Most Americans are neither left or right. They're simply persuadable.

[cali]

Hell, that's true of most humans. What does this have to do with Obama? He knows this is true. And he's out to persuade people to back his plans for the country. He doesn't want to be viewed through a particular political prism. The moment he becomes the Liberal president, he's cut off millions of people who are potential supporters.

The most interesting thing Obama said during the campaign are his comments about Reagan that so outraged many DUers. He said he saw Reagan as a transformational President who changed the trajectory of the country, and that he wanted to emulate that, moving the country in the opposite direction from Reagan.

Can he succeed? I don't know, but he's got the potential to succeed. He understands the psychology of such a transaction intellectually. Reagan understood it instinctively. Obama relates to people differently than Reagan, but like Reagan, he seems to inspire confidence and hope. Personally, I couldn't see how people were taken in by Reagan. He held no appeal whatsoever for me. It's only years later that I get how potent a figure he was insofar as being able to change the political dynamic. He did that and he changed it for decades.

Obama is going to do everything in his power to avoid being labeled. He's going to try and move the people to where he is. He may not do it, but it's an experiment worth watching.

[BzaDem]

1. K & R. Obama understands the way to make real change is to change public opinion.

[midnight]

2. Ok. But for the sake of those trying to hold on to their only home,

can we change the monitary policies along with shaping opinion on why it's not ethical to screw mom and dad out of their home they have worked the last twenty years to keep? Shaping policy is effective if you truely want change.

[BzaDem]

8. If that is a policy that Americans agree with, then it will probably pass and be effective

I am simply saying that the way to get policies you agree with more is to change people's minds about those policies. It is not, as some suggest, about trying to elect people who then enact policies that go against the will of the majority. The latter is a backdoor method that does not work (see 1994).

[mediaman007]

3. There is a difference. Obama understands the movement, while Reagan

was the front man for the corporate masters behind him.

[cali]

4. That's a huge difference, and I hinted at it when I said that

what Obama understands intellectually, Reagan understood only instinctively.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. IMHO, Reagan still had handlers who understood/created a "movement"

backed with corporate financing (from those masters you mention). And they then solidified that movement by carefully changing the laws to gain control over the media so that they could then promote their movement's "message" (propaganda) over a 20+ year period. And it's that corporate-owned, RW-biased media that we are dealing with today that was, as of this election cycle, finally "defeated" (or at least, knocked down a few notches and worked around).

What Obama has done is similar except that the internet and wireless technology became the "media" that allowed a new movement's message to go out (and bypass the RW, corporate-owned propaganda machine that the M$M has become).

So I expect the next major battle will be control of the internet (purveyor of OUR "message") and I think it's unanimous out there that this will be an epic struggle! And not from the luddite Reagan/Bush-era handlers, but from whoever they can manage to recruit (the "youth") who would be knowledgeable. And at what point they choose to embrace those youth, will determine how long it will take for them to regain their footing.

[rug]

5. Reagan was an ideologue who made the word conservative respectable.

Are you saying Obama should avoid the appearance of being liberal? Are you saying it because people cannot be persuaded that liberal policies are better policies? Or that liberal policies are not in fact demonstrably better than conservative policies?

Obama will be labeled no matter what.

[cali]

6. No, I'm hardly in the position to give him advice. I'm saying that this

is what he's doing. I'm saying that he's pointed clearly to Reagan as a model NOT for policy, but for changing the trajectory of the country.

Sure he'll be labeled, but I think it's clear he doesn't want labels to define him to the American people.