"Yes We Can"... fail

I can almost feel the dirty looks I'm going to get from most of my friends for writing this, but hopefully they won't hurt me too badly. But in my defense, it's their own fault for making me want to write this.

The more I watch the election results come in the more convinced I am that Obama can't win in the general election. This comes after Obama won all three primaries last week and is likely to win in Maryland and Washington D.C. by similar margins while Virginia will probably go to him but might be a closer race. This is the part where most of my friends get excited and say "See look! He can compete in red states!" And that's true... sort of...

Obama and Clinton have managed to neatly divide the Democratic base. He wins with the young, the educated, the wealthy, blacks, and men. She wins with the old, the less-educated, the poor, whites and latinos, and women. This is great for the primary, but come general election time it'll be risky.

Obama is in many ways the anti-McCain. Young vs. old, black vs. white, democrat vs. republican, etc. But they both appeal to the moderate center of the country. In general I find this to be a good thing, I want moderates in power but I also want a Democrat in the oval office. Obama appeals in red states but hasn't really come through in the traditional blue powerhouse states like Massachusetts (in spite of the Kennedy and Kerry endorsements), New York, California or polling particularly well in traditional battleground states like Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania.

Normally that wouldn't be a problem. Blue states aren't going to swing red just because they don't like a moderate democrat. They might however swing for a moderate republican over a moderate democrat. Obama doesn't excite the liberal core enough to lock in the weaker blue states which leaves them open to McCain while McCain seems to have found his place both as a moderate and in the conservative base. Obama might be able to excite the base after the convention but by then McCain will have been running virtually unopposed for months which can only end badly for the democrats.