Because he's tried carefully to say enough of whatever the audiences he's been speaking to at the time want to hear while leaving himself enough space later on to deny his intentions to leave that impression, his record represents precisely the "character" weakness the Republicans have exploited in every Democratic candidate since Dukakis: Another Dem trying to put things over on the American people.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=622&Itemid=1

The Deeper Racism in Iowa: Beneath the White Obama Craze

First in the Nation

Blacks would seem to be under special surveillance in Iowa.  The state might have been the first in the nation to support Obama on the road to the White House but it is also first in the rate of racially disparate mass incarceration.  According to a recent Sentencing Project report, Iowa locks up African Americans at 13.6 times the frequency that it imprisons whites, the worst record in the nation.

This is more than twice the terrible national black-white race disparity (5.6) in incarceration rates. Mississippi and Alabama both lock up blacks at 3.5 times the rate at which they imprison whites, making them look like bastions of progressivism compared  to relatively lily-white northern states like Iowa (13.6), Wisconsin (10.6), and South Dakota (10.0).

"Iowa locks up African Americans at 13.6 times the frequency that it imprisons whites."

An antiwar activists from Des Moines told me last year that "if you want to see blacks in Iowa, just join us on a civil disobedience act and spend a night in jail."

and

Middle-Class Obamists Missing in Action

Interestingly enough, you don't see many if any white liberal Iowa City Obama supporters involved in efforts to fight and overcome routine institutional racism and racial harassment in their city and state.

Given the purported anti-racism behind their support for Obama, they seem remarkably indifferent to - and ignorant of - Iowa's status as the nation's leader in disproportionate black imprisonment.

Some of the black and liberal students here find this a paradox.  I have a different perspective. Two days before the heavily Caucasian Iowa caucus, one forthcoming and self-critical caucus-goer and neighbor told me something I'd been suspecting for some time. Obama, he said, was "a way for liberal and moderate whites around here to pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced to vote for a black guy."  But it was all premised, he agreed, on Obama being a "good," that is non-threatening, middle-class, academic-friendly, and "not-too fiery black" - one who seemed unlikely to confront institutional white supremacy in any way more meaningful than attaining higher office.

There is an imoact on the local economies as well. In small towns mom and pop convenience stores who sell food, beverages etc. are struggling to get by. The immigrants spend money in these stores.

That's in fly-over/hill billy country though, so let's not mind it. The immigrants are killing animals for human consumption. They are buying beer and cigarettes (!) in the local stores. They even by Lotto tickets. These people are not worthy of our concern.

If the immigrants can't get jobs making tofu patties, they should get jobs raising free range chickens. They should learn to live on unprocessed foods. They shouldn't drink or smoke either.

All three have voted for US Chamber of Commerce written bills.  McCain especially pushes for everything the corporate lobbyists want.

Hillary is now recognizing the labor economic realities in her speeches.  

Obama does not, he claims everything is immigrant bashing.

Neither Hillary or Obama have signed onto Dick Durbin's S.1035, which would reform the H-1B and L-1 guest worker Visas to close these loopholes by which US professional workers are displaced.

All three have promised NASSCOM, the US Chamber of Commerce to give them their global labor arbitrage vehicles.

Of the three I would say the only one even giving any acknowledgment of the labor economic realities on immigration is Hillary but none of them are willing to go against the massive special interests and corporate cheap labor lobby agenda.

Bear in mind we have in the United States, right now, horror stories of outright slavery and human trafficking and they often use guest worker Visas to do it.  So, trying to claim that's Pro immigrant to set up a system that is guaranteed to further erode wages by flooding the system with cheap labor is not my idea at least of humanitarian agenda.  It's opposite of what you would think it would be intuitively.

Hillary has repeatedly mentioned starting programs, esp. S of the border to increase their opportunities, middle classes, those nation's worker rights so it curtails those fleeing their homeland because they are economic refugees.

I've never heard Obama or McCain mention those economic truths either.

Obama is probably the worst of the bunch because he refuses to even acknowledge these economic realities and in philosophy seems to have some sort of all immigration is good, globalist agenda.

If I were a candidate I would just say, it is a Bush failed policy. I wouldn't comment on it too much. It's too complex.

Clinton appears to be more conservative than either McCain or Obama. McCain does not want to go after the corporations.

Does that sound racist to you?  (BTW, my friend had not listened to the debates, so I told him the "good speaker" was only good in certain situations.)

I wish I knew a way to change the way we are speaking about the primary and the election.

Obama did not run for the presidency saying, "Vote for me or you are racist." (As someone above said.)

Obama did not make an issue that small town Americans "are bitter and cling to guns and religion". He said it once. It is not fair to say Hillary separated Americans into "hard working Americans, white Americans" based on one mention and it is unfair to look into Obama's heart and say that remark "changed things forever".

I don't know why Hillary trails in the delegate totals, but I don't see how anyone can say I am for Hillary or McCain any more than I can see how anyone can say I am for Obama or McCain.

I have come to dislike Hillary, but if the Super Delegates nominate her, even if their reason is that they think Obama has no chance with a segment of white voters, I will vote for her.

I know many Hillary supporters here on Talk Left say they won't vote for Obama. That is fine. But all the "unity Pony" and "Bitter/Cling Gate" and "Obama would nominate Roberts and Scalia ;ile SCOTUS Justices" is sad.

The discussion around citizenship involves positioning for votes.  To get the vote of hispanics doesn't the party need to take in to account the percent that practice religion and are pro-life?  I have seen statistics that hispanics lean Catholic and are more often pro-life and I seem to be seeing more pro-life Dems.  This article is telling Obama how to get the Casey Dem vote.

Is this the direction this party is going? Not the Party Faithful Anymore
[The bottom line is clear: The party must woo Casey Democrats in Rust Belt and border states -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky. To win them over, it won't be enough for Democrats to hammer the GOP over the economy and the war in Iraq, as Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, did in 2004, or merely to use inclusive language and support partial-birth abortion, as Obama and Clinton have done. Instead, Democrats must address voters' real concerns about protecting families and human life, as Gov. Casey did. "Catholic voters have emerged more pro-life," pollster Greenberg wrote in a 2005 memo, "but they are very responsive to a broad initiative to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions."

Unfortunately for this plan, it would be necessary for the companies to first make sure that their illegal work force workers are all LEGAL residents.  Illegal immigrants cannot become citizens.  Period.  No exceptions.  So ..if they take on that (almost impossible) task, they would then lose the advantage of employing illegal workers who work for less because they have no choice but to accept what is offered them--one of the reasons they are employed by these companies in the first place.  

I stand to be corrected, but I would be shocked if you lived in a state in close proximity to the border.  It seems that the farther that people live from the border and contact with illegals, the harder they scream.

Maybe you should go see "A Day Without the Mexicans."

I'm a lifelong Texan and while there is some minimal wage depression (but the main problem for all workers is a strong nonunion mentality) and job competition, the truth is that most times, illegals are doing jobs that have few takers otherwise.  In fact, in Texas, Hispanics illegal or otherwise, are starting to dominate minimum wage jobs as in the fast food industry, where actually there has been job growth to which Bush so proudly points.  Also  you hardly see a county or city road crew that is not mostly Mexicans or Mexican Americans.  

Absent putting up barbed wire and machine gun nests, the flow is going to be pretty hard to stop.

This is a complex problem which has a facet that is hardly, if ever, discussed.  That is that the main problem is not with USA policies, but with policies and economic conditions that are solely Mexican.  Whatever the rhetoric, the Mexican government sees the flight to the US as a pressure  release valve that lowers domestic discontent and
does away with any need for internal reform in what is still basically a corrupt political system. About "Insist that Mexico and CA countries work to provide safety nets and other societal benefits ...", good luck.  Insisting about anything is sorely resented and any pressuring is great fodder for local politicians against Ugly Americans. Just saying, it's not any easy sell w/o
a sincere internal desire for reform.