Thursday’s campaign round-up

CB says: “We’ve been hearing for months that less-educated voters are reluctant to back Obama. The latest data from Gallup suggests the conventional wisdom is wrong:”

The fundamental problem with this argument is that there are no longer any candidates left for these groups to back within the Democratic party. This doesn’t mean less-educated voters have suddenly come around and now like Obama. It means they may be holding their noses and only prefer him over McCain. They haven’t come around in any substantive way. Their other choices have disappeared. Construing this as support for Obama is misleading because it means absolutely nothing about whether Obama has increased his appeal in such groups. If Clinton were back in the race, there would likely be no significant shift toward Obama at all in these groups.

Now that there are no remaining Democratic challengers, Obama is free to ignore the issues of concern to these voters, as he has done, in order to focus on attracting people at the fringes. There is no rational reason why groups that formerly disliked him should now find him appealing when he has done so little to attract them, but has only inherited them. So, this kind of celebration makes no sense.

I nominate IFP for “Best Troll of the Week.” Hilarious!

Run, Jesse, run! I think he’ll draw more votes from Coleman than from Franken. (Jesse VENTURA, that is. That other Jesse has gone “nuts.”)

Whoever posts as IFP takes the cowardly route of reading my comment on a different thread, and instead of addressing it, coming to this thread and pretending that criticizing Obama as a human being and a candidate is the same as calling him “a brash young Negro,” something I have never done. IFP is a coward and bully hiding behind a fake name. You find him funny to the extent that you hate me, but you might ask yourself why I make you angry if I am so obviously crazy and your guy is so wonderful.

Note that there is no resemblance between my actual post #2 and IFP’s #1 (which had not yet appeared when I wrote my own comment).

“Insane Fake Professor” is satirical right? He’s gotta be!

Yes. But the real trick is to read the next presumably real comment from the person he is satirizing, Mary, and determine which is more absurd. Once you can do that, you will have acheived true enlightenment young Grasshopper.

A month ago Mary sounded rather rabid. Unfortunately Obama is helping her credibility. At the rate he’s going, he will give her ample reason to tell us, “Told you so.”

You call me a troll because I don’t share your blind adoration of your pantsless emperor. You attack me and call me crazy just because I support Senator Clinton (and am going to send her some money…soon). And yet you say people are “backing” Mr. Barack Star just because they’re voting for him. Since when does voting for someone count for anything? Who’s really crazy here?

A little Limbaugh/dittohead humor in my post at #13

PS: I like you Mary. I don’t like Hillary though. For the same reasons I’m starting to not like Obama. My enthusiasm is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down since yesterday.

Lynn said: At the rate he’s going, he will give her ample reason to tell us, “Told you so.”

He already has. But, if the shoe were on the other foot, folks here would make Clinton diehards look like pikers.

This website needs some balance (so does the internet in general). I think most of the regulars here are just having fun or perhaps using me as a whipping post to take out their daily frustrations. Doesn’t matter.

If you look at the list of bad words one liberal can call another, the adjectives aren’t the ones on George Carlin’s list. Republican and racist are right up there at the top. You don’t have to be one to get called those things — you just have to piss someone off. Obama thinks he owns the race card and folks here don’t like it when anyone else talks about race, even in the same terms as the scholarly literature or Obama himself. On the other hand, one measure of the lack of sensitivity to women’s issues or ageism here is that no one minds being called a sexist or ageist. Pathetic for a supposedly progressive website, but the people who understand that issues were probably Clinton supporters, the people who were driven out of here a long time ago.

Obama leads McCain in Illinois by 13, 50% to 37%. (I have a strong hunch that margin will be much higher on Election Day.)

perhaps, but what would have been a solid bet two days ago, is looking a little more sketchy now. i can promise you there is at least one illinoisan vote he won’t be getting now.

Short fuse — thank you for asking.

Low education goes with low income, demographically speaking. So, all of the poverty issues apply. It also goes with jobs that lack health care benefits, lack of pension plans (making social security a big issue), and trade issues (NAFTA and unions). Obama has been weaker than other candidates on those, especially compared to people like Edwards and even Clinton. You can also look at child care and education itself. Low education voters want quality public schools. Middle class voters want choice, tax credits for private schools, and support for college expenses. Obama focuses on NCLB but his stand on merit pay for teachers is majorly wrong, suggesting he might not know how best to reform NCLB. That’s why so many teacher’s unions supported Clinton instead of Obama. Strengthening community colleges is especially important, but I haven’t seen him talk about that.

Specific examples. Gas prices hit especially hard for low education voters but Obama’s insistence that high gas prices will encourage people to take public transit or reduce driving and thus fix energy problems ignores that lower income people not only pay a higher percentage of their income on cars but have less flexibility about where they work, what kind of car they can buy, and are harder hit when transportation-related inflation drives up prices of milk, food and similar necessities. Further, public transit may not exist where such voters live or go to the places where they work, or be reimbursed by their typical employers. Obama ignored that when he was ridiculing Clinton’s tax holiday (which came with legislation to prevent gas companies from raising prices to offset reduced taxes). Another example. Obama was proposing interventional early education for disadvantaged and at-risk preschoolers whereas Clinton was proposing universal early education via mandatory pre-kindergarten. Clinton’s plan would have had a broader impact on all groups, including those with low education (whose children need the boost). Obama’s would have affected primarily minority groups in inner-city neighborhoods who are most likely to do very poorly in school and drop out. Low education voters saw Clinton’s plan as more to their advantage, except for those who would have been targeted by Obama’s plan, who voted disproportionately for him, just as the so-called low-education voters voted disproportionately for Clinton (a phenomenon routinely attributed to racism, not issues).

Mary said:

CB says: “We’ve been hearing for months that less-educated voters are reluctant to back Obama. The latest data from Gallup suggests the conventional wisdom is wrong:”

The fundamental problem with this argument is that there are no longer any candidates left for these groups to back within the Democratic party. This doesn’t mean less-educated voters have suddenly come around and now like Obama. It means they may be holding their noses and only prefer him over McCain. They haven’t come around in any substantive way.

CB didn’t frame the argument in terms of “liking” Obama. He framed it in terms of what actually matters – who they’ll vote for. If more of them are now saying they’ll vote for Obama, then they most certainly have “come around in a substantive way.” Clinton would have had plenty of Dems holding their noses as well.

Did this website get a whole new crowd of commenters or something? How can so many people be getting worked up about IFP and taking her at face value?

Mary, will you get the hell off the computer and hie yourself to a mental health professional? This is what Benen said/quoted:

We’ve been hearing for months that less-educated voters are reluctant to back Obama…in June, voters with a high school education or less were as likely to prefer John McCain as to prefer Barack Obama for president…In June, the two candidates were tied at 43% each

“Back” and “prefer for president” mean that they are going to vote for Obama, contrary to earlier predictions of doom from some Clinton backers that this demographic would refuse to do so. No one but the most determined-to-be-petty-and-tendentious reader would sit here arguing for more than an hour that anyone implied these people are also planning to invite Obama over for dinner and home movies. They are voting for him, he is winning the election and he will be president. Get over it, you loon.

That “new Gallup poll” is from June 15-June 18.

HUSSEIN Obama had a bad day yesterday.

There’s really nothing better than IFP and Mary side by side. It’s pretty much the only thing that makes the latter’s irrationality, incoherence and apparently bottomless bitterness tolerable.

Any election is about choices; choices in turn can be more or less informed. My contention since the start of the primary campaign was that lower-information voters–people who can’t or choose not to hang around sites like this–were more likely to back the Clinton Brand. This probably was reinforced by the media coverage of Obama as well as the racial sensitivities of those whom St. Hillary referred to as “hard-working whites.” Or maybe they just liked the Gas Tax Pander.

With the Clintons finally defeated, though, the choice for this chunk of voters is limited to a Democrat who’s at least trying to speak to their needs, or a Republican with whom they might have greater cultural affinity but who promises more of same as far as Bush economic policies. To the extent that Obama and Democratic surrogates–hopefully including the Clintons–draw that contrast, it stands to reason that the Democratic candidate will do better.

Mary writes: Obama was proposing interventional early education for disadvantaged and at-risk preschoolers whereas Clinton was proposing universal early education via mandatory pre-kindergarten.

That reason alone would have prevented me voting for Hillary. Mandatory pre-kindergarten? Just how young are we going to take them? I suspect you could put headphones around a pregnant woman’s abdomen and play Teaching Company lectures for nine months. Day care and pre-kindergarten should NEVER be mandatory. How about men and/or women who are able to be home with their little ones. You’re going to make them send their kids away when they’re four? Three? When my kids were little if you’d tried that with me you’d have had to pry them from my cold dead hands (to cop a stupid phrase).

familiar with Jenny Holzer, Crissa?

I think most of the regulars here are […] using me as a whipping post to take out their daily frustrations — Mary, @16

Um… Mary? Are you aware of the difference between a “whipping *post* and a “whipping *boy*”? Since you claim to be a college professor, I’d have expected you to, but…

Being tied to you while being whipped *as well* would, I think, constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”. “Unusual”, for certain-sure.