From your articles on the US election throughout the season, it’s been clear that you don’t think too much of Obama, but your dislike of the candidate has blinded you to his strategic ability. Yes Obama’s been lucky - the climate in the US has been pro-Democrat for some time now - but you do you honestly think it has been luck that has got him to this point in the election? Obama has played the strategic political landscape of 2008 far better than anyone else - far better than the dynastic political machine of the Clintons, far better than McCain. The quality of his ground game, of his enormous network of volunteers, and his focus on states in the primaries neglected by ‘better candidates’ has been what has got him to where he is; if he wins, it won’t be because Edwards lied, or even because of the financial crisis.

John McCain will probably go down in history as defeated by Bush twice for the Presidency.

Obama is a charismatic figure and the role of the ‘Fourth Estate’ in his likely ascension to the office has been I think the real story of this campaign. In the end however I doubt that its role as his cheer squad will likely hold him in good stead to make policy in the next 2 years.

Obama has barely put a foot wrong (or if he did then like Biden’s errors we barely heard of them) but to wrest the Presidency that should not be simply enough. Neither essentially should a generic call for ‘change’ be enough.

From Australia’s parochial perspective I agree with Downer that McCain would better serve our interests.

When/if the ‘inevitable’ happens, I wish Obama well and loads more of that good luck!

Edwards’ cover-up had absolutely nothing to do with Obama routing Hillary in primary season. Edwards campaigned to the left on his war vote and economic populism, which put him into the orbit of Obama’s primary voters not Hillary’s. But Edwards was never even a truly viable candidate, regardless of his despicable cheating, because he simply lacked the necessary gravitas and resonance with the electorate due to his association with the failed Kerry ticket and his general phoney gloss. Polling shows he was always an after-thought / third fiddle.

Keane simply can’t bring himself to give credit to Obama genuinely outfighting Hillary in the primary. Hillary was locked into her own inevitability, ignoring vital caucus battles - which allowed the Obama-Plouffe number-crunching machine to steam roll her candidacy, accumulating margins, whilst the Hillary campaign was measuring the drapes. Keane, you seriously need to have a read of some serious treatments of Hillary’s loss, look at her campaign’s missteps, and stop buying the DLC kool-aid.

Nobody would deny that Obama has enjoyed a favourable innings for the party brand, but you’re kidding yourself if you think Hillary would be doing better. Hillary would be still running a swing-state strategy; there would be no epic 50-state ground game; Harold Ford would be in the DNC instead of Dean; they’re be no record turn-out for youths. I have no idea why you find Hillary so inspiring, but believe me it is shared in the key Obama-demo.

She is effective enough, but being the spouse of a president who wasted political capital in office, and who always did better at building his own brand than his party’s doesn’t give her “executive experience.” cf. Obama’s huge coat-tails.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Hillary is decent, but she would not be filling stadiums, bringing in huge numbers of recurrent < $200 donations, and inspiring volunteerism on the kind of scale that has completely demoralised the McCain GOTV effort. She would be running the same failed DLC strategy, using the same lobbyist and PAC money, and be evoking the same insider, polarised dynamic that Obama is riding into office against.

Also, compared to Democrats like Biden, and even Republicans like Hagel and Lugar, who also voted for the war, Hillary’s vote showed the most craven and shallow focus-group mentality about how she would decide foreign policy issues. So her supposed executive experience turns out to be putting her finger in the air and making decisions based on which way the wind is blowing. That’s not something I find remotely inspiring or commendable. Indeed, it is exactly that kind of artifice and shallowness which has inspired the netroots to reject her for Obama, alongside her history of video-game paternalism and her pathetic race baiting in the primary.

I can thank Hillary for one thing, her attacks about Ayers turned out to be helpful for Obama in the general election by defusing the issue.

Anyway, I look forward to Keane regaling Crikey readers with the story of his circumnavigation around the Crikey office, sans pants, as he promised he would do if Obama wins. It will be entertaining if for no other reason than, in the absence of some future reality-based epiphany, it likely to be the closest thing to his ever embracing the full extent of his complete misreading of Obama and the 2008 electoral landscape.