The Average Voter Likely Does Not Understand What is Happening in the Democratic Primary

I mean no disrespect to the general electorate, but, from recent conversations I have had with many people who do not follow politics, the average voter probably has no clue as to what exactly is occurring with the Primary Election process. Many can not understand the tactics the Clintons have employed to prolong the nomination, nor do they really seem to care to try and understand. Heck, I am not certain on any given day that I understand, or that anyone else does, for that matter. I do sense that people want it to be over, and want change from the current situation with gas prices, grocery prices, housing problems, the war and the economy, in general. But, they don't seem to be able to connect their problems to the importance of the outcome of the General Election.

From the discussions I have had, more people are exposed to the silly distractions, like Obama's pastor and, more recently, Father Pfleger. Some are still stuck on flag pins and emails about 'Obama's Muslim upbringings' or Michele's 'unpatriotic' words repeatedly taken out of context. I won't go into all the distractions -- we know them all, but, at each airing of these stupid stories, the M$M brainwashes the masses more, and reinforces the electorate's silly suspicions.

I, myself, am frustrated at what has occurred in this primary, as many, obviously, are. While I have tried to remain unbiased and keep an open mind, I can not help but realize that the Clinton campaign is responsible for much of the situation we find ourselves in now. While others have attempted to make the argument that continuing the nomination process is a positive thing, I have come to the conclusion that it has been very detrimental to the Obama campaign. Obama is our likely nominee -- and that has been known for some time now -- and the Clintons have destroyed his potential to win the GE by a landslide. The recent statements from the Clinton campaign via Ickes following the RBC hearing leads me to believe that this mess will continue to the Democratic National Convention in August, and Obama will likely have little time to recover from all the trivial shit that the Clintons have only helped to perpetuate and to magnify.

I am deeply saddened that the Clintons have done this. While I voted for Clinton twice, I learned long ago that his presidency was not in keeping with my brand of politics, and I criticized his presidency for the same reasons many DUers do -- DLCer, 3rd-Way, botched Welfare Reform, NAFTA, etc., etc. -- but it is their recent actions during this primary election cycle that have solidified my negative feelings toward them and have confirmed for me that Hillary Clinton should never be president, and so I am glad that I made that last minute decision to cast my vote for Obama instead of for her, despite the fact that Bill had me believing she was the better choice.

I had at one point believed that there was no doubt the Democrats would win in November. The actions of the Clintons have now made me feel otherwise. Our work will be made more difficult in the fall due to the Clintons -- I will be door knocking, phone calling and donating in the fall for Obama. But, much of the trivia that will be surrounding his campaign in the GE could've been avoided had Clinton not remained in the race -- less damage would have been inflicted upon Obama and Democrats in general. I still believe he can win in November, and I will do everything within my power as a volunteer to help get him elected. I hope others will, too.

of time between the last primaries on the 3rd, and the November elections. And there is even more work to be done. But we'll meet our goals, and score impressive democratic victories this fall.

:hi:

As ever, :hug:

And while I appreciate the thought, I can tell we will have much work left to do this fall. I am less positive than I was just a couple of weeks ago -- I will try not to let my negative mood get int he way of positive outcomes ;)

mc cain has a chance...unless they can figure out a way to cheat...they are pretty good at that...

yesterday and probably also due to waking up to Ickes on Meet the Press this am.

But, even before that, over the preceding weeks, several things have really gotten to me in a negative fashion.

The first is my secretary at work -- when I asked what her perception was of the presidential primaries, she just said, "I hate them all and wished they'd all just shut up..." -- or something to that effect. This is a woman who is on the phone daily to creditors, attempting to avoid foreclosure on her home, as she has been a victim of the sub prime mortgage lending fiasco. She's maxed all her credit cards, yet continues to spend. Her husband recently lost his job -- he's in construction, and her car broke down last week. She's in a real mess, and if there was any one person who should be paying attention, it is her, IMHO.

The second recent incidence was when I was on a business trip, I was at a dinner with a group of economists. The subject of the primaries came up, and it was pretty obvious that the majority were Obama supporters. However, there was one man, a guest speaker at our event for the next day -- a highly intelligent man recognized and admired in his circles -- who started talking about his 'suspicions' of Obama due to the emails he had been receiving about Obama's 'connections with Muslims, Farrakhan, etc'. He was Jewish, and I say this only because he stated that Obama could not be trusted to insure the security of the state of Israel. Despite any of our comments and assurances to this gentleman, he remained keen with his distrust of Obama and will likely not be voting in the election because of his entrenched views -- it just floored me that such an intelligent and seemingly reasonable man on other subjects could be so swayed by the nasty, silly rumors that have been circulated, and it irritates me more knowing that some of those emails were the ones that the Clinton campaign has been known to send out to the Jewish community.

Lastly, and most recently, I discovered that a long time friend of mine, a life-long Democrat, will not vote in the GE if Obama gets the nomination. (She will also not vote in the GE if Clinton gets the nomination.) She was an Edwards supporter, has never liked Hillary, and thinks that Obama is "out to fool everyone" -- when in reality, for reasons I'd rather not get into, I fear she is merely harboring racist tendencies in refusing to vote for him.

*sigh*

I should've probably let this one sink, but, you asked so I thought I'd explain.

edit typo

But, being an optimist, I was refraining from making knee jerk reactive comments about it all. It's been only recently that my negative thoughts have outweighed the positive thoughts for me

that they need to educate the people more.

I'm fucking still waiting for DU to shut this shit down so we can organize this.

But noooooo, instead, we have to continue to hear Hillary mislead LIV thinking that she can still pull this off. She's as good at this as Bush was in selling his war. Misleading the American people should be called treason, IMO.

that she continues on with this, as if she has a legitimate chance to win, and that there is no authority to reign her in. She moves her own goal posts, over and over again.

In a half awake, half asleep daze this morning, I watched Ickes on Meet the Press (At least, I think it was Meet the Press) and he said, "We expect to get the nomination. We don't accept the premise of your question..." I cringed and turned off the teevee.

are the two corporate candidates who were selected for us way before January 2007, and that they were the only ones that Democrats were ever going to be allowed to select, because Edwards and Dennis were too dangerous for business ? That Hillary said she would take lobby money but not listen to them and Obama said he would take lobby money if you sent it through a state capitol first which was the same thing as what Hillary said just a different way of saying We are corporate Democrats. We will do what the corporations want if it does not upset the base.

Should we educate them that the press attacked John Edwards as a phony in Jan 2007, ignored him after that, declared him the loser in Iowa where he came in ahead of Clinton and actually told voters not to send him money because it would be a wasted donation?

Maybe we should tell voters that the press has misquoted Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, portraying both of them as hysterical, witchy, bitchy radical unAmerican and unwomanly.

And that the press has taken great pains to convince the public that Karl Rove was right last September when he said that the War in Iraq was the Democrats fault--though only a radical left fringe of Democrats is silly enough to buy this.

If misleading the people is treason, the news media and the corporations are the biggest Benedict Arnolds around. They will tell America what they want America to hear. Fortunately, America does not believe much that it hears from the press anymore.

I can tell you one more thing that America will not listen to. Try to get up on a soap box somewhere and tell people that Hillary Clinton is the same as George W. Bush, and unless you are in a crowd made up of member of Social Workers for whom all corporate candidates are the same (including Obama), the people will wonder what you have been smoking. But, if that is the message that you want the press to spread--that whatever it is that Clinton is supposed to have done this time is morally the same as the lies about WMDs that lead to the War in Iraq--I can understand your frustration with the American people. You will be hard pressed to find anyone above the level of 6th grade who will swallow that one.

some big substance, i.e. a dramatic rivalry in the party, that is what people key on. Even after a Convention(how many Dems watch enough or any of it?) the gatekeepers of knowledge and consciousness have the greatest sway over anything except broad public awareness which today favors Dems. It is very very clear most Dems have no understanding of any negative complaints against the Clinton except for the news- which ironically they have learned to distrust on this one issue. That distrust allows the GOP media to play a temporary double game of keeping the Clinton perception status quo in static mode(with both parties) until they are ready to unload both barrels with new material as Vanity Fair has just released about Bill- enough at least to discourage all Dem voters had Hillary succeeded.

Hillary still wins states with machinery beholden and in place loyal to Bill. The public perception is largely rooted in the past. There is a deliberate illusion created by the MSM that race is not over, has not been over despite the math. The significance for Obama is what you stated. It is also a basic education of the enormous difficulty in moving the electorate and its mindsets. As H2OMan stated, that underlying massive consciousness in the electorate will coalesce around Obama once the past has been put aside. The real work is to connect Obama to it through GOP distractions, the sorry but sustained McCain myth and the vast grass roots ground work needed to earn the day.

it won't just happen, but Obama, we, and the will of the people will make it so. Maybe with the continued help of the abysmal GOP and its discredited, insane machinery. It won't be rationally pretty or all that clear but the mass movement of the body politic remains ready to leave the circus behind.

That is bigger than all of us, even Obama, but especially better than petty criminals using power and psych devices to stop a tidal wave.

I am left feeling a bit more optimistic and with the belief that it is possible to overcome certain barriers -- large obstacles, if you will.

For some reason, your post reminded me of Tom Robbins:

"Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light. For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irritable: the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside. Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a nine-thousand-pound granite boulder, the surprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. And if the boulder is more special, if it has been painted or carved in some mysterious way, you may find that it possesses an extraordinary and supernatural presence that enchants you, and in coping with it--as it blocks your path to the bathroom--leaves you feeling extraordinary and supernatural, too. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality."

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

They don't realize that we have a presumptive nominee and an out of control gadfly.

They neither idolize nor make a villain of Sen. Obama nor Sen. Clinton, they do not treat Sniper-gate or Pastor-gate as worthy of their attention, choosing instead to decide on their candidate based upon the issues which are the economy, health care and the war.

After reading hundreds of DUers claim that that the mere fact that Clinton claimed that she walked through sniper fire is enough to bar her from political life forever, I have been forced to conclude that DU is populated by people with the political common sense of Mr. Potato Head (sorry if I have insulted Mr. Potato Head). If well known and well financed Hillary Clinton can keep an important political seat in the Democratic column, then more power to her. Only a Democratic fool cuts off his nose to spite his face.

There is an attitude here, people who keep looking around for an affirmative when they ask "We did the right thing when we acted like Ken Starr and Melon-Scaife towards the Clinton's didn't we ??? " I guess it is because Sen. Obama is now giving these people the cold shoulder. By the time the convention comes around all the writers who were getting fan mail at the Huffington Post for penning nasty little pieces like "Hillary Has Cooties" will find that they are suddenly not wanted in the Party.

Anyway, I think the American voter has always understood the Democratic Party, because the American voter is the Democratic Party.