And I would submit that the “savior” mantle laid on Obama is not his doing or his choice, but is the result of a) media coverage choices and b) the great relief of much of the voting population for a sane, reasonable, somewhat progressive candidate after such a long drought. Kind of churlish to blame him for it.

These things have been brought up but not very effectively, or just haven’t been very effective. I think part of that is that McCain just doesn’t have the money, part of it is obama is good at deflecting, and part of it is the situation this year is too serious to get caught on such things. I think in other years, those things would have been huge, the way swift boat and riding in a tank and whatever other nonsense became big. I like Obama, but this is a weird race, kind of right place, right time… and even so, it isn’t universal – that’s why Palin has become a symbol for some other people (since McCain is not a symbol for anyone…)

And then there are people like me, not looking for symbols, a little mystified by the whole thing. I just want someone who will be a decent president, no religious crowds, please. I’ll vote Obama, even don’t mind if he wants to be transformational, but I’m not counting on it or anything. Just some common sense.

Peacay, I think anyone who’d read the longer form journalists already felt that way about muslims – sort of preaching to converted.

What are his “plenty of down sides”?

I don’t know if Obama is the best candidate of my lifetime; in a lot of ways he’s a pretty unlikely candidate and it’s luck that he could run at such a bad time so he has such a good chance. That americans are going to vote for a black guy with the middle name Hussein who is kind of academic/ boring when it comes to debates / talk shows / impressions, is sort of fantastic already… he was excellent at running the primary, and is a great orator, but he has plenty of down sides, and if the Repubs had a stronger candidate or it weren’t such a bad year, they’d be able to squash him. If it were just 00 or 04, they’d have squashed him.

I am somewhat worried about racism and I don’t know about vote theft stuff…

1) The fact that despite having the best candidate in my lifetime vs. a terrible candidate of the same party (and policies, for the most part) as the incumbent–the worst president in history–the polls still hover around 50/50;
2) “Hidden” racism that may show up in the privacy of the voting booth;
3) Dirty tricks and vote theft, which have clearly contributed to the Republican “wins” in the past two elections.

No euphoria over “won” debates or ephemeral poll numbers can erase these fears.