The ranking is pretty ridiculous, this is true. This is why I'm convinced that most of the anti-Obama trolls here are Republican shills, because it's pretty hard to believe they'd hate him THAT much when his platform is virtually identical to Clinton's. He supports NAFTA, he would be willing to use force and keep the nuclear option on the table, and though his healthcare plan is different from Hilary's (and, some might legitimately say inferior though I personally think it has a better chance of passing), it has in common the fact that it is far from the type of single-payer system that most of us 'far-left' liberals would prefer. He's an establishment candidate through and through.

HOWEVER (and this is the part that I fear it may be unwise to say, but screw it, it's not like I'm famous) the reason a lot of 'far-left liberals' like myself are quietly supporting him is because we have something between a feeling and a hope that much of this is temporary posturing and that deep down, he is like us. His associations with the Hyde Park intellegentsia, while anathema in the mainstream, give me a sense of hope in that he is willing to fraternize with the sort of people that, while demonized in mainstream media, are par for the course in academic intellectual circles.

And this is the larger point - what's more important than his liberalism is his intellectualism. It comes through in the way he speaks, in the way he responds to questions more directly than other candidates rather than with pre-scripted buzzword-laden catchphrases that make you want to puke. Of course I'm speaking relatively here - I've often wished that he would do this more and use words like 'change' less, but as with other things, I grudgingly accept that as what he needs to do to win. The point is that even if I'm wrong regarding his politics and he proves to be a thoroughly centrist president, this still won't be worse than any of the alternatives we currently have. And if he brings no other improvements, his contribution to raising the bar of political discourse may prove to be more valuable than any specific policy.

If you've been following the way the media dismissively brushes off Obama's 'base' when they speak of the almighty white working class vote, you would think that 'people with college degrees' were some kind of inferior second-class citizens not worthy of consideration (I'm not even gonna touch the similar dismissal of blacks). Of course we're used to this as the Democrats have been brushing us off for years. The logic is that since we're actually informed and smart enough not to base our votes on idiotic emotional reactions to someone's slip of the tongue, you can treat us like shit and we'll still vote for you as long as you're slightly to the left of the other guy. But you have no idea how many far-left friends I've had to argue with after they proclaimed that they don't vote because it just "supports the system" and "they're all the same". Obama has brought in a lot of that crowd among the young. If you think that Obama can be shelved on the basis of not appealing to white people and these young supporters will still come out and vote for Hilary, you're wrong.

I think someone else already made this point, but who actually buys products this way? This seems like something geared towards people who aren't very web-savvy, the type who would just open up a browser and type in what they want. Most people I know already have a sense of where to find good deals (Newegg for computer stuff, Half.com for books, etc.) Not to mention eBay. Are these searches so reliable that they would give you a lower price than knowing where to look?

I really wish this wasn't on Salon's front page. I read the article and it's pretty cautious, but it still comes off like a passive-agressive whispering campaign exactly of the same sort as Rove's in 2000. Not only does it make me kind of queasy, but think about how it will look plastered all over right-wing blogs.

Look, I can understand the urge, but please...do we really want to take a page out of the Karl Rove playbook? I don't think Obama would stoop so low as to make this an issue, and neither should we. And it's not just a matter of principle - making an issue out of how someone's military service may have affected their mental health when our candidate has no military service of his own would be likely to backfire. Please, McCain has enough legitimate weaknesses to go after without us stooping to this level. No good can come of this.