Free Republic

John Judis has a provocative web article about how the Pennsylvania primary exposed Barack Obama's potential weaknesses as a general election candidate. It's defnitely worth a read. However, I'd add a couple points to balance out the gloomy picture he paints. First, you can't automatically assume that any constituency that didn't support him in the primary also won't support him in the general election. John details how Obama's share of white upscale voters diminished, and he attributes this to the Wright controversy. Maybe, or maybe those voters -- especially the women -- just preferred Hillary Clinton, but would also prefer...

Hillary Clinton won a decisive ten-round decision over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary, but she didn't score a knockout. The struggle continues. Clinton still has virtually no chance of overtaking Obama's delegate lead or his edge in the popular vote. And the superdelegates will be loath to ignore this advantage. Meanwhile, Obama's weaknesses as a general election candidate grow more apparent with each successive primary.Clinton's best chance of winning the nomination was to win Pennsylvania so decisively that she would have set off a media firestorm about Obama's electability--one that would lead superdelegates to wonder whether she would not...

ONE of the more interesting things that John Kerry has done in 30 years in American politics is a stint as the No 2 to Michael Dukakis as Governor of Massachusetts.Like much of the nonmilitary part of his CV, however, this period has been little mentioned in the 2004 presidential campaign. Indeed, poor Mr Dukakis has been noticeable by his complete absence from this year’s contest, airbrushed out of Democratic history like an early Bolshevik in Stalin’s Russia. The 1988 Dukakis presidential campaign against George H. W. Bush is now universally acknowledged to have been among the most jaw-droppingly inept...