Here is what independents Jacqueline Salit and Fred Newman had to say about Obama recently:
Salit:
There was talk today about Obama's vulnerabilities. What are the steps that Obama has to take, do you think, to address them and what does he have to project to bring the country together and to pursue the goals of his candidacy?
Newman:
He's already doing that, don't you think? He has to simply continue the campaign that he's set in motion.
What he's going to do, obviously – and he's done this already – is to say that McCain is simply a third term of Bush and the last thing in the world the American people want is a third term of Bush. It turns out, in retrospect, that they didn't even want a second term of Bush.
Newman:
That's what he'll do. And he continues with his work "across the aisle." 'Trust me,' he says, 'I will lead that coming together.' And I think the American people might well come to trust him when we get to the general election. Democratic voters – and independent voters – have come to trust him to some degree. And, moreover, he might even accomplish that coming together once in office.
I think the key for him is managing to keep this huge base, this new coalition of forces, this new generation of voters, active and involved. If he can nurture that, and the new coalition can work together, I think he's in a good position to force some issues like a new energy policy, like health care reform, like education reform, to be dealt with in ways that they've not been dealt with before.
Newman also predicts that, if Obama wins the presidency, the Democrats will try to "capture as many independents as you can into the Democratic Party and then destroy the rest." He predicts that many independents will resist being drawn into the Democratic Party, and that it could get ugly.
The interesting question here is where Obama might position himself in this kind of battle? If he wins the election, it will be in large part due to independent voters. Would he then join an effort to force them into the Party or destroy them? Or would he decline to join the Democrats in this type of effort? And could the effort succeed without his support?