Orrin, you are probably the last political commentator on the Net or off it who still thinks that the GOP can win this particular seat in November, let alone _will_ win it. I happen to think that GWB will overturn the common wisdom again in November and win really big, but as for Illinois, after the Ryan fiasco and after Ditka bowed out...oh, come on!! I don't even _know_ if the state Republican Party has a candidate at all.

Oooooooh, 14 years ago a college student said he didn't want to live in the suburbs! What a scandal. How will Obama survive?

I lived in Chicago for 5 years. It's pretty racist. Go out to the suburbs and it gets whiter and whiter. If the Republicans can find a candidate - and that's a big IF - they will win.

Personally, I don't think Ryan should've backed out and the party should've been more furious about the judicial/media intrusion into his private life than his actions. He'd already lost his wife and his kid over it fer cryin' out loud. He paid the price. I'd write him in if I still lived there.

Well, I must trump NKR's expertise of 5 years, given that I was born in IL and lived there for 23 years. My family was also from Chicago and almost all my family is there too. I grew up in the collar counties, and I went to school downstate. I think I know the state's politics pretty well.

Chicago certainly is racially segregated, but all politics is based on the local ethnic neighborhoods. I remember Eddie Vrdolyak complaining that Mayor Daley viewed him as just a "Pollack." Yet the Irish and the Polish seem to be able to politic with one another, along with the Hispanics and Blacks plus anyone else. And since Obama is the Democratic nominee, Chicago will vote for him.

2004 is not 1983 when Harold Washington was elected mayor and the city was very divided. Neither is Obama a creature of black political system. I don't see Jeese Jackson, Jr becoming Senator, but Obama is someone whites would see as safe to vote for. He doesn't shout "blame whitey," isn't a black nationalist, and was successful outside politics.

Obama had a good chance to win before Ryan dropped out. He'll definitely win now.

Joe:

Ask Governor Tom Bradley about it.

Obama is a gun-grabber and a socialist.

I've got almost 44 years here.

Peoples' Republic of IL. DuPage County - bastion of GOP - 1/3 dem. W should have gotten larger numbers here and only won by about 5K votes in Will County.

Will County is growing leaps and bounds.

Ditka would have won handily.

I have paid no attention to this race, but it's getting a little attention in Hawaii because Obama was born here -- with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Harvard is a step down from Punahou, in local opinion.

I only lived in Chicago for 7 years. A half black professor from Hyde Park does not make a machine democrats heart go pitty pat. If Jack Ryan had the guts to let the sex scandal blow over, he had a good shoot. He would have carried Bridgeport.

Ditka would have been a shoo in. Unfortunately, they have now @#$%ed around too long. You can't beat someone with no one.

It just shows that it's not just the national GOP that can't pass up the opportunity to hand the Dems a victory they don't have to work or acheive or a victory they don't deserve.

Whites won't know the difference between
Barak Obama or "Amiri Baraka" or "Farrakhan".

The GOP could literally run Mr. Ed against this guy and win. They don't seem to want to go for
the Jugular.

They should be painting this guy as some sort
of leftist black nationalist or dredge up some
Black Panther connections or something.

The GOP is the party of the white middle class
that refuses to take up the mantle.