

Pennsylvania's primary will be followed by contests in West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky, all of which have similar, lunch-pail demographics. If Clinton enters the summer on a roll, especially in the big states, the superdelegates may no longer feel that backing her would be opposing the will of the voters, an Obama supporter said.

"Superdelegates are politicians. They will not buck the will of the voters," said a superdelegate supporting Obama. "The danger point comes if the superdelegates don't see a vote for Clinton as bucking anyone."

 

[punkin]

The NY Times shows votes by county and there are 2 counties in Wyoming that tied. One of those counties had 20 votes cast. Yes, 20 votes all together, 10 for Obama and 10 for Hillary.

Can you imagine a county where there are only 20 democrats voting. WOW.

I have never been to Wyoming. Is it really that desolate?