"I Do Have Choices And Options"
Roll Call's Kondracke just got chastised by FNC's Hume for saying that this election will be remembered for producing the first African-American POTUS, "most likely." Hume: "That's a moment yet to come."
Newsweek's Fineman reports "huge black turnout" in PA's West and East, which he attributes to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ad run by the PA GOP. Fineman: "If there was any question about blacks turning out in PA, this ad has done it" (MSNBC).
Arlington, VA’s Darin Hammond, who's studying computer technology at a school for inner city kids "who've had it rough," tells the Washington Post: "It's not just pride I feel, it's gratification. Here's someone who shows me I can do something other than be in the street. I do have choices and options. I don't have to be a statistic."
Dem consultant and "self-described redneck" Mudcat Saunders says Obama "will do better in rural America" than Al Gore or John Kerry. He said Obama "will still lose the rural vote, but only by 10 percentage points or so." (Gore lost it by 16 and Kerry by 19.) "The reason? He's beat the elitist rap that sank them." Saunders: "A redneck'll vote for a black guy before they vote for a white elitist."
"Saunders said that rural voters dislike pedigreed Northeasterners." Though GOPers "tagged Obama with the same label, he said it didn't stick." Saunders: "When you think of elitism, you think of a white guy from Boston, Washington, New York. You don't think of a black guy from Chicago" (Raleigh News & Observer).