Well, here's my reaction.

You take things in context or you create an artificial reality.

Which is what I have seen happen on the blogs, especially the Huffington Post, to a really creepy extent.
It is a Twilight Zone world of inarticulate sloppy vitriol incorrectly controlling the preception of what is actally happening in the country and is both too demeaning and too depressing to keep reading. Orwell meets Obama on too many wishful postings

Boorishness of the thuggiest sort is Karl Rove's real legacy and I don't even want to know about it any more.

What this last incident has done is made me realize how astonishingly easily gullible voters can be manipulated.
I won't be reading the Huffington Post again until at least after the election, if ever.

Obama was objected to on Day One as too inexperienced and too soon.
Nothing has changed that except to show show us displays of petulance and bad judgement.
What the GOP will Darwinianly understand is the true value of that. And how foolhardy the Democrats were to build on the obviously too weak foundations

He has no popular support in Flyover places. That is indisputable to me since I am right here being flown over and if you are over forty-five, you know too well the value of experience and Obama is consistently mentioned here as not having it.

These are places where traditional values are so sacramental a great many people I know consider their church the social milieu.
The majority out here thought Dean and Kerry unacceptable to their standards, and voted to their chagrin twice for a man who came closest to what they know and hold dear.

How do you expect Obama to hold up to them against McCain who is a mirror image of what they want to grow old being around?
He's Reaganesquely a charmer. And, since we are a nation of second chances far more than first right now, they'll overlook his warmongering and being a corporate shill. Because he is safe and solid and familiar.

In time of war and financial crisis and with no end in sight, do you really expect towns that are in patriotic overdrive to go for someone they have utterly no context to relate to?
Obama's about Merlot. McCain and Rove know how to be about Milk Money. So does Hillary- the best of the candidates who is being squandered by her own party.

All Obama's change rhetoric came into being to counter the idea of the comfort of the familiar.

Obama offers no comfort, not even of the coldest sort, for those of us exerienced who know how to tally the cost of consequences.

And so, Obama's own consequence is that his ambition deliberately will make him choose to become a six-month flame out instead fo a the first half of a sixteen year stretch.
He is giving up being the nation's first black vice president to become its' first black losing presidential candidate.

And all the Oobamabots are doing is turning up the heat on ther very own Icarus.

Hillary's liability is pretty much limited to whenever she misspeaks.
Obama's people are so self-righteously repellent hostile in their invective - I can't tel you how many times I have been labelled a racist when I am blogging - that they have lost all credibility for their candidate.

Hillary said one thing with a politically incorrect overtone when taken out of context.
Obama's backers are daily outright labeling everyone who disagrees with them as Klan members.

Now's a good season for a time-out for.
I'm going to ignore this campaign and write-in Hillary.
If for reasons I couldn't ever figure out, she is willing to be Obama's vice president, I'll write-in Joe Biden.
But I won't ever, after these past few months, forget what I have seen hm bring out in half the democratic party.

I'll never vote for Obama.
Even if he ran against Bush again.
But that's moot.

He's unelectable to the largest demographics.
You can't change inexperience. And it's always been the dealbreaker here.

Gala1

I live in flyover country, myself. Small town Kansas, actually. He took well over 70% of the primary vote here, and I see Obama signs in the smallest towns.

But, far more than half of Americans don't live in flyover country. They live in cities and suburbs. You may distrust them, but they are Americans.

The last presidents, in my mind, whose campaigns were not centered on distrust of urbanity were Nixon and Kennedy.

Why is the "flyover country hates him" more important than "urban America loves him"?

I think the flyover country hates him for the same reasons they didn't support Kerry or Gore.They feel left out of a lot of what is going on and another thing is, people tend to vote like their peers.How many of them have multicultural social networks and the Repugs have done a masterful job of spin on making latte rinking liberals a joke
they can all bond around.

The sad thing is those same repug spinmeisters ae quaffig the best imported wines and driving Mercedes.You are so right about how this election has shown the power of the media to manipulate public opinion.Its truly frightening .

A great volume of wordy crap, Gala1.

Obama and McCain will campaign and debate, then people will compare them side-by-side, and make up their minds. None of that has even BEGUN yet, and you're calling the winner (calling it contrary to what the polls say--which currently call it a tie, btw).

But, it's no surprise. I'm sure you also called the dem. nom. for Hillary last September, as well.

Boorishness of the thuggiest sort is Karl Rove's real legacy and I don't even want to know about it any more.

And Clinton QUOTED KARL ROVE to prove HER point that she was the "stronger" candidate. Talk about wishful thinking! He's an "unofficial" advisor to the McCain camp. He most certainly isn't interested in McCain running against the "stronger" democrat. Open your eyes.

Hillary's liability is pretty much limited to whenever she misspeaks.

Or any of her personal scandals..whitewater, the rose law firm, getting in trouble for unethical behavior during Nixon's impeachment proceeding, trying to unlawfully remove furniture belonging to the white house when she moved out, the Peter Paul lawsuit.

Or any of Bill's left over crud..which BTW is just as pertinant as the Rev. Wright, actually she's been with Bill longer. And I'm assuming it's a MUCH closer relationship.

Or Bill's current crud..He's a lobbyist.. a well paid lobbyist...for policies she professes to be against. And that guy has a mouth or a train of thought that has blown her campaign off track so often, but Billy LOVES the limelight, get ready for the daily, anti-what Bill said to the press yesterday speech from a potential President Hillary.

And I'm not using the word misspeaks, talk about a BS, politically correct, media sanctioned, Orwellian term..for LYING left, right ,and center. I don't even think she's an evil liar, she just doesn't understand the modern political landscape of cell phone voice recorders, video capture, youtube, and INSTANT distribution. There is no way to "squelch" a story anymore. She is used to the idea that no one is going to hear what she said to the Souix falls newspaper but the people in Souix Falls. Too politically naive by half.

Where have you been these last several months?

She mispeaks every time she opens her mouth.

Hillary Clinton is the only reason Hillary Clinton has lost this race. I am a hard working white male from fly over country and I have been supporting Obama since before he was a Senator.

You are a whinner of the worst proportion and a terrible democrat in fact i don't eevn think you are a Democrat. That you would not support the winner of this contest in the general election shows that you are all to happy to have mccain continue the disasterous policies of the Bush administration. there is no excuse for such inpetulance. And you accuse Obama supporters of hostility? What do you expect when you are so full of lies and horse manure

You are also a bald face liar in stating that obama supporters are calling everyone Klan members. A bald faced crybaby liar. Get over your candidate because she blew it and I am working as hard as I can to prevent Obama from allowing Clinton anywhere near the Democratic ticket.

Clinton should retire from public service the second her senate term is over or she should switch parties.

"What we have here are two different forms of family-based morality. What links them to politics is a common understanding of the nation as a family, with the government as parent." <link>

Here is another, related, essay by Tony Brasunas, that I think is well worth the read. <link>

<link> <link>

Nada links. OK

Google George Lakoff, Moral Politics

google "Behind the Veil of the Bush and Clinton years", Tony Brasunas, Garlic & Grass issue no.8

So you are telling us that you are going to vote for Bush again. Let's see, after sixteen years of Clinton and Bush, this country does not have anything remotely resembling an energy policy. Then we can add in the Iraq war (that you apparently are OK with), and our economy slowing down for a multitude of reasons. Your happy with all of this, right?

Look, GWB has been a TERRIBLE LEADER for this country. I really don't see anyone disputing that, on any blogs, other than obvious trolls. This country is WORSE in almost EVERY WAY for having had him and bunch of right wing robber baron's and religious loonies in charge. (Dude, seriously some of those guys make Rev. Wright look like a piker, and some of what he said ain't my idea of "family values")

In 2000 I might have voted for McCain, honestly. But he CAN'T seperate himself from Bush's policies for many reasons. And as a result I CAN'T vote for him in 2008, not for any reason.

A) Republican party leaders and money men, are GWB's people, and he NEEDS their support to have any chance of winning at all.So he has to toe the line and refrain from doing too much criticizing or claiming that he'll change things.

B) He has no plans for how to fix anything that has gone or is going wrong with this country that will fit in with the current republican doctrine.(To be fair I'm not sure that there are any solutions to these problems that fit those doctrines) So he has no alternative but to continue the policies that are in place currently with only slight alterations or go completely against his party.

But, and this is VERY VERY IMPORTANT,...NO PRESIDENT CAN PASS ANY LEGISLATION. .EVER. So, since the democrats will vote against republican legislation, and republicans will usually support a republican president ...McCain can't possibly go against the only people in congress who would support his policies if he were president.

C) McCain is a "throwaway" candidate. He is an almost guaranteed one term president running in an election year when the current party has held the presidency for two terms already, and has less approval rating that outdoor toilets. The only reason that he won the nomination is that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (also throwaway candidates) were so blatantly religious that even republicans under the age of 55 were too freaked out to vote for them, and the right of center independents pushed McCain to victory for his "Maverick" image.

(BTW he has voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time on issues, and the only reason it's not 100% is that he misses SO many votes, for instance EVERY "green" bill, and just lately Jim Webb's excellent GI Bill bill. He is no Maverick, he is instead a bit of a coward when it comes to bucking his party leaders.)

But back on topic. McCain has little support in the Right wing of his party, they don't trust him. He pulls right of center independents more on image than substance. He hasn't previously, and won't be able in the future, to buck his party's leadership precisely because he won't be running for a second term and everyone knows it.