Obama's Problems Against McCain

From a certain point of view, it's a miracle that Barack Obama is making the US Presidential race close at all:

- To state the obvious, he's African-American. He's had to walk a fine line between being able to talk about race but not be "the angry black man."
- He doesn't have traditional pre-Presidential-race experience (he's not a second-term-or-more Senator, a state governor or the Vice-President).
- 12% of the country think he is Muslim (a further 1% think he's Jewish).
- He's under 50 years old.
- He's a "lifelong city dweller" trying to win over rural areas.
- He represents Illinois (the last fellow to run for President from Illinois lost the '52 and '56 elections for the Democrats). He was born in Hawaii, the first person to be his party's nominee to come from that state.
- His success will rely on turnout by young voters.
- It was an incredibly divisive battle against Hillary Clinton.

But, I think his main problem is that Obama keeps using high-falutin' words, like "specificity" -- he needs to keep talking about hope and change, but start talking far more about unemployment, about falling real incomes, and explain things in 10-word chunks that people in the check-out line at Wal-Mart can understand.

It's interesting that Obama's reading up on the convention speeches of Kennedy in 1960 and Reagan in 1980. Andrew Sullivan has also written a compare and contrast piece that examines the strengths and weaknesses of McCain and Obama.