"A number of factors opened my eyes. McCain for one. That's where I draw the line"

This is the fear card that BooMan played on you a couple of days ago, Idredit. I recall you weren't too pleased about that. And really, what's to fear when Obama is beginning to adopt GOP talking points?

1.    To be pragmatic - you'll never have a candidate with whom you can agree on all the issues. As Dems, we need to have our candidate win. Imho, we need to adapt the GOP stance: our candidate right or wrong.

Pragmatic, yes. Giving away the store? No thank you. When you adopt the GOP stance, my candidate right or wrong, you are no longer a democrat. Really, what's the point? That is wrong, period.

2. "If you assess Obama carefully, he's a small c Conservative on a whole houseful of issues. It's in his DNA. He's a centrist."

There's nothing centrist about voting to strip my constitutional rights from me. There's nothing centrist about supporting a ban on late term abortions and contributing to the GOP's and McCain's efforts to find an inroad to overturning Roe v. Wade.

3.

a) "It'll be a vote against what it is we don't want"

b) "More wars, He (McCain) has staked out he's against women's rights-Roe v. Wade must be overturned"

c) "McCain is deceitful"

a) It's beginning to look like a vote for what you don't want, given so many hard right reversals and the way he's basically blown off his supporters who've rightfully said 'wtf Barack?'.

b) It looks like the war in Iraq won't be ending anytime soon as Obama's done a doe-see-doe on that position too. It's especially apalling to see him adopt Bush's insincere use of the "I'll listen to the generals on the ground about what we can do" strategy to deflect calls to end the war and hold him to his earlier pledges to end the war and remove combat troops.

Regarding Roe v. Wade, here too your candidate has done an about face on a ban against late term abortions, knowing full well that the GOP is using this issue as a stepping stone, a trojan horse as a means to strip women's civil and human rights from them. Another "sweetie" moment? Again, nothing centrist about this.

c) There's a lot of deceit going around right now, Idredit. I first noticed this when Obama unequivocably stated that he would not run for president in his first term only to spin right round and reverse himself. What I didn't know then was that this was the first visible sign that he has a pattern of deceit. Lying, or habitually and arrogantly shifting policy positions looks just as bad on a democrat as it does on a republican. At this point he might as well have both his eyes surgically moved to one side of his face, preferably the side that he talks out of, like a flounder, for all the flopping around he's done.

4. "On The Hill, we need a landslide to avoid gridlock. Tired of losing is my deal breaker because the challenges ahead are enormous"

Yes well, in my opinion the last thing needed now is bipartisanship, or as he calls it, post-partisanship. What's needed now is a fighter. This guy has revealed himself as not only not that, but a serial backstabber, willing to chuck anyone and any liberal/progressive hope for change under his proverbial bus. I'm most certain that you'll have your desire for no gridlock as he'll grease the skids for the GOP as soon as he has the chance. Then we can have one big harmonious and homogenous political party representing all of us. They might as well remove the aisles now from between the the two sides of both houses.

If this candidate or any democrat is not held to the standards that they themselves professed to us that they held themselves as representing by removing support of them through not only funding but removing the votes they are taking for granted there will never be a reason to do what is needed of them. He/they can continue spitting in the faces of all of us "sweeties".

Truth be told, that's fine by me.    

Green Grass and High Tides Forever