You have encompassed my thoughts about why Republicans want to run against Obama in the fall exactly, dianavan. And my thoughts about how easy it is to snooker the voting public with the Coke v Pepsi false choices.

Obama won't even commit to pulling out of Iraq, at this point. How is that different from McCain/Clinton, except by infintessimally small degrees?

How can that give anyone hope?

One thing Jamieson mentioned last night on Moyers has stuck w/me all day today. She talked about how soft support is for him in the sense that those who are voting for him now aren't true believers, and have many doubts about him, and a very large number of likely voters in the primaries (including Texas and Ohio) are still undecided. Many people who are voting for Obama are going for him at the last minute, as Zogby pointed out recently too.

Zogby also has pointed out that while Obama doesn't suffer what they call 'racial leaking' among the primary voters (this is the phenomenon where whites say they will vote for a black candidate to pollsters, but then switch to a white candidate in the general election) this year, which is actually unprecedented, they say it is far too early to tell if that will hold with general election voters.

Democratic party primary voters are, to no one's surprise, a tad more progressive than general election voters, so don't feel as uncomfortable voting for an African American candidate as they once did (for instance, for Jesse Jackson in 1988, when he had a real shot at the nomination).

In the general election, it is conventional wisdom (until the MSM went all Obamarama on us) that Clinton is the much stronger candidate in a general election, because of the sheer popularity of her husband among US general election voters. Why that argument has been shunted aside by the MSM is a great mystery though, isn't it?