[Reposting to get to the heart of the matter]

Michael Tomasky guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday July 16, 2008

When Barack Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination, I wrote that he needed to do five things: redefine himself, redefine John McCain, make nice with the Clintons, unify the party and brace himself for some serious hardball.

He's taken steps to address four of those points. There's lots of complaining about how he's handled the "redefine himself" part. Some of it is legitimate, but much of it is infantile yelping by two types of people. First, those whose idea of politics consists chiefly of waiting until the inevitable moment that a politician "sells them out" so they can wag their fingers and say I told you so. Second, those who live in liberal cocoons and want to think that the United States of America consists of about 11 blue states.

But let's put that one aside for now, because the topic today is that on one of my five points, Obama has done very little and has let some silver-platter opportunities pass him by. He is not redefining McCain.

Some leading conventional-wisdom meisters, like Time's Mark Halperin, like to say that this race is completely about Obama. When they say that, you can hear them setting themselves up as Obama's judge and jury, just waiting for him to trip up so they can say that he's failing to "close the deal" and there are just "too many questions" about him, as they nudge their readers toward McCain, a media darling for many years now.

Well, there is some truth to it. The race will be, to a certain extent, probably a considerable extent, about white voters' comfort with Obama. But it's not all about Obama. It's also about an unnecessary war that was based on lies. It's about a lousy economy and a housing boom that went bust. It's about $4-a-gallon gas. It's about America's dreadful reputation in the world. It's about federal inaction on a wide range of problems, most notably healthcare and climate change, but a bushel of smaller things besides. It's about 84% of Americans thinking the country is on the wrong track.

Here's the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/16/barackobama.johnmccain