John, I think you're projecting the primary to the General election in a wrongheaded way re: Latinos. Even considering the Latino protest shift, national polling has Obama doing essentially as well among Latinos as John Kerry did.
If only Obama is doing as well among latinos as Kerry did, that's a huge problem for him. After all, John Kerry lost in 2004. Obama has to do
better than Kerry if he wants to win Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, or Colorado.
The GOP has not exactly endeared themselves to the Hispanic voting base in four years. McCain's moderate stance on immigration will help, but I doubt Obama will perform much worse among Latinos than Kerry.
Again, Obama can't simply do as well as Kerry, he must find some group he can do better among than Kerry.
And when you say Obama is doing about as well as Kerry, do you mean the 55-44 win Kerry got in the exit polls or do you mean the 61-38 margin most analysts think he actually recieved? There's a big difference. If Obama is only polling about where Kerry did in those unweighted exits, congratulations Democrats, you just lost the election. For your sake, he better be close to the 20+ point margin the revised numbers showed.
Taxes were an issue levied against Kerry too, and with little success. Invariably, Obama's best group that Clinton does not win tend to be affluent, well-educated males. He's polling better among them than Clinton by a good deal, and better than Kerry too.
Obama is doing well among affluent well educated
Democrats. I don't dispute that. But that is very different from sbane's claim that Obama will do well among rich white people in Orange County.
I suppose he could collapse, but I'm always skeptical of "once they know what he's really like..." arguments.
I'm not making a "once they really get to know him" argument. Voters in California already know Obama and McCain pretty well. And Obama is only ahead by 7% in an exceddingly Democratic year.
And remember, Obama never does as well when people actually vote as the polls say he will. In California, the RCP average had Obama up by 1.2% on election day. He lost by 9.6%. That's means Obama did 10.8% worse when people voted than he did when they answered the polls. If that happens in November, there are going to be a great many nasty surprises for Demcorats.
Again, I'm not saying McCain can win California. I've said he doesn't have the money and the atmosphere is too poisonous for Republicans, even though I think McCain could have won California in, say, 2000 or 2004. What I'm saying is that Demcorat are about to nominate a horrible, horrible candidate.