Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

US & Int'l Papers

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Life is Old There ...

Wednesday May 14, 2008

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As expected, Hillary Clinton beat the you-know-what out of Barack Obama in West Virginia by something on the order of 66% to 27%.

This is becoming a White v. Black primary battle. According to the exit polls, 95% of the voters in West Virginia were White and, according to the AP piece written by Dave Espo and Matt Apuzzo:

"Nearly a quarter were 60 or older, and a similar number had no education beyond high school. More than half were in families with incomes of $50,000 or less, and the former first lady was wining a whopping 69 percent of their votes."

If you want this primary campaign to be over, then you write-off the Mountain State and continue your fantasy that Clinton will have some epiphany tonight and wake up tomorrow morning proclaiming Barack Obama is the one and true nominee of the Democratic party.

If you are not on illegal drugs, you look at her better than 2-1 win last night and say, "Why would she want to get out after a huge win in a state which is no less legitimate than North Carolina (which Obama won handily last week).

The only major difference between the two is that WV is almost completely White and North Carolina is about 22% Black.

The issue for Democrats is that according to the 2000 census, Blacks make up less than 13% of the total population of the United States, and so winning even overwhelming majorities of Black voters in November will not be enough to win the Presidency if he is getting the support of a minority of White voters.

I am not in favor of people voting on the basis of race but, obviously, people do.

Hillary Clinton is a Woman. Barack Obama is Black. John McCain is 71.

Those are facts. For most people those particular facts don't matter. For some, maybe for a lot, they do.

I did a phone interview with a newspaper reporter yesterday afternoon and after sparring for about 20 minutes, the reporter finally asked me "and you can answer this off the record, if you want" whether I thought America was ready to elect a Black President.

I said (on the record) that America was ready for a Black President, but I didn't think it was ready for this particular Black man (Obama) to be President.

I reminded the reporter that Obama has been in the US Senate for three years and has been running for President for two of them.

Remember, that Hillary Clinton said at the debate in Cleveland this past February that Obama

"chairs the Subcommittee on Europe. It has jurisdiction over NATO. NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan. He's held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan."

To which Obama responded: "Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007."

He was too busy running for President to (a) do the things a Senator is paid to do, or (b) learn the things that a President needs to know.

Go figure.

I told this reporter that, as far as I was concerned, someone like [NY Congressman] Charlie Rangel might make a formidable candidate for President having served in the US Congress since 1971 and, (according to Wikipedia) is the "Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. He is the first African-American to chair the committee. Rangel earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service in the Korean War."

Compare and contrast that to Barack Obama who didn't serve a day in military service, and has spent two-thirds of his entire three-year US Senate career running for President.

Thus he has been, by his own admission, too busy to do any substantive work on the important Committees to which he is assigned:

Foreign Relations
Veterans Affairs
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

See what I mean?

According to the New York Times, in his eight years as a State Senator in Illinois, Obama "effectively sidestepped" difficult issues by voting "present � nearly 130 times as a state senator."

Hillary won big in West Virginia last night and only a fool would bet the family homestead that she will be leaving this race any time soon.

New Topic: The Lad has, once again, published an essay which I would not have thought of in 1,257,350 years. You can read it from a link on the Secret Decoder Ring page.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the lyrics to the John Denver song about West Virginia, to an analysis of Obama's Committee attendance, to the NY Times look at the number of times Obama voted "present" in the Illinois Senate, and to The Lad's essay on RealClearPolitics.

Also a Mullfoto which will further erode my popularity in the Garden State and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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