> But this party advantage has almost nothing to do with the
> magic guy.
Agree. Almost.
The difference between "almost nothing" and "nothing" is, well, decisive. If Obama is not "special," then why didn't Hillary Clinton prevail already -- or John Edwards, or Dennis Kucinich or others? All of them tried. And history would be taking a different course.
I wish I could remember now that quotation by Marx where he suggests that the relationship between regular commodities and money is analogous to that between regular catholics and the Pope. If gold as a use value hadn't had certain special characteristics, then it would not have emerged as the general equivalent. On the other hand, outside of its relationship with those regular commodities, gold is just a prosaic silly thing -- without any of the magic properties that attach to it as money.