Reply #65: Re-read my post

[beaconess]

And then reread some of the posts here on DU and you will see that I'm right about the attitude of some Democrats. Unfortunately, you seem to have bought into some of these attitudes - for instance, using Harold Ford as an example of what would happen to Obama, as if they're the same person or their electoral circumstances would be identical. As I've repeatedly noted to others who make this argument, Barack Obama is not Harold Ford and Tennessee is not the United States - it is, in my view, foolish to insist that because Harold Ford lost a Tennessee Senate race that Barack Obama doesn't stand a chance in a presidential contest. That's like saying because Rick Santorum lost his Senate seat in Pennslvania, John Edwards shouldn't run for president. Lumping all Black politicians together and dooming them to dire predictions merely because they are of the same race is ridiculous - regardless who does it.

You and others who insist he'll get whupped in a presidential race seem to miss an important point: if Barack Obama decides to run, he won't just leap forward in time to the general election where he will run against the Republican nominee. There will be months of primaries where he will have to fight it out with several Democratic contenders and undergo unprecedented scrutiny from the media. He will engage in debate after debate, trudge through Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and elsewhere. He'll be tested to the nth degree. If he doesn't have what it takes or if racism is so rampant that he can't prevail, he won't make it through the primaries. If he survives that gauntlet and emerges on top, I have no doubt that he will have an excellent chance of beating whomever the Republicans put forward - just like any other Democratic nominee would have. Plain and simple.

So I don't understand all of the handwringing and dire predictions and warnings that he shouldn't run because he'll get his butt kicked. No other potential candidate is being treated that way on DU - he certainly is the only one whose race is being used as an excuse for him not to run, something that deeply disturbs and disappoints me coming from my fellow Democrats.