People on the left and the right of our political spectrum have argued recently that Obama can't fix our problems. I would agree that they are correct, that alone Obama will be unable to dig us out of the hole that we now inhabit. I think that they are missing the point, the truth is that while Obama is important this election is not about Obama.  (more on the flip)...

Obama's excellent foreign policy speech (video, transcript) today covered a wide range of topics. The most attention will probably be paid to the discussion of Iraq and his plans to remove our troops and help stabilize the country. He also promised to move more resources into Afghanistan to help deal with the mounting problems in that area. By this he means more than merely troops or supplies.

Recently much of the discussion on this board has centered around Obama's position on issues such as FISA as well as other issues in which many members of this community feel he has betrayed his strongest supporters. The sense that I get is that it is not the specific issues that people are concerned (though the issues themselves are important) but to larger extent what it means about Obama as a candidate and future leader. The question is asked, are we heading towards another Bill Clinton style Presidency full of triangulation a little accomplishment? Every speech he gives, every comment he makes is heavily analyzed by those who would take both sides of this question. Before we judge Obama we must wait until we see how he acts when in power with congress solidly behind him. Comparing the campaigns of leaders such as Lincoln and Roosevelt with what they later accomplished shows why this is the case.

Much has been made of Obama's supposed increasing problem in securing the white working class voters. I believe that this problem is greatly overstated and is mainly connected to white voters in particular areas rather than white working class voters in general. In particular Obama seems unable to compete with white working class catholics in the northeast as well as in Appalachia. Further, his performance among this group has been hidden due to the use of caucuses in the areas in which he did particularly well. In addition his difficulties with these demographics are not becoming worse as the Clinton camp would like us to believe.

The high cost of higher education is clearly a very significant problem facing our society today. Obama's plan to offer a $4,000 credit per year in exchange for community service seems an excellent step along the path of reducing expenses for students while also instilling an ethic of national service in these young people. This credit will go a long way towards making state schools affordable for those paying in state tuition and will also help mitigate the cost for those paying out of state tuition or attending private schools. However, many students will still be limited to their own state's public universities as the cost for other options will still be quite a bit higher. I believe that our best students should have the opportunity to attend our best schools, or at the very least our best public schools. In addition state schools should have to compete for the best students rather than receive a significant number of them by default from their own state. I therefor would propose an additional program perhaps called the National Scholar Program. The purpose of this program would be to allow the countries top students to attend any of our countries public schools at in state rates. (more below)

The past 24 hours have been rather disturbing.  We've watched Obama accomplish what he set out to do.  Since winning super-tuesday he has built up a huge delegate lead.  He then managed to hold Clinton to a single digit pick up on what was supposed to be one of her best nights.  Today he should be declaring victory, but instead his campaign has to contemplate how to deal with more negative campaigning from the Clinton side while trying to stay positive and focus on the likely coming battle with McCain.  He has to deal with ridiculous assertions by the press and by members of his own party who seem to forget how much ground he gained in these 2 states over the past couple of weeks and how few delegates she actually managed to win.  All of this is occurring for one reason: superdelegates.  I propose that the system be modified to require their explicit assertion that a need to intervene exists. (more below)