Obama is selling the meme that Washington's problems are the political divide and only HE can "bring us all together" and change Washington.

But the problem isn't red vs blue - but the great disparity between the haves and the have nots.
Corporate lobbyists have driven Obama's political career until 2007 when he based his campaign on "changing Washington."  He could have begun "changing Washington" when he entered the Senate - but he continued taking bribes from corporate lobbyists - voting to fund the war -and supporting NAFTA legislation.
Obama may rock the vote - but he wouldn't rock the boat!

This is a great article on Obama's deceptive rhetoric...

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_articl e.cfm?itemID=14432&sectionID=90

"A DIVIDED COUNTRY" AND ITS PURPORTED SAVIOR

"There is a lot of talk right now," Noam Chomsky told David Barsamian last January, "about how the United States is a divided country.  We have to bring it together, 'red states' and 'blue states.' In fact, it is a divided country, but not in the way that's being discussed. It's divided between the public and the power systems, the government and the corporate system." Intentionally or not, Chomsky here puts his finger on one of the key ways in which "the [Barack] Obama phenomenon is a noxious and reactionary political disease.

Right now," Chomsky rightly adds, "the major fissure [in the U.S. ] is the basic split between the public and the country's real power sectors.   Both of the political parties and the business sector are well to the right of the population on a host of major issues..." (Chomsky 2007a, p. 95).

I won't be surprised nor disappointed when Obama continues the religious referenes if he is nominated.  There are many dumb voters out there who will be scared of his scary middle name and his father's scary religion.  You can't win election by only getting the intelligent, informed voters to vote for you, and the only Obama can overcome this problem is to reference his religion.  It doesn't bother me because, unlike Huckabee and most Republicans, Obama has no interest in turning the U.S. into a theocracy.

You'll never hear Obama call out the fundamentalists only if you don't listen to him.  What you want actually is for him to pander to your secular warriors by attacking fundamentalists when his at a non-religious event.   If he's going to criticize someone he does it when he's in front of them, not behind their back.  He goes in front of the Saddleback Church and talks about AIDS.  And when addressing the Sojourners, he had this to say about fundamentalism:

I ALSO WANT to look at what conservative leaders need to do, some truths they need to acknowledge. For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the forebears of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount--a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

This is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

First, as you say, to be viable in every precinct. That is a high priority, and it pays dividends, as you show.

But his campaign is also aiming to win a majority of delegates in urban and suburban Iowa precincts.

this post was in response to a Frank Rich column trashing Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth".
My apologies for its length, but its vital to understand what kind of man Rich s and why Democrats should flee from his "advice" and opinion.

Rich isn't dumb, our e-mailer said. To which we'd only say, perhaps--but his problem clearly goes deeper than that. And over the course of the past dozen years, Major Dems have kept getting turned into jokes as haughty, fatuous crackpots like Rich have mind-read and flailed about trivia. (Often inventing their "facts" as they go.) Because no, this is hardly a new thing for Rich. Back in 1997, he helped invent a dumb, nasty tale which was used to savage Gore during Campaign 2000. With apologies for asking you to revisit such nonsense, it was Rich who mind-read dumbly and well--and created the Love Story canard. Before the Swift Boats came for Big Dems, dumb-ass Rich was there with Love Story. Then, as now, he seized on trivia--and formed a nasty tale about Gore.

We've discussed this before, at least several times (links below). And yes, it involves such a trip through the weeds--about matters which are so completely absurd--that we apologize for bringing it up once again. But Frankly, this destructive performance was Rich at his best--a moment in which he displayed his prize-winning method.. Rich seized on an utterly trivial matter; rearranged the basic facts of the tale; and then began to mind-read weirdly, helping us reach a foregone conclusion: Al Gore has a character problem, like Clinton. Let's say it again: Rich's facts were wrong in his Love Story column--and his mind-reading was an embarrassment. But so what! He knew in advance what his great story meant--it meant that Gore had a "character problem!" He had "inflated his past," was "disingenuous," and had been "prevaricating" again, the scribe said--inventing a utterly foolish tale which was used to put Bush in the White House.

Let's say it again--Rich was faking his basic facts in this damaging column (published on December 16, 1997). Two days earlier, his own New York Times had reported an interview with Love Story author Erich Segal--the only interview Segal gave on this fatuous topic. In this interview, Segal said that Gore had been one of the models for his book's main character. (Segal knew Gore when Gore was in college.) In fact, in the interview (reported by Melinda Henneberger), Segal agreed with every word Gore said on the meaningless topic. But so what? Rich just knew what Gore had been doing in his fleeting remarks on this topic--remarks Gore had made to a pair of reporters. Mind-reading brilliantly, Rich clued us in. Gore had been "bragging" and "boasting," Rich said. Gore had "inflated his past" in his comments; and Gore had done this in an "effort to overcompensate for his public stiffness by casting himself as the role model." Uh-oh! As noted, Segal had already told the Times that Gore had been one of two role models. But Frankly, Rich had a better story, a story the brilliant pundit loved--and so he went ahead and told it. In 1997, the brilliant Rich just knew why Gore made his fleeting remarks about Love Story. Today, he knows why this troubling new film has that moment about young Gore's gun.

Yes, you have to be half-nuts to engage in this version of "journalism." And no, this isn't a matter of Rich being "dumb;" when Rich invents facts about total trivia and mind-reads to tell us what these phony "facts" mean, the issue goes well beyond "dumb" to the point of mental dysfunction. How appalling was Rich on Love Story? Time's Karen Tumulty was one of two scribes who actually heard what Gore said on the subject. For those of you who haven't seen it, we'll now reprint what Tumulty said, in September 2000, after Rich's tale had been used to savage Gore for almost two years. Again, Tumulty was one of only two scribes who actually knew what Gore had said:

   TUMULTY (9/7/00): I am the reporter to whom Al Gore claimed that Love Story was based on him and Tipper...I was sort of appalled to see the way it played in the media. I mean, it was an offhand comment made during a two-and-a-half hour conversation that was mostly about other things and it was a comment that was, you know, true in most respects. I mean, he was a model, Erich Segal said, for the preppy character in Love Story, and it had been reported in Tennessee newspapers that it was modeled on both of them. But all of that got lost in, again, this kind of snowball--I think that there was probably something there worth gigging him about, but the degree to which it became a symbol of the man's integrity I thought was very unfair. And I say that as the person to whom he made the comment and who wrote it.

Tumulty had actually heard what Gore said; she had heard his "offhand comment," a tiny part of a much longer discussion. Her reaction? The resulting scandal had been "very unfair," she said; she said she had been "sort of appalled to see the way it played in the media." But Frankly, it was Rich about whom she was speaking. It was Rich who invented this idiot's tale. It was the haughty but hapless Rich--mind-reading about trivia once again.

Frank Rich isn't dumb, our e-mailer said. We'd say that the problem goes well beyond that. Long before the Swift Boats came, this weird man invented the Love Story nonsense. The pleasing tale was then used for two years to bludgeon Gore--and send Bush to the White House.

Rich isn't dumb, our e-mailer said. Perhaps--but the problem goes well beyond that. Indeed, if Dems want to understand recent history, the story line goes through Rich's columns. How inane have his great judgments been? Tomorrow, we'll show you how brilliant Rich was when he compared Bush and Gore.

TOMORROW--PART 5: Bush and Gore? What difference could it make? the great pundit quite dumbly judged.

EVEN HIS CORRECTIONS ARE RICH: Segal agreed with Gore on every point, as Tumulty noted in her statement. In particular, he told the Times that the Love Story lead had been based in part on Gore and in part on Tommy Lee Jones, Gore's friend in college. (Although none of this was ever worth discussing.) Incredibly, Rich offered a "correction" to his original column on 12/20/97. Try to believe that he actually wrote it (and actually typed the word "Sorrygate"):

   RICH (12/20/97): Harvard vs. Yale: In writing about Sorrygate this week, I noted that when "Love Story" was released in 1970, some in Cambridge found it a Yale man's revenge on Harvard: its author, Erich Segal, had been teaching at Yale since 1964. But as almost his entire class wants me to add, Mr. Segal was a Harvard grad before that ('58). So Harvard can proudly take credit for instilling in him the good literary sense not to model a romantic hero on Al Gore.

Except Segal had plainly told the Times that the character had been modeled on Gore. Remember: Fatuous millionaire pundits like Rich will do and say anything to promote their great insights. Is Al Gore just a big fake and a phony? To Rich, Love Story just had to prove it!

This bogus tale was more fun than truth--so this great dumb-ass typed it on up. By the way--does Gore "condescends to us as if we were idiots?" Any time Gore speaks to Rich, the temptation must be vast.

Al Gore's campaign manager Donnna Brazile said today on This Week with George S., that this has always been JRE's goal to focus on the rural voter. She seemed pretty confident that JRE might win IA. It's appears I may underestimated JRE. He's been putting forth this extremely positive message lately and hasn't engaged in any tit for tat stuff with HRC and BO. However, Taylor Marsh had a great post that talked about how JRE should  have been going after BO's support all along instead of attacking, as they share the same type of voter. http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view .php?id=26700

Rich fails to point out why Letterman, Leno, Conan, Stewart and Colbert are in strike mode and Oprah ins't.

It is of course because he is not a union supporter and her show is 100% non union.  More money in Oprah's pockets I guess.

I think Edwards is doing a good job campaigning all across Iowa and building up solid support. It's going to be really close come caucus night and his support in rural areas is certainly going to help him. I guess in a lot of those precincts it's all or nothing, so if he wins enough of them then that could decide who wins.

Could you point me to the link where he said he wanted to create God's Kingdom please? Or where he specifically said that God was supporting his campaign? I would be very interested to see these articles.