Obama Can't Re-Write The Political Book

Can Barack Obama rise above our politically divisive times and unite the country in bipartisan cooperation to solve our major issues?

Can he put an end to years of political bitterness, to the red-blue divide, to petty partisanship?

Don't bet on it. We like Barack Obama. He is fresh. He is thoughtful. He may be different.

But if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee for President, he won't be able to erase the bitter divide in our country. He might, however, convince hopeful independents that he has a chance.

Here's the problem: no matter who the Democrats nominate--even if they resurrect Ronald Reagan himself and run him as their candidate--they won't be able to quiet the vast right wing commentary machine, upon which tens of millions of dollars in media revenue now rest.

Do you really think Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann C . . . . . r (we try not to mention her name here), Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the American Enterprise Institute, Weakly Standard, National Revue and their coterie of hangers-on are going to go meekly into the night just because Barack Obama is the Democratic standard bearer instead of Hillary Clinton? Give us a break!

Do you really think those emails circulating around about Obama being a Muslim sleeper agent will go away?

Do you really think Obama's race won't be an underground issue?

This election will be a close one, once again. The Democratic nominee will handily carry the Northeast, the West Coast and parts of the Midwest; the Republican nominee will have no trouble with the Deep South and the Mountain West. It will boil down to the same handful of battleground states as in the last two elections, and it will be tight.

That's not to say that Obama wouldn't be an attractive candidate. For now, at least, he has lower negatives than Hillary. He probably always will--a certain percentage of Americans will refuse to tell pollsters they view him negatively simply to avoid a perception of their being racists.

But Hillary has a decent point: she does have experience, including fighting against these same bastards for a long time. And knowing how to fight them may yet be a crucial quality in this general election campaign, one that, unfortunately, will last longer than any other in recent history (because both parties are picking their nominees so early).

We'll see. We certainly wouldn't be against combining their strengths into one ticket.