The Redhunter

I'm sure you've already seen them, but if not here are the results from yesterday's primary in Pennsylvania

Candidate____total votes___%____Delegates

Sen Clinton __1,260,208 ___ 55% ___ 81

Sen Obama _ 1,045,444 ___ 45% ___ 69

If you calculate it out, Clinton really got about 54.6% and Obama 45.4%, so technically she didn't quite win by double digits. But everyone rounds these things, and so she can claim a double digit victory, and in a way perceptions count.

However, she still trails in committed delegates 1331 to Obama's 1487, with 2025 needed to win. Although she looks close, in reality their proportional system of awarding delegates means it'll be almost impossible for her to win in a straight-out manner.

As such, what she's no doubt hoping for is to convince the superdelegates that Obama can't win the general, and as such to support her. Given recent events, this is not an implausible scenario. Unlikely, but not implausible. For the superdelegates to give her the nomination would create civil war in the party. A delicious thought for Republicans, but Chairman Howard Dean will move heaven and earth to keep that from happening.

How Did We Get To This Point?

Barack Obama came out of nowhere. One day he's a state senator in Illinois, and the next he's running for U.S. Senate. When his Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out, leaving the gadfly Alan Keys to run in his place, most of us tuned out. I remember hearing that this Obama fellow gave a good speech but I didn't give him much thought. The next thing, though, I hear he's running for President. "Awfully presumptuous", I think, given his inexperience, but whatever. Lo and behold, the guy takes off like a bat out of hades. He beats Hillary Clinton time and again in the primaries.

But we hardly knew anything about him. As I wrote above, he seemed like a nice guy, if wrong on the issues.

Then the wheels started to come loose; his bizarre pastor Jeremiah Wright, associations with the terrorist William Ayers, we find out he attended at the Million Man March, various utterances of his wife, and finally his own remarks about "bitter" Americans "clinging to their God and guns"

But Obama cannot close the deal with Democrat voters.

The thing is, there's hardly a dime's worth of differences between Obama and Clinton. The issues are that 1) each side had built-up a base of hard-core supporters before the primary even began, and these supporters are not willing to give up. 2) There are grave doubts about Obama based on his past associations and statements. He is charismatically shallow and people are beginning to see this.

The problem with Obama is both that his associations are so questionable and that he thinks it beneath himself to have to defend against these charges. At the last debate, he reacted to questions from George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson with an attitude of "how dare you ask me these questions". You wouldn't know it given the whining from the left, but Stephanopoulos and Gibson are hardly right-wingers. And at least with Stephanopoulos, his questions to Obama on William Ayers were so gentle as to be almost softballs. Yet the left has gone into fits of rage over even this. It's one thing to say that you will be above gutter politics, another to be so arrogant and elitist to think that you don't have to answer questions about your past associations.

If you're against Obama you're against "hope" and "change".

Obama and his defenders claim that Clinton is simply engaged in "negative politics". In other words, they don't like any criticism of their candidate. Obama supporters can dish it out but can't take it. We all know that if McCain had sat in a church for 20 years listening to a racial hate-monger, or had known an abortion-clinic bomber, he'd be booted out of the Senate, let alone the presidential race.

Obama thinks that he can simply slough off talk about his associations and comments and only discuss the issues he wants to discuss. But to voters, and not just Republican ones, character matters. People don't like what they see in Obama. They're increasingly uncomfortable with him. There's a sneaking suspicion that "he's not who we thought he was". Worse, if you're a Democrat, you can hardly switch to Hillary if character is your main issue. They're caught in a bind.

Obama says that he doesn't take money from "lobbyists". But that's almost false advertising. It's been illegal for 100 years to take money directly from oil companies. Also, his definition of "lobbyist" is pretty narrow. Will he take money and support from civil rights and environmental groups? Why don't they count as "lobbyists"? The ACLU and GreenPeace don't represent anyone but their own members.

In the wake of all this new criticism, he's off his game. His concession speech last night sounded bitter to some. He flubs answers in press conferences and debates. It seems that he's only comfortable when he's on top, but can't handle stress or dissension. He only looks good in staged appearances where he's got a teleprompter and thousands of adoring fans.

If he's flustered so easily by a campaign, how can he possibly handle the the everyday events that come with the presidency, let alone a world crisis?

He also abandoned his "new style" politics. He lies about McCain's "100 years in Iraq". He said to The Washington Post today that he was going to bring up the old Clinton Scandals. The magic, it seems, is gone.

Obama doesn't realize that the problem is with Hillary Clinton, or with bitter middle Americans clinging to their Bibles and guns. The problem is that people are not comfortable with him. There are questions about his associations and positions, and worse he doesn't appear to want to address them.

As for McCain, he's following the old aphorism of "when your opponents are in the process of destroying themselves, get out of the way". I say, let them continue to destroy themselves.