From Salon:
And a fair number of people don’t care if he’s been around for a while and has more political experience. He’s a republican, and when the democrats finally come together quite a few Clinton supporters do not want to see another republican in the white house, and would vote for Obama simply to make that not happen. I believe that to be true if either is the nominee. This will be a democratic year IMHO.
This is my girlfriend. It’s not so specific or rational as the way you’ve put it, but that’s still the basis. I had a long talk with her this weekend, when she finally confronted me about my switch in loyalty from Hilary to Barack. I went through the cold political calculus, and she said, “Yeah, that all makes sense, but I still really like her and want her to win.” I went through the calculus again, and she said, “Yeah, I know, but I finally have a chance to vote for a strong woman, so I’m going to support her until she’s out of the race.” The emotional pull for her on this is very strong, so I didn’t try to change her mind. We basically agreed to disagree.
My wife is leaning toward Obama, but it was a very difficult thing for her to abandon Hillary. Mrs. AG deals with Fortune 500 CEOs/CFOs on a daily basis, consulting, advising, and butting heads constantly with the “old boys” network (which is still alive and strong, to her perpetual frustration). She doesn’t like Hillary’s crass victim posturing or her constant fudging of the truth, but she does strongly identify with battling the latent sexism and double standards that still exist in large institutional structures in this country, and she can understand why a lot of women her age (40s) and older might be offended by the idea that a “qualified” woman is seen as off-putting and a younger, “less experienced” man gets all the attention and adoration.
Rest assured, she appreciates what Obama represents, and hates the depths to which the Clinton campaign has fallen in attacking him and his supporters, but the symbolism remains very powerful, and it can be difficult to separate the individual from the larger gender identification that her accomplishments and stature represents.
Nobody’s that wise! 
I voted for Obama in the primary and the caucus. I really want him to win the nomination. But I have a sick feeling Clinton is going to get it. (Gods grant my fears are unwarranted!) If Clinton wins the nomination, I think McCain will win the election.
The problem here is that people perceive Hillary as a ‘capable woman’. She’s NOT a capable woman. Her campaign is a trainwreck. She might be capable as a lawyer for Wal Mart, but she’s done fuck all as Senator for New York, and fuck all as First Lady of the US. She’s a celebrity parlaying her image into a presidential run. She’s like Paris Hilton, famous for being famous.
Obama did more as Senator in less time than she did. He had more cross partisan support for bills he introduced. His campaign has been run in a far superior way, with a lot less nastiness. Obama is CLEARLY more qualified for the job than Hillary. Whether he’s electable or not is another matter, but even if Hilary is electable that doesn’t make it a desirable outcome. Hillary would be like George W. Bush, another celebrity candidate that is totally full of shit. Everyone would be hoping for Bill Clinton, but that’s not who they would get.
Mrs. tough as nails feminist bursts into tears when she loses a primary.
I wish this were true, but I don’t buy it. We (the American people) love war. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place. That’s why we re-elected Bush in '04. I think Obama will probably win, but it’s not the slam-dunk it should be.
They didn’t seem to care in 2000 when Bush beat McCain in the primary and Gore in the general.
Bush had more executive experience than most candidates in history have had. The idea that Bush was an inexperienced candidate is a bit of a myth. He was inexperienced in Federal politics.
OP checking back…
& sorry I didn’t mean to be away all afternoon
I don’t necessarily have a specific rebuttal to the dominant strain of disagreement, but I have to say I’m really surprised at the hubris here. Kerry at this time in 04 was a MUCH stronger candidate than Obama is now.
I really (sadly) think low-level nervousness with Obama’s race & ambition & perceived Muslim-ish-ness will be a much bigger obstacle with non-partisan voters than you all anticipate. They want a ‘regular guy’.
I’m mostly in agreement with others who posted dissenting regarding your OP, but I have to agree with you the last part of your post. There is a bit of this type of nervousness, sure. It’s pretty much what I think that guy who said a few weeks ago meant when he said "They can have their Tiger Woods.’ Sure his comment compared Obama to someone who had been immensely successful in his chosen endeavor, but I think, what he meant was, successful or not, in the end, we have our regularly, our good old white man.
I think you guys are underestimating Obama’s weaknesses. Let’s put aside for a minute his speaking ability, poise, and other intangibles, and just look at the candidate on paper.
This is a senator with no executive experience. He’s a one-term senator who is generally considered to be one of the most liberal members of the Senate. He has not performed all that well in the debates, and quite poorly in the last one. He’s got no foreign policy experience. He’s an academic in law, but has no real training in economics or anything to do with the military. Speaking of which, he never served in the military. He’s got a history of opposition to guns. He’s a Chicago politician, which means he can’t help but to have somewhat of a history dealing with shady characters like Rezko and William Ayers.
This is not the traditional ticket to the White House. Most successful presidential candidates have a military background, do not come from the senate, and typically have executive experience through governing a state. Luckily for Obama, he’s going up against another Senator, so that pretty much eliminates that issue,
Also, successful Democrats tend to come from the south or midwest. Why? Because they have the north and coasts locked up anyway, so coming from the south helps them pick up those extra votes needed to put them over the top.
The fact is, Obama has been doing pretty poorly in the populous midwest and southern states. His delegate lead is due to picking up the majority of delegates from the caucus states - the party insiders like him. He’s lost the open primaries, generally.
These are his liabilities. He’s a liberal in a center-right country. He comes from a liberal area of a large city. He’s a one term Senator with a rather unimpressive resume (he didn’t even have his school loans paid off until he made his big book sale).
His youth and unconventional background also means Obama is a bit of a wild card. This is a guy who admits to using hard drugs, to being a hell-raiser when he was younger, and then who straightened up and went to school and did well. That’s an inspiring story, but it’s also one that the American public is most certainly going to have some misgivings about. The paper trail is rather thin on the guy, other than his voting records, and those are extremely liberal.
Now, he has plenty of assets as well - intelligence, excellent speaking ability, etc. But he needs these to be able to overcome some pretty big deficits. He’s not a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination.
McCain’s probably a good candidate for him to beat. His age will contrast dramatically with Obama’s. He’s a Senator, which takes that issue off the table a bit. But man, McCain’s resume is going to be a good selling feature. Count on that campaign to repeatedly point out that McCain was sitting in a tiger cage in Vietnam for refusing to cooperate with his captors while Obama was in grade school.
Obama can certainly win. But if you’re wondering why he’s not trouncing the field, that’s why.
(Missed edit window)
I think, even in light of these doubts, Obama is electable because enough people in this country do not feel that way or are ready to move past it (not raciall hardliners, of course), and enough people have had enough of Republican politics. Obama is certainly more electable than Hillary because, pound for pound, he hasn’t conducted himself and his campaign in way that simply detracts as much personally.
I think what he meant was, “You could be watching Augusta National, but instead you get to hang out with John McCain!” I don’t think it was a veiled snipe at Obama, I think it was talking about the actual Tiger Woods.
Including the follow-up “audacity” comment, were you watching the same video I was? Or is this a whoosh in Great Debates?
People who don’t like him think he did poorly in debates, people who like him think he did well. It’s totally subjective. McCain is getting pasted in terms of Economics right now, so it’s not like he’s going to have stiff competition there. It’s gonna come down to the war. Rezko and Ayers are irrelevant. McCain dealt with Hagee and was involved in Savings and Loan, it’ll cancel each other out and the people who will care are the people who would have voted for the respective candidate anyway.
Obama in what he’s actually done in his time in the Senate is more impressive than Clinton. Clinton ain’t done jack for New York.
Valid point, but not essential.
Huh? Illinois, South Carolina?
It’s a false center. This country has moved center-left.
No one is going to care about his drug use. That’s a non-issue for most people under 50. If that sort of thing mattered it would’ve affected both Clinton and Bush more.
All he has to be is better than what’s available.
Kennedy/Nixon. McCain will get angry when he is stymied on economic issues, Obama will say something that will sound reasonable, maybe not to you, but to the average person for whom economics is voodoo.
Sure. You make valid points in that regard.
I missed the audacity comment.
When was the last time the Democratic nomination was this close?
If Obama was trouncing her, he’d have clinched the nomination by now. A race that can enter the convention still decidable by superdelegates isn’t a trouncing, by definition.
In 2004, the strong consensus on this board was that John Kerry had the election sewed up, because people were sick of George W. Bush’s incompetence and the war in Iraq.
Can I suggest, again, that the possibly apocryphal story about Pauline Kael is of relevance here? (Supposedly, Kael, a writer for a New York newspaper, expressed utter surprise at Nixon’s 1972 landslide victory over McGovern, saying something like, “How is that possible? None of my friends voted for Nixon!”)
I find an amazing tendency here to hear the widespread agreement from active posters on a board that leans politically left, and extrapolate those attitudes to the American populace at large.
Where are you seeing this?
This is a point that all on the SDMB should agree to, but I can’t help wondering to whom it is addressed? Was someone in this thread saying that Obama is a lock in the general because of their anecdotal observations?