In addition, you can’t predict who will turn up for the GE by who voted in the primary, and in this election cycle, there are just too many variables to predict anything.

As far as McCain goes, I think your assessment of his marginalization is extremely generous. The polls certainly don’t reflect it. His numbers should be on the negative side, given Bush’s numbers and given that it’s, well, McCain. Instead, he’s got a real chance of winning, which is just the cherry on top of the nuts on top of the whipped cream over the ice cream and hot fudge of this CrAzY election sundae.

I am entertaining my own nightmares as to what may happen by the time Republicans hold their convention, and one of them is that their candidate ultimately is NOT going to be McCain, for whatever reason (sickness, death, etc.) and that we won’t be the only one holding a brokered convention.

BTW: I reposted my comment on the new thread. bmaz agreed.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/05…..nt-1470864

Just in case you didn’t know.

Because the campaign is going to every state (except FL & MI) Democrats and others who don’t like the way the nation is going are feeling empowered…maybe for the first time ever. And they’re signing up in droves to vote in the primaries. If they vote in the primaries, they’ll most likely vote in the general. This campaign is changing the party demographic as well as enlivening it. Obama has a ground crew in place to assist this. I think that’s wonderful. Would he have had to work harder as the sole candidate? I think so. Because it would have caused primaries to be run on local issues in many states…not quite as galvanizing.

McCain has been marginalized in the press due to the “bloody” battle between Clinton and Obama. He rarely makes the news unless it’s a scandal and I think that’s awesome too. When it’s not a scandal, he sounds just like Bush.

The “all guns blazing” Republican smear machine has had to hold fire until the race is decided. Yes, some shots have been fired, but not enough to matter at this point–except to 28%ers. The longer Obama has to build his campaign, the better off he’ll be.

I think the pluses far outweigh the minuses on this issue.

What a tool!

The reason I don’t believe it is because I think it’s harmful in three ways:

1) It’s irritating the hell out of me, and if I’m irritated enough to consider abandoning the Democratic Party forever, people with less patience and less connection to Democratic politics (that would be a goodly number of Obama supporters) are already gone.

2) I think it’s dumb, counter-intuitive politics in that it inhibits a unified coalescing of the different groups within the party and a coordinated campaign against Republicans not only at the national level but in state contests.

3) Financially (and is that really what it’s all about?) it’s a nightmare. The DNC is broke because of this. $26 million dollars a month ago was all it had on hand, and as long as this campaign continues, contributors are spending their money financing a war between two of its own (Clinton and Obama) instead of spending it against Republicans.

4) It’s extremely risky for Obama to leave this unsettled for the summer. Not that Clinton’s wildest dreams might be realized (another Rev. Wright in Obama’s closet, or some scandal), but because he’s seen her dirty tactics, he’s been blindsided by them, and he’s no fool. But while he’s no fool……

5) I don’t think Obama is that disciplined a politician.

6) Obama and his people claim that he doesn’t have them (superdelegates, enough yet to put him over the top), and I take him at his word.

I’m the treasurer for a candidate trying to unseat Bill Young and Samm Simpson has been doing the cafe-to-cafe bit all along. We don’t have a lot of money so Samm spends a lot of her time pressing the flesh with the neighborhood groups, etc. We got a really late start in 06 but ended up with more votes than any other Dem who ever ran against Young.

Never give up.