The potential for change…

If you’re in for a good long read about the intricacies of this race, and how race might play into it, Matt Bai of the New York Times has nailed it for you.

Will Obama be a transformational candidate and change the electoral map forever, as Colin Powell suggests and progressives like me yearn for? Or will he simply be another “50 plus 1″ president with a slim majority, no clear mandate, and a continually divided country to lead?

We’ll see… but my money is on the guy who beat the Clintons!

On the reality of rural white voters who see Obama as “different”:

Obama’s strategists accept that there will be some number of voters — particularly white men — who will reject Obama solely because he is black. But they are betting, first, that most of these voters wouldn’t have voted for a Democrat in any event and, second, that the groundswell of black support for Obama will produce enough new African-American votes in a lot of states to offset them.

Obama on the potential of his campaign:

“If I’m able to change this,” he told me on his plane, meaning the cultural breach in our politics, “then it’s probably going to be most powerful after I’m elected, when you’re no longer in the context of day-to-day battle, and I can prove it by what I do.”

… and Obama on FOX news:

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

Overall, a great read, if you’re into the nuance that makes politics interesting…

justin