News flash from the city!

Some Americans are racists.

What will the Obama campaign DO?

I'm thinking that Team Obama was fully aware going in that there is a hard core of voters who will not vote for the black guy, not no way, not no how. Many of these voters are democrats who might have voted for Hillary (or another Democrat).

I think the strategy is twofold: Yeah, they will not vote for the black guy, but some of them will sit home in disgust. Some of them will vote for Bob Barr. Only some would vote for McCain. So that tends to cut the losses somewhat. Part duex is to counterbalance those losses with increases in registration and participation in the black community. I think we can take it as a given that the Obama campaign will register many thousands of new voters by election day, and will get a much higher percentage of those voters to the polls than either Kerry or Gore did.

Will it be enough to counterbalance the 2.5 percent mentioned in the AP/Yahoo poll? November 4th will tell.

McCranky is providing unlooked-for help of late with his complete inability to utter a coherent paragraph about the economy. Despite his attempts to tie it to Obama, he owns this crises and the Obama campaign is fairly hammering him on it. They are also quite cleverly reminding voters of McCain's support of privatizing social security: Not looking like such a good idea given the recent news. McCain will still win in the older voter demographic. But not by as much.

One thing is for certain: This is NOT the same campaign team which ran the show for either Kerry or Gore. They haven't been perfect, but they've been WAY more aggressive. Except for a brief bounce during the GOP convention, the McCranky/Barbie team has been playing full-time defense.

Again, will it be enough? I dunno. IIRC I said going in that I was skeptical about the chances of any black candidate winning the White House--even more so about one whose middle name was "Hussein" and whose last name rhymed with "Osama".

Actually I thought the first black president (not counting Bill Clinton) would be a Republican. A few years back I thought maybe Gen. Powell or maybe JC Watts. Now, no credible black GOP candidates on the horizon.

I expect the long knives to come out next. On both sides--you know they've been saving the Good Stuff for the stretch run.