I know ARG is a dreadful pollster, but this analysis by one of their guys is really interesting and uses turnout data v. election results, so I think it might hold up.

""A Surprise About Obama, Clinton, and Turnout"

Conventional wisdom has it that Barack Obama's primary victories are based on his ability to increase turnout.

A look at what happens when voter turnout increases in the primaries proves that this notion is wrong. In fact, Obama has had his greatest primary (and caucus) victories when turnouts have been low."

Cultural attitudes shape voter attitudes, and the urbane Swarthmore educated Dukakis and Yalie, John Kerry, lost handily in middle America.  Cultural issues have always been a part of the American political landscape, emerging, at times, in starkly partisan alignments.

Since the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960's and the Vietnam War, cultural elites have trended Democratic, with many populist lower income whites often moving into the Republican column.  Southern Presidential nominees, with histories of tapping rural voters, have often kept lower income whites in the Democratic camp, while nominees more steeped in academia have faltered.

Barrack Obama is a quintessential cultural liberal - the candidate of Hyde Park, the University of Chicago and Harvard.  Educated upscale voters from both parties, as well as independents of similar backgrounds, identify with his style and rhetoric.  Blue collar voters aren't so sure.

Exit polls in West Virginia showed that two thirds of Clinton supporters were unwilling to commit to Obama in the fall - and that's just among Democrats!  With an economy perceived to be failing, these voters should be easy prey to ANY Democrat, but they're not.  Herein lies the key for the McCain campaign, and potentially for alert Republican Congressional candidates.

Over the last twelve years, partisan alignments have moved away from wealth and economics to cultural and social issues.  Some of the wealthiest precincts in America, from McLean, Virginia to Beverly Hills; from Potomac, Maryland to Beacon Hill; from Newtrier to Shaker Heights, voted for John Kerry by substantial margins.  But Harlan County (Bloody Harlan), Kentucky, Bluefield, West Virginia and most of Appalachia voted overwhelmingly for Bush.

[. . .]

I point this out because Obama's appeal is to the liberal cultural base of the Democratic Party, not to its liberal economic base.  His connection to high income suburbs, the granola belt and college towns, is strong, but his connection to poorer whites, rural voters and other voters who may be susceptible to the Democrats' message on the economy is not yet demonstrated.  Conservative value voters are a long way from being sold on Obama, even while they feel pinched by global trade, a soft housing market and high gas prices.  But Republicans have to hold these voters to have any chance in 2008.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Question Time With the Republican President Who Will Appoint Democrats and Reject the Unitary Executive

I think it's brilliant for McCain to claim to introduce this.  It should help put to rest the claims he is too old to lead.  A raucous question time should show how alert the guy actually is.

I would really like to see Clinton and Obama match fire with fire.

I can't even tell how angry I am right now.

Obama supporters need to put a sock in it right now.

 I'll give TX the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew he was HIV+ and intended to transmit the virus...he was originally arrested for public intoxication, though, so the latter at least is probably unlikely.

 Of course, he's black.  Some things in Texas never change.  

Make no apologies for speaking the truth, or inquiring about the truth, ever.

Do you realize what is at stake here?  The opposition has had no qualms about launching full frontal attacks against our party's best candidate.  Michelle Obama herself took a personal shot at Hillary when she said something like: "if you can't take care of your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."

As Obama likes to say, "words matter."  People choose their words. Politicians even more so.  Nobody forces anyone to say anything.  It is not upon us to make apologies for their behavior.

Hillary deserves an honest accounting of what has actually gone on in this election.  It is not too late.  I am tired of the timidness.

I may be a tepid McCain supporter now but I will always be an enthusiastic believer in fairness.

And on Ugly Betty, there was this sly reference to the Obama campaign in an exchange between Betty (Ferrer) and her boss Daniel:

[after mutual encouragement for what the characters are about to face]

Daniel: We can do this!

Ferrer: [uncharacteristically smacking his @ss] Yes We Can!!!

[They exchange a moment of surprise]

Daniel: Well, THAT was unexpected!

The pheromone is supposedly harmless for humans, but the toxicity of the encapsulating material is unknown, and the ingredients held secret by the maker.  A federal exemption from human safety regulations has been obtained, so the project can go forward.  Preliminary spraying in Santa Cruz county (not highly urban) resulted in a reported 600 cases of respiratory distress.

Months ago I diaried it at Calitics.com, with this link: <http://calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5138>.  Visitors and comments much appreciated.

Very little has happened to stop this.  I think the story has national political implications, because I don't think it would happen over a largely Republican populace.

Please let me know your thoughts.

"But Obama has such a lead that he may be able to afford to be generous and give Clinton most of the delegates. That would help put the issue behind them and help him build good will in Michigan and Florida heading into the November election.

Still, some of Obama's supporters think the fairest solution is to disregard the primary votes and split the delegations evenly between the two candidates.

"It has to be a fair process for both candidates," said member Yvonne Gates, an Obama supporter from Nevada who said she wasn't sure what position she would support at the meeting. "My definition is a 50-50 split is something that is fair. It cannot be a situation where you give one candidate more votes than the other. In my opinion that wasn't an election when they didn't have a chance to get out and talk to the people of that community."

"And the unfortunate fact is that every single voter who is at least 60 years old what at least 16 years old when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 means that older white voters grew up in an environment where racial prejudice and stereotyping were a given,"

We, the elderly, are often exactly those same people who worked hard to get the civil rights act passed and, more importantly, implemented.  We marched, we sent our kids to newly-integrated schools, we brought new black friends into our homes--I could go on a lot longer about the fact that that is just the group of white people who are inclined to actually welcome a black candidate.  (But not this one.  Really.)

I live in the south--in a state that tried very hard to resist integration.  What do I see now?  Black and white friends having fun together, black and white townspeople working for the common good,  black and white dating, black and white marriage.

You know what?  We are the people who grew up with blacks, who realized old prejudices (back of the bus) were abhorent, who already knew that black did not truly equal different in ways that counted, who had already had a suspicion that lack of a decent education and opportunities were behind the undoubted cultural differences that did exist then.

If you stop by, give bink some love.  Still can't believe that some people are still trying to fight the good fight over there.  When I said "Who is there to talk to?" a few days ago, I realized what the answer was - almost no one.  Go to a community blog with hundreds of diaries every day, with tens of thousands of comments and talk to a half a dozen people?  At the cost of scanning diary after diary, and spending time sifting through the comments for something substantial?

Then there are gems like this:
These women need to be stopped.

Yup.  I thought the Pie War was much ado about very little once, but now I'm beginning to think not.  After all, if the O Team really wanted to woo women voters, the first thing they would do is ask women what they want.  And listen to the answers.

What do they do?  Tell women what is "good for them" and what they should want and denounce any women who don't agree.  

Someone in here commented one time that Michelle Obama is her own 527, with respect to her self-inflicted damaging comments.  When she said that "how can someone run for the White House when they can't run their OWN house", made me lose any and all respect for that hateful human being.

In Texas, we have a word for her:  tacky.