On Wednesday night’s ABC World News Broadcast, Correspondent David Wright talked with Michigan truck driver Jeff Ellis about Barack Obama. Said Ellis, who is white, “I think he’s kind of wishy-washy. He tries to play both sides of the fence. He tells people what they want to hear.” 

Wright asked, “So given a choice between Obama and John McCain in the fall?” Ellis replied, “John McCain.”

As expected, Senator Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary, won it big with votes from white, rural, older, low income people who do not have college degrees. Clinton says, “It’s a fact that no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia, ” adding. “The bottom line is this: the White House is won in the swing states and I am winning the swing states.”

She’s won swing states, but she’s not winning the nomination, Barack Obama is. But Washington Post Columnist Colbert King says on “Inside Washington” this week, that Obama should have paid more attention to West Virginia. He needs to convert some of the Jeff Ellises of America to win.

Not only in West Virginia. Mark Shields this week reports attending a focus group conducted by pollster Peter Hart in Charlottesville, VA during which more than half of thirteen people present said they think Barack Obama is a Muslim. And remember, in the Virginia Democratic Primary election, Obama beat Clinton by almost two to one. Conclusion: Democrats may know Obama, but there
are still a lot of people out there who either don’t know him or don’t know much about him. Our panel concludes that he has a lot of work to do before November.

True, the Republicans are in trouble. Two-thirds of the American people, according to this week’s Washington Post/ ABC News poll, think President Bush is doing a lousy job and 8 in 10 think the country’s headed in the wrong direction. With week’s Mississippi special congressional election, the Republicans have now lost three in a row. Says VA Republican Congressman Tom Davis, who’s decided not to run again, If Republicans, “were dog food, they’d take us off the shelf and put us in a landfill.” Says Inside Washington panelist Charles Krauthammer, Republicans need to run away from George Bush and run toward John McCain.

McCain this week, however, echoed President Bush on the appeasement issue, Mr. Bush telling the Israeli parliament that calls for negotiations with people like the President of Iran represent “foolish delusion” and the “false comfort of appeasement.” He conjured up memories of Nazi tanks rolling into Poland in 1939. Democrats were outraged. Obama’s Communications Director Robert Gibbs said it was an unprecedented political attack staged on foreign soil.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden called the President’s remarks, “bull----.” But McCain said, “Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is head of a government that is a state sponsor of terror, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans and wants to wipe Israel off the map and denies the holocaust.”

Colbert King reminded McCain that Mr. Bush’s Secretary of Defense this week told the Washington Post, “We need to figure out a way to find leverage and sit down and talk with them,” meaning the Iranians.

Mark Shields says the Bush speech on Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration was a cry from the wilderness of his lame-duck 27-percent approval rating: “Look at me. I’m over here and I’m still relevant.” Colby King says the speech was a welcome gift to Obama who needs to demonstrate some fluency in foreign affairs.

At a town-hall style gathering on Friday, in Watertown, South Dakota, Obama said, “They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it’s not going to work,”Obama said, “Not this time. Not this year.”