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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (346834)	8/15/2007 1:41:23 PM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575292

You made my point. I see on TV Obama is back peddling on his latest gaffe. * * *

To: Road Walker who wrote (346834)	8/15/2007 2:18:56 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575292

What Republicans See in Obama In an interview with the Washington Post this week, Barack Obama laid out as explicitly as he has to date what many believe is his strongest argument for his candidacy against that of Hillary Clinton: that he is a less polarizing figure on the national scene. "I believe I can bring the country together in a way she cannot do," Obama said. "If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be running." In making this case, Obama can find both affirmation and reason for concern in an intriguing and overlooked nugget in the Post-ABC poll on the Democratic presidential race released late last month. Simply put: independents and Republicans seem to recognize that Obama has the potential to appeal to voters outside the Democratic base -- but Democratic voters themselves don't yet seem to be taking that fully into account in their thinking about whom to nominate. Asked which Democratic candidate would have the "best chance to defeat the Republican nominee in the general election," 54 percent of Democrats polled said Clinton would, compared to 22 percent who said Obama would. But when the same question was put to independents and Republicans -- which Democrat would have the best chance in 2008 -- those voters had a notably different view: 35 percent of independents said Clinton would have the best chance, and 29 percent said Obama would; 37 percent of Republicans said Clinton would have the best chance, compared with 33 percent who said Obama would. (John Edwards was deemed most electable by 9-10 percent of voters in all three groups of voters.)What to make of this 17-19 point gap in the estimation of Clinton's general election prospects between Democrats and other voters? One might surmise that independents and Republicans -- the very voters whose views matter most, come November 2008, in determining how electable a Democrat would be -- are basing their estimation of Clinton's chances on their own misgivings about her, and the misgivings of other independents and Republicans. Democrats, on the other hand, appear so far not to be making as much of Clinton's unpopularity among many groups of voters. Whether there is an increased reckoning among Democrats on this score will likely help determine whether Obama is able to carve into Clinton's status as the party's frontrunner. Chris Runkle, a 51-year-old analyst with the New Jersey Department of Criminal Justice, was among the Democrats who responded that Clinton would have the better chance. She said in an interview that she did worry that "the conservatives hate her," and that if Clinton wins the nomination "there's always the fear" that "there might be a vote against her as opposed to for whomever is the Republican candidate." But Runkle also gave weight to Clinton's fundraising machine and the importance of name recogntion and experience in winning the general election. And she said she had been pleasantly surprised at how Clinton had won over people in New York after being elected to the Senate, and hoped that perhaps the same could happen nationwide. " I thought she'd have trouble in New York, I thought, 'aw, jeez, it's all going to come up again,' but she seems to be handling herself well," said Runkle. But Leslie Gallagher, an independent from Fairfax County, Va. has doubts about Clinton's ability to change people's minds about herself, and thinks Obama would have a better chance of winning in 2008. "Too many people say, 'There's something about her I don't like,'" said Gallagher, a 50-year-old homemaker who voted for John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. "She's been in the public eye for a long time, and everyone's had a long time to form opinions about her. I'm not sure she can turn it around." --Alec MacGillis blog.washingtonpost.com