Close (and not-so) ties to Obama

"Kill Him!"

Lots of words there David to try and prove a point McCain does on TV every "town hall" he holds.

The fact that Obama is NOT an Arab doesn't dissuade McCain dead enders from BOO'ING McCain when he corrects them.

We are judged by the company we keep TODAY, not 40 years ago.

The Obama campaign's own core supporters are making it difficult for a lot of Democratic office-holders to rally to Sen. Barack Obama's cause for the fall campaign.

The latest Democratic governor to be booed at a major political rally by Obama backers was the governor of Michigan, who was trying to bring her Michigan supporters from the Hillary Clinton camp to the Barack Obama tent, but she was hooted down, according to the Washington Post.

Even former Vice President Al Gore was booed at this meeting in Detroit, according to the Post. So there you have individuals representing Democratic presidential campaigns which received impressive popular vote totals in the 2000 general election and the 2008 primary trying to help broaden Sen. Obama's support for the general election campaign this fall, but both the governor of Michigan and the former Vice President and Tennessee senator instead received brickbats for their efforts to help boost Barack Obama's chances.

This is becoming a real problem for the Democratic Party, including candidates for governor, U.S. senator and Congress. The party pros and major leaders loyal to the Democratic banner will stick with the Obama general election campaign throughout such selfish exhibitions of hostility and scorn, but if some of Obama's supporters have their way in continuing to boo other Democrats who wish only to express their support for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nominee, then some of the field-level, rank-and-file Democratic loyalists might not necessaily go along with such inhospitable treatment.

Then there was the rude reception dished out to North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley at this spring's Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Raleigh merely for being a Clinton backer at that particuar time even though the two major Democratic candidates for governor, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and Treasurer Richard Moore, had both pledged their support to Obama.

The whole thing suggests that perhaps some of Sen. Obama's core backers feel he is better off "going it alone" from now on rather than welcoming in other major Democratic leaders who wish to lend his campaign their support. Of course, Sen. Obama personally does not feel this way as he has gone out of his way to express public appreciation for recent statements of support from leaders across the Democratic Party spectrum.

But this may be another case in which a presidential nominee's own original supporters block their own candidate's best leadership efforts and remain so hostile to other Democratic voters that they may ultimately impede Sen. Obama from receiving the additional legions of Democratic Party activitists he needs to have a chance to win the November election.

The Republican presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain of Arizona may be facing a number of problems at this juncture, but ill-considered demonstrations of acrimony and bitterness from his campaign toward other loyal Republicans is not among them. No matter how far behind Republican presidential candidates may start out in certain general election campaigns, they rarely experience any difficulties in achieving party unity for the November election.

Students of American presidential elections who wonder how promising and appealing Democratic nominees can open the general election campaign with high hopes and favorable standing in the polls but are unable to maintain and build upon these early advantages need only to look at the way some fervent Obama supporters are lashing out at other major groups of voters from within the Democratic Party--not independents and Republicans but other committed Democrats! It could yet another classic derailment of a Democratic train which seemed at first destined to reach Union Station in Washington by Inauguration Day.

If vocal hecklers in the Obama campaign succeed in blocking their own candidate's extended efforts to restore harmonious relations within the Democratic Party of this country, then other Democrats on the receiving end of this negative treatment may either stay at home or vote the other way come November.

David McKnight