Barack Shot Down By Court

In the wake of today's Supreme Court ruling affirming the right to bear arms, John McCain used the opportunity to remind voters how Barackists feel about gun rights.

"Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly," McCain said.

Barack used the opportunity to have a foot on both sides of the issue.

Obama said if elected president, he would uphold the rights of gun owners, but he said: "I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact common-sense laws, like closing the gun show loophole and improving our background check system, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals."

Ironically, today's ruling may make it easier for Barack, and other liberal, blame the gun, types, to do their parsing. Gun rights voters don't have to fear the slippery slope that Barack represents quite as much now that the court has clarified the issue.

The court's 5-4 ruling strikes down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision goes further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

Although McCain's not so sure about Chicago's gun laws remaining in tact.

"Today's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans," McCain said in the statement.

And it appears he's right.

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

In Chicago, a ban on the sale and registration of handguns has been in place since 1982. Only police officers, aldermen and a handful of others are exempt from the ban.

Polls indicate that Americans are strongly on McCain's side, while Barack doesn't believe gun rights warrant a button on his website's issues list.

Nearly three out of four Americans — 73% — believe the Second Amendment spells out an individual right to own a firearm, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,016 adults taken Feb. 8-10.

Gallup Shows Race Tied - Again

For the second day in a row, Gallup's daily tracker of 2600+ registered voters shows a tie between Barack and McCain. Rasmussen, a more accurate survey of 3000 likely voters, remains a four point lead for Barack when "leaners" are included, and five points without.

Is it possible that international security concerns in the news are working to McCain's advantage and keeping the race tighter than it would be otherwise? That's what Dick Morris said last night on the Factor. Gallup's numbers would seem to reinforce this view:

Americans are more likely to have confidence in John McCain (80 %) than Barack Obama (55%) ...to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief.

While the Gallup numbers do indicate how poorly Barack is doing at a point when he should be flying high, polls at this point are not great predictors of what will happen in November, since there hasn't been a campaign yet. At the same time, it seems the more that voters get to know Barack, the less impressed they are.

The Age Thing

Nader, 74, is a consumer advocate and political activist.

So how come no one is saying that he's too old to be president?

Uncle Ralph

Ralph Nader is calling Barack Obama out for being, essentially, an Uncle Tom.

CHICAGO (AP) — Barack Obama dismissed Ralph Nader's claim that the Democratic candidate is trying to "talk white" and has failed to challenge the power structure to appeal to "white guilt."

Now there's a strategy for Nader to get some press.

In a story published Wednesday, the Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reported that Nader said he was not impressed with Obama and that the senator was playing down poverty issues. The interview took place Monday in Washington, the News reported.

While the media will likely focus on the racial overtones of the comment, Nader is making a serious point about Barack. He is avoiding certain issues so that he can appear non-threatening.

I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson?"

When asked if Obama does try to "talk white," Nader replied, "Of course." He also said that Obama doesn't want to appear to be "another politically threatening African-American politician."

Nader describes Barack to the suburban elites who are so taken by him.

"He wants to appeal to white guilt," Nader said. "You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up."

Nader doesn't seem to suck up to anyone, or to compromise his values. On the other hand, he doesn't get many votes.

The Mythology of Change

A story in Newsweek questions how Barack can change a city he's never known. Just three years into his first term, much of the last two have been spent trying to escape his new job. In his rush to get home to the family each weekend, Barack is part of a generation of Congressmen who don't get to know the city or their compatriots.

Old-guard senators bemoan their new colleagues' eagerness to get out of town on Thursday nights, a tendency that the veterans believe has helped make Washington a more partisan place. It was easier to understand the gentleman from the other party, they reason, when you saw him cheering at St. Albans' soccer games.

It was this connection that members of opposing camps felt that made it possible for them to work together in the past.

And as they contemplate capturing the White House under a banner of bipartisanship, Obama and his generation of senators face a broader dilemma: how do they work with their opponents when, for so long, they've lived their lives apart?

Is it possible to change Washington if you don't know the players? The town?

John Warner, the Republican from Virginia, retiring after six terms, remembers this Senate as "a close-knit family" where "a new senator had a big brother and his wife had a big sister." The collegial quarters made it harder to stay mad. "I remember in the good old days, there were several senators who were known to keep a pretty good bar," says Warner. "We would just go down and have a sip together and go home. The fight was over."

In Barack's case, uncomfortable in his role as Washington bachelor, he didn't spend any time developing relationships during his brief time in the capital.

Obama shunned the party scene, confining his socializing to fund-raisers, dinners with policy experts and the occasional meal with old law-school classmates. "I'm not aware that he ever went to a residential party," says Cassandra Butts, a law-school friend who helped him set up his Senate office. "He could have developed much deeper personal relationships if he had spent more time in D.C," says a senior aide who would describe a weakness only anonymously.

Yet another instance of how McCain, after more than twenty-five years there, knows his way not just around the city, but around the opposition party. The real change candidate.

Planning for Unity

The ridiculous Obama campaign event to role out the newly bought Hillary endorsement in Unity, New Hampshire is a complex thing. Here's the press advisory from the campaign.

FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Unity, NH

"UNITE FOR CHANGE" RALLY WITH BARACK OBAMA AND HILLARY CLINTON
Unity Elementary School

864 Second NH Turnpike

Unity, NH

Early Media Access: 0:00 AM

Media Pre-Set: 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Equipment must be dropped at the site by 11:30 AM; media will not have access to the site from 12:00 AM to 11:00 AM.)

Media Access: 1:00 AM

Live Truck Parking: Directed on site. Unity Elementary School soccer field. Live trucks are the only media vehicles allowed on site.

Media Parking: There is no media parking available onsite. Members of the media MUST take shuttles provided by the Obama campaign to access the event. For media who need to pre-set, a shuttle will begin running at 10:00 AM Friday, June 27, and run until 9:00 AM from the Claremont location listed below. Shuttles will resume running at 4:00 AM for other media. Media will be credentialed at the Twin State Speedway; members of the media must present a credential in order to ride the shuttle at any time. At the conclusion of the event, shuttles will resume running back to the Twin State Speedway.

Times have been adjusted to dissuade crashers.

Meet Mr. ATW

Barack is not the man from Hope any more. He's abandoning his angelic, liberal stances and has morphed into ATW - Anything to Win. The difficulty of doing this standard general election reposistioning when you're the guy who is going to be different is outlined in Time Magazine.

To some observers, Obama's transformation from upstart candidate to presumptive nominee has made him begin to look dangerously like the typical Washington politicians he so often rails against. Worried about his patriotism? He now wears a flag pin daily. Worried about his church? He left it. Think he's inexperienced? Don't fret; he's got lots of renowned advisers. Too liberal? Well, just look at his recent policy statements on defending Israel and protecting warrantless wiretapping.

It may be my imagination, but there seems to be a darker mood to Barack these days. He comes across as less warm, less innocent, less likable.

in some ways Obama has boxed himself in: in trying to counter criticisms about his experience, he's brought in a team full of gray-haired advisers who, by dint of their long-established positions and Washington relationships, represent the furthest thing from change.

Perhaps he feels ugly, giving in to his lust for power the way he has.

As he tries to maintain the fervent grass-roots enthusiasm that has gotten him this far while appealing to enough independents to take him to the White House, the Illinois Senator must both disprove and prove the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That will be hard, for sure.

The liberal blogosphere lit up angrily when Obama signed on to a controversial Senate compromise to authorize President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs last week. Earlier this month, Obama conceded that his own rhetoric on trade during the primaries was "overheated and amplified" and that he supports "opening up a dialogue" with trading partners Canada and Mexico on "how we can make this work for all people," as he told Fortune. And in his first speech after cementing the nomination, Obama assured the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent Jewish group, that he would like to see Jerusalem "remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," a surprisingly hawkish declaration that outraged the Arab world and Arab-Americans and appeared to contradict earlier statements he had made.

Barack has so effectively built his brand as the remedy to a self-serving, unprincipled government in DC, that it has to diminish his magic to behave as maliciously as he has of late.

The Tarnished Brand

While Barack will still use the words about being an agent of change, and voters will still fall for it, the brand has been effectively ruined.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama sought the Democratic presidential nomination by pledging to rise above partisan politics and bring to Washington a more public-spirited way of governing. By rejecting the public finance system to pay for his general election campaign — thus avoiding the limits it would impose on spending — Obama demonstrated that he is a politician like most others: one for whom principles must bow to expedience.

The worst of all possible damage has been done to the Change brand because now, people who defend Barack, do so by saying, "Well, McCain did the same thing!" That defense represents a guilty plea as a result of Barack having raised the bar so high for himself.

However, in first declaring his intention to seek public funds and then changing his mind, Obama is no worse than McCain. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee sought public funds during the primary, used their availability to secure bank loans and then improperly opted out of public finance when adequate private donations began to flow.

Who would have imagined, just a few weeks ago, that "Barack's no worse than McCain," would have been deemed an attempt at complimenting Barack's politics?

Obama's change of heart is vulnerable to criticism on several counts: His flip-flop shows that on some matters he cannot say what he means and then stick to his word. The switch also flies in the face of Obama's claims to be devoted to reform and transformative change.

Race Tightens

Even while less credible polls that show a big Obama lead get massive media coverage, the credible polls are ignored as they show the race to be tightening.
Gallup's daily tracker has gone from a 3 point lead for Barack yesterday to a tie today, a pretty big change. Rasmussen keeps Barack's lead at 6.

There's more good news for McCain.

Just 22% now say the McCain is too old to be President, down from 30% who held that view earlier. Forty-one percent (41%) continue to believe that Obama is too inexperienced.

The race has remained very stable in recent weeks. Without leaners, Obama’s support has stayed between 45% and 47% for fourteen straight days. With leaners, he has stayed between 48% and 50% for twenty straight days.

McCain, too, has been very stable.

his support has been at 40% or 41% on eighteen of the last twenty-one days. Twice, he inched up a point above that range and once he slipped a point below. With leaners, McCain’s support has stayed between 42% and 45% every day since Obama clinched the Democratic Presidential Nomination (see recent daily results).

Hollywood Hits

A bunch of new Hollywood hits have offered their support to The Chosen One, who had a fundraiser in California yesterday. Barack took in an estimate $5M - proof of his moonbat status.

Actors Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, John Malkovich and Dennis Quaid were just some of the stars in the audience, which also included supermodels Cindy Crawford and Heidi Klum.

And Klum's husband, singer Seal, was there as well. Seal

sang two songs to fire up the crowd, many of whom had shelled out 28,500-dollar-per-head for a VIP dinner, benefiting the Democratic National Committee, followed by a 2,300-dollar-per-person reception.

But there were other singers there.

Other celebrities included Black Eyed Peas front-man Will.i.am, immaculate in an ivory silk suit, porkpie hat and Nike sneakers emblazoned with Obama’s face and the "Obama 08" logo.

This crew of opinion leaders joins an impressive list of endorsers that includes Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Robert Reich, Ted Kennedy, Tom Hanks, NARAL, John Edwards, Jane Fonda, The Teamsters and Steel Workers unions, Moveon.org, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Reggae Singer Cocoa Tea, and Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef, just to name a few of the characters of questionable credibility who have given their dubious nod to Barack.

The ticket prices match the maximum allowable contributions to national committees and individual candidates.

Barack, of course, doesn't take money from any special interests.

Media Lust

The media continues to revel in the story that is Barack.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has an index of what makes the news each week of the campaign season. Here is what happened from June 16 to 22:

Obama appeared as a "significant or dominant" factor in 76 percent of stories, compared to 53 percent for McCain, according to PEJ. Some stories last week about Obama included his decision to abandon public financing, Al Gore's endorsement and Obama's apology to two Muslim women that were banned from seating behind his podium at a rally.

It's tough for McCain to compete with those bad news stories for Barack.

Michelle Obama and President Bush also played a key role in campaign coverage last week. In a measure of the campaign newshole, the potential First Lady took up 9 percent of campaign stories. The press has focused on whether Michelle Obama is trying to remake her image following criticism for her remarks that she was proud of her country "for the first time" in her adult life.

Meanwhile, the press does its best to hurt McCain.

In the coverage of McCain, Bush helped drive the campaign narrative taking up 7 percent of the campaign newshole. Here, the press has focused on the Bush-McCain relationship. (Critics have said McCain is pursuing a third term of Bush's presidency). In an advertisement last week, McCain says that he stood up to Bush about the environment, however they took the same position on offshore drilling.

Polls

The best of the current presidential polls is the Rasmussen daily tracker, which tests 3000 likely voters and shows Barack having a 5 point lead.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows Barack Obama attracting 46% of the vote while John McCain earns 40%. When "leaners" are included, Obama leads 49% to 44%. Three percent (3%) say they will vote for a third-party option while 4% remain undecided (see recent daily results).

Both candidates are doing well amongst the voters in their own parties.

Currently, Obama wins the vote from 80% of Democrats while McCain is supported by 82% of Republicans. The two contenders are essentially even among unaffiliated voters.

But the key to this poll is that it demonstrates what a poor predictor the polls are at this point of what is going to happen in November.

However, one of the key stats in the race remains the potential for volatility in a race with two little known candidates—32% of voters are either uncommitted at this time or could change their mind before Election Day. Thirty-six percent (36%) say they are certain to vote for Obama while 32% are that certain of their support for McCain (see recent demographic notes).

There's another poll, meanwhile, that shows a big lead for Barack - this one from the LA Times and Bloomberg. Like the Newsweek poll that preceded it, the lead doesn't match the norm of the other polls, and its fundamentals appear flawed.

The Newsweek poll, which appeared several days ago, shows a 15 point lead for Barack. But it has a small sample size of about 896 registered voters. Polls of registered voters aren't as accurate as ones which only poll those who are deemed likely to vote based on their answers to qualifying questions.

The new poll from the Times shows a 12 point lead for Barack, has a sample size of a bit over 1100, and is also a poll of registered voters.

On a four-man ballot including independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, voters chose Obama over McCain by an even larger margin, 48% to 33%.

Gallup, meanwhile, in its daily tracking poll, shows Barack leading by 3 points with a sample size of 2587 registered voters. This one is good because of its much larger sample size, but questionable because of the lack of a test to see if respondents are likely to vote.

The best of the bunch is the tracking poll from Rasmussen.

The realclearpolitics average of all national polls has ticked up to a mean 7.5% lead for Barack on the strength of the big leads in the Newsweek and LA Times polls. But these polls are, at this point, aberrations.

Barack's Inexperience

A new column in Newsweek is trying to twist Barack's lack of experience into something different.

...here's something I bet you didn't know: If Obama becomes president, he will have spent more time serving as a state legislator (eight years) than anyone who has occupied the White House since Abraham Lincoln.

Is that because everyone elected president over the past 145 years has been lacking in experience, or because we don't view two terms in a local legislative body to be demonstrative of massive leadership abilities?

John McCain has been a member of the U.S. Senate since 1986; do I really mean to suggest that Obama's eight years in the Illinois Senate (not the most august deliberative body, as anyone who has seen it will attest) provide the same preparation for the presidency? Well, not exactly.

What Alan Ehrenhalt does argue is that being in the U.S. Senate isn't the best experience for anything. No argument there. But my problem with the whole premise of this, and most arguments offered on the experience issue, is that people make their arguments based on political experience alone. When I argue that Barack doesn't have the experience for the job, it's not just his lack of political experience. It's an evaluation of his entire resume - there's just not much there.

During the years that Obama served in Springfield, 1997-2005, he was forced to wrestle with the minutiae of health-care policy, utility deregulation, transportation funding, school aid, and a host of other issues that are vitally important to America's coming years, but that U.S. senators are usually able to dispose of with a quick once-over. State legislators have to do this largely on their own, without ubiquitous staff guidance, because staffing is not lavish even in the more professional state capitols.

Whatever. Eight fidgety years in the state legislature, combined with a law degree but no law career of note, and a couple of years of community service, hardly shows a history of leadership. That's the real argument. John McCain's 22 years in the Senate isn't great by itself, although it does show his willingness to focus on one job for a long time. Barack has never been serious about a single job in his 'career'. But you add in McCain's military service, his U.S. Naval Academy training, and his two terms in Congress, and it blows Barack out of the water.

As for the fall campaign, I am not urging anyone to vote for Obama, or against McCain, on the issue of experience. What I am suggesting is that experience itself is a slippery commodity to measure—that there is no easy way to guess what sort of political career is ideal for a president—and that we would all be better off just listening to what the candidates say and how they say it, and spending a little time looking into what sort of people they are.

Listening to what they say only takes you so far since presidential candidates say whatever they have to in order to win election. But when you look into Barack's past associations to determine what sort of person he is, that, of course, is when voting for Barack becomes impossible.

Black Flack

Given the flack over the comments of McCain aid Charlie Black regarding the benefit that McCain would get from another terror attack, the perspective offered by Jake Tapper of ABC is valuable.

...it's worth recalling that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, in August 2007, while campaigning in Concord, NH, similarly noted the political advantage a terrorist attack might give the Republican candidate.

Which Hillary then turned to her own advantage.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord. "So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that."

Hillary took some heat for it, but she was politicizing terror, wasn't she?

Hillary was pilloried for the comments at the time, with then-rivals such as Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn, saying, "Frankly, I find it tasteless to discuss political implications when talking about a potential terrorist attack on the United States."

Just goes to show that these attempts by candidates to punish one another for saying things that are obvious and true and harmless are silly. I had hoped for more from the new kinda politics.

New Politics of Pettiness

Once again comes evidence from the campaign of Change that there is nothing different with Barack - he eagerly engages in the politics of pettiness.

Barack Obama’s campaign held a conference call with former 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben Veniste to excoriate McCain adviser Charlie Black — accusing him of engaging in the “politics of fear” by speculating that a terrorist attack could help McCain in November.

It is true that any conversation about international affairs helps McCain, as it's the one area in which polls indicate voters trust him more than Barack. But in the world of Gotcha, it was a dumb thing to say. He certainly wasn't engaging in any politics of fear - more the politics of self-destruction.

Black, a long-time senior aid to McCain, told Fortune Magazine that a new
attack “would be a big advantage to him,” saying that the assassination of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto last December helped McCain win the GOP nomination.

“His knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief,” he said. “It helped us.”

McCain, of course, realized the mistake and offered an attempt to preempt the silliness that he knew would be forthcoming from the Campaign of Same Old.

Asked about his aide’s remarks, McCain said “I strenuously disagree,” adding “I cannot imagine why he said it. It’s not true.” Black himself said he deeply regretted his comments, calling them inappropriate. “I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire life to protecting his country,” he said.

In Barack's world, speaking the truth is disgraceful.

Obama’s campaign released a statement last night calling Black’s comments a “complete disgrace.” Spokesman Bill Burton said “Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics.”

Does Contrived Work?

How silly is the whole Unity thing.

Hillary and Barack unified? Riiiiiggght. A tie vote in Unity means Barack and Hillary are unified? Nope. Hillary won New Hampshire but Barack won the nomination equals unified. No, not exactly.

But the duo will go to Unity New Hampshire on Friday where they each received 127 votes, and use the dramatic symbolism the town represents (???) to blow away the world with how much they love each other!

In announcing that decision Monday, the Obama campaign was less than subtle in its symbolism. The announcement noted, for example, that in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire last January, the town of Unity split evenly between Obama and Clinton - 107 votes to 107 votes.

Some people, who haven't thought about the true symbolism of the meeting place, are taking it to mean something even more... unified.

But Unity could also be a point in the argument that Obama should pick Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, an argument he doesn’t appear to want to make but others in the Democratic Party do.

Together, their vote total in Unity nearly equaled the entire vote for the Republican field, 214 for Obama-Clinton, 216 for the 21 Republicans on the New Hampshire ballot.

Which means... what exactly?

McCain edged out second place finisher Mitt Romney. But no vote combination of McCain and any of his Republican rivals came close to equaling the Obama-Clinton combo.

Now that - that's powerful.

Edwards Not Confident

Elizabeth Edwards doesn't have much confidence in the power of Barack.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate and vice presidential nominee John Edwards, predicted that November's contest between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain would be close.

She's right, of course. The odds of Barack surviving his inexperience and sleazy friends is not very good, no matter how much money he spends.

Interviewed by Skype video before an audience at the Personal Democracy Forum 2008 conference in the Time Warner Center here after weather problems prevented her from flying to N.Y. to speak at the annual gathering, Edwards predicted, "We are going to need to fight for every vote. This is going to be a close election."

Matthew Dowd, a a political guy on ABC News and the chief political strategist for Bush/Cheney in 2004 made an interesting point on This Week Sunday regarding Barack and money. He said its tough to spend $84 million dollars between the convention and the general election, and he's not sure that you can use more than that effectively. Maybe that's why Elizabeth isn't feeling cocky.

"I said I would work as hard as I could to make sure he is the next president," said Elizabeth Edwards of Obama. Electing him president "is enormously important," she said, "but I don't think it is by any means assured."

Sealing the Deal

The Obama campaign has apparently flipped on the idea of using a slightly modified presidential seal to represent the candidate.

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs told CNN "that was a one time thing for a one time event."

Good decision. Going from the superficial to the super-scary, Democrats are trying to figure out if Barack's platform is a repeat of past mistakes.

While Sen. Obama is certainly more articulate than his party’s recent presidential candidates, his platform is not much different than that offered by Democratic nominees Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry in 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 respectively.

If Barack loses, Democrats will finally have to face the fact that Americans don't care for their liberal policies. If he wins, despite being dealt the best hand of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, Democrats will make the mistake of thinking liberalism is popular.

His foreign policy is centered on his opposition to the war in Iraq, a position consistent with the past Democratic message that the Republicans are too quick to fight, rhetorically and militarily, rather than talk and cooperate with America’s enemies.

Of course, there's really not a question. Democrats are not popular with the core of America which is 74% white.

McCain is favored among all white Americans by 12 points (51 to 39 percent)... consistent with how well Republicans have done in several of the most recent presidential elections. In 2000, Al Gore lost white voters by 12 points. In 2004, George W. Bush had a 17-point advantage over John Kerry among whites.

How have Democrats traditionally won? Only when they convince the mainstream that they're not so scary.

In 1976, Carter defeated then-President Gerald Ford in part by only losing the white vote by five points. In 1992, Bill Clinton lost the white vote to George H.W. Bush by only one point.

So, there's nothing new about the fact that Democrats have trouble winning national elections. And it proves that race is not the reason Barack will lose, especially where he will do so well with minorities. He will lose because of his willingness to affiliate with radical extremists, and because of his own extreme liberalism.

Barack's Race Game

Here's an outline on how Barack's race card game works according to John Pitney at National Review Online.

On Friday, Senator Obama warned a cheering audience about the Republicans. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

You heard that one, didn't you, over the weekend? Even though Barack said it just once and the audio wasn't great - the media is all charged up and reporting the hell out of it.

A few months ago, historian Sean Wilentz dubbed this tactic the “race-baiter card.” Smear your opponents as racists, and if there’s no evidence for the claim, accuse them of using “coded language.” There is no authoritative racial codebook, so the charge is easy to lodge. The campaign need not make such accusations directly, since sympathetic writers will do so.

It's an easy game to play, since the co-conspirators are preprogrammed to be coordinated in their thinking - they don't even realize when they're dancing along.

Consider Senator Clinton’s “3 A.M.” television spot. The ad did not mention Obama. It merely said that if a crisis erupts while our kids are asleep, we need an experienced president to take the call. A race-neutral appeal, right? Not according to Professor Orlando Patterson. Noting that the ad’s sleeping children were white, he recalled the silent movie Birth of a Nation. This racist epic glorified the Klan, picturing black men as threatening and brutish. “The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.”

Just like doing a waltz, the smart people start moving to the beat.

Patterson’s charge was ridiculous. The ad was a lineal descendant of a 1968 Nixon commercial, which showed a nighttime still of the White House, along with ominous music and a voiceover saying that the president’s decisions “can affect the future of your family for generations to come.” Nixon’s opponent was Hubert Humphrey, a Norwegian American.

Remember when Barack was accused of being an elitist after he made his elitist comments in San Francisco to an elite group of donors - the 'bitter' comments?

Yet journalist David K. Shipler wrote: “‘Elitist’ is another word for ‘arrogant,’ which is another word for ‘uppity,’ that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.”

This "thinking" is insidious and carries great political power.

Last year, Joseph Biden got reams of bad publicity when he said that Obama is “articulate.” An article in the New York Times suggested that the word had a subtext: “articulate ... for a black person.” The writer explained: “Such a subtext is inherently offensive because it suggests that the recipient of the ‘compliment’ is notably different from other black people.”

So McCain will have to be careful in trying to utter any truths about Barack.

In the months ahead, expect similar attacks from Obama and his allies. “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” he recently said. He failed to add that the knife can be imaginary.

It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations.

So just picture how Obama supporters would react if McCain tried various compliments.

“Barack Obama is extremely intelligent.”

McCain is hinting that black people have lower IQs than white people.

“Barack Obama is very nice.”

McCain is obviously playing to the stereotype of violent black males. He’s suggesting that most black people are anything but nice.

Does Experience Matter

Barack should be running in another dozen years or so.

Last week's Zogby poll revealed some concern over the fact that Barack isn't qualified to be president.

Asked whether Obama has the necessary experience to be President, 54% said that he does not, while 43% said they believe he is experienced enough for the White House.

That's pretty amazing. As is the fact that more than a third of Democrats are already aware enough of his sparse resume to deem him unprepared.

Among Democrats, 62% said they think he has enough experience, while 36% agreed that he was too inexperienced to be President. Among those age 35-54, a majority – 55% – said they think he has too little experience to be President. Among men, 55% said he was too inexperienced, while 53% of women agreed.

You can't fool all the people all the time.