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Real-estate and newspaper mogul Mortimer Zuckerman voted for Obama but began seeing trouble as soon as the stimulus went into the pockets of municipal unions. 'It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States. Barack Obama doesn't seem to care for individuals, elaborates Mr. Zuckerman, though the president enjoys addressing millions of them on television. The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime...

DURANGO, Colo. -- There's no question about it, John McCain's supporters said. We are the real Americans, and folks who support Barack Obama aren't. If Obama wins, said Craig Jederline, an Albuquerque radio station programming director, "It wouldn't be God Bless America, but God help America." At rally after rally, McCain's supporters chant "USA, USA, USA," wave bright blue "Country First" signs and shake little American flags high in the air. In the Durango High School bleachers, people made it clear that they're part of what GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called "these wonderful little pockets of what I...

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, it may well be the result of a public perception that he is detached and elitist -- a politician whose expressions of empathy for hard-working Americans stem more from abstract solidarity than a real connection to the lives of millions of citizens. Suggestions that Sen. Obama has failed to relate to working- and middle-class voters in swing states have dogged his campaign for months. His choice of Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate only marginally corrects the problem.~~snip~~ The "new politics" Democrats have found their new, improved Stevenson in Mr. Obama. In...

A CLINTON ADVANTAGE OVER OBAMA IN NOVEMBER, THOUGH MCCAIN DOES BEST OF ALL According to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in April, the certain Republican presidential nominee John McCain would get more votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton from white voters who have not finished college, 43 percent to 30 percent. Barack Obama would do even worse than Clinton, trailing McCain with this group 44 percent to 22 percent. McCain has a 23-percentage point lead against Clinton among whites who have graduated college, but just an eight-point margin over Obama with that group. DEMOCRATIC CONTEST TAKES ITS TOLL Obama was viewed...

Priya Venkatesan ‘90, a former Writing 5 lecturer and research associate at Dartmouth Medical School, is threatening to name seven of her former students in a potential civil rights lawsuit against the College, DMS and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Venkatesan announced Friday. Venkatesan also plans to write an autobiographical book that will include details of her experience at Dartmouth and name the seven students in question, all of whom were members of her Winter term Writing 5 class in 2008, she said.

“They”? Who in the hell is “they”? — Lyle Gorch in The Wild Bunch Recently Barack Obama got into trouble by explaining to an affluent San Francisco audience why the cash-strapped, mostly white, working classes in Pennsylvania and the Midwest do not logically vote for his brand of economic populism, but instead cling to issues that sophisticates can see are extraneous to their economic plight. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations....

GUEST COLUMNIST Some liberal commentators have downplayed the effect of Barack Obama's recent fundraising speech in San Francisco. But that's wishful thinking. Along with the revelations about Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, his remarks in San Francisco will haunt him not only in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, but also in the general election against John McCain, assuming he gets the Democratic nomination. To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri. That becomes even more imperative if a Democrat can't carry...

Polls show Clinton holding a stubborn lead over Obama and, if she wins, she will have staved off political death one more time. Yet if Clinton wins by a narrow margin - even after an unusually bad stretch for Obama, including his foolish observation about 'bitter' small-town voters and a horrendous debate on Wednesday - her victory will be underwhelming. In the next two primaries, on 6 May, she trails badly in one (North Carolina) and has surrendered a one-time lead in another (Indiana). Even some Clintonites say they will pressure her to drop out should she lose both those...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama, after accusing Sen. Hillary Clinton of "playing gotcha games," declined Thursday to commit to a debate in North Carolina before the state's May 6 primary. "We're trying to figure out what our schedule looks like, but I'll be honest with you, we've now had 21" debates, Obama said in response to an audience member's question at a rally at the state fairgrounds. Clinton has agreed to a debate proposed for April 27 in Raleigh. Over the last three days, Gov. Mike Easley, former Gov. Jim Hunt and Democratic leaders of the state legislature have...

Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new-—an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that. But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal. He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the...

Barack Obama, Man of Faith August 22, 2004 by Nicholas Stix "I am a Christian.… So, I have a deep faith. I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. "That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.” Thus, U.S. Senate candidate for Illinois Barack Obama...

The odor of elitism is like onion breath: It’s quick to acquire, hard to mask. Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot camouflage the political stink he exhaled when he dissed small-town Americans as “bitter” Neanderthals “clinging” to their guns, faith, and belief in strict immigration enforcement. It wasn’t the first time the effete Snob-ama revealed himself. In Philadelphia, he passed up the hometown cheesesteak — gloppy, artery-clogging, and blue-collar (yum!) — for a nibble of Spanish-imported, $100/pound ham. In Iowa, he moaned to voters about the price of arugula at Whole Foods. (Fun fact: There aren’t any Whole Foods...

New York Times Op-Ed opinion columnist William Kristol compared Barack Obama's remarks about the bitterness of white working class voters leading them to nationalism, religion and guns to Karl Marx. "The Mask Slips" published New York Times on April 14, 2008.

April 14, 2008 - Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Preference Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama 48% to 44% among men (45% of likely Democratic primary voters). Among women, Clinton leads 64% to 31%. Clinton leads 64% to 29% among white voters (82% of likely Democratic primary voters). Obama leads 79% to 18% among African American voters (14% of likely Democratic primary voters). Clinton leads 52% to 43% among voters age 18 to 49 (50% of likely Democratic primary voters) and Clinton leads 62% to 31% among voters age 50 and older. 10% of all likely Democratic primary voters say they would never...

Obama outburst in Pennsylvania Shame, shame, shame TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito ABC News is reporting that Barack Obama launched into a fiery offensive tonight in a speech before the United Steelworkers Union in Steelton, Pa. Obama, in response to Sen. Hillary Clinton criticisms of his 'bitter' remarks, said "Shame on her, shame on her, she knows better."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's remarks about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians could make it more difficult for vulnerable House Democrats, many of whom remain uncommitted as superdelegates to the Democratic convention, to back Obama's campaign. A good portion of House members who have not declared their support are moderates and conservatives who represent swing districts dominated by small towns. Republicans, in particular, sought to use the remarks to put two politically-vulnerable Democratic House members on the hot seat. The targets of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee were a pair of freshman Pennsylvania Democrats - Jason Altmire, who represents small towns outside...

Marc Ambinder tries to put some “perspective” on the latest of Barack Obama’s gaffes. “We’re dealing tonight with a classic Kinsleyian “gaffe,” where a candidate says what he means and then is forced to account for it. Let’s separate, for the moment, the politics of Obama’s words from the argument he is making.” We can stop there. In liberalism they are forever “separating” the politics from the argument except of course when it applies at a conservative. Then it’s all one big happy gaffe that they are all too happy to collectively pounce on. There is really no defense of...

Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities. For a second day, Mr. Obama sought to explain his remarks at a recent San Francisco fund-raiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations. Acknowledging Saturday that “I didn’t...

Here's a clip taken by somebody at the San Francisco event; it's the passage just before the lines everyone is now focused on, in which he talks about the skepticism he encounters: Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered...