Can Obama's campaign recover

or is the damage so substantial as to be a death blow?

I suppose I could have said, can it recover to the point where he has a chance to become the nominee- or something to that effect.

And I agree with you.

:hi:

And hello to you.:hi:

We've come a long way, baby.

Wrong is wrong whether it's Obama or Billary.

But it will be for Obama in 2008. I think Bill was wrong in '96.

I have to say I've never seen the attraction. I think he is an eloquent speaker, incredibly intelligent and thoughtful, and certainly not a homophobe. Basically, a good man and a democrat I would have no problems voting for should he win the nomination

But for all his talk about hope, unity, and New Politics, I didn't see any of it. And now, though it was clumsy, life has thrown Obama a golden opportunity to show us what he's made of; And he did.

If he wins the nomination, I'll still vote for him, but it won't be without reservations. It won't be the first time, and sadly, probably not the last either

I think this issue plays less in Iowa than it does in other areas of the country. If Iowa voters put Obama first, then this is old news. If they put Edwards first, then we can debate how badly this hurt Obama. If they put Hillary first, the primary race will be over.

It is as simple as that.

...and will add that I think Hillary will have a very tough
time winning in Iowa.

If he became the nominee, I have no confidence that he could get elected. He has some seriously piss poor advisers in his campaign.

My feelings exactly

I don't know if some people around here really care about that, but his standing with the GLBT Democrats just plummeted big time. There's no way he can recover from it.

He may have calculated that he can get away with insulting the LGBT community in favor of currying bigot votes in South Carolina, but us straights who detest bigotry and homophobia will not forget this.

homophobic,including the DEM party, and I seriously doubt most DEMS give a shit about us enough to drop their favored candidate over this. There has been some nasty stuffed spewed at us here this weekend from his supporters and if that is a sign, it probably won't make much difference. I might be overly pessimistic but this is how i feel.

I look forward to seeing him win in Des Moines firsthand.

before Obama wins Iowa

I doubt he anticipated this blowing up into such a large deal with many liberals and gay rights activists, and they are more represented in an Iowa caucus than gospel loving African Americans. Iowa is being counted on to at least blunt Clinton's momentum.

It's not like pulling a curtain and voting in private. The whole thing is simply indefensible, and the defenses have been so deeply disingenuous. This will play out terribly for him in a public forum.

There's no defending against this. It simply isn't possible. I would be really, really surprised if we aren't witnessing a truly historic moment in American politics. It's a Donna Rice kind of moment. Donnie Rice.

That people don't see this is quite interesting.

If so, I think you're vastly overestimating the significance of him. Yeah, it wasn't a good idea to get involved with him, but very few people outside the netroots know about this, and even less care. Obama is in about the same position he's been in for a while. Take that however you want to, I really don't know whether he can win the nomination or not.

What I'm saying is for the majority of voters, this is not a make or break issue.

for this round, but it won't have any long-term impact on his career.

I suspect he'll be a successful presidential candidate in the future.

This is two events - one for the aware, like us, and he can't recover from that. Activists know that he's either not in charge or that he is and he's really weird and offensive on the gay issue.

The larger event is the one you're referring to. Probably which is a yes. He'll get new activists, be hurt in some primaries, but he can still recover.

Why is that? Because we're in a Kabuki drama of unreal polls and campaigns. Clinton is not leading with the public, just in the Mark Penn contrived polls. Obamma is convenient as a #2 but who knows what his numbers are. Edwards probably leads, but that wouldn't please the party masters, the leaders of The Money Party.

Handicapping this political race is sort of like betting on professional wrestling. You know it's rigged so you really can't bet on the event. You're left only with a bet on the story linen...in tihs case, Clinton wins, surprise, surprise - rigged polls in the use, rigged voting machines in the US just like "they" (the intel agencies and NGO's)rig elections overseas. It's a boomerang form of Globalization.

Pathetic isn't it.

If she's that powerful than resistance is, indeed, futile...

Bigger question: why isn't John Edwards capitalizing on this to point out Obama's bigotry? One would think this would be a great opportunity for him to make a stab at distinguishing himself from Obama.......but then again, maybe he agrees.

Never mind.

I can't think of a thing he could do to reverse his downward momentum. I think he is seen as yesterday's news - with a very, very long shot of being the next president.