Given the re-emergence of Obamamania, I offer thoughts from a post I had on mydd earlier this year. My basic point is essentially in line with David Sirota's, if with less virulence and hopelessness attached: Obama has hardly done anything to warrant the level of excitement that his potential '08 presidential run has generated.
Further, I'd say the reason most Americans ever started going gaga over Obama is that in his highest-profile performance ever, at the '04 Democratic National Convention, he went out of his way deny the racial divide that exists in America. When a black politician does that, white Independents get moist. And as an African-American, I am particularly sensitive to, and frustrated by, such maneuvers.
Unfair? Really? Well, Bill Clinton has always been smart, articulate, charismatic, but at no time during his first campaign -- or pre-campaign -- did the country go ape-shit over him the way it is currently behaving toward Obama. Why? The racial component is the key.