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Dear God, it’s finally here.

It’s worth recalling just how absurdly action-packed this two-year campaign has been. The First Lady Candidate vs the ambitious young black senator. The earliest-ever primaries. The shock in Iowa, Hillary’s tears. The Michigan-Florida farrago, which saw the term “Democratic Rules Committee” enter water-cooler vocabulary. John McCain’s campaign out of money, written off, and then reborn in New Hampshire. Guliani’s Florida gamble. Rev. Wright and “A More Perfect Union”. Bill Clinton’s “fairytale”. “Clean and articulate”. The pit bull, Katie Couric, Tina Fey and Joe the Plumber (say it ain’t so, Joe!). The dramatic Powell endorsement. Then - just as it all seems to be over - Obama’s grandmother dies the day before the election. You couldn’t make it up.

I’m 28, British, and have only been watching elections closely since the Bush era began. But surely this has been the most dramatic campaign since 1968. I wonder if anything - short of, God forbid, an inaugural assassination - can bring it to a suitably compelling climax.

But the next 24 hours should be pretty damn good.

Essential resources (besides the obvious):

• Twitter’s election portal offers stream-of-conscious commentary from its (Obama-centric) young user base
• Twitter accounts @866OURVOTE and @electionjournal have live reports of voting problems and fraud, while Twitter Vote Report offers voting reports from across the country (on a map!)

I’ll be twittering non-stop once the results start coming in. Happy voting, America!

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It’s a natural instinct for Obama supporters to leap to his defence in the face of every attack by conservatives. And there is a lot of crap being thrown around. But as polling day looms, it’s worth remembering that there are some real problems with Obama and his candidacy. Whether any of them is a dealbreaker, I’ll leave up to you.

Three attacks on Obama that shouldn’t worry you…

1. He’s friends with some shady types. 

You already know about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The McCain campaign is now focusing on William Ayers, the former violent 1960’s radical who has served on a charity board with Obama; there’s also been controversy over Obama’s links to Tony Rezko, the property dealer currently charged with corruption, and ACORN, a voter registration group that supported his early campaigns and has been accused of voter fraud. The four cases are very different: Ayers’ sins are most serious, but were longest ago, and there’s no real evidence the two were friends.h They do appear to have retained some charity connections after Obama found out about his past _ I’ll leave it up to you whether it would be more honourable to drop a charitable project because of its founder’s childhood crimes, or to condemn those crimes and persevere. Rev. Wright’s relationship with Obama was the longest, but his crimes were minor - if you consider a little light demagoguery a crime at all - and Obama has denounced them thoroughly and publicly (indeed, Sarah Palin seems to be about the only person left in the McCain campaign who doesn’t understand why he’s no longer an issue). ACORN supported Obama’s early campaigns, but Obama hasn’t been otherwise involved with them since the early 1990s, back in his community-organising days. 

Rezko is probably the most worrisome connection, as the crimes are recent and the two were genuinely close. But Obama is accused of no wrongdoing. In the end, these issues aren’t resonating with voters because there’s no evidence that Obama ever sympathised with or collaborated in any of their wrongdoings (with the possible exception of Wright). Supposed “revelations” by conservatives, usually providing evidence of slightly closer ties than previously thought, have failed to suggest Obama was complicit in anything illegal or reprehensible. Obama’s initial riposte - that he should be judged by his own past, not that of his friends - seems to satisfy most voters. After all, realistically, it seems unlikely anyone can rise in Chicago’s notorious political scene without picking up some questionable associations.

2. He voted “present” 130 times in the Illinois senate. 

File this one under “true but misleading”. In fact, he voted “present” 129 times, but this accounts for only 3% of the over 4,000 votes he participated in. Nor are these the fence-sitting abstentions they seem. Illinois allows senators to vote “present”, and it’s traditionally used as a way of opposing measures with a little less risk than voting “no”. You might think that a little cowardly, but Obama’s use of it is nothing special by Illinois standards.

3. He’s been a do-nothing in the U.S. Senate.

Obama has been accused of missing most Senate votes to focus on his campaigning. As one snarky article put it, “For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.” And it’s true that, in the last year, Obama’s Senate record has been decimated by his campaigning. He’s missed 47% of votes this year, placing him third in Washington Post’s ranking of vote-missers. But who’s at number one, missing a whopping 64.1% of this years votes? You guessed it: one Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

And one that should

1. Accessibility. The press is right to be angry at its lack of any opportunity to question Sarah Palin, barring one, heavily stage-managed press conference a few weeks ago. But Obama has not gone out of his way to make himself accessible. His early press conferences were marked by his tendency not to directly address difficult questions. His campaign stops have generally eschewed the traditional Q&A with audiences. And his campaign has come down hard on reporters they feel have misrepresented it or the polls. Even his much-vaunted web presence, while utilising thousands of volunteers around America, has been highly centralised when it comes to the media message. None of this is a problem, per se. But it suggests a man who isn’t really comfortable with criticism. And we’ve had someone like that for the last eight years. If Obama wins, his supporters should join in the outrage if he doesn’t improve on  Bush’s terrible record of inaccessibility to the press.

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Perpetually fretting Democrats will not want to accept it. The campaigns themselves can’t afford to believe it. Many journalists know it but can’t say it. And there will certainly be some twists and turns along the way. But take it to a well capitalized bank: Bill Ayers isn’t going to save John McCain.  The race is over.

John McCain’s candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill… Before Wall Street’s collapse Senator McCain was ahead. His approval ratings remained high, his VP pick had generated excitement and interest, and his campaign operatives were capable, on any given day, of winning news cycles and giving their opponents fits. And then the underpinnings of American capitalism begin to sink — and with them sunk McCain.

An election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters.

Howard Wolfson, “It’s Over: Why Bill Ayers Won’t Save John McCain“

What could turn things round? Wolfson points to a domestic terror attack as the only thing that could seriously shake things up now. I think the “Bradley effect” is likely to mean Obama’s vote will be smaller on the day than the polls suggest now, potentially making things very tight. And the danger is that overconfident Obama supporters will stay at home. The democrats have to warn against complacency and focus all their efforts on getting out the vote.

Still, it’s true: a McCain victory now would be a stunning turnaround.

Track the latest odds on the race

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The lesson? The surge has not, as expected, neutralised Obama’s gains on having opposed the war. He can keep using having opposed the war, in mainstream arenas, and score real points on judgment. This is big news.

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This is the first time I’ve realised just how dangerous going negative could be for Obama. Thanks to - conspiracy alert - McCain-Feingold, this and all other Obama ads have to have his specific approval message on. There’s no way to run a Biden-fronted anti-McCain TV campaign that Obama can distance himself from. So every attack has to be balanced against the risk of losing the sheen of bipartisanship that has made Obama attractive so far - especially risky given that McCain has now set out so hard for that same ground.

Obama has to stick to the same strategy he pursued with his convention speech - stay broadly positive and put some meat on the bones. We need details, and more details. That promise of tax cuts for 95% of Americans needs to be repeated, and trumpeted, and sung from the hills till everyone is sick of it. Those details - those specific promises - are the only thing that can keep this campaign from sliding right into a 2004-style gutter of character assasination. And if it comes down to character, Obama will lose. Sorry, he will. If Americans go into that booth and choose the person who, deep down, they just feel they trust more, like more, or would rather have a beer with - it will be McCain who comes out on top. War hero trumps inspiring black guy. It just does.

It’s ironic, given the characterisation of Obama’s victory over Clinton as being one of style over substance, that policy - and particularly economic policy - is actually Obama’s big advantage. He’s not playing it enough.

UPDATE: Andrea Tantaros agrees with me, sort of

UPDATE 2: Sullivan puts it more succinctly:

Obama must maintain the high road. He must keep insisting that the McCain-Palin camp has no new policies to offer on the most critical issues we face, especially in foreign policy. And he must carefully and relentlessly explain what he intends to do. If he does that and refuses to take the bait, he will win. If he descends into the foul sewer where McCain now resides, he will lose.

Karl McCain knows one thing: how to smear, lie, disorient, distract, and intimidate. You can’t beat these thugs and liars at their own game. Beat them at the task of government. They are unfit for it. Obama is not.

UPDATE 3: Joe Biden kind of gets it (he also follow’s Sullivan’s earlier advice to ignore Palin). But will Obama follow this line?

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In 2005, before Palin ran for office, she and her husband, Todd, claimed the trooper, Mike Wooten, threatened to kill Sarah Palin’s father. Wooten was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job. The Palin family also accused Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson.

Palin’s Lawyer Has Already Questioned Two Witnesses - law.com

What? They accused him of shooting a moose?

The increasingly likely vice-president of the United States appears to have the life of a minor character in a Coen Brothers movie.

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The Los Angeles Times reported recently that Barack Obama’s campaign seems to be modifying its earlier affirmation that “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.” In a statement to the Times, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: “Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.” The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood’s Islamic center. His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama’s grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.

If this is true, Obama could possibly be charged with being an apostate from Islam… Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, ordered that apostates from Islam be put to death…

So is Barack Obama under a death sentence? Probably not…

it is virtually inconceivable that there will be protests in the Islamic world over his apostasy, or calls for his execution. The Cartoon Rage and Pope Rage riots were orchestrated from above. The people who orchestrated them know enough not to shoot themselves in the foot. Muslim leaders worldwide will not be saying, “He was raised a Muslim. Isn’t that terrible?” They’re more likely to say, “He was raised a Muslim. Isn’t that wonderful? At last, someone who can see our point of view.” Given Obama’s politics, it will not be hard to present him internationally as someone who understands Islam and Muslims… our first Muslim President.

We can only hope that, if he does become President, he won’t propose to do this only by means of various varieties of appeasement.

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Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination commentators have been falling over themselves to evoke the memory of John F. Kennedy. Obama’s youth, short time in the senate, and relentless message of change all stir memories of the handsome young upstart who squeaked the presidency in 1960. With the endorsement of Obama’s candidacy by several senior Kennedys in late January, the comparisons became more frequent. “A president like my father”, Caroline Kennedy called Obama. The New York Times evoked Kennedy’s most successful book when it referred to Obama’s race speech as a “Profile in Courage”.

With JFK still generally revered by most Americans, particularly the white working-class voters Obama desperately needs to win over, it’s a comparison Obama’s people are happy to see made (despite the odd snipe by commentators). The truth is, though, that John F. Kennedy and Obama came from very different places politically - and had very different concepts of “change”.

Obama’s campaign has been built on a solid platform of opposition to the Iraq war. Indeed, if Obama hadn’t been able to contrast his own opposition to Hillary’s mixed record, it’s highly unlikely his campaign would have gathered the momentum - and the money - it needed to seriously compete. With his willingness to negotiate with so-called “rogue states”, and to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, Obama has nailed his colours pretty clearly to the dove mast.

The contrast with the Kennedy campaign of 1960 couldn’t be clearer. Kennedy’s brand of change, and its attendant criticism of the preceding eight years of Republican rule, was unequivocally hawkish.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking, or whether it will move in the direction of slavery… We discuss tonight domestic issues, but I would not want that to be any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.

So Kennedy began the opening speech of his famous debate with opponent Richard Nixon. Granted, Kennedy discussed poverty at length in his campaign, and also lent his support to the nascent civil rights movement. But his most progressive ideas were always couched in the rhetoric of the Cold War. “The kind of country we have here, the kind of society we have, the kind of strength we build in the United States will be the defense of freedom,” he went on in his opening speech. If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we’re moving ahead, then I think freedom will be secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fails.”¹

Indeed, as George Packer points out, Kennedy’s message of hope was coded to speak to insecurities bubbling under the surface of a nation allegedly at east with itself. In an atmosphere of steady-as-she-goes conservatism - the 1950s, with their fetishising of conformity, had just ended - Kennedy brought to the surface fears about the economy and America’s place in the world that had previously been unspoken. Obama, by contrast, faces a nation in turmoil, where divisions over the best response to myriad challenges have almost made civilised discussion impossible. This means his message of hope, his focus on the positive, can be much more effective.

So is the strange, and ultimately sad, Kennedy story of no real relevance to the Obama campaign? Not so fast. Because there is a Kennedy campaign that Obama has much more in common with - the 1968 campaign of John’s little brother, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Like Obama, “Bobby” built his campaign on a central platform of opposition to an unpopular war. Like Obama, he faced a fight for the nomination with Democratic party royalty whose impeccable liberal credentials had been tarnished by support for that war: vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey (Kennedy had already seen off the previous presumptive nominee, the Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson). Like Obama, he campaigned on a leftist platform - focusing on poverty, public services, and civil rights - but proved effective at transcending traditional party affiliations.

While John’s radicalism was mostly rhetoric - once he entered power, his administration became known for a gradualist approach to issues like civil rights that exasperated activists - Robert’s was genuine: in place of John’s tax cut, Robert called for substantial tax rises to fund social programs; to John’s enthusiastic Cold War saber-rattling, Robert proposed a retreat from the US’ global commitments and from the military-industrial complex that had spiraled since the start of World War II.

While Obama’s program can’t match Robert’s for radicalism, the thrust and theme of his campaign is identical. Where John sought to identify the nagging concerns of a nation grown cosy after years of peace, Robert spoke up to the desire of a nation wracked by war and division for change. Obama’s stance as the “change candidate” has a clear precedent. While the standard approach is to attempt to achieve unity through compromise, Kennedy sought to build a new consensus on ground that had previously been identified with the hard left - essentially the same trick Obama hopes to pull off, a generation later, in 2008. Kennedy’s slogan, a quote from George Bernard Shaw - “Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” - stands out as a more lyrical version of Obama’s “yes we can”.

So what can the campaign of Robert Kennedy - whose closest relatives, ironically, have broken ranks with the rest of the clan to back Hillary - tell us about Obama’s chances? Of course, Robert Kennedy was never put to the general electoral test. His campaign ended, not with a concession speech, but with a victory party - after the Californian primary on June 5. It was ended, not by polls or delegate counts, but by Sirhan Sirhan, the young Palestinian who shot the Senator in the back and head at celebrations in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Psephologists disagree about the chances Kennedy’s radical campaign would have had against the republican nominee, Richard Nixon. When I met Senator Ted Kennedy, the youngest of the Kennedy brothers in 2004, he confessed he was unsure whether Robert would have even beaten Humphrey, who had the support of most of congress, to the Democratic nomination. “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “We had a long way to go.”

What’s clear, though, is that Kennedy had several factors in his favour which Obama can’t rely on. Both men score highly in both party and national polls among young people. But that demographic is far smaller now than it was in Kennedy’s time. The 1960s were the coming of age of the so-called “baby boom” generation, children born in 1945-7 in the postwar boom. As a result, the proportion of people in the US aged 18-25 was higher than ever. It was these “boomers” who protested in the universities, became the first hippies - and fought in the Vietnam war. These young people were the bedrock of Kennedy’s campaign.

The same is true of Obama’s campaign, but almost everything else has changed. Those same baby boomers are entering retirement, leaving America with a chronically aging population. The younger generation, by contrast, is smaller than ever, thanks to several decades of working women with easy access to birth control. And they’re less likely than ever to vote.

It is possible that aging boomers will be inspired enough by Obama’s rhetoric of change - and his resemblance to the Kennedy campaign - to carry him to victory. And blacks, who supported Kennedy in droves, are flocking to Obama. But another core Kennedy constituency, Hispanics, aren’t Obama’s to count on. Kennedy’s support for firebrand activist César Chávez made him a hero to many “Chicanos” (as Hispanics were generally called then). This constituency, unlike the youth vote, has only grown in the intervening years. But Obama’s support among Hispanics now, except the young, is poor.

With the youth vote less powerful, and the minority vote fractured, Obama may face an uphill struggle to clinch the nomination - and then, of course, the presidency. But then, few expected Kennedy’s campaign to obtain such momentum - or for the formerly overshadowed brother to prove such a compelling orator and eloquent advocate for the poor. In these more centrist days, it would be too much to expect that Obama might finish what Robert Kennedy started. But with America once more crying out for a change of direction, for a politics of compassion and co-operation, it seems possible a measure of Kennedy’s vision might be achieved.

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what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past… But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee… What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over. She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary. If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.

Andrew Sullivan may be exaggerating Hillary’s malevolent mania a smidge, but perhaps not by much. But the generational point is the really interesting one. Of course, inspirational-left candidates always appeal heavily to the young - look at Robert Kennedy. But I sense this is different. After all, the cutoff is supposed to be 30, not 40. While the baby boomers got conservative as they got older and settled down, it’s just possible that generation X and the millennials*, with our never-ending adolescence and our upbringing free from the trauma of Vietnam and stagflation, might not. Or at least, not till much later in life. What does this mean? Well, it means that whatever happens in November, the long-term future looks good for the democrats. While the swollen ranks of aged boomers begin to die off, the most liberal generation in American history will be becoming hugely influential. But this is a long-term play. For now, I’d love to see polling with this level of age detail for Obama v McCain. If Obama v Hillary feels like “the future struggling to overcome the past,” what will that feel like?

* Yes, I know. But “millennials” is - just - better than “generation Y”, which makes us sound like some sort of more masculine version of our Star Wars-obsessed older brothers. I say “us” because the dividing line is, apparently, 1980, putting me just on the right side of history. UPDATE 14/05/08: This is an altogether depressing explanation of our defining characteristics as a generation. Apparently we’re not all being schooled all over the world and redefining work-life balance. We’re fat, poor, and tired.

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Mr Obama has fought a brilliant campaign, out-organising his opponent, raising more money, and convincing undecided Democrats as well as the country at large that he was more likeable, more straightforward and more worthy of trust.

On form, he is a spell-binding orator and holds arena-sized audiences in thrall. He is given to airy exhortations, it is true, but genuinely seeks consensus and has cross-party appeal.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign, in contrast, has been a shambles. She and her team expected to have it all sewn up long ago; they made no plans for a long struggle, ran short of money and had to reorganise on the run.

Her speaking style is pedestrian, when it is not actually grating. Those who dislike her tend to do so with a passion: her disapproval ratings started high and after months of campaigning are climbing still. It is a tribute to her tenacity and to the loyalty she commands in the party that her fate was not sealed weeks ago.

How much the way that a campaign is run tells you about a candidate’s fitness to be president is debatable – but it does tell you something, especially if the candidate with the misfiring strategy is running on a claim of management expertise.

The FT drives in another nail

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Andrew Sullivan (who [a] I’ve never forgiven for not remaining the attractive, slim role model he was when his book, Virtually Normal, was serialised in the Guardian in the 1990s and briefly lit up my gay teenage life; and [b] doesn’t allow comments any more on his blog The Daily Dish, only pingbacks, hence this post) is slightly unfair with his criticism of the inveterate conservative’s gleeful hay-making over Bittergate. Is Kristol, like many conservatives (and Mrs. Clinton*) being entirely disingenuous in pretending that any time a politician, in a private fundraising meeting, makes sweeping generalisations about a section of the electorate and the socioeconomic drivers of their political positions, they’re importuning its collective intelligence? Of course. He goes on to do it himself, a few lines later, by implying that all wealthy San Franciscan democrats are metropolitan snobs (not a generalisation many would disagree with, but then of course that’s the point - many don’t disagree with Obama either). But he doesn’t actually - as Sullivan suggests - cast doubt over Obama’s religious beliefs. Rather, he argues that Obama believes his own religious beliefs to be complex and genuine, but appears not to think that about others.

Not that this is true, or fair, of course. Obama’s choice of verb - he said that people “cling” to religion - was not, as Dan Schnur argued on Left, Right & Center on Friday, the heart of an offensive slur on small-town, working-class whites’ ability to think. Rather, it was entirely the correct word to identify the phenomenon Obama was describing - the phenomenon, unique to America, of religion becoming one of the primary wedges between political parties, despite every significant politician belonging to the same religion. White working-class voters, who believe in God, have been convinced again and again to vote (against their economic interest) for Republican candidates, who believe in God, and to vote against Democratic candidates, who believe in God, because they’ve been persuaded that the Republicans believe in God more strongly than the Democrats do. You don’t have to be a snob, an athiest, or even an arch-liberal to believe this to be at least partly an emotional reaction borne of anxiety and fear - clinging, in other words.

If the presidential candidates were actually from significantly different religions, as in 1960, then you might expect belief to become the primary guide to people’s votes - although the result of 1960 suggests, even then, people might put policy and personality before pulpit. But for this to have happened in a politics entirely dominated by protestantism is bizarre, and somewhat irrational. You could say the same about down-the-line gun-rights voting, when no Democrat has seriously threatened the second amendment for a decade (abortion, where another four years of Republican rule could feasibly lead eventually to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, is a little different).

A century after Freud, to recognise that people’s voting decisions aren’t entirely rationally based isn’t snobbish, it’s adult. And to deny in public (while, I suspect, acknowledging freely in private) that the phenomenon of the working-class “values voter” owes more than a little to the manipulation of people’s emotions - their anger, their anxiety, and, yes, their bitterness - is duplicitous in the extreme.

So Kristol is innocent of denying the depth of Obama’s faith. But he’s guilty, as usual, of a host of other sins: insincerity, hypocrisy and faux-naivete, for a start.

*I’m having trouble knowing what to call her. To keep using “Hillary”, when I never say “Barack”, seems clearly sexist; but “Senator Clinton” is too pompous and “Clinton” obviously unclear. “Mrs. Clinton” seems the simplest identifier, similar to “George Bush, Jr.”, my preferred name for the current President.

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Like most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision… often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

- Bruce Springsteen

This was probably inevitable, but still has a vague air of significance to it. Should certainly help sew up that wavering white working-class vote in the wake of bloody Bittergate.

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Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

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You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Now look. Come on. This is not an insult. This is not a Kerry-style gaffe. And it’s not going to hurt Obama against anyone except, feasibly, small-business owners, who lean Republican anyway. This is the truth. And its harshness is softened by its genuine sympathy for working-class people.

Kerry’s remarks about getting “stuck in Iraq” were harmful because they backed up what people already suspected: that Kerry, while genuinely sympathising with poor people, didn’t know them, didn’t understand them, and deep down, didn’t like ‘em. Barack Obama is not John Kerry. Barack Obama is not an elitist. He grew up in Chicago, not Beacon Hill, Boston.

Top of the Ticket : Los Angeles Times : Barack Obama’s “small town” critique: Is this a game changer?

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Well, this is not a good sign:

Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act to name a few…We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). “They” are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future.

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Daughter-of-John Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg:

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

Brother-of-John-and-all-round-good-egg Ted Kennedy:

With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign, not just about himself, but about all of us. A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.”

So far, so good. But uh-oh!

I respect Caroline and Teddy’s decision, but I have made a different choice. At this moment when so much is at stake at home and overseas, I urge our fellow Americans to support Hillary Clinton. That is why my brother Bobby, my sister Kerry, and I are supporting Hillary Clinton.
-Daughter-of-Bobby Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Where will it all end? Will Mrs. Schwarzenegger be able to hold her peace?

UPDATE: No.

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All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals. Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things.

In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

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