I've begun hearing that specific people won't vote for Obama because he's black. Until now, it was just hypothetical. It comes from "liberals," fearful that a black will "give it all away to them (only)." And they add their fears that the silent majority and over-50-crowd will never vote for a black.

Newspaper columnists have started writing how the Dems always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, even with Clinton, who "sought" defeat with his foolish behavior.

It's looking like McCain's policies won't rise to the surface. People are expressing their "animal" preferences, almost deaf to debates and issues.

(Not so) hidden persuaders are percolating.

It WOULD help, however, if McCain could be flushed out as "soft on Social Security and Medicare."

Obama, and most of his supporters always knew that there would be elements of racism in the voting demographic. The problem is that if you're not voting for someone due to skincolor, or stereotype,well, there's not any reasonable argument to change that.

Any argument you use ends up sounding like an attack on another person.

Ex. "Well, Hillary's in menopause, and McCain is senile."

Using those divisive arguments doesn't help anyone.

Here's a real argument though.

John McCain has been in politics a long time, 26 years in the Senate. And he hasn't done one damn thing the whole time to save social security, to fix medicare, to stop global warming, to help soldiers or their families, to advance education in this country, or really anything else of any importance to the actual people of America.

I would add ont thing of some importance to the McCain package: even if policy specifics make your head hurt, you have to have some faith in a candidate's personal honesty. So how honest IS Mister Straight Talk?

His campaign office is largely staffed with people who are, in "real life," lobbyists. The biggest "bundlers" in his fundraising effort are also lobbyists. This is the guy who says his way to fiscal sanity requires MORE tax cuts, not less (because he thinks we'll float out of this one with consumer spending?), is by cutting every government program to the bone. That will require making those lobbysits who have MADE him President (in this bad dream) very, very unhappy.

Does anyone with half a brain foresee this happening?

The current McCain formula is a mixture of Proxmire-style cheap shots, usually at some kind of research he doesn't understand (he likes to whine about a population study of grizzly bears in the Glacier Park area, which was the first and only such study ever, of an endangered species, which came in under budget and, considering they were working with Grizzly Bears, amazingly without any of the research staff or volunteers ((most of the labor was volunteer)) getting eaten, or even badly hurt.) and broad strokes bullhist about entitlement programs he doesn't understand, either.

If the Republicans want to draft Bloomberg, then they can be the party of management reform. The President-as-CEO model isn't innately pernicious (well, not much anyway, maybe) if you have a President who can actually run a company that delivers goods and/or services, survives and prospers.

Well, if pigs could fly, we'd all need umbrellas, yes?