UP@NIGHT

Yes, well, I know, it’s all very confusing.  Red states are supposed to be Republican states and Blue ones Democratic.  But McCain and his surrogates are running around suggesting that Obama is a socialist, which is of course just a kinder and gentler word for communist or Red.  In any case, socialist/communist, what difference does it make if McCain feels that he can use the epithet to help him defeat Obama.  Here is McCain’s latest campaign “strategy” as reported in today’s Los Angeles Times.

By Bob Drogin and Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 19, 2008
CONCORD, N.C. — John McCain sharpened his attack on presidential rival Barack Obama’s economic proposals Saturday, accusing the Democrat of seeking to turn the United States into a socialist country and convert the IRS into a giant “welfare agency” that would dole out cash at Washington’s discretion….McCain, delivering a national radio address before setting out for stops Saturday in North Carolina and Virginia, said Obama’s approach sounded “a lot like socialism.”

McCain’s claim is patently absurd.  Increasing income taxes on Americans making over 250,000 a year–by making their rates equivalent to what they were during the Clinton presidency–and lowering taxes on the middle class, doesn’t exactly sound like socialism to most Americans. And of course it’s not.  As a matter of fact, only the most die-hard, right-wing ideologue, one who is opposed to progressive taxes, social security, medicare, etc, would be likely to make such an outrageous claim and actually believe it.  So we have couple of choices here: McCain is an extreme right-wing ideologue OR he is lying and knows it.

Given the history of Red-baiting in this country, and the number of lives it destroyed, this is dangerous territory.  Further, McCain is playing with fire on another front.  He can’t directly raise the issue of race.  But he can try to make Obama appear foreign and  unamerican (you know, he “pals around with terrorists,” according to Palin).  Here is a recent attempt from Palin to play the all-American card:

We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Sara Palin, October 16, 2008

Now the really big guns have been brought out.  Not only is Obama from the wrong part of the country–raised in Hawaii and schooled in big cities, so he is not really pro-American–but he may also be a socialist.  If you know anything about actual socialism/communism, this is too silly to be believed.   And it is even beyond silly, if that’s possible, since a conservative Republican administration has just semi-nationalized part of the banking industry.  Nationalization is a lot closer to socialism than modest changes in our tax rates.  (Marx would have a good laugh over this one, while he is turning over in his grave.)  But one doesn’t have to be a pundit to figure out what is really being said here.  Obama is not one of us, that is, don’t forget white America that he is black.

It’s time for McCain to feel a little shame.

We remember Paul Newman today as a distinguished actor, philanthropist, committed progressive, and a truly decent soul.   And on this day of his passing, his unique career does us an additional service.  It helps us to understand why Obama won the debate and why he is going to win the election.  As everyone knows, Paul Newman had a one in million smile, and he would certainly be flashing one now if he knew that he had made this contribution.

All we need is one film to make the case.  While Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid may not be a great movie, it is a very good one, and perhaps more importantly, it was a timely one.  It was a zeitgeist film.  It connected with an audience that understood that time was out of joint in America, that we were adrift, that we were losing our collective soul, and that we needed to set things right.  When the “bad guys” become the good guys, and “the law” is viewed as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you know that the world has been turned topsy-turvy.  And when an audience feels so undermined that it can immediately connect with the line, “Who are those guys?” that is, those guys who can’t be stopped from chasing us (think here of the Vietnam War and a nation in turmoil back in 1969), you know that things have run amok.

Paul Newman’s films were often successful not only because of their success as works of art, but because they understood the importance of speaking to an audience, something which many of our pundits and commentators still do not seem to appreciate.  How so?  Last night I spent hours, UP@NIGHT, in true political junkie fashion, listening to commentators on the first debate between Obama and McCain.  I would listen to the first round of comments, and then since I couldn’t be in two virtual places at once, turn to reruns of earlier broadcasts.  I have also looked at many of the editorials in print today.

Time and time again, commentators insisted on using sports metaphors to describe the debate, primarily from boxing (points, knockouts) and baseball (home runs, strikes).  There were exceptions, but just turn to the print media today.  What’s the big headline?  “No Knockout.”  We hear about jabs that were thrown, and counter punches, etc.  We hear criticisms that Obama didn’t throw enough punches, and that he could have brought McCain down by going more on the offense   I am sure that you have heard this stuff.   I won’t belabor the point.

But Obama understands, like Newman did, that acting is about audience.  And presidential debates have more in common with acting than they do with sports contests.  Or let me put this another way.  Presidential debates are like auditions, and if you are going to be successful in an audition, you’ve got to be able to have a sense of what the director is looking for and the possibilities of a role.  In this case, the director is the American people and the role is president.  And the goal of the debater is not merely to score points, but to give a performance that resonates with the desires and hopes of the people. The debate is not an end.  It is a means, and it is not a means to merely “winning” the debate in terms of points, but of winning the election.

I am not surprised that polls and focus groups show that more people thought Obama won. (Two  examples, a USA Today/Gallop Poll, a CBS poll.)  Nor am I surprised by the internal numbers in the polls showing that Obama went a long way toward crossing the biggest hurdle that he needed to cross, making voters feel comfortable with whether he is ready to be president.  If you think about the debate in terms of an audition, then Obama was wildly successful.  Obama appears to have convinced a significant number of people that he is ready to lead, cool under fire, knowledgeable, not easily flustered (by a cranky old guy telling you that “you don’t understand”), and energetic.  Further, he reinforced his message that he understands “people like you and me,” which was already one of his strong suits.  It was actually a beautifully orchestrated event, right down to the ads Obama has started to run.

Obama won this debate in the only terms that he needed to win it.  He connected with a larger number of people in the audience than did McCain, and made them feel comfortable with his “playing the role” of president, while discussing a topic that was supposed to be McCain’s strong suit.  Obama is going to win the election.  And unlike Butch and Sundance, this story is going to have a happy ending.

You will laugh. You will scoff. You will be befuddled. But I have finally figured out why Obama is so familiar. At first I thought it might just be his politics. In my day job as a political philosopher, I recognize deep similarities between Obama’s political orientation and a tradition of American progressivism that had its heyday in the early 20^th century. This form of progressivism had roots in the Midwest and was linked to the Social Gospel Movement. In some ways Obama is reviving this tradition.

But there was something more familiar about Obama, and about how his campaign has managed to galvanize so many young people. Well, maybe it was simply a flash from the past, the political organizing that many of us engaged in to stop the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights. He is leading a movement in which people of color and whites are linked once again. Perhaps this was the source of the deep familiarity.

Yes, certainly, his campaign has brought back memories. But it somehow didn’t get to another level of familiarity. And then it hit me. Obama is Mr. Spock and his campaign the Star Ship Enterprise, that is, if you allow for the vicarious presence of millions of fans aboard the ship. Consider Spock and Obama: cool, logical, trustworthy, a great deal of presence of mind, etc. Further, Leonard Nimoy, the actor who plays Spock, is Jewish. Obama went to Harvard Law and taught at the University of Chicago Law School, which makes him an honorary Jew. (Being Jewish, I can say this.) And what have we heard about Obama’s blood pressure, 90/60; not that of an ordinary mortal, just like Spock. But don’t consider character traits, or arguments, gaze on their images.

We must broaden our horizons. It is not merely the similarity to Spock. Star Trek ran during a war that most of us could do little to stop. Here we are, once again. (And there is a Texan in the White House, again. Don’t get me wrong. I lived in Texas. I am fond of Texans. I married one. But let’s just keep them out of the White House for the Next Generation.) Star Trek was a fantasy refuge, before the Internet. But Star Trek was going to be canceled by NBC. What saved it? According to William Shatner, Captain Kirk, in Chapter Three of his book, Up Till Now (don’t ask how I know this), a letter writing campaign was launched to save the show. Here is what Shatner tells us about the campaign.

“As a result of this campaign, NBC received, trumpets blare here, more than 1,000,000 letters urging the network not to cancel the show….[It was not cancelled] Perhaps more important the people who wrote the letters suddenly had an emotional attachment to a television program unlike any viewers ever before. They had actually influenced a network’s programming decision. They had ownership. Star Trek really had become their show. This marked the beginning of the most unusual relationship between viewers and a TV series in history.” [emphasis added]

Okay, you will accuse me of trivializing one of the most important recent movements in American politics. But Obama the community organizer would understand the connection. Star Trek was a collective experience mediated by a visual medium. It also expressed utopian ideals at a time when young people felt impotent about changing the course of a war and the world. (Star Trek began before the full impact of demonstrations against the war became apparent.) Obama and his people have harnessed the Internet to allow people to feel that they are not mere bystanders but full participants. They have provided a sense of “ownership” (although I am not crazy about the term). Most importantly, and here the analogy begins to break down, Obama and his team are providing not only a fantasy utopian moment, but the possibility of actually changing things. Live Long and Prosper.

P.S. Leonard Nimoy is an Obama supporter.

The DNC reached a compromise today (May 31st) on Florida and Michigan. It is fair and prudent. The Clinton camp appears satisfied with 50/50 split in Florida, but unhappy about the resolution in Michigan. From the Clinton camp:

“We strongly object to the Committee’s decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan’s delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan.

The Committee awarded to Senator Obama not only the delegates won by Uncommitted, but four of the delegates won by Senator Clinton. This decision violates the bedrock principles of our democracy and our Party.

We reserve the right to challenge this decision before the Credentials Committee and appeal for a fair allocation of Michigan’s delegates that actually reflect the votes as they were cast.” [emphasis added] http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/

Are we really supposed to believe that Hillary Clinton, after stating publicly that the election in Michigan would not count–an election in which her opponent was not on the ballot–is now in a position to claim that the decision of the DNC has undermined democracy? Does she really believe this? Is she actually outraged?

I believe that there is outrage in Hillary’s Camp, as irrational as it may seem at first. Just listen to some of the reports about what went on at the DNC meeting. And I also believe that Bill and Hillary may actually be outraged. The DNC’s decision results in four more delegates for Obama than Hillary would have awarded him. In terms of the delegate count, four delegates can’t be the source of the outrage. The practical consequences are nil and genuine outrage over principle is suspect. So if there is outrage, what is its source? Here is my hypothesis.

Hillary’s Camp has been playing the metrics game for several months now, inventing new metrics at every turn. But the one that she has grown most attached to is the so-called “popular vote.” The fact that this is mythical is irrelevant to the Clintons. (Any statistician or pollster worth his or her salt will tell you that you can’t combine votes from caucus and primary states, for the former simply have many fewer “voters” involved. It is a classic case of apples and oranges. If you did combine them, the citizens of the caucus states could claim that they were being disenfranchised. Further, the primaries had different rules, some allowed independents to participate, some even allowed Republicans to cross over, while others were solely for Democrats.)

The problem with the DNC’s Michigan decision is that it undermines the plausibility of counting Michigan’s votes in a popular vote total. According to the DNC, giving Obama the “uncommitted” votes is an inadequate solution to the Michigan problem. No one knows for sure how the vote would have gone. So it simply took the request of the Clinton Camp, and the request of the Obama Camp, and split the difference, awarding Obama four “additional” delegates. This is meant to make a statement. It shows that the state’s popular vote is not to be construed as decisive or legitimate, for the delegate count does not match the “popular vote” (which in fact is non-existent since Obama wasn’t on the ballot). The compromise was one over delegates, and the way that the delegates were handled signaled that Michigan’s popular vote should not be counted.

The outrage from the Clinton Camp is real, but to be more exact, it is really fury at the DNC for undermining its case about the popular vote. It is not clear how she wants to use the latter at this point, but whether it is for posterity, for the VP slot, or for her next run for the presidency, the popular vote total remains very important to the Clintons. The problem, however, is obvious. By insisting on this false metric, they are undermining Obama. They are making it appear that she somehow won the election, as did Gore, and then had it taken away from her by an unfair system. But the analogy to Florida in 2000 is specious. Hillary and her Camp will have to take responsibility for any damage done to Obama’s chances by continuing to “strongly object” to the DNC’s reasonable compromise.

The political world is phase shifting, from yellow to at least orange. Just in the past couple of days we have had Scotty McClellan tearing apart the walls of Bush World by revealing truths that we have long known. Bush and Co. have struck back by trying to toss him into the sphere of hell that they reserve for those who are disloyal to the brotherhood. (First rule of Bush World: never speak ill of the inner circle or the gods will strike you down, down, and further down.)

But I am not here to talk about politics. I want to provide a respite. I want to answer a question that I know has been on many of your minds. I know that it has been on mine. Who is the twelfth Cylon?

A couple of months ago, a colleague recommended that I watch Battlestar Galactica. As a born sucker for entertaining Sci fi, whether on the screen or in print, I gave it a whirl. I especially like Sci fi that breaks some of the conventions of the genre. As any BSG fan knows, we are currently in season four. However, because I came late to BSG, I was able to watch the first three seasons on DVD. But now I find myself having to deal with commercial TV, for the fourth season has just begun, and there are no DVD’s. For the solution to one of the biggest mysteries, who is the twelfth Cylon, I must wait months to find out. (For those of you who may not have seen the show, the Cylons are an “artificial” species that human beings created. And they in turn have created Cylons who look and act like human beings, which has led to many trials for both “species.” We have learned who eleven of the human-like Cylons are, but the twelfth is a serious mystery.)

I find this intolerable. I need to know now, not in several months. So employing the finely honed analytical skills that I have developed as professional philosopher, I decided to figure out the answer.

It wasn’t very hard. First, we must keep in mind that we are dealing with a show that prides itself on unexpected twists and turns. It wants to play outside of the box. Second, we must assume that the character who will turn out to be the twelfth Cylon, while already known to the audience, will still surprise us.

The writers have placed clues. The most striking: the executive officer, Saul Tigh, is a colonel. Why is this striking? Because we are on board a starship, a battlestar, in which everyone on board has naval military ranks. (Standard Sci fi fare here.) The Battlestar Galactica is led by an admiral, Bill Adama. It turns out, however, that the second in command–a hard-drinking, uptight, cussing, tough military type–is a colonel. And he is also a Cylon. The trail leads through Tigh, no doubt about it.

BSG has been rife with political commentary. (Sorry, we got back to politics somehow.) And the last shows have only been written recently due to the writers’ strike. We know that one of the techniques that has become commonplace in TV of late is to import political figures into shows. The twelfth Cylon will be such a figure and, get this, he is going to be Tigh’s fraternal twin. (Yes, this will turn out to be one of the most interesting twists in the plot. Up until now, all human-like Cylons have been identical twins. Now fraternal twins will come to the fore….a genetic variation that suggests new possibilities for the species.) You laugh, you scoff. But I tell you that he will be a military person, who, like Tigh, has had trouble with authority. Still skeptical. You will see and believe…..

Behold, I give you Colonel Tigh, a Cylon, and his fraternal twin, the Twelfth Cylon:

Trying to do my small part to help begin to unify the Democratic Party, I had promised myself that I would halt criticism of Clinton in print and on the Web. There is, after all, so much to be said about McCain and Co. But this evening I find myself unable to carry through on this pledge. There are two significant reasons.

First, I have grown increasingly concerned that Senator Clinton’s continual references to the so-called popular vote may end up damaging Senator Obama’s candidacy. It has the potential to do so by delegitimizing his victory, that is, by making it appear that he didn’t win the nomination cleanly because more people voted for Hillary. Certainly Clinton is entitled to remain in the race through all of the caucuses and primaries, and if she must, until the convention. However, even though it is clear that Obama’s (increasing) delegate lead will give him the nomination, the Clintons have continued to appeal to the notion that she is entitled to it because she has won more votes. It’s of course not evident that she has won more votes, except according to the most contrived mathematical formulas (e.g., leaving Obama without any votes in Michigan). But on a more basic level, the national popular vote is a myth, or I should say, a mythical beast. It is a chimera. You cannot generate a national popular vote from contests that have included caucuses (which cannot produce nearly as many votes as primaries), contests that have permitted independents to vote, as well as states that have permitted Republican crossovers, etc. It isn’t necessary for the Clintons to make the popular vote argument to see the election through to the end, which is one of Hillary’s proclaimed reasons for staying in the race. The argument is shortsighted if you care about a Democratic victory in November. One can only speculate as to why the Clintons have chosen this course, but it isn’t for the good of the Party.

The second reason can be called the anti-mensch factor. Instead of stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for her comments regarding RFK’s assassination, Hillary has come up with two lame strategies and one despicable one for explaining them away. The lame strategies involve trying to justify her comments by saying that 1) Teddy Kennedy had been on her mind, and 2) all she had meant to do was suggest a time line for long campaigns. I won’t comment on the first, except to say that her comments were a strange way to reveal caring and concern. Regarding the second, the time line argument simply doesn’t hold up. There is absolutely no reason why Bobby Kennedy’s assassination needed to be invoked as a marker. There are many other ways to talk about extended nominating contests. And if for some reason she had wanted to mention Bobby, all she had to do was say that he won the California primary in June. (This is not to say that she wasn’t thinking about a time line. The issue is about the role of the marker, RFK’s assassination, that she chose to use.)

But now I come to the despicable reason. Zachary A. Goldfarb reported on May 25th, in The Washington Post, the following. “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign accused Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign of fanning a controversy over her describing the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy late in the 1968 Democratic primary as one reason she is continuing to run for the presidency. ‘The Obama campaign … tried to take these words out of context,’ Clinton campaign chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘She was making a point merely about the time line.’” [emphasis added] http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-talk/2008/05/clinton_camp_stokes_rfk_flap_b.html?nav=rss_email/components

As noted, the time line argument doesn’t work. And it is virtually inconceivable that some very bright Clinton people do not understand the flaw in their own argument. It’s just too obvious. So it is disingenuous for Clinton to claim that Obama took her words out of context if her own claim about ‘the context’ is justifiably suspect. Further, the reaction to Hillary’s words were viral. They were all over the web within hours if not minutes. In addition, you had papers like The Daily News and The New York Post running banner headlines about Hillary’s “killer gaffe.” McAuliffe’s words were meant to suggest that the Obama people were somehow responsible for the “attacks” on Hillary. It is inconceivable that the Obama organization, even if it had wanted to fan the flames, could have been so successful. There was genuine outrage. I can tell you as someone who lived through the assassinations of the sixties, the outrage was totally comprehensible. It didn’t need any “fanning” from the Obama organization.

But there is more.

According to Goldfarb, “Asked if Clinton has personally called Obama to apologize for the reference, McAuliffe said she has not, ‘nor should she.’ He added, ‘Let’s be clear. This had nothing to with Senator Obama or his campaign.’”

Obama, the first African-American candidate with a real chance of winning the White House, has had to receive secret service protection since last May, long before the other candidates (excepting Hillary as the spouse of a former President). This protection is necessary due to a very real concern, namely, that someone might try to shoot and kill him. As a black American he is uniquely vulnerable. And the Clinton campaign can’t see a reason for a phone call. Why? Because of how they read the politics: if we apologize, then we admit that she may have done or said something wrong. Political calculation trumps basic decency. (The irony, of course, is that they have the politics wrong. How they are handling this will cost them support, especially among Boomers who lived through the sixties.)

As a final note, I watched HBO’s new movie, “Recount,” this evening. I have heard that Hillary has already noted that the movie supports her claims about Florida and Michigan. Nonsense on stilts. The situations are totally different, and a slogan such as, “count all the votes,” had a totally different meaning in Florida in 2000 than it does in Michigan and Florida in 2008. But right now I am just hoping that I don’t feel compelled to write something more about Hillary Clinton.

“ABC News’ Sarah Amos reports: Former President Bill Clinton today [May, 24th] continued to reiterate the importance of counting the votes in Florida and Michigan, saying that once they do ‘neither candidate can get a majority just from pledged delegates.’

Speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 at Montana State University, Clinton enthusiastically took to the stage and began by asking the crowd, ‘Aren’t you glad Montana matters?’ ” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/24/bill-clinton-once-fl-and_n_103438.html#postComment

Although there hasn’t been a great deal of publicity surrounding Bill’s latest activities on the campaign trail, the Aboulafia Blog has attained this exclusive rendering of “Bill on the Trail” by a not so local artist.

Hold the Presses. John McCain has begun considering VP candidates. From the New York Times, May 22nd, Adam Nagourney reporting, “Charlie Crist and Bobby Jindal, both governors, and Mitt Romney, a onetime rival for the nomination, are all set to meet with John McCain this weekend.” (Editorial sidebar: So this means that we might have “Mac and Crist in ’08,” which could do wonders for Mac with a certain demographic, or “Mac and Mitt in ’08,” for help with the baseball loving trucker vote. On the other hand, “Mac and Jindal in ’08,” no way. The Jindals make up too small a percentage of the electorate.)

But this is not the really BIG news. A high placed, anonymous source, reports that Hillary Clinton has decided on her choice for VP. And it ain’t Barack.

First, the context. As reported on May 21st, from BOCA RATON, Florida, in Politico. “Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women.[...]”

Hillary was quoted in Politico as claiming,

“This work to extend the franchise to all of our citizens is a core mission of the modern Democratic party,” she said. “From signing the Voting Rights Act and fighting racial discrimination at the ballot box to lowering the voting age so those old enough to fight and die in war would have the right to choose their commander in chief, to fighting for multi-lingual ballots so you can make your voice heard no matter what language you speak.”

Ah, there you have it. She is incensed about what has been done to the people of Michigan and Florida. Their citizens have been old enough to fight and die for their country, speaking in different tongues as they do so, but not old enough to have their votes counted for Hillary. And part of her anger stems (and this is one author’s psychoanalysis) from self-hatred, since she signed off (read: gave her word to the DNC) on not counting the votes in Florida and Michigan way back when. (When exactly? Sometime before she had beaten “Uncommitted” in Michigan.). So she must act to right this wrong, in part, to overcome her self-loathing.

What you have just read/heard is the part of the story that deals with morality and self-loathing. But there is more. There is Hillary as tactician.

As reported by Politico, she went on to say, “We know the road to a Democratic White House runs right through Florida and Michigan…”

Knowing that she needs Florida and Michigan to win against Obama and to win in November, Hillary has had to determine how best to secure these states. One answer, choose a VP from either state, perhaps one for the first term from Florida and one for the second from Michigan, and let the voters know asap that she plans to do so. But this, as it turns out, is insufficient to right the magnitude of the injustice.

To arrive at a solution (recall, “solutions” were once a feature of one of her slogans), she has drawn on hitherto unknown, but deeply held, skeleton in the closet, Communist sensibilities. Her solution is novel, seemingly impractical, but strikingly bold. (How bold? Bill may have been behind the idea.) She plans to make the People of Florida her VP. (Florida, in her mind, has suffered more than Michigan due to the 2000 election. See her recent and future comments–coming to web sites and blogs everywhere soon–about the movie “Recount.”) Yes, it’s true, the People of Florida will be her choice for VP if she should win the nomination. And my sources also tell me that a slogan has already been prepared: “Vote for Hillary and the State in 08.”

LATE WORD: Campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, Comrade Terry, is denying rumors that there are plans afoot to change the name of Florida to the Florida Democratic Republic or the FDR.

Here are a dozen reasons, a baker’s dozen, for why Barack Obama will win in November.

1. The Change Factor: Yes, you have heard it before, but it is for real. People are hungry for it, especially after the worst presidency in living memory. A key point here is that Obama has been on message about change from DAY ONE. He is the Change candidate.

2. The Organization Factor: Obama has built a remarkable organization, in part through using the Internet. Nothing quite like it has been seen before in its capacity to raise money, generate enthusiasm, and get out the vote. For more on the uniqueness of Obama’s organization, see Joshua Green’s piece, “The Amazing Money Machine” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance and Marc Ambinder’s “His Space” in The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/ambinder-obama

3.The Charisma Factor: Hard to explain. Hard to quantify. But you know it when you see it. (Obama’s recent Portland crowd, 75,000 in a primary election, was no accident.)

4. The Republican Factor: They are in disarray and have money problems. This will have an impact on the Presidential race. How much? Good question. But no doubt it will have some.

5. The Money Factor: A corollary to the Organization Factor. Obama will have lots of it and will be able to raise more and more of it. To those who say that money can’t buy love or office, agreed, at least in terms of the former. But money can certainly help win office. It is especially helpful if you have a good candidate, a good brand as they say, to sell. Obama is such a brand.

6. The Even Keel Factor: In this case, the younger man, Obama, seems to have a more even temperament than the older candidate. This undermines a potential advantage for McCain and also defies expectations, namely, that age should bring a more even temper. (McCain’s anger problem is for real.) Americans believe that we need a steady hand on the rudder in these difficult times.

7. The Intellectual and Expert Factor: There are those who have claimed that Obama is an elitist, a pointy head, etc., and that too many in his campaign fit this bill. But the bottom line is that candidates who can comfortably make use of experts and genuine intellectuals–not faux intellectuals, for example, the neo-conservative ideologues–are in stronger position than those who cannot. Knowledge may not be power, but it sure can help keep power from making foolish mistakes, like Iraq. It can also help win elections. (It was the “nerds,” after all, who really understood how the delegate process worked in the Democratic race. And guess who had them on staff and who listened to them.)

8. The African-American Vote. Obama will draw the greatest number of African-American voters in American history. It will make a difference. As Poblano’s analysis shows, just a 10% to 20% increase can make a significant difference in who wins in the fall. (Poblano suggests 13 electoral votes for each 10%.) See Josh Kalven’s “Obama Over the Top: How New Voters Could Redraw the Electoral Map” http://progressillinois.com/2008/05/11/features/obama-over-the-top

9. The Youth Vote and Support: Typically the youth vote is viewed as an unreliable voting block. But Obama has shown that he can increase the youth vote. In addition, youth represents ‘boots on the ground.’ They do much of the door to door and office work that campaigns require. On how the youth vote could assist Obama, once again, see Josh Kalven’s “Obama Over the Top: How New Voters Could Redraw the Electoral Map” http://progressillinois.com/2008/05/11/features/obama-over-the-top

10. A Motivated Democratic Party: Yes, there is the issue of whether all of Hillary’s supporters will come around. And there are unknowns in terms of whether Obama will be able to bring more working class folks into his corner. But the Democrats are hungry and they have resources. There will be some synergy between Presidential, Congressional, and local races.

11. The Oratory Factor. We know what the man can do. He is pretty much in a class by himself. Speeches matter. Words delivered well matter. McCain, on the other hand, is not a strong public speaker. (The “My friends” thing just isn’t going to cut it.) In addition, Obama will best him in the debates.

12. The Bush factor: Obama is the anti-Bush. He listens to those outside an inner circle. He is anti-Iraq war, exceptionally intelligent, reasonably hip, etc. McCain, on the other hand, appears to be running for Bush’s third term. The McBush notion will stick with a significant number of voters.

13. Michelle Obama: Michelle has made some gaffes. Some view her as coming on too strong. But her story will get out: poor kid from the South Side of Chicago, who through her own hard work and intelligence made it to Princeton and Harvard. She is now the mother of two young daughters, juggling family and career. Women, many of Hillary’s supporters, will relate. Further, Michelle is a powerful speaker. The Republicans would be foolish to underestimate her.