Struggling to not say anything that would peg him as ‘the black candidate.’
Obama is telling you exactly what you want to hear.
Historical reasons against Obama, counterexamples
No Democrat who hails from north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected since 1960.
No President has ever been elected from the Mountain Time Zone.
No candidate in the modern primary era has ever been elected in November after failing to win more than one of the nation’s seven largest states in either its pre-convention primary or, if the state didn’t hold a primary, its caucuses.
No Republican has ever been elected after failing to carry Colorado in the primaries (McCain lost it to Mitt Romney). No Republican has ever been elected after failing to carry Georgia in the priamries (McCain lost it to Mike Huckabee). No candidate from either party has ever been elected while receiving less than 19 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus (McCain received 13 percent), except when a native son was running (Tom Harkin in 1992).
No candidate in modern times has ever been elected president with a voting record that could be identified as his party’s most liberal or conservative, yet in 2007 Obama was designated as the former (by the National Journal).
No candidate has ever been elected from the incumbent party when the sitting president had a Gallup approval rating below 40 percent.
No candidate arguably since Abraham Lincoln has been elected president with as little political experience as Obama.
No candidate as old as John McCain has ever been elected to a first term.
(via fivethirtyeight.com)
John Weaver, a former chief strategist for McCain.
McCain does not like to follow a script. People who know him said that it may be a challenge to apply the Bush model — strict adherence to the message of the day by the candidate combined with a relentless drive to define the opponent negatively — to a campaign not known so far for discipline or consistency.
Obama’s campaign has mostly been able to avoid high-profile policy contradictions between its central staff and its candidate.
That’s a testament to Obama’s messaging, which has been more tightly controlled than McCain’s. But it’s also probably attributable in part to Obama’s aversion during his relatively short career in public service to taking stark stances on controversial issues.
Over his long career, McCain has been out front on a number of controversial issues — and his occasional penchant for heretical stances that diverge from GOP orthodoxy is put in sharper relief through his differences with some of his key advisers.
Obama spotted in secret China meeting. Hillary finds ladies' stuff in house, storms off in a huff.
-spam
Every New York Times headline is like a love letter to Obama.
No shit. And every picture is worth a thousand words.
DAVID RANSON is head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc.
NOVAK: Obama's difficulty in reaching the 50 percent mark reflects an overwhelmingly white undecided vote of 10 to 15 percent.
Clearly, Obama has not yet convinced the people to accept a young, inexperienced African American as their president. Obama had virtually clinched the nomination when white working men in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia poured out to vote and comfortably delivered their states to Hillary Clinton. This was not because of unalterable affection for her.
HALPERIN: To Do in The 100 Days Remaining
Both 1. Pick a strong running mate. 2. Give a boffo convention acceptance speech. 3. Dominate the debates.
Obama 1. Finesse and muscle the Clinton situation so the former First Couple (and their supporters) are happy 2. Find more ways to clear the commander-in-chief bar (Chicago knows he isn’t there yet.).
McCain 1. Get his maverick, independent, likeable mojo back — and get Obama out of his head. 2. Find issues on which he can play offense and not defense.