i see you're all too familiar with the latin maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius, which means the expression of one thing excludes all others. it is helpful in some contexts, but not applicable here. you're not alone - so many posters here make the same logical misstep.

if you look at what he said in the speech, he is not running solely on the issue of healing the racial divide. rather, he "chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren."

bringing people together, including people of different races, is the only way we're going to solve the problems you detailed.

and just because race has become an issue does not mean it's the ONLY issue.

perhaps i should have been clearer. obama is the only one IN THIS ELECTION being forced to deal with blatant lies being spread about him.

i agree with the rest of your post.

you are absolutely correct.

if history has taught us anything, it's that a long pre-presidential resume is not a reliable indicator of presidential success by any measure. character and judgment play a far greater role in the success of a president than their past experience and achievements. this past administration alone was highly lauded as being one of the most experienced ever put together (cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, etc.), and look where that got us.

here's another difference while we're at it:

obama: WE

hillary: ME

well, i tried. i tried to acknowledge that a lot of intelligent and educated people are in hillary and mccain's camp (and i agree that the two are not necessarily synonymous). my point was rather that obama is up against people who will cast their votes based on misinformation, lies, innuendo, personal biases, fanciful leaps in logic, and a very base-level appeal to their fears.

it would be foolish to think that hillary doesn't know that her strongest base is not in danger of being recruited for mensa. she knows this very well, and has crafted a campaign designed to appeal to them. i don't fault her for this - you have to play to your base. but she has done very little to elevate the discourse, preferring to stay near the gutter where it has proven to be more effective. politically shrewd? yes. good for the country? i'll let you answer that.

i guess there's just something i find fundamentally unfair when you have to convince people to not believe blatant lies about you. and let's be honest - obama is the only one who has had to endure this.

if he cannot convince people his policies are the best for the country, he does not deserve to win. if he cannot convince people that he is not an america-hating muslim, well that's something kind of different, at least in my book.

that's what i meant with my original post.

i did read the text and obama gave us what he always gives us, vague promises of change that mean nothing.

no concrete economic plans or foreign policies. he has had months to come up with these but prefers to attack his fellow democrat instead.

is your head that far up your ass? the topic of the speech today was race in america. when you go to a baseball game, do you complain that they're not playing hockey?

and if you want specific policies, i suggest you check out his web site and report back to us.

... how will this speech impact the stupid people?

I don't know how else to put it. Obama already has the vote of the intelligent and educated liberals (on balance - and no, I am not calling all Hillary and McCain supporters stupid. I am merely reciting the fact that, as a whole, the more educated and intelligent voters are flocking to Obama).

Obama doesn't have to convince intelligent voters that Wright's statements cannot fairly be impugned onto him, that Wright's statements, though inflamamtory and over-the-top, were largely fact-based (aside from the HIV one, of course), and that neither Obama nor Wright "hate America".

Obama has to win over the unintelligent voters. The people who just a few weeks ago were convinced he is a covert muslim. The people who mistrust him because he is black. The people who were moved by the 3 a.m. phone call ad. The people who just don't seem to "get it" - everyone knows someone like this.

And I'm not convinced that delivering a powerful, erudite, history- and fact-based speech will get through to them. They need sound bytes, not long passages. They need pictures, not words. They need complex ideas to be broken down into very simple and easily-digestible parts, and even then it's a crapshoot as to whether they'll put it all together.

I'm obviously not talking about the overwhelming majority of Salon readers. And I'm quite sure that someone here will dismiss this post as being elitist snobbery. There's pretty much no way you can bring up the topic of our less-than-brilliant countrymen without being labeled an elitist prick. I'm not saying it's their fault - a large portion of his speech dealt with how we have to fix the educational system in America. I'm just wondering if this magnificent speech will get through to them, or if the implicit messages will go flying over their heads.