Yesterday I watched Obama’s campaign launch speech. Awesome stuff. Andy is deeply dubious (cynical?) about how a presidential campaign is going to affect Obama, essentially declaring that “it will ruin him.” As for me, well, you can call me naive but I’m hopeful; I believe that Obama is made of very stern stuff indeed. In his years as a community organizer I’m sure he was up against forces every bit as daunting as those to come. And you can believe he’s going to have an army of volunteers right behind him. I know that things are bound to get nasty within the the next year, but I think this will have the tendency to drag down Obama’s opponents rather than bolster them. There were 17,000 people there yesterday, standing around in the bitter cold. That’s just the beginning.

Of course I was very hopeful about Howard Dean and he did not end up winning the primary. However he did go on to chair the DNC and has done some fairly amazing things there. So, yeah, que sera sera.