Narrow lead for Obama over Clinton in Colorado according to a Denver Post poll. I'd kind of figured that Obama was doomed anyplace where Latinos outnumber African-Americans but apparently not. One advantage he should have is that normally states with smaller black populations show less racially-polarized voting patterns. Thus, though Obama likely won't see many more states where the electorate contains such a high proportion of blacks as South Carolina, it should be much easier for him to win white votes in the whiter states just as he did in Iowa and seems to be doing in Colorado.
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Mile High
27 Jan 2008 02:47 pm
Comments (59)
That poll was pre South Carolina -- which makes it that much more interesting.
And that was before his big South Carolina win. You gotta figure that his victory speech picked up quite a few new supporters. Just from talking with colleagues today who were Edwards or Hillary supporters, a good number of them are now Obama leaners if not outright supporters. Throw in the Kennedy endorsements and you've got the potential to see a surge.
Liz Matheson: Little help here? Usually I have a nose for irony, and I am assuming you are being tongue in cheek here, but that link made me wonder.
I really wish that "Liz Matheson" spambot troll would go away and stop cluttering things up...
It's pretty obvious that "Liz" is just some pro-Obama activist using an extremely silly "false flag" technique to try to embarrass the anti-Obama people. But I can't imagine that anyone with an IQ above room temperature is going to be fooled...
The idea of a racially polarized electorate in SC is W-R-O-N-G. Obama did worse among whites, but so did Hillary. Compare it with Nevada. Obama did 10% worse. Hillary did 20% worse.
The reason is that the native son John Edwards did much better among whites than he did in all the other contests. And that was the place he's won his only primary in two runs for the presidency.
Since we're talking demographics. The Obama coalition (so far), 80% of the black vote and 35% of the non-black vote, is probably good for 40-45% of the vote in Democratic primaries on average across the country. That's easily enough to win the nomination as long as John Edwards draws 20% of the non-black vote, which he's drawing in that Colorado poll.
Expect Hillary surrogates to start chipping away at Edwards in the next week, if not the candidate and Bill themselves.
Unsurprisingly, the name attached to the comment above (see comment by Liz Matheson) links to a white supremacist organization.
AJ,
Going after Edwards will make the Clintons look silly. They have to do it under the radar, which is much harder in 2008 than it was in 1992, when they last had to run a tough national race.
Well, having a cut-and-paste white supremacist troll means it's easy to spot the shitpiles it leaves.
Delete the fucker. Really. Seriously.
Heather Isaacs Royce:
Yes, the link is one of the things that makes Liz's "false flag" trolling operation so blatantly obvious.
Can you really imagine the people from the small website endlessly clogging up poor liberal Matt's blog with retarded-sounding cut-and-paste spam?
After all, there are certainly at least a couple of regular commenters here whose ideologies probably aren't too far off from that of the rightwing website, but they certainly don't do their best to deliberately sound retarded and embarrass themselves.
Some "false flag" trolls are just lazier than others...
From our More Things MattY Doesn't Know file, at least two of Hillary's co-chairs are very strong supporters of illegal activity, with one of them being slightly more of basically a MexicanPartisan than the other. And, with the former looking increasingly dirty. So dirty that even the LAT and others have reported on his questionable dealings.
OTOH, Obama has this: tinyurl.com/33om4g
And now this:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/
link/bcpid353515028/bctid1390018673
He recently named MariaDurazo (mentioned here: tinyurl.com/2onnrg) as a co-chair.
It doesn't have to be a human. These might just be bots programmed to comment on political blogs.
And the info seems damaging to Obama, so I can't think it's a provokatsia.
Little known facts about GEORGE W. BUSH:
He did coke and was an alcoholic until he was 40.
After a C average in high school, he got into Harvard and Yale due to affirmative action ("legacy")
Oh, and he's the worst president in history.
But keep stressing the "HUSSEIN" like it means something, you jackass.
I really think this will be a "cool kids" election. If you are at a party and the presidential race comes up, are you really going to say I voted for the rich white guy (Romney)? Really? Do you want to see your chances with every single female there go down to zero?
We have got to vote our own self-interest, people.
RKU, you amaze me. No Obama supporter would even imagine writing this kind of garbage. The troll is evidently one of the few remaining Clintonistas, following the Big Dog's lead.. unless, of course, it is simply a rather nasty little racist.
Byron- It is more likely to be surrogates or robocalls like they did in South Carolina. They've also already put out a memo on how Edwards staying the race damages the party in some way and delays the 'final showdown,' between Obama and Clinton.
But, on the other hand, looking silly doesn't seem to be an impediment for Bill these days.
I call on the Atlantic to remove the posts of Liz Matheson.
Can the Clinton campaign get more ugly? I'm afraid so.
Like the other states we've seen, Obama has a solid ORGANIZATION in Colorado -- my understanding is that they've had five offices throughout the state for more than 7 months, since last summer. Organization should help them where they fall short in "establishment."
Not that I'm anywhere near an expert on this, but I suspect that part of this is because Latinos in state A =/= Latinos in state B. In this case state A is Nevada and state B is Colorado. Voters should not be defined by their ethnic groups.
Though I would prefer less solidarity in how ethnic groups vote, I was pleased that South Carolina was less polarized than expected. Hopefully that will be the case in future primaries as well.
Perhaps the best remedy for the Liz Matheson entity is to write to Matt
(MatthewYglesias@theatlantic.com)
and request that its ISP address be banned from the site. It has also posted on Douthat and Ambinder's blogs, so you might emphasize that its verminous presence is well.. omni-present.
maraschion:
Well look, I certainly can't track down the Liz-troll's IP address or anything. But consider the two central aspects of all those dozens of recent posts:
(1) They attack Obama.
(2) They come across as exceptionally retarded, ridiculous, lazy, and annoying.
Why could a Clintonista do this sort of thing on a mostly-liberal blogsite? Cui Bono?
By contrast, consider that "TLB" anti-immigrationist semi-troll, who's always attacking all the candidates for being insufficiently anti-immigrationist and then linking to his conspiratorial, anti-immigrationist website.
He's clearly trying to persuade people that McCain, Obama, Hillary are all in the pay of Mexico or whatever. I'd bet an awful lot he's not running a false-flag operation.
I'd point out that assuming that all Latinos are the same in demographic terms is as silly as assuming that all white people have blonde hair and blue eyes and are Lutherans. There's quite a difference between e.g Brazil, Mexico, and Spain after all.
Hmm, If Edwards really wants to 'win' the nomination and not just be a spoiler he needs to start campaigning against BHO.
You gotta go where the votes are if you want to win. HRC is no longer the frontrunner I would guess.
BHO gots'em and Edwards needs'em. Now we may see if John Edwards really really really wants to be president, or not.
RKu *whispers gently* Might the entity simply be
a) nasty
b) not very rational
c) a believer in its powers of persuasion
There are also stupid and unpleasant Clintonistas out there (the founder of BET, for example). I think that accusing an Obama supporter has as much (or little) rationale as accusing a Clinton supporter. There isn't any evidence either way to show what it really is. For all we know, it may even be a lone and deranged Gravelite, betting the farm on Alaska. Better to suspend judgment, request the detrolling of the site, and leave matters there.
RKU not RKu - sorry for decapitalizing you. Don't read any sinister motive into it, please. Sometimes a slip of the keyboard is just a slip of the keyboard!
I don't really see why racist comments with links to racist websites need to be explained by linking the Clintons to stormfronties or by double-bankshot theories of "false flags."
On the internet, a racist is usually just a racist.
People, people. Say what you will about "Liz Matheson", but you cannot deny one overriding truth about her posts: as bad as they are, they are far more interesting and persuasive than those of Chris "TLB/Lonewhacko" Kelly.
I vote that we keep Matheson, but kick Kelly off the island. At least Matheson doesn't pretend to be anything other than a script-driven roboposter.
(Kelly, I swear, is the Serdar Argic of the 21st century.)
RKU: I don't follow your argument that the senselessness of Matheson's post rules out an actual white supremacist. They exist and they are stupid.
Before we start prognosticating, how'd Jesse do in Colorado?
Well, I hate wasting my time on the output of some silly spambot troll, but I'll give it one more shot...
Look, I've certainly wandered around the Internet quite a bit and run into lots of really rightwing "white activist" types...
But absolutely NONE of them seem to care about who wins a *Democratic* primary. To the extent that they're involved in "mainstream" politics, they're devoting absolutely 100% of their energy to trying to stop McCain---whom they totally hate---from winning the *Republican* primary.
Therefore, I'd say that the odds are almost 100% that "Liz" is some sort of "false-flagger." And if "Liz" is a false-flagger, then read those annoying, retarded posts and ask "Cui Bono?"...
RKU: thank you for thinking of me. If I were running a "false flag" op, I don't think I'd have years' worth of posts about this issue, containing endless facts that people like MattY don't know. And, I don't think that McCain, Obama, or Hillary are "all in the pay of Mexico". However, they have links to people who sometimes act like they were actual paid operatives of the MexicanGovernment. You know, just like we have paid operatives in other countries. Of course, those who think of Mexicans only as their maids will have trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that they'd actually use proxies to lobby inside the U.S., despite their president recently admitting that he's going to use proxies to lobby inside the U.S.
As for "Liz", if she's posting those things at a liberal site, the "cui bono" is Obama. I'm not surprised that no one else above was able to figure that out.
Did you know that Hillary is a secret lesbian?
You must know she murdered Vince Foster
I won't ask why Bill Clinton raped all those white women:
RKU - are you outing yourself?
Now I am confused - is RKU a false flag operation all along?
You know, it might be that a racist fanatic would dislike Obama because of his racial heritage, rather than caring about Democratic politics per se.
Wait, are you guys saying that the first comment wasn't an attempt at sarcastic humor? Because I actually laughed when I read the "execution of all white people" part. And then I thought the "raping white women" just drove the point home.
I was amused, and assumed it was a joke by someone who regards Obama positively.
Wait, are you guys saying that the first comment wasn't an attempt at sarcastic humor?
I thought so too, but it seems to be spam. If you look, you'll see that the exact same comment has been posted by "Liz Matheson" in the comments to every Obama-related post (there have been five or six) in the last few days.
If I were running a "false flag" op, I don't think I'd have years' worth of posts about this issue, containing endless facts that people like MattY don't know.
Indeed. On the other hand, if you were an paranoid obsessive shut-in blogwhore who thinks Teh Brown Menace is about to rise up and overthrow the US government...
And "Liz" sounds a lot like WackoKelly's no-holds-barred bigot commenters, who, presumably, pay his rent. When you're whoring for pageviews, you can't be picky.
RKU: I'm sure Steve Sailer has an opinion; he's the fuzzy, excessively-tolerated face of racial determinism.
If the implication here is that this Obama fellow suffers from anti-black sentiment among Latino voters I think it is wrong. And I think it represents an east coast-centric view of race and ethnicity.
Latinos unlike African-Americans live everywhere in California and the southwest - cities, suburbs, small towns; this is increasingly true of the mountain west as well. Many of these people have little contact with African-Americans let alone conflict.
This is not how it has been with Puerto Ricans and Cubans - the old established Latino populations in the east.
Latinos in the west - whose power to turn elections is limited even in California still by the fact that many are not yet citizens - tend to vote for establishment candidates. It's not that Obama is an anti-establishment candidate or that he's too black it's that Mrs. Clinton is the chief establishment candidate; she's at the head of the line.
Why is it that the MSM draws attention to Senator Obama's failure to attract white voters in huge numbers?
Senator Clinton failed to win an even larger number of black voters.
Is this incipient racism?
As for Liz......aah, there lies a very sad story, we all need to understand the form some emotional illnesses might take.
Malcolm
RKU wrote:
But absolutely NONE of them seem to care about who wins a *Democratic* primary. To the extent that they're involved in "mainstream" politics, they're devoting absolutely 100% of their energy to trying to stop McCain---whom they totally hate---from winning the *Republican* primary.
I dunno, I just checked out the white supremacist "stormfront" site and I found at least one three-page thread devoted to Obama in the discussion forums. The Democratic primary doesn't seem to be their main interest, but they aren't ignoring it completely.
Go Obama!
I support Obama, (the Clintons are like the flu...) but I confess to wading through the comments and watching Liz and her silly trollness hijack the conversation. This is, of course, exactly what she wanted
Here is how to beat her: When a troll appears, run a script that takes her writing and removes the vowels from what she has written. (or at least most of them)
There is a good article on Wired about it. I think they called the person who wrote the script a "Troll Guru."
Anyway. Back to Obama.
He did good, didn't he?! :-)
Your management should really ban the ISP of the Liz Matheson comments (here on the top @ 2:58 PM). I can understand allowing hate speech, but they are clearly spam, repeatedly posting the same exact thing over and over on different threads. You already have certain spam filters, so it's not like it would be anything you don't already do.
When stuff like that starts showing up and nothing is done about it, it's sure as shooting that more is on the way. It's important to put your foot down or the site will be full of campaign spam. It's not hard to get a few volunteers to keep a site full of it.
Re: "Latinos unlike African-Americans live everywhere in California and the southwest - cities, suburbs, small towns; this is increasingly true of the mountain west as well. Many of these people have little contact with African-Americans let alone conflict."
Exactly. The political "analysis" I see on cable TV when it comes to Latinos is a joke.
It would never occur to the media, Clinton haters that they are, that some Latinos are supporting Hillary because they think she is the candidate who would do the best job.
Wait, are you guys saying that the first comment wasn't an attempt at sarcastic humor? Because I actually laughed when I read the "execution of all white people" part. And then I thought the "raping white women" just drove the point home.
I was amused, and assumed it was a joke by someone who regards Obama positively.
Shane, James Gary:
Yes, I had exactly the same impression the first time I saw the posting. But after what seems like after dozens of them apparently across all the Atlantic blogsites, it's starting to get annoying.
And I was really surprised to discover that so many of the other commenters had been assuming it was from some Clintonista or fanatic-anti Obama racist.
If it is some sort of false-flag troll, hopefully the person will now go away or at least become less lazy in their attacks.
P.S. It was a fake "RKU" who claimed above that Hillary was a lesbian who'd killed Vince Foster. But that was exactly analogous to the "Liz" postings. If someone were doing that sort of thing endlessly on a liberal blogsite, I wouldn't suspect a fanatic Obama supporter.
RKU - you have totally confused me. Doesn't your own logic demand that the false RKU (or the RKU aka not-RKU) be a fanatical Obamican?
re: "Latinos in the west - whose power to turn elections is limited even in California still by the fact that many are not yet citizens - tend to vote for establishment candidates."
OK, I don't know where you're getting that. Being an establishment candiate has nothing to do with how I cast my vote. You're implying that people don't make up their own minds in the voting booth.
Secondly, in 2006 Latinos made up 18% of the CA electorate. Nobody can win statewide without a significant share of Latino support.
The poster is a troll whether they support Clinton or Obama or neither. Should we really care who a troll supports?
"It would never occur to the media, Clinton haters that they are, that some Latinos are supporting Hillary because they think she is the candidate who would do the best job."
Clearly, but we have to consider why they seem to be more likely to think she is so qualified.
It's fully possible that Hilary's support among Hispanics is solely due to other demographic variables that happen to be correlated with being Hispanic(Lower income, larger families, etc).
It's also possible that they support her because she has different stances on certain issues that are disproportionaly influential to that demographic.
And likely, at least among certain subgroups, a good deal of the effect is racism.
It must be racism right? It. must. be.
Well, here's one piece of friendly advice to all the pro-Obama people, including those on this blogsite...
If Obama does manage to get the nomination, then it would be a really, really, REALLY dumb thing to go around endlessly whispering "racism" in the direction of all the many millions of people in America who not planning to vote for him...even if it might be true in quite a good fraction of the cases.
This sort of tactic may---barely---work within the limited context of a Democratic Party primary. In a general election campaign, it's totally suicidal.
"P.S. It was a fake "RKU" who claimed above that Hillary was a lesbian who'd killed Vince Foster. But that was exactly analogous to the "Liz" postings."
Yup. I actually thought it was you, and thought you were being quite clever in making your point.
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I have no idea if the "proclivity for raping white women" poster, (who has been around since early 2007, btw), is a rabid Republican or a devious Obama supporter, but I agree that they're almost definitely not a Democrat supporting a non-Obama candidate.
Re: "This sort of tactic may---barely---work within the limited context of a Democratic Party primary."
It's nice to hear somebody finally admit that calling everybody who does not vote for Obama a racist is a campaign tactic.
I am one of those "Latinos" about whom you speak. Also, I live in California.
I didn't know that I was supposed to support HRC until the press announced it last week.
Imagine my dismay. What will I do with my blog?
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/hope4
--Zel
Wait, is the same Liz Matheson who played a zombie in Meat Market 2?!?
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm1386233/
Adds credence to the "spam bot" theory, does it not?
Re: Colorado.
It's true that the state is disproportionately white and Latino, but it should be mentioned that it is also skews young and affluent (especially among Democratic voters, many of whom are transplants from California or the eastern Midwest/Rust Belt).
"The truth is there are two hundred white women sexually assaulted in America by black and Latino men for every one minority woman assaulted by whites." –Hillary Clinton, 1994
Comments closed February 10, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
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THE TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
(1) Early on he was a crackhead, and then was accepted into Columbia and Harvard because of affirmative action (not academic merit)
(2) His black nationalist church in Chicago has called for the execution of all white people.
Need I say more? I'm not even going to mention his proclivity for raping white women.
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Posted by Liz Matheson | January 27, 2008 2:58 PM