Reply #49: According to most fears

[PATRICK]

The GOP is slipping on its own drool no matter what we do. Drooling could be merely a mark of senility.

I think we should be addressing the best way to help a campaign, not drown ourselves in doubt. The real picture is nothing new. Good guys will get kneecapped without political smarts and assaulted criminally in any event. The election tallies and vote suppression will also suffer assault. The media has been as consistent as they were with Gore and Kerry in backing the GOP moves. That is 100% in the area of their pundits, banner news and use of the trivial.

What Obama has in mind is Mayor Washington of Chicago who got a race divided city to vote for him, maintaining a good chunk of their prejudices but winning their respect for a good and fair job. That matches what seems to many as innocent, low key and middle of the road presentations. As with kerry, Obama would do well to emulate the easy going direct approach of that mayor, mingle mix and remove the divisions physically. Undercutting the media noise machine is very difficult. Maybe the real argument about 2004 was whether Kerry overcame it to come close or never did, to lose a natural super majority. the same with the vote fraud, but in that case I think as in 2000 the GOP was successful in everything they did, exposed or not. Floating(but not aloofly) above these two issues is not easy, maybe not possible. That is a generic concern of the generic Dem candidate and our fears take shape around any eventual nominee.