And it would be “Barack Obama who?” if he was white. What’s your point?

Rubbish. The black vote in the United States is not that significant. Neither I’d wager is the percentage of people who’ll vote for affirmative action reasons. Obama has many impressive attributes. If he was white (and he is white as much as he’s black maybe more so) then he’d still be well known.
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In the days when Obama was the prez of the Harvard Law Review the Harvard Law Revue sent him up thus:

In Chicago I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since

Palin was chosen for many reasons. Being a woman may be one of them but it wouldn’t be the entire story. She’s a gun-totin’ God fearin’ advocate for the little guy – or at least that’s how she presents. McCain and Palin can be sold as people quite apart from the nefarious Bush bollocks but in policy terms they’re pretty much the same sans the nepotistic collusion and technocratic fascist tendencies.

No president has more experience in foreign policy than the State department.

Most of the US foreign policy fiascos of the last fifty years have arisen when the president has listened harder to his White House advisers, or to his direct telephone line to God, rather than to the contradictory advice of the state Department.

It therefore seems clear that as far as foreign poliy is concerned, the most important experience a president can have is sufficient knowledge of history to persuade him to listen to career professionals who generally know what they are talking about.

Ah yes but where does ‘involvement” end and “authority” begin?

Whilst Governors in the United States are similar to Premiers in Australia, there are important differences. The nearest a state premier in Australia gets to anything military is to take the salute on the ANZAC Day March. Governors in the United States have a lot more to do with things military than do either state premiers or state governors in Australia.

(1) The national polls aren’t all that important except as a really gross indicator, because of the turnout factor and likely to vote sampling and then secondly because it’s not a national election, but 50 state elections of various importance because of both their number of electoral votes and how contested that vote is.

(2) There’s no “contested middle ground” in the same sense as there is the outer suburban swing vote in Australia. Local factors and state differences are much more important. So Palin is supposed to appeal to the “Reagan Democrats” who deserted the GOP in 06 and returned home. She’s not there to appeal to the upper middle class suburban crew and the college kids who are “independents”. The former are the more important demographic, and they’re the ones who Hillary had.

Which could be right: If swingers think she stinks, there`s a chance of a net negative for McCain. My guess is hard core GOPers were going to default his way in any case. Maybe Palin has just burned off the contested middle ground,? all Obamas way.

We`ll see…

Metaphor AK. But OTTness acknowledged.

What do we do with brains, beauty, and all that?

Shall we conquer the world?

Got the northern hemisphere covered.

Is it your special super power?

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/22/micro-fiction-competition/