Obama's Momentum
As John Cole points out, despite Hillary still being the frontrunner in the polls and with the establishment "superdelegates" most likely in her favour, Obama's campaign seems to be picking up speed since the crushing win in South Carolina, picking up endorsements left and right. (Cole misses a really big one, though :))
One other point from Cole's post stands out, though.
Obama is running a momentum campaign, which is why people like me say things like “pretty thin gruel” when we listen to him speak.
A common theme, but one that may not be as accurate as a lot of people seem to think. One of the points in Howard Kurtz's article today lamenting Obama's non-courting of the press like himself, was this:
One media narrative that seems to be taking root is of Obama as the candidate of lofty rhetoric and Clinton as the maven of pedestrian policy talk. At a rally at Furman University here Tuesday, Obama brought the audience to several peaks, raising his voice over the applause while describing how his days as a community organizer "taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things" and how "the dream that so many generations fought for feels like it is slipping away."
But the address was saturated with proposals. Obama called for tax rebates; a one-time boost in Social Security checks; extending unemployment insurance; mortgage aid for those facing foreclosure; raising the minimum wage; protecting pensions; and college tuition credits. And that was before he got to his support for solar and wind power and biodiesel fuel. (There was no discussion of how he would pay for all this, other than to say his health-care plan would be partly financed by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.)
How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.
So is it possible that Obama's "thin gruel" is due not to his failure to make policy speeches, but that he's found a way to not make boring policy speeches and nobody has figured out how to deal with such beasts?
Oh well, at least the next week will be full of interest for political junkies like me.
