Defeating Obama

I thought Obama's speech was fantastic tonight. It was nationalistic, well-crafted and written and delivered, cerebral AND emotional, soaring AND grounded, confident not arrogant, combative not nasty.

To defeat this gentleman I would say is going to be difficult, my preliminary prediction is McCain 45%, Obama 51%, others 4%

To defeat him one must point out a contradiction in him in that he professes to be for a bottom-up form of politics in America but his rhetoric suggests a top-down form of paternalism. The Left has never understood that their fundamental beliefs presuppose government imposed from a centralized location, from the top down. To implement Barack's policies requires direction from a central location. Progressives and Liberals fail to see that the policies they advocate have a tendency to make grass-roots politics less energetic and effective precisely because the grass-roots will be expecting so much from Washington during his administration.

The challenge for Barack when he is President, as I suspect he will be, will be to stimulate the grass-roots and still implement his programs which are by their nature centralizing. The challenge for McCain is to try to show the contradiction and defeat Obama on that point.

In other words, McCain must point out the contradiction while trying to cover up all of his and the Right's.

A caveat is that the next months will be one's of great social and economic turmoil in the country and tension in the world. Hang on. The overture has just ended, the symphony is beginning.

John.