Which one bothers you the most? For me its the final one.Obama's ability to inspire enables him to reach out to independent voters that otherwise find McCain very attractive. It also gives him the ability to mobilize millions of young and African American voters that will change the electorate.
Most importantly, Obama's proven ability to mobilize at the grass roots gives him the credibility to convince voters that he can accomplish what they want most -- that he can lead a movement to change the way things are done in Washington.
The narrative that over incredible odds, a young African American Senator has challenged the conventional wisdom, won the Democratic nomination for president, and found 1.3 million grass roots donors to finance his candidacy gives him enormous credibility to argue that he can take on the special interests and force members of Congress to guarantee health care for everyone. It gives him credibility that he can lead a movement to remake our economy to benefit everyone and not just the wealthiest among us.
And, of course, Obama's judgment in opposing the War in Iraq from the first day, contrasts sharply with McCain's commitment to four more years of Bush foreign policy. Hillary Clinton's early support for that War does not.
If you play out the scenarios of Barack as president, having been elected as the guy who will end the war, who owes that to the electorate, who has guaranteed that he will pull troops out without regard for what's happening on the ground in Iraq, you have to figure it will take him into a second term to start winding things down, don't you? The LBJ of Iraq. The guy who actually turns Iraq into Vietnam.
Compare that to a President whose election is a mandate to win the war.
The latter is obviously the one with the better chance of ending the war quickly, and to suggest that a guy who has positioned himself as the anti-war candidate but has done nothing in terms of anti-war activism in the Senate is the best guy to end it strikes me as, sorry, dumb.
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