There are a couple of key diaries today, including this one by eugene and this one by wmtriallawyer that discuss how best to use the widening margins Obama currently enjoys in the polls.
But it was this comment by kismet in one of the diaries that struck me as diariable (jeez is that a word?) in its own right:
It seems like in the run-up to this election, especially if he truly pulled in $100M this month and holds a crushing lead in the polls, Obama needs to be spreading a "pull the D lever and give me the help I need in Congress and in the states". If I go out canvassing for O, I'd like to be able to hand supporters a nice Obama-branded card that says something like "it's not just important to vote Obama, it's Obama, Perdue, Hagan, Kissell/Taylor/Watt, etc."
This is exactly what is required...and we've been doing it in big ways via ActBlue and DFA and DNC and DSCC and probably more acronyms that I'm forgetting. But now Obama needs to do it. He's finished McCain, and now he needs to come to the electorate and ask the American people for a real mandate. He needs to ask them to vote Democratic up and down the ticket, and to allow Congress to respond to this FUBAR financial crisis as well as all of our other problems (and there are so very many) by speaking with a unified (or at least a filibuster-proof) voice.
Note these two quotes from this terrific article by The Atlantic's Ross Douthat where he compares 1980 and 2004 and describes what happened to the Dems after Reagan's landslide of 1980....
The Democrats of 1980, on the other hand, turned out to be much worse off than they looked on paper after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win. Reagan had triumphed amid stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis, and his victory could have been read as a fluke rather than a realigning triumph—a win that had more to do with the unpopularity of Jimmy Carter than with deeper weaknesses in the liberal brand. The Democrats still enjoyed a 50-seat edge in the House of Representatives, and they had lost presidential races before—to Eisenhower, to Nixon—without forfeiting their position as America’s natural majority. But ’80 was different: although the Democrats would rebound from their defeat, the political and policy initiative had passed from liberalism to conservatism, where it would remain for the better part of two decades.
Now what if the shoe were on the other foot in 2008?
If, on the other hand, the Republicans are experiencing their own 1980—with Barack Obama playing the role of liberalism’s Reagan—then the GOP will need something more to hack its way out of the wilderness where George W.Bush has left his party. The Democrats of ’80 needed better ideas, not better messaging and candidates; they needed to redefine their party, not just rebrand it. It has been a long, hard road from Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale to the confident, cash-rich Democratic Party of today. If 2008 is the GOP’s 1980, then a similar period of soul-searching and internecine struggle awaits Republicans—and the sooner they get started, the better.
If it's the undecideds and the independents that decide between a close race and a blowout, then in the remaining weeks of the campaign Obama needs to shoot the moon and convince the undecideds and independents that America needs change to the degree that the Democrats running for office everywhere deserve to win. And tactically, in these final weeks, that means we change our rhetoric from all-Obama/Biden all-the-time to Obama/Biden and your local/state/congressional candidate's name here. Let's get the literature printed with the local candidates too, let's spend the money on downticket media, let's make it impossible for this country not to change in a big way.
Time to spread the love, Senator. You know it'll all come back to you.