3 years as a senator is simply not enough experience to be president.

Kennedy's remark about Hillary not having leadership for the VP position was astounding in its stupidity.  Her experience and command over the issues is precisely why she won the older voters.

Obama can't win them because he lacks that quality.  It's transparent.

If they are being polite, they will say that us old folks don't know what we are talking about when we say that Obama has a major problem with seniors.

The message here is that the voters that are more likely to show up on election day are the ones that are more likely to vote for McCain.

This morning, on a 'progressive' blog that shall remain nameless, I saw a comment about McCain that was one of the nastiest comments I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot) - including phrases like 'cancer-covered skinny ass', 'feeble deranged brain', 'white-haired death walker', etc. It's just unbelievable out there.

I'm no McCain fan, believe me, but there's really no need to talk this way or engage in these insulting personal attacks.

Oh yeah, in the diary I posted here about 30 hours or so ago...

;-)

Obama doesn't just "not do well" among older voters, his numbers are disasterous.

And the reason should be obvious -- the messaging of the Obama campaign couldn't be more alienating to older voters if it had been designed specifically to piss them off.

You want to send a subliminal message telling older voters that you think they are worthless?
Emphasize "new" voters and a "new" coalition.

You want to have older voters question whether you'd be a good president?  Make "change" your mantra, but make sure that the nature of he "change" is completely amorphous.  Older voters have lived throgh lots of "change" and know that "change" is not a virtue in and of itself.  They want to know exactly what you intend to change, and how it will affect them.

You want older voters do wonder if you are really on their side?  Use Republican framing like "Social Security crisis" on issues they care about.  

And if you really want to alienate older voters, treat the working class with contempt and derision.  Older voters created the middle class as we know it -- most of the more senior ones most of them were born into the 'working class', and most of the rest had parents who came from working class backgrounds.  

The problem with TeamObama's haste to write off groups that don't serve the immediate purpose of flattering the "youth" vote or desperate, validation seeking "Creative Class"* is that that kind of shallow trendiness evaporates quickly when the product under it shows itself to be the same crappy old thing, maybe even crappier. (eg, Doin' the Dew!; Drink Sprite, the Ghetto Soft Drink!; Starblechs coffee. Ugh, whoever thought up the genius move of dosing perfectly innocent espresso beans with caramel fakery deserves to be punished by being forced to drink it at the current cost.)

http://insightanalytical.wordpress.com/

Watch this BBC video and reflect on the pressures being exerted by the Democratic party et al to stop the democratic process of voting in the primaries.

It's scary...

The responses here all boil down to look at Obama's web site. That's just silly. We hold candidates accountable for policies and promises, not websites. So the dogwhistle in Iowa matters far more to me than the website.

Further, if there's one thing we've learned from dealing our experience with Bush, it's look to the base. While the press was swooning over Bush giving them nicknames and feeding us pablum about compassionate conservatism, they might have looked at the base, seen that Bush's base was and is filled with Christianist lunatics ("God is in the White House"), and reported it.

Similarly, a consequence of Obama's relatively more youthful base is that, very naturally, they place less priority on what happens when you're old. That's the nature of youth; that's how I was. But that also means that a big part of Obama's base has no reason to push to protect Social Security, and so SS may end up being a lot lower on Obama's list of priorities than some would like. Obama's dogwhistle tells me that; Donna Brazile tells me that; and the contempt and derision expressed toward "aging Boomers" by some in Obama's base tells me that. I don't think the contempt is in the majority, but it's there, I'm sure that others besides me have experienced it, and it should be slapped down hard by other Obama supporters, just like misogyny, but generally, just like misogyny, is isn't. (One of the many reasons Unity doesn't play for me, and possibly for many.)

There are 70 in Orlando, FL, 21 in Nashua NH, 59 in Albuquerque, NM and 29 in Pueblo, Colorado all pledged to do the same...some are hitting the streets right now.

I promise we won't distinguish between young and old. We are registering voters in a nationwide program to increase Democratic participation in elections.

Obama launched and funded this program before the results of NC and IN were known.

Over 60% of voters registered by Obama in 2008 have voted at the polls. That has made a difference.

How many votes do you think you might have gotten with you very first comment:

[Its just goofy. What we have here are the stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, grief, acceptance.
First, denial that Hillary would lose, now anger at Obama's flaws and faults, then bargaining over the terms of defeat. Grieve and then accept it folks. And then lets get to work electing the person who after Hillary most reflects your vision of what this country should be, and there should be no question that it is Barack Obama.]

By the way... Michelle hates Clinton....
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Close-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama.

Who is kidding whom here? The hatred for the Clintons (and their supporters) is at an all time high in the elite core of the Democratic Party. It's palpable and it's ugly. And Obama has ridden it to the nomination.

Watch the Obama flip the bird at Clinton and her supporters - and watch the state of frenzy it created in the Obama crowd. Folks may argue that he didn't flip the bird, however, don't tell the Obama crowd that he didn't flip the bird. They saw it and they loved it and they worked themselves into an anti-Clinton frenzy.... it looked like a Reverend Wright anti-American sermon.

As an older voter am I supposed to care only about the issues that directly concern me -- social security and medicare, and the cost of nursing homes?  But I have kids and grandkids, and I care about them and so I care about the problems that they face--the cost of health care, the soaring costs of college, the quality of education, the housing meltdown, the dollar's lack of vitality, the cost of gasoline, the rise of China, and so ad infinitum.  If I want magic and wonderful rhetoric, I can read a book or go to the movies, but if I want practical solutions to the problems which beset us in these waning days of the worst administration ever, I want a leader who knows what those problems are, who can at least acknowledge their existence and tell me directly that she (or he) is willing to TRY to tackle them.

While I agree that appealing in the GE to older voters may be a difficult needle for Obama to thread, his focus and strategy has been and continues to be on winning the nomination.  That comes first, before running in the GE.

Since I like both Clinton and Obama, I'm mostly interested in beating Bush -- I mean McCain.  But while many on here have made an excellent case that Clinton would be a stronger POTUS than Obama, assuming that's true, then the only explanation for why Obama's chances are at this moment so much stronger than Clinton's to win the nomination is that he has run a better campaign.  Not an easy task, granted, given the dumb, strange, even unfair rules that all of our Democratic candidates have had to live with.

I think everything changes whenever Obama or Clinton wraps up the Democratic nomination.  Even in going after McCain, I think that both Clinton and Obama continue to do so in order to win under the rules of this contest -- mostly trying to win over Super Delegates -- rather than starting to run in earnest to prevent Bush from having his third term.

You vote and hire with whom you have comfort with and time in front of voters makes them feel like they "know you".

The latest polling has obama ahead of McCain nationally.  When the race starts I predict obama will open a 7-9 point lead and maintain it throughout the race.  

McCain does not represent change from the current policy and economically he is a shell of a candidate.  The policy changes required to "right" the economy are taxation of the upper bracket and reinvestment in R&D, specifically on environmental investments.  It will create new jobs and stimulate the eocnomy.  

We have been here before, "it's the economy stupid."

What Obama needs to do is take a page out of Hillary's book and campaign MUCH harder.  she out appeared him nearly 2-1 in the latest races and he can ill afford to let a 70 year old out campaign him.

Hillary's comment about "working people, white people" was deeply offensive.  She should correct it immediately.  It's pretty obvious what happened.  She said "working people," then recalled that her supporters don't include black working people.  She corrected it to "white people" -- but it was clumsy and inadvertant, and understandably gave offense.

Meanwhile, this is from a rightwing paper, but is very revealing about what BHO knew about Jeremiah Wright's political opinions -- everything, all the time.

The reason that it is still relevant is that this campaign is clearly following Wright's 1970s style of bigotry in its sexism and ageism -- and pointing at everyone who doesn't support them without qualification and screaming "racist!"

I think BHO learned much from his mentor: