I guessed as much. 
I’m not bothered by the religious ads. He is, by all accounts, a fairly religious man. Most biographies talk about how important his faith is to him and his outlook. He’s not your stereotypical evangelical conservative, but he’s by no means a humanist either.
I think he’s just done a smart thing with these ads. In areas were it matters – Kentucky and the South in general – he plays up his Christian faith. He’s not being disingenious or pandering, he’s just emphasizing a part of who he is that resonates with that population.
In Oregon, where the voters are less interested in his Christian background, he emphasizes his environmental and socially-liberal voting record. Perfectly understandable.
You can’t call the ad with the cross “pandering” and say the environmental ad is not. They’re both good and honest ads, aimed at different voters.
Of course it is. Go Obama!
From what I’m hearing Obama’s doing amazingly well in the sparsely populated areas of Oregon that tend to vote as red as their necks… Obama campaign offices are humming, new ones are being opened and the phone bank is way busy. I’ve been getting at least a call a day and I keep telling 'em I already voted for our guy, I’m doing volunteering myself and they should go call somebody who needs convincing!
Oregonians tend to be tech savvy, so the mybarackobama site has been getting quite the workout. One of the neat campaigning tools has been the “House Party” where people who are interested in hosting a party on a specified date (all parties are scheduled for one day) create an event on the web site and anyone who’s interested in attending puts in an RSVP online. The last house party day there were about 50 parties going on in the Portland area–all within 15 miles of me. With 15-25 RSVP spaces available per party, it adds up. The social networking his campaign is fostering is nothing short of amazing and it’s bringing the community together in a really cool, organic manner.
Seriously, I got interested in Obama during his rallies here in February, and everything I’ve seen since has been hugely impressive. His campaign has embraced technology and the internet and is using it in an incredibly effective manner. The offices are busy but organized, you can drop in any time to put in data entry or phone bank time and there’s usually a canvassing class going on. Signage, bumper stickers and buttons sell out within hours of arrival. I get email updates on every twist and turn in the election from someone in the campaign. Make no mistake, this guy is a very organized, effective, smart leader and he is gonna make a great president!
Imagine that, it is all about the (d) and the (r).
-Joe
All will be revealed. In the next 1-8 years.
No it isn’t. I don’t support John McCain either. I didn’t vote for him in the primary, just as I promised, and I won’t vote for him in the general.
It’s been posted before but I’ll say it again here. This has to be one of the most groundbreaking, innovative and historic presidential campaigns in my lifetime. I can’t wait for the book(s) that will be written about this campaign and the above post highlights why. I don’t know the interval but my reading list in the next two years in this regard will be 1) Dreams of My Father; 2) The Audacity of Hope; 3) the best-reviewed overview of the Obama campaign; 4) the best-reviewed overview of the 2008 campaign in general.
Time to print up a bunch of “seeking same for foursome” bumper stickers.
Only if it works.
Even if Obama only gets the nominatiion, it will still be all of the things I mentioned.
Actually, even if he doesn’t, and comes as close as he will to beating someone like Hillary with her connections, name recognition and expectations by everybody that she would walk away with the nom instead of stealing it, it will be all of those things.
It’ll work. There are enough of us to make a big dent in the political fabric of this coming election. Not that other elections haven’t worked equally as hard, but this one will certainly be historic.
I was wondering to my wife about what she thinks the textbooks will say about this period in US history, 50 years from now. She said, "when the teacher asks the class about who was our first president they will say in unison, George Washington. And when the teacher asks who was the first black president they will all say, “Barack Obama”.
It’s kind of neat to picture a class full of 9 year olds all saying that…
We’ll see.
I like the way you think.
I hope you’re correct. But I recall that shortly before the 2004 election, the members of this board conducted an informal poll and based on that predicted a landslide victory for John Kerry. This board does lean left and is not necessarily reflective of the general electorate.
That’s very true, I remember. However,as part of the Obama campaign and having been fortunate enough to see their camp run from the inside out here in CT, they are an organized finely tuned machine. Maybe I have had blinders on but I haven’t seen McCain’s camp have anything resembling what Obama has been doing. And I can only see his organization growing and really working the system. And on Nov. 7th, we’ll see if all this hard work and bloodhsed were worth it. I really hope it will be. I’m confident, yet cautiously optimistic.
One of them is that Obama doesn’t have a problem with rural voters generally. According to the latest SurveyUSA poll crosstabs, Obama beats Hillary 53-44 among those latte-sipping Portlanders, but whomps her, 57-39, in the rest of the state.
And as Poblano points out (complete with neat graph), Oregon’s conservative voters are pretty damned conservative.
It just seems that rural white voters in some parts of the country think Obama’s great, and rural white voters in other parts of the country won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.
Okay, only the most deluded Clinton supporters (and we know who they are) have any pretense that these ones matter other than playing out the final moves in a chess match with “four to checkmate” matter, but what the Hell, let’s make some predictions anyway!
I’m betting that Oregon does better than expected for Obama. Mail-in voting seems akin to getting people to early vote, and Team Obama has done well at that sort of thing. Obama by over 20% maybe getting near 30%.
I’m also thinking that Clinton is trending down in Kentucky. She’ll still score big among her strongest demographic - older poor Whites who may have or who may not have finished High School but less than in West Virginia. I’ll say Clinton by just under 30%.
Attention will be on the fact that Obama will have hit the majority of the pledged delegates and his speech focused on the battle with McCain that he will give in Iowa. Clinton’s speech that it isn’t over and that her victory in battleground states like Kentucky and West Virginia prove that she is the stronger candidate and that Florida and Michigan need to be counted and … whatever … will be met with rolled eyes across the land.
Any one else want to play? Just for the heck of it?
What the hey.
KY: C-O-E 63-32-5.
OR: C-O 56-43.
I can’t resist this post of Josh Marshall’s, quoted here in its entirety:
Did you mean to reverse the numbers for Oregon?