"Can Obama Ride the Wave or will it Break short of Shore?"

[KoKo]

Can Obama ride the wave? TheStar.com
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU


If you listen carefully, you'll swear you can hear it.

It's the rumble of a political movement, a Barack Obama wave, building in the distance, about to break in a tsunami of inspiration, a torrent representing a clean break from old ways and a new chapter in American history.

It is a national chant of "Yes We Can" swamping Hillary Clinton.

But the Obama wave breaks just short of the shore every time it appears ready to wash away everything in its wake.

For all the fervour of the arena rallies, the rapt thousands who hang on the senator's every word and call back to him with religious zeal, the wave has not crashed with all the ferocity bottled up in those venues.

Obama has drawn 15,000 in Idaho, 17,000 in Connecticut, 20,000 in Minnesota and Missouri – winning all those states.

But Clinton's rather wonky, reliable kitchen-table campaign prevails in reliably blue Democratic states like California, New York and New Jersey, where the best known brand name in the party still pulls in older women, working-class voters and Latinos, voters who have not been swayed by the arena magic of the young challenger.

Clinton could never tell her supporters that "the world as it is . . . is not the world as it has to be," a favourite Obama line.

Imagine her telling a rally: "We are the ones we have been waiting for."

But these defiant Obama phrases have yet to translate into the type of support that can withstand a long war of attrition.

Beginning today, all the trend lines are pointing to the Obama wave finally breaking. He is winning the money wars with Clinton, counting on a flood of small donors who are going online and giving his campaign $10, $20, $40 at a time.

He should win all four contests this weekend, in Nebraska, Louisiana, Washington state and Maine, three of which are caucuses, where he has proved lethal to Clinton, drawing on liberal activist energy.

Then, he'd be poised to sweep the "Potomac Primaries" Tuesday in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

A week later, Hawaii, which sees Obama as a native son, and Wisconsin, with a huge liberal vote in the college-town capital of Madison, would seem to cut his way.

Would that be the wave?

-snip-

The next two weeks will also go a long way to answering two more Obama imponderables in this fascinating race. Conventional wisdom says the more voters see of Obama, the stronger he gets and it is backed by evidence.

But the counter-argument is that the closer this comes to a verdict, the more voters will look for specifics in Obama's message of change.

Theodore Sorensen, the great JFK speechwriter who backs Obama, says words can move an electorate and Clinton seems not to realize "the important quality in a presidency of being able to move, arouse, inspire, galvanize. Neither Congress nor the allies would pay any attention to you otherwise. Words still matter. You bet they do."

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/301973

[Bread and Circus]

1. Obama is the unstoppable force, Clinton is the immovable object...

and none of us really know what is going to happen.

[NCarolinawoman]

2. Maybe Obama's is the wave (like JFK) but the safer shore is Hillary (LBJ)?

Of course I say that without taking the horrible Viet Nam War into the equation.

In my late teens I worked in LBJ's Great Society as a VISTA volunteer. I marched with Ralph David Abernathy singing "We Shall Overcome" (Martin Luther King had just been assassinated) We loathed LBJ for the war but we all knew he was the one who got us our salaries, meager as they were. I understood that statement that Hillary made
a while back---inspiration leading to something concrete.

Anyway, I've gone from hoping for Clark, hoping for Gore, happy with Joe Biden and now leaning in Hillary's direction. After all, I fit her demographic. LOL

[FrenchieCat]

3. I want it to be OBama.....but folks who haven't got a clue are only relying

on the Clinton name for reliability. That's her formidable built in advantage. Not that she's a better candidate or has better judgement.

McCain will win the election if Hillary is the nominee.

[OzarkDem]

4. Ohio is going to slow things down for him n/t

[Riley133]

5. In Cleveland and Youngstown......

I think he will carry those precincts, but yes - I think he will have a harder time in Columbus and Cincinnati and the southern/southeastern part of the state. I only know of one Republican who 'might' vote for Obama. The rest are sticking to their party.