American politics is tribal.

Not in the sense of Kikuyu and Luo and Kalenjin and Kamba and all our competing ethnic groups, but racial and ethnic components do account for the differences in this richly diverse country.

At the most basic level in the nation of 305.3 million people, it is Black and White. Obama Versus McCain.

Then there are the Hispanics, a sizebable group with about 14 per cent of the population compared to about 13.3 per cent that is black.

There are the Asians, who are a distinct minority at five per cent, and the largely forgotten and ignored Native Americans, who make up about 1.5 per cent of the population.

Among the whites, things get very complicated, depending on how people chose to classify themselves in the census.

There are the majority White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. There are Catholics. There are Hispanic whites.

There are religious or ethnic groups like the Jews; and there are the various white ethnicities — Italian, Greek, German, Dutch, Irish and many more that went into the original melting pot.

Within the white community, for instance, political pollsters look not just at the above distinctions but also at sub-genres like education, sexual orientation, region, occupation, rural or urban, farming or industrial, new industry (IT) or old industry (mining, motorplants) and so on.

These are the Tribes of America for whose votes Barack Obama and John McCain are competing to win one of the most compelling presidential campaigns in US history.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the latest stop on a whirlwind tour between last Tuesday’s second presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee and the final debate set for New York on Wednesday.

Before Philadelphia, Mr Obama made several stops in Ohio while his running mate Senator Joe Biden campaigned in Florida, another key state whose electoral vote could determine the outcome of the election.

Republican candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin have been equally busy in the week or so between the two debates, covering, sometimes together and sometimes separately, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Winsconsin.

National opinion polls show Mr Obama increasing his lead over Mr McCain, reaching double-digit 11 percentage points — 52 percent to 41 per cent — according to the latest Gallup daily tracking poll at the end of the week.

The margin was mirrored in the latest Newsweek poll. But outside the major national events like the presidential debates, the campaign is being fought at the grassroots level, block by block, town by town and state by state.

   A pro-Obama campaign march in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this month

What matters in the American political system is not the national popular vote, but the state-by-state popular vote which determines the number of electoral votes through which the electoral college elects the president.

The outcome in some states can already be predicted — New York generally votes Democratic — so the candidates are concentrating their efforts on the so-called battleground states where the outcome is still uncertain.

There is no need, for instance, for Mr Obama to spend too much in California where he already commands nearly 54 per cent of the popular vote to Mr McCain’s 39 per cent.

The Republican candidate would not bother too much about the state’s 55 electoral votes because he has little chance of overturning Mr Obama’s majority.

The reverse holds true in another large state like Texas with its 34 electoral votes where Mr McCain holds an unassailable 51 per cent advantage over Mr Obama’s 38 per cent.

So the campaigns are almost over in California and Texas and in a large number of other states where solid red indicates support for the Republican candidate while solid blue shows support for the Democrat.

But then there are the states where the outcome is still too close to call; they are coloured light blue or pink depending which way they lean.

And there are some states where the candidates are virtually tied; they are marked with blue and red checks.

Almost all the polls now indicate that if the certain states for either candidate are counted, Mr Obama has a clear lead.

If he also captures the states leaning strongly towards him — those where he has more than a five per cent margin — then all the key pollsters including Reuters, Newsweek, Zogby, Gallup, give him an unassailable victory over Mr McCain in electoral votes.

Some estimates already give Mr Obama just over the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory; most give him a clear margin of between 330 and 350 electoral votes compared to Mr McCain’s 190 to 210.

Mr Obama’s tremendous surge is being attributed to the way in which he has steadily eaten into the regional and demographic groups that have been supportive of McCain or of the Republican party in general.

States like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri and quite a few others were just weeks ago solidly for McCain. Now they are seen as leaning towards Mr Obama or are too close to call.

According to the conventional wisdom of electoral demographics, Mr Obama’s key support comes from non-white groups including blacks and Hispanics; the youthful 18-29 age group; those with postgraduate educations; women; the urban poor, mostly black; and groups that are ambivalent towards religion.

Mr McCain’s strengths have been among whites, other than Hispanic; senior citizens over 65 years; the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS) and whites who attend church frequently or for whom religion is important.

On the demographic map, therefore, Mr McCain’s support base has been in the traditional Republican strongholds, the middle and central United States that are largely agricultural bastions of conservatism; while Mr Obama’s support has been in the big cities on the densely populated East and West coasts.

His support among whites has been limited, as described above, to young, modern, well-educated urbanites.

That is what has changed. I was at an Obama campaign march in Nashville, Tennessee, last Tuesday on the same day the two presidential candidates had their second debate.

Nashville is the home of country music.

Tennessee as a whole is a very white and conservative state; guns, church and ranching are the defining characteristics. It is a solid red state where the 11 electoral votes are all but assured for Mr McCain.

But observing the Obama march around Belmont University, one could hardly have believed it.

The participants were mostly white, as would be expected of Nashville. But they were not just the young, educated and modern white generation generally seen to side with Mr Obama.

The chanting crowd included middle-aged to elderly white men and women of the type that instinctively would be fearful of and hostile to the prospects of an Obama presidency.

That is the demographic that Obama is stealing from McCain in states around the country and the one that might secure him victory.

Article — Originally posted in The Daily Nation on 10/11/08

Turncoat Democrats, the biggest of them all being Senator Joe Lieberman, always turn to FOX NEWS, a nest of venomous vipers and compost-throwers, to air their grievances.

Such is the case of Debra Bartoshevich last Sunday. Debra is a Wisconsin Hillary Clinton delegate who will not endorse Barack Obama and is publicly supporting John McCain.

I would respect her if she aired her grievances elsewhere, other than Sean Hannity’s “shit-hole” a.k.a “Hannity’s America” on Fox News Channel.

The 41-year-old nurse from Waterford, Wisconsin a pledged delegate to Clinton told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after Clinton dropped out that she would vote for McCain, not Sen. Barack Obama.

Last Friday, Bartoshevich was buried by a party committee, which voted unanimously (23-0) to strip her of her delegate status. The Democratic Party convention had previously and also unanimously passed a resolution asking the DNC not to seat her at the convention.

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., center, and his wife Cindy, second from left, have coffee with Treasonous Democratic Turncoat — Debra Bartoshevich, left, of Waterford, Wis, her daughter Mariah, right, and her father Gene Brittain at the Dunn Bros. Coffee Shop on Thursday, July 31, 2008 in Racine, Wisconsin. [ENLARGE PIC]

Other than feeling “disenfranchised,” she cites the following as her other reasons for not backing Barack Obama:

• She believes Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly. [Nope! -- Hillary lost to a superior political organization, and had she and slick-willy not injected RACE issues in the South Carolina primary, we might be looking at a presumptive nominee other than Obama today.]

• Obama’s lack of experience and his judgment. She says: “I just feel you need to have somebody who has experience with foreign matters.” [Complete hogwash -- John McCain Foreign Policy will be exactly the same as Bush's -- "You're either with us, or against us"]

• Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright, the fiery Chicago based Pastor of Trinity United Church. [Well, what about McCain's association with Pastor Hagee and numerous other intolerant right-wing preachers]. Hagee commands a much bigger “Establishment Audience,” and is therefore much more dangerous than Jeremiah Wright.

A look at Jeremiah Wright, Geraldine Ferraro and John Hagee, who have
been associated with the campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
and John McCain respectively.

McCain Calls This HATE SPEWING MORON — A “Moral Compass”

Hagee on Hurricane Katrina — “All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]

Hagee on Islamic Beliefs — Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked if Hagee believed that “all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews,” to which Hagee replied, “Well, the Quran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly.” [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]

Hagee on African-Americans — The San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to “meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a ’slave sale,’ an East Side minister said Wednesday.” The Express-News reported:

“Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a ’slave sale’ to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, ‘The Cluster.’

“The item was introduced with the sentence ‘Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and ended with “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]

Hagee on Catholicism — “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.” [Jerusalem Countdown by John Hagee]

Hagee on Women — “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” [God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner]

“[T]he feminist movement today is throwing off authority in rebellion against God’s pattern for the family.” ["Bible Positions on Political Issues," John Hagee]

Hagee on LGBT Americans — “The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment.” [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]

Hagee on Iran — “The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty,” Hagee wrote [in 2006] in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. “Israel and America must confront Iran’s nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide.” [The Nation, 8/8/2006]

• Obama’s association with Tony Rezko — You mean this person [See below]

   Hillary and Bill Clinton Pictured With Tony Rezko

• Bartoshevich says, “The Democrats jumped on this wagon of Barack Obama, and nobody really knows him.” –[Lame Excuse!] — After almost two years of extensive coverage what more do you need…imbecile!?

If Hillary Clinton herself has not deserted the Democratic party despite her loss, I wonder who this “faithless Benedict Arnold” thinks she is to abandon core Democratic principles which are totally parallel to the “man-eat-man” dictates of the Republican party.

Clinton Supporter – “Angry White Female ‘Bigot’”

John McCain supports the eight year Bush policies — for example lying himself(Bush) into an unnecessary war resulting in huge casualties on innocent Iraqis and American servicemen and women, and squandering tax-payer money to proliferate this war while enriching a clique of neo-cons and reckless war-profiteers bent on raping America to the bone.

Now, that’s TREASON!

By supporting John McCain, a warmonger and a Bush supporter, Debra Bartoshevich’s switch to McCain is a betrayal of the “core causes” of the Democratic party — to stop this evil, unnecessary “thieving” war in Iraq, to restore America’s severely damaged pride and prestige among nations, and to reverse the greedy, dictatorial and discriminatory Republican policies that King George and his THUGS have shoved down our throats.

I therefore find and Bartoshevich’s actions faithless and traitorous.

The fact that McCain is absorbing numerous Bush operatives into his campaign, including “Bush’s Brain” Karl Rove, the “Architect” of Bush’s failed, murderous, thieving and treasonous presidency, is testament.

In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more serious acts of disloyalty to one’s sovereign or nation……George Bush has committed treason, and John McCain who is hell-bent on perpetuating the same “Treasonous” policies for “100 Years,”…so to speak, is a co-conspirator, and therefore, Debra Bartoshevich is an unprincipled traitor/moron of the worst kind….a deserter, a defector, a turncoat!

In no way does the magnitude of John McCain’s and Bush’s treason, balance with the flimsy reasons this woman lists for not supporting the Democratic party and Obama.

There has to be another reason….

Racism as I have noted in a blog post before is not limited to right-wing Republicans, the so-called “Reagan Democrats” a.k.a “DixieCrats” a.k.a “Appalachains” such as Debra Bartoshevich, are just equally racist, for they think SKIN COLOR first before anything else. The Appalachian heartlands of America is riddled with bigot democrats in rural strongholds, who will never vote for Obama.

As Obama correctly and very elegantly put it: During times of economic difficulty….“it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” — the only “credible reason” to explain Debra Bartoshevich’s switch to McCain.

Obama was censured angrily for speaking the TRUTH!

The destruction in terms “faith,” “pride,” “international standing,” and “economic waste” that George Bush has inflicted on this country should make even his most ardent supporters to desert him….and by extension John McCain.

Debra Bartoshevich is just another sore loser, and by airing her grievances in Sean Hannity’s “dung-pit show” just like Mafioso Geraldine “I am not a racist” Ferraro did, she has lost all dignity, and is officially a “White ReTHUGliTOM” in my books….as despicable as Hannity’s Black Pastor — Jesse Lee Peterson, who has repeatedly and selfishly allowed Fox News to use him to disparage his own people.

Debra Bartoshevich — Ignorant and Confused ‘Low-Information Voter‘

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