come on, the gist is not 'let's stop thinking', but rather 'he's proven we can trust him'

politics from policy.

I want Obama to listen to people on matters of policy-- Iraq, energy, etc.

But when it comes to politics-- picking a VP, responding to criticism, where to fly next-- that's up to him and his staff. The various "Obama must pick X as his running mate" diaries are kind of silly

You may think that all people of professed religion are the same, but I beg to differ.

Regardless of your opinion of Obama's "imagination," Obama does not impose his religious views on anyone else, nor does he make calculated shows of piety in an effort to attract votes.

OTOH the PNAC administration not only imposes a particular view on others (and a hypocritical view, I might add), it shamelessly uses the sincere faith of many as either a club, a lever, or both.

I'm with you on this one.

best,

mikolo

last Christmas when DK mocked Huckabee's Christmas ad?
Look at Obama's fliers pandering to KY evangelicals!!

http://race42008.com/...

in your criticism of the Christian faith--and I'm no Born Again--but I think you are doing no one, including yourself, any favors by painting every Christian with the broad brush that says Christians are dumb because in your mind they

believe in an imaginary friend in the sky.

Not all Christians believe as you seem to assume they believe. You insult thinking Christians and you show yourself to be small-minded when you say things like that. and, really--

how intelligent is that?

If you want to judge religion, you're probably wise to keep it to yourself, or be sure you're only addressing other small-minded individuals.

reported this morning. More of the opposite and how this demonstrates that Obama is now in complete control of the party.

work with that delay, there is absolutely no doubt that the particular moment that was eventually chosen for edwards's endorsement, which he's been telegraphing for a week, was carefully designed to annul the effect of the WV loss.

sounds pretty smart to me.

if gore endorses after kentucky, will you say that it has nothing to do with kentucky simply because he could've endorsed earlier?

we don't actually know either way, do we?

My assumption is that many of the supers currently endorsing Obama in daily drips have been in contact with the campaign, and even if Obama doesn't completely control the timing of their endorsements, he's able to inflect it.  Edwards was a big enough fish that he could name his own timing, but a key part of endorsements for most folks is the giving and receiving of favors.  Jimmy Carter is probably one of the few supers who is totally immune to this sort of thing.  For Al Gore, his "favor" might be an assurance that environmental concerns will be high priorities.  

Anyway, if Edwards told Obama that he intended to endorse him, he's offering a favor, and he wants to make it as big a favor as possible.  He makes it so by allowing Obama to suggest his preferred timing for the endorsement.  If it suits Edwards, then fine.  Obama says that endorsement would be more powerful after WV than before, which makes sense to Edwards: Clinton's going to lap Obama in WV, and Edwards doesn't want his reputation as the candidate of the "other America" tarnished.  So instead, he gets to join Obama in Michigan, the heartland of American unions, and change the week's political narrative.

Quick, gimme the winning lotery numbers for tommorrow and don't tell anyone else, huh? Cuz yer OBVIOUSLY a gifted psychic, right?  Knowing what's in John Edwards mind, and all.

You and you,alone, know that.  Damn, yer good.  Let's have those numbers, dude.

What's your basis for the following three points?

And I can tell you first hand that every senior member of the Obama campaign will verify this.

Edwards' timing was based on one thing and one thing only- John Edwards being as absolutely safe as possible.  This wasn't brilliance on Obama's part, this was safety first on Edwards' part.

Barack Obama and every single adivsor on his campaign wanted this public endorsement long, long ago and would have leapt to take it.

The first and third points suggest you have some position with or intimate connection to Obama's HQ.  The second statement sounds like conjecture based on observation.  So I'm curious:  What's your source for this information?

I have to say, this is the kind of diary that Clinton supporters make fun of Daily Kos for: "Obama is AWESOME and smarter than ALL OF US!!!!! Trust in him 4ever!" All on the basis of a silly and unsupported assumption (that Obama planned the timing of the Edwards endorsement). Now, I don't particularly mind being made fun of in general, but since we need to convince these Clinton supporters that we support Obama for rational reasons and not hysterical ones, it would be cool if we wouldn't make ourselves such an easy target of ridicule by recommending diaries like this one.

(By the way, one can play this game with any candidate—point out some monumental event that happened to have good timing and declare it to be an example of the candidate's enduring brilliance.)

There were plenty, plenty of other times where Obama was within a bairsbreadth of ending this thing for good- just prior to Texas, Indiana, Super Tuesday where an Edwards endorsement and some hard campaigning could have helped end this thing long ago...

or this?

Edwards waited, and waited, and waited... He was perfectly content to allow folks like Terry McAuliffe to repeatedly leak hints that Edwards was about to endorse Hillary  

Your saying that Edwards contrived this waiting thing out of safety concerns. Can you point me to an article, or a web site, or a video clip that will colaborate what you are claiming? Please link to your sources, or please list them. If there are no facts to back this, then it is just your opinion.

of BHO's campaign, and the very careful way they have manuevered their candidate into the nomination against the most formidable political machine around.

The Obama campaign has been one step ahead of everybody else on every level; Their strategy of campaigning hard in so-called 'red states' which Clinton and her Dem Machine ignored is the most obvious.*

Every step of the way since before Iowa, it seems as though the Obama campaign has expertly played not only the media coverage and narrative, but also the way they have slowly taken HRC down.

It was necessary to do it this way for the simple reason that HRC's supporters would've screamed bloody murder if Obama had "wrapped it all up" earlier; The Clintonoids would've accused BHO of "manipulation behind the scenes" and "stealing" the nomination. This accusation would've stuck, too.

It was absolutely necessary from the Obama campaign's perspective that HRC lose fair and square, and that every Democrat should get a chance to vote in the primaies. The Obama campaign wanted a situation in which Clinton lost without any doubts whatsoever. She would be given every oppurtunity to "come back"; assuming her comeback failed, and it became certain that BHO would win, only then could the supers start to shift to him en masse. Any earlier and HRC's supporters would've fraked out bigtime.

If the pro-Obama supers and bigwigs like Edwards had endorsed Obama sooner, or if Obama had called for her to drop out earlier, or if Clinton herself dropped out, many of her supporters would've become so bitterly angry they would never, ever support Obama in November. Clinton had to lose as slowly and as gently as possible and she had to lose it herself. The supers could not "decide" it for Obama prematurely, just like they could not overturn the will of the voters and decide on HRC.

Thus the Obama campaign's masterful prudence and careful handling of HRC's defeat is one for the Poli-Sci books.

The other well-played issue was Jeremiah Wright; The Obama campaign knew this was gonna come out sooner or later, and they are very lucky or they were very smart to 'arrange the release' of the Wright Tapes to the media during a long spell between primaries when the vast majority of Americans were not paying much attention.
The reason why Wright didn't cause too much damage in the polls in IN and PA was because Wright was not on the network news all the time like he was on the cable news channels; Few people actually watch the pundits except Kossacks and political junkies - about 3% of the US population. Most folks didn't even know about Wright in any great detail, and to them it seemed like a silly story, a typical media-frenzy over nothing.
Now Americans are innoculated against the Wright bullshit, and the issue is dead. The timing of the Wright 'nontroversy' was very favorable to Obama. I think 'bitter' was probably more harmful to him than Wright.

*BTW, Obama does NOT have a "white, blue collar" problem; he has (had) a problem with Appalachian whites: PA, OH and IN (and KY) all have large areas which are part of the Appalachian mountains; those are the counties he got beat badly. Working class whites everywhere else (like in the midwest) did just fine for Obama. The main reason HRC did well in those areas was because she had those places targeted a long time ago as the 'all-important' swing states which her campaign thought they needed to win the general. Obama's path to the WH doesnt necessarily need those Appalachian whites. He has numerous other possible ways to beat McCain.