I think that Obama is on the same page as you are about what he has to do tonight. And I think he knows who he audience will be. So the big question in my mind is which he mentions or alludes to favorably more often: Reagan or unions?

This marks four years since the Red/Blue speech brought him to national prominence, and established his reputation as an orator. It marks the historic occasion of the first African American to win a major party nomination-- 45 years to the day of the I Have A Dream speech. It's being held in a football stadium in front of 80,000 people and millions of viewers live around the country.

This is not a moment for a workmanlike speech to move the ball down the field another few inches. This one has to soar.

For decades the Repubs have been the bully to the Dem. wimp, and Rovian attack tactics are just the latest incarnation (finding the opposing candidate's strengths and turning them into parodies) of that kind of campaigning. This kind of depersonalization is as old as tyrany itself: make the (n-word) into a 'boy'; make the jews into baby-eating cannibals and blood sucking usurious financiers; turn moslems into rag-head terrorists, etc.

I think I disagree in part with Ezra's prescription for Obama. I think the real WMD for Obama is to turn his way with words into a weapon that makes his opponent/attacker into an object of ridicule and mistrust. But that requires a direct attack on McCain's lies, sleeze, dangerous warmongering, and lack of understanding of what makes a democracy work for actual people. I don't think Obama will do that kind of direct attack.

The politics of division may just turn out to be stronger than the politics of unity.

Government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" may be dream that can't be fulfilled in these times of global corporate control of nearly everything. Rove and McCain and Bush and Cheney and Bill Kristol and all the others are counting on that simple set of facts.