Thanks Allison. (Let's do dinner soon!)

I appreciate Allison's response. I think it is very honest, and there is not much there that I can actually disagree with.

I have no truck with anyone who prefers Clinton's policies over Obama's. I think there is little daylight between them, kind of like getting to choose between a Mercedes or a BMW, after you've been driving a crapped out Dodge Neon for the last eight years.

She is right to call me out on hating Hillary in a very un-obama-like fashion. I should follow Obama's example. This is why Obama should be president, not me. If I were president, Walker would be in a prison tower and forced to watch an endlessly repeating loop of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

I also agree that facing Hillary is the ultimate field test. I've been telling Jenny that totally changing the dynamics of American politics is no easy matter; It's almost an epic quest of old, wherein the hero has to face a number of tests. If he cannot slay the little dragon, he will never be able to slay the BIG dragon, which in this case is the nut-bag base of the conservative movement. John McCain is formidable, but it is his allies that will really come at Obama without mercy or morality. (I snapped this picture today in a parking lot in Southampton, of all places. The rear window of the truck said MILITIA over an American flag. Notice how the "t" is a cross, nice touch, eh?)

The rest of Allison's argument boils down to this: Barack Obama just doesn't have what it takes to win, against Hillary or against republicans. He is all hope and no hammer. To paraphrase Allison, you can't win unless you can win it in a knife fight.

I don't know. I still cling to hope. I still believe that we can have a country in which the high ground wins. I believe we can have something different from an eternal red/blue state, McCoy-Hatfield war. The Clintons thrive in that war. They pull everyone down on to their knees in the mud, unsheath the knives, and wait until their enemies lose just a little bit more blood than they do. That's how you win a 51 percent majority. Triangulation, maneuvering, right-wing conspiracies, finger-wagging, but aaahhhh, the power. The power is the prize, and once you have that, the psychodrama is justified.

No, she won't ever be Obama. She'll be whatever it takes to win. And maybe Allison's right. He's not tough enough. Perhaps we won't see an Obama in the white house, at least not in my lifetime. Maybe that's what the real world is like, and I just need to get used to it. But for now, I'll stay naive, I'll stay a hope-monger.

Obama will see the Matrix before this is all over. He is.... The One.