WP,pg1: Does Obama's Message Match the Moment?

[DeepModem Mom]

Does Obama's Message Match the Moment?
Reconciliation May Be Hard Sell to Angry Party
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007; Page A01


Sen. Barack Obama says he wants to "turn the page" past the country's red-blue polarization.
(David Lienemann/AP)

WASHINGTON, Iowa -- A hush fell over the crowd as Sen. Barack Obama crossed the field, his white shirt glowing in the sun, waves of cornstalks rustling behind him. Once inside the open barn on the county fairgrounds here, he offered a message as uplifting as the backdrop, promising a new era of consensus instead of partisan divide.

"We're going to win an election, but more importantly, we're going to change the country," the Illinois Democrat said. Nothing will get done in Washington "unless we not only change political parties in the White House, but also change our politics." The audience of Iowa Democrats seemed receptive. But when it came time for questions, it was clear that at least some members of the crowd had not escaped the partisan mind-set that Obama said he wanted to overcome. What did he think about President Bush's veto of a children's health insurance bill? What, another person asked, did he make of the Bush administration's alleged denigration of science? What would he do to prevent Republicans from taking advantage of election flaws like the one in Florida in 2000, in which the questioner said "it's not over till your brother counts the votes"?

As Obama positions himself for the stretch run for the Democratic presidential nomination, his call for a "new kind of politics" faces a broad test in his own party, and not just of whether it makes any criticism of his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), seem hypocritical. As the pointed questions he received here suggest, it may be that his summons to "turn the page" past the country's red-blue polarization is not what many Democrats want to hear after seven years of mounting anger at Bush and the Republican-dominated government.

Obama faults a broken system in Washington for failures that many Democratic voters attribute simply to having the other side in power. By contrast, Clinton more directly exploits Democrats' feelings of resentment. She argues that the troubles of the past seven years -- the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the widening income gap -- are the result not of broken politics in Washington but of poor Republican governance, and she says that she would offer competent leadership to fix what has gone awry since her husband left the White House.

Obama accentuated the basic differences yesterday in Iowa. Reminded by a shop owner in Vinton that Clinton is proposing a universal health-care plan just as he is, Obama countered that electing Clinton president would not be enough to get health-care reform passed. "It can't be the same kind of partisan battling we had in the '90s," he said, according to the Associated Press. "I think I can do better than Hillary Clinton, and that's why I'm running."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101602267.html?nav=hcmodule

[XemaSab]

1. It's an interesting strategy

If he was running 4 years ago I'd say it was the kiss of death, but man... we CANNOT have another president like Clinton or Bush that half the country HATES. We really can't.