"Obama's challenge: For the second day in a row, Obama campaigns in a general election battleground state (today it's Michigan), and according to a focus group that Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart conducted among 12 independent voters in Charlottesville, VA, that general-election focus can't come soon enough for the Illinois senator. Hart explains that those independents -- half of them who said they have been paying little attention to the political process -- define Obama to a large extent by his association with Rev. Wright or his Ivy League background or that he's a Muslim (which isn't correct). "For now, their concerns about him are not centered on his policy proposals, but rather on the limited knowledge they have of him," Hart tells First Read. "This effort at introducing Obama to independent voters cannot wait until the Democratic convention and the fall campaign." Moreover, there's growing evidence that Obama still has a Rev. Wright problem with voters he hasn't aggressively campaigned for. In largely writing off West Virginia, Obama spent very little time introducing himself to those voters. The result? Per the exit polls, half of the Dem primary electorate in that state believes he shares Rev. Wright's values. That's a shockingly high number. Combine this with Hart's focus group and it's clear that Obama has some work to do.

Just how much change do you want? Hart says there's a second important story that his focus group -- half of whom supported Obama, half of whom supported McCain - - tells us. "The overwhelming numbers which one has been seeing in the polls about the direction of nation and the performance of President Bush are here in hurricane force with these independents in Virginia... The word change was first and foremost on everyone's mind, and to these people Obama represents change." Yet despite that desire for change, some of the respondents didn't want THAT much change, Hart says. "One respondent summed up what some of the less ardent McCain backers had been expressing, which is that even in this time of uncertainty when they feel as if the country is headed in the wrong direction, they would rather have a president who does not make major changes than have someone like Obama, who right now is `scary' to them."

(Chuck Todd, MSNBC, May 14, 2008)