Forget Iraq and the economy. Barack Obama's greatest feat may be ending the ruinous, decades-long battle over race and religion that has plagued the Democratic Party.

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The group (six men and six women, all from Virginia) had voted for Barack Obama but were, to varying degrees, late converts—some literally did not decide until they entered the voting booth on Election Day.

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When a politician plays the Adolf Hitler card, you know he's lost the argument. Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia lost credibility when he played the H-card clumsily and outrageously against President-elect Barack Obama almost a week after Election Day.

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There's no doubt that those who have "generally been sitting on their hands for the last year and grousing about McCain," are "pumped about her," said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback.

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Personally, I'm not as interested in having a candidate who is like me or has lived a life similar to mine, but I bet that there are a whole lot of people in some of those key swing states who remember Obama's putdown of people in small towns turning bitter and clinging to th …

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It was 40 years ago that the most disastrous modern-day national political convention convened in Chicago. The 1968 Democratic convention contributed to Richard Nixon's victory that fall and, in turn, the prolongation of the Vietnam War.

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Irmo Antonacci used to vote for Democratic presidential candidates. A son of Italian immigrants, the 80-year-old retiree lives in Jeannette, Pa., a down-at-the-heels smokestack city southeast of Pittsburgh.

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Doug Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, has both encouragement and a warning for Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

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The picture for Obama is sobering as well.

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"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

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"[Hillary Clinton] sees herself as the champion of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy mentality. The comment before that was that 'the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they weren't on our side,' and she was agreeing with that comment.

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Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and one of the strategists behind the party's 1994 takeover of Congress, told The Times: "The Santorum race shows that Reagan Democrats are returning to their roots.

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A very nicely done graphic that describes the various blocs within both the Republican and Democratic parties, showing their respective agendas, voter bases, and leading spokespeople.

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