There is a lot of anger on that bumper. I live in NC and where I live it is pretty liberal. There are several major universities here, UNC, Duke and NC State are all in close proximity. When you head outside of this area, the state gets pretty conservative, pretty quickly. You start to see more confederate flag stickers on cars and where that exists, there is often an anti-Obama sticker as well.

BUT... We've had "personal" bumper stickers before. Let's not have too short of memories: Bush was called an idiot and basically told to "fuck off" on the car shone above. He was called a nazi, a murderer etc on many a bumper sticker. I suppose you could argue that this was all policy driven and not personal but it was still pretty ugly.

As for the question regarding how Obama could be expected to stand up for his convictions in the face of such hatred... such hatred with guns, I think that's a silly question. We elect presidents in the hope that such a question wouldn't sway their convictions. My hope is that all the hatred, anger and dumb bumper stickers in the world wouldn't sway a good presidents hand. Is Obama a good president? Well, there I think we may agree though he still has some time to sway me otherwise.