Chicago Tribune re-endorses Obama

At times, the historic contest between the first viable female presidential candidate and the first viable African-American has threatened to devolve into just another ugly race between ordinary pols whose positions on the issues are largely the same. But in recent weeks, Obama's personal and political mettle have been sorely tested— and have been proven.

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But Wright's rants only escalated. Obama was forced to publicly denounce the man who presided at his wedding, baptized his daughters and supplied the title for his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

By putting him in this difficult position, Wright may have unwittingly done Obama a favor. Moved to passionate restatement of his beliefs, Obama reminded a lot of people of what they found so appealing in him in the first place.

Friedman is an elitist.

A little (but significant) addition to your nice list:

Paul Krugman: Gas Tax Follies

...here's a proposal. For all the REAL Dems amongst us...

Lets take a generic figurehead approach to this, and start talking strategy instead of candidates, with the thought in mind that we will get our candidate elected in November.

What have you folks seen, thus far in this election cycle, that you think we need to emulate in the final stretch, between now and November?

And what have you seen that we need to get rid of?

I, for one, believe we need to look outside existing voters, and concentrate on NEW voters.

Not to ignore the already-active base, I think all of us who consider ourselves in that group need to start reaching out to the non-voters around us. Every day, we need to get out of bed and ponder, "who can I get registered today?"

We all know people who aren't involved in the process, who aren't registered, and there are so many of them they outnumber us, what, 70% to 30%?

If there is any place we can find the power to have a 50-state landslide, it is in these new voters.

And one last thing... all of you need to remember we call ourselves a PARTY! Lets make it one.

Nothing can do more for our chances to bring in those new voters than to make it FUN! If you think that isn't taking things seriously, you are mistaken.

I am desperately serious.

If we can find a way to make this a lot more fun for new people to join (Kerry's Bruce Sporingstien event is the best example I can conjur up, on a national level) we will not only gather in many more members, but make our own jobs easier because we get to enjoy the social networking that it will provide us all.

We need to turn this into a summer-long festival of voter registraton.

Everyone needs to start thinking about what sorts of fun, inviting and inclusive events you might be able to organize, to help bring these new voters into the fold.

And I don't mean inviting a bunch of Democrats over for a cocktail party, I mean those very Democrats organizing a BIG event with lots of entertainment and very few speeches, and inviting everyone they know to come to THE PARTY.

Where they can register to vote, along with the fun stuff. Then maybe they will relate politics to something other than a bunch of stuffy old bosses.

Another would be McCain's admitting he knows little about the economy.

The DNC has an ad, but it could be much better.

But this will be just as important as the 100 years if put together properly.