Over at OpenLeft.com, we see Matt Stoller (icon of the liberal netroots) is depressed about Barack Obama. He’s depressed because Barack Obama’s lead is slipping. He’s depressed because Barack Obama has recently soldout on a whole host of issues to pander to the political center. And he’s depressed because he seems to be realizing (like many other formerly enthusiastic supporters) that Barack Obama is just another typical politician.

My favorite lines:

Don’t expect great things from Obama.  Don’t expect anything, really, except blame when he screws up.  It’s our fault, since we didn’t clap hard enough.

Still, there’s the Supreme Court, so I’ll probably end up giving and volunteering at some point later.  Not now, though, I don’t like being lectured by Ivy League wankers who tell me it’s my fault when Obama lies to me.  That’ll have to blow over.

Ah, I love the Looney Left. Apparently, they don’t seem to love Barack Obama as much as they used to.

H/T @PatrickRuffini

 Scooped: Just when you think you’re the first one that thought of something BAM, the Weekley Standard beats you to it…thanks Mr. McCormack!

Now, this clip has mostly to do with immigration and expecting immigrants to learn English (Obama adds that Americans should expect to begin learning Spanish), but that’s not the part of the clip I want to focus on here. About two-thirds of the way through the clip, Obama starts talking about Americans traveling to Europe and not knowing the native languages, and he says this:

It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they all speak French, they speak German, and then we go over to Europe (laughter) and all we can say is ‘Merci Beaucoup.’ (Laughter ensues) Right?!”

Here’s the clip:

Now, after all the problems the Obama campaign has had with not being proud of their country, don’t you think Barack would be a little bit more careful with his words? I guess it’s just hard to hide a distaste of the average American when you are an elitist like Barack Obama.It’s quite obvious that John McCain has been, and always will be proud of his country.

Well, by now we have all heard that Obama has broken his “pledge” (his word) to accept public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent does the same. John McCain has kept his end of the bargain, but Obama sees a more politically expedient approach and is going to opt out of the public financing system, becoming the first presidential candidate since Nixon to do so.

Of course, this starts raise issues about his trustworthiness. Obama has made a great many promises to his supporters throughout this campaign, some of which are on a much grander scale than committing to public financing. Already we see his supporters having to call him to task over his recent pandering to the political center on the FISA bill, which he now says he supports even after promising to never compromise his values on such legislation only months ago. MoveOn.org has been sending their millions of liberal members emails asking them to make sure Barack doesn’t continue to break promises.

But, I never really thought he would lose support over breaking his pledge to accept public finanicing. While it is certainly a window into his character, it’s sorta a inside-baseball kind of issue. Not many people in the public carry public financing as their #1 issue.

I stand corrected:

 The RNC launched a new site to introduce Sen. Obama to the American people, check it out at www.meetbarackobama.com

They will not go silently into that good night! Hill-Dawg’s supporters are cotninuing to travel nationwide to volunteer for their leader as described in this article from the Washington Post.

“It’s become so personal, just one insult after another,” Smith said. “These sides are starting to feel some hate for each other. Everybody is angry, but I’m going to keep at this as long as I can. I never want to look myself in the mirror and say, ‘You quit. You didn’t do your part.’ “

Barack might have some trouble bringing women voters back into the fold after this nomination is all sewn up. With sentiments like these:

“I don’t even know these other women, but I feel like I do,” said Zenia Kuzma, from Shepherdstown. “We’ve been going through this same ordeal together.”

…there’s is definitely some allegiance-to-a-higher-cause-type motivation for many women voters with Hillary’s candidacy. And right on que:

“The more I’m involved, the angrier I get. Every call for her to get out of the race just incenses me. It makes me crazy. Who are you? Who in the world are you to tell this woman who’s done so much that it’s time for her to be quiet and sit down?”

As I have said before, this Dem nominating process is driving a wedge between certain demographic groups that Obama will need decisive margis with to win in November.

 

We shall see…

Mary Katharine Ham has a very interesting post on the importance of staging and advance work in sending a message on television. She has posted two pictures of the Obama rally in NC held tonight - one the television shows and the other from a little more…uh, inclusive angle.

As Seen On TV:

As Seen In Real Life:

Now anyone in politics can tell you that every campaign in the world tries to master the angle the media depicts in photos and on television in addition t orchestrating countless other things to portray an bigger, more excited, all around better crowd than might actually be there. But Miss Ham (is it Miss or is she a Mrs.? I just don’t know) brings up an interesting point here about the lack of media scrutiny of such facts with the Obama campaign and an overzealousness to report them about Republicans like John McCain:

I realize it’s standard practice to rope off an area of a venue for crowd-wrangling and appearances, but this is a little drastic. McCain’s event at the Wait Chapel at Wake Forest today was nicely filled if not overflowing, but I imagine if he had held it at Groves Stadium and filled only the endzone seats, someone in the media might have said something about it. Obama doesn’t have such worries, I guess.

Indeed.

Karl Rove (CRNC alumnus) has shared some insight into the electoral map with Fox News, and I have decided to share it with you here as I prepare to fall asleep assuming that Barack Obama is going to get a bounce out of tonight’s Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

The news is good and bad when we look at the maps Mr. Rove has constructed using polling data for general election match-ups with McCain v. Obama (shown below) and McCain v. Clinton. The good news is that the Dems seem to have nominated (presumptively, but they say never count the Clinton’s out ’til their out) the electorally weaker candidate:

The bad news is for College Republicans in those yellow states above - get ready for some serious GOTV work and a lotta attention this summer and fall…

But hey, it’s why we’re here right?!

Some interesting state results to note, both good and bad:

NY - We’re down only 4%!

NE - Up by 3%…

TX - 4%…

MI - Moving to our column!

OH - This is awesome. The GOP in OH has had some rough years for the brand name up there, but we are holding strong in 2008.

FL - If it stays this strong (performing better than state like Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska for instance) it will be hard to call this a “swing state” in 2008. This speaks to the amazing reputation of former Gov. Bush and current Gov. Crist.

MO - See FL above. Traditionally a bellwether state, with an 8% victory, it will allow us to focus resources elsewhere.

IA - My home state is under-performing.

NM - Up by 2% in a close state from ‘00 and ‘04 with an important congressional and US Senate races.

Well, I could go on here, but those are some notables. Of course, this is all really for naught as it is way too early to be measuring in-state general election polls, but it paints an interesting starting picture. I should note too that states like MO and FL will probably remain incredibly important in the general election even if polls show them at decent margins now. I’m very, very confident we will win both states, but Barack’s say-anything-do-anything campaign will surely contest them with force and CRs will need to be prepared to add a little truth to the madness in states such as these.

If you notice something really striking that I have failed to mention, send it to csmith at crnc dot org and I’ll be happy to include them in a future post!