His programmatics are crafted to evade the progressive label, sometimes to excess (thereby exercising Paul Krugman and LBO-Talkers, but nobody else). Underneath he's mainstream Democrat (not DLC), IMO.
Most intriguing to me is his insistence that popular, post-election mobilization will be the basis for reforms. With mobilization you don't need to rely as much on elite approval, though of course one could exploit mobilization for rotten ends. He has built an organization that is a plausible foundation for such a mobilization, much more than any candidate in the past.
At this point it's hard to see what McCain's substantive case for election can be. He wants to continue the war, which nobody likes, he's got no domestic program. The two biggies in my view are waving the blanket of sleaze that Hillary has woven, and stoking irrational fear of tax increases. (Irrational because such increases are unavoidable.)
I can't see the superdelegates backing Clinton. I'd say she quits in a week or two. Supers come over to BHO, she runs out of money, party elders & elite media say go sit down this is over. She's out of bullets.
The funny thing is, in terms of starting points, Clinton and Obama were very much alike -- both evinced sympathy for radical politics. HRC went to work for a commie law firm, Obama went to organize steelworkers. We know how she turned out.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James Heartfield
> Sent: 12:10 pm
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] US elections
>
> So, listers, help out someone who is looking in from outside the US
>
> If I understand it right, Obama's appeal is a kind of Blairite (or even
> Clintonite) transcendence of the 'old politics'. His core base is black
> and young, but to show that he is of a different stripe, he has to
> distance himself from race politics.
>
> Hillary hoped to play up her experience, but that has been boxed in to an
> appeal to older voters against younger, and to white working class
> voters, afraid of change.
>
> Is that right?
>
> And is it right that it would be too problematic for the superdelegates
> to overturn Obama's majority of the committed delegates?
>
> Does that mean an election between Third Way Obama and McCain pushing a
> kind of old, white resentiment against change?
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>