Dawn

The State Of the Race

We have inspirational candidates, we have candidates with ideas and we have candidates who project competence-- but we don't have all three in the same man or woman, and so we're left having to pick and choose between the negatives....
and

While Obama is assembling a campaign built around class warfare, there is no serious challenge  coming from his opponents which means the left is achieving its mission of creating an Anti-Tea Party to take back the debate. The victories of 2010 rewarded the insurgent party. Now Obama's people are determined to present him as the insurgent fighting against a GOP congress and big business. It's a narrative tailored to peel away enough independents and conservative Democrats to score a win and it may work.
There's been a little too much complacency after the victories of the midterm election and the weak numbers for the White House have convinced some politicians that they're fighting over a carcass. They're not. 
Obama's original victory was implausible, it took extensive work, planning and money. The idea that it can't happen again should be buried deep right now. It happened once. It can happen again if we let it. The other side is not going to play by any rules, it is not going to run a conventional campaign, it will pull every dirty trick it can think of and change the game as many times as it takes to win.
OWS should be a wake up call that this election will not be a cakewalk. The failures of the coffee party and every alternative to the Tea Party created a dangerous complacency. Now the mobs are abroad and the game is being changed... and this is just the first phase of what will be the ugliest campaign ever fought...
The perception that we will win because people dislike Obama should be put to rest now. That may help us, but it will not win it for us. All that the other side has to do is convince the public to dislike our candidate even more. We will only win if we deserve to win by making this an election of ideas, not a smirking contest. Only when there is a clear dividing line drawn down the middle and when the left is hit on the consequences of its policies over and over again, while the alternative is made clear will we win.
 
 
Read it all.   Pass it around.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/11/state-of-race.html