I have still been lurking quite a bit and reading a lot of good diaries. It's just tough to rationalize spending so much time weeding through the muck to get to the good stuff.

I wonder where all the good ones have gone...

had a whole section answering your last paragraph.

Primary Divisions Continue for Democrats

While 72% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters who backed Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination say they will support Barack Obama this fall, a significant number of holdouts remain. Among the 28% who say they will not support Obama on November 4th, 18% say they will support McCain , 7% don't yet know who they will support and 3% plan to back another candidate.

The Obama campaign has made no significant headway among former Clinton backers over the past two months. The voting preferences of Clinton's supporters are virtually identical to earlier polls in June and July.

By comparison, fully 88% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters who backed a candidate other than John McCain for the GOP nomination say they will support McCain this fall. Just 6% favor Obama. Support for McCain in the general election has consistently been just as strong among Republicans who didn't back him for the nomination as it is among those who did. By contrast, among Democrats, Clinton's primary supporters are 21 points less likely than Obama's primary supporters to back Obama in the general election (72% vs. 93%).
Despite these internal divisions, Barack Obama continues to have substantially more strong supporters in the general election than does John McCain. Overall, 27% of registered voters describe themselves as supporting Obama strongly, while just 17% say they back McCain strongly. This imbalance is driven by the overwhelming enthusiasm for Obama from those who backed him in the primaries.

http://people-press.org/report/443/presi dential-race-draws-even

In the next few days you will get all the excitement you can handle. REC

heh heh just happened to have Tivo'ed the Boondocks episode about his trial ;p

A lot of tunnel vision around here...

Ah, you all just rock. So lithe and quick with the stats. Thank you thank you.

Oh, and btw, I just heard Chuck Todd refer to 11%, but I'll concur that yours is bigger.

I was glad to hear Todd echo my very own words: yes, Obama has to get out to those rural areas where most of that 11% (his number) are located, and introduce himself to those voters. But to bring them back into the fold, it's really up to Hillary now. Those are the people Hillary courted at the very time she turned up her attacks on Obama, convincing them not merely to vote for her, but to NOT to vote for him. As many of us noted with dismay at the time, that was a dangerous game to play.

So now the onus really is on her to bring that flock back home. She has to get out there and somehow convince those voters to whom she had previously said "don't vote for him, he's too elitist, he's not ready to be commander-in-chief, he doesn't love his country as much as McCain" that they should, indeed they must, vote for Barack Obama, that he does understand their concerns, that he is ready to lead and does love his country. She has to show this bloc of voters how much she believes in his candidacy in the most compelling and persuasive ways possible. She exploited an emotional connection with her supporters during the primary; she needs to make that connection now on behalf of Obama.

Granted, for reasons I'll leave alone, a certain percentage of them won't be convinced, but if she works hard, she can bring most of her base (which, as you'll recall, ran most strongly along the spine of Appalachia) back into the Democratic fold.

She can start on Tuesday. She's been given what amounts to a full night of attention in Denver, with Bill getting a spotlight on another night. The media is now sure to be talking as much about them as they will about Obama. The Clintons basically own two nights of media coverage. So it's pretty clear the Obama team has done what was asked of them.

My point is that she needs to do even more than is "asked of her" if she wants to see Obama win. And that means getting out there and working like it's her own race she's running. And if she cares about the issues she stumped for, the issues that you care about, she will.

I like Clinton just fine, and had she run a better campaign and won the Democratic nomination, I'd have had no trouble talking up the Democratic ticket. Granted, I also think that her ticket would have had no choice but to include Obama, rather than throw away all that energy, organization, and money.

But apart from the simplistic math of adding up primary numbers, I see more of a tactical and strategic downside to Clinton's presence on Obama's ticket. I'm concerned about not only the way Obama conducts the rest of the campaign, I also want him to lead effectively in the White House. As I've noted before, the Clintons are true political celebrities, and they'll suck up the media air like two sponges, whether they want to or not. The first woman VP, wife of a former president, Bill back in the White House... it'll be endless. The media, both obsessed with All Things Clinton while also harboring deep-seated contempt for the couple, will make Obama's presidency as much about them as about him, and not to good effect. The distraction could prove devastating. We don't need it; the stakes are too high.

There's a fundamental rule in choosing a VP: the VP must never, ever, ever upstage the president. Hillary, merely by being a Clinton, would, ineveitably.

Obama may yet break that rule, but I doubt it. If he does, it's because the analysis his campaign has done has considered it a risk worth taking. Whatever his decision, I'll support it, because I trust his judgment.