Obama does not have a majority of the Supreme Court in his pocket, or a brother who's the governor of a major state, so I don't think he can count on winning the way Bush won.

Bush won in 200.

I must be getting old... it didn't seem like that long ago.

Well maybe I am being a pollyanna, but I kind of think that if (for example) a major American city was wiped out by a hurricane, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, a President Obama would want do something about it, even before his aides explained the political impact of doing nothing.

So at least in a relative way, Obama does care.

Come on - the dude has spent most of his life helping people.  You might not like Obama on certain issues, but that's just a mean generalization.  Both of our candidates are pretty damn good in my opinion.

If we have learned just ONE thing about the Obama campaign, it is clearly not his intent to destroy the Republican party.  In fact, his many nods and pleas in that direction could well have the opposite affect:  Resurrect an almost dead party by a president who has no qualms to demand MORE collective guilt confessions from his side, thereby keeping the GOP free to virtually erase 16 years of blame, but then pounce on the very first sign of weakness (an economic downturn, oil crisis, Dollar crisis) to pour the blame squarely on his shoulders and wrestle power away from Democrats again.

It has nothing to do with PC, and I am not playing the victim. I am neither black, nor an Obama supporter.

We just barely got over a weeks-long shit-storm of Obama and Clinton fanatics trading countercharges over who race-baited whom, blah, blah, while the Republicans and their buddies in the media laughed up their sleeves at their cleverness for starting the whole thing and keeping their fingerprints off of it.

You ruined a decent post by needlessly making it about race. Keep your eye on the ball, you re hurting your own team with the racial crapola.

NYCDem, you're correct I think to note that Obama often fails to include policy specifics in his rhetoric, and in the debates - however, if you look through the plans and whitepapers which have been released by his campaign (and are available on the website), I think you'll find a very surprising amount of specificity about his positions and his actual implementation strategies once he's in office (he refers to "blueprints" in some of this stuff...).

My initial thought was that Sen. Clinton's biggest selling point was the credibility of her "ready on day one" meme, and that her detailed policy proposals backed that up.  But as I've read more of Obama's actual detailed proposals, I feel much more comfortable that he can do the same (and I feel good about supporting him for a variety of his other strengths, as a result).

Here's a good example of details: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlue printForChange.pdf