People keep saying Obama is "light" on the issues. Well for 6 years we've had a supposed "dream team" of experience in charge, and now look where we are.

This man has character and he has charisma and he has vision. Was Ronald Reagan so "heavy" on the issues? No. We need an articulate, mature man of character who ignites hope and promise across this great country. Barack Obama is that man. Don't sell him short.

Do we all know what happened at Obama's press conference in Nairobi? Do we give a damn about all the billions who live on two dollars a day or less? Do we give a damn about all the tax money that ends up as welfare-for-the-rich? Obama doesn't.

Dennis Kucinich does, and he just announced his candidacy. Senator Sherrod Brown does (read his excellent little book, "Myths of Free Trade.") Who else? Bernie Sanders?

Don't be fooled by this man's charisma.

Go Obama!

Some of my friends are completely mesmerized by him. I wish I could feel what they're feeling, but I don't.

I think he's an excellent orator. So is Jesse Jackson and a slew of other people I would never want to see in the Oval Office. Orators don't impress me, except for their ability to speak well.

I'm taking a wait and see attitude.

when the Republican party was trashing the Constitution? This was a perfect opportunity to show that he stood for something. Unfortunately neither he nor other Democrats showed they give a tinkers damn about the Constitution. I just can't help feeling there is no 'there' there as someone once said about Oakland.

Tell me again how a mixed-race candidate with a Muslim-sounding name and a few years of senate experience is going to expand on Kerry's electoral total?

I'm not saying he can't win, but if circumstances are such in 2008 that Obama can win, that means the Democrats could run just about anybody and win.

And if that's the case, why on Earth would we choose a genial, untested rookie who has never to date done anything politically courageous, and who seems not to have the stomach for hand-to-hand political combat?

After the fiasco of George Bush, I'm not willing to fall head over heels for a someone with a golden tongue, or a presence that makes him look good for the Presidency. With just 2 years in the Senate, and a resume that avoided touching controversial legislation because he wanted to keep his record clear for a political run, I'm not going anywhere near him until I'm absolutely positive that he is the right man for America. I've seen enough bad Presidents. Its time to look good and hard at what we elevate to such resposibility and service.

Was Ronald Reagan so "heavy" on the issues? No.

Do you intend this to be a favorable comparison??

Between Obama and Hillary, you have to wonder what the democrats are thinking. I hate to break it to people, but America is both racist and sexist. It sounds mean, but if either of those two are on the ticket then we can look forward to four more years of repulican rule.

The republicans are bloodied, not beaten. This is no time for weird fantasies about running unwinnable candidates. It won't work. The nation needs good leadership, and we won't get it if the democrats throw the race.

The week that another country okays gay marriage and makes this country look more like a backward swamphole, we have an enormous amount of unjustified hype over

an exceedingly smarmy candidate who writes: "my unwillingness to support gay marriage may be misguided."Can you be any more spineless?

He won't have my vote unless he stops the smarm and the pandering to religious extremists.

The fact that Obama continues to skirt the issues and give generic, and yet moving, answers to policy questions, makes it that much easier for the desperate to graft onto him our own hopes and wishes for this country's political future and our own place in it. Me, I believe that when he runs for President, and someone finally asks him point blank about gay marriage he won't, like Kerry, back down and say he is against it. No, he will stand his ground, even at the risk of losing the race, because he is an honest person who is disturbed more by the stink of lies and persecution than he is by the prospect of losing his political career.

HAHAHAHA! I know, the joke is probably on me and everyone else who is hoping against hope. I honestly don't want him to run because I'm afraid of finding out who he is and what he is really made of. I prefer to stick to fantasy and grudgingly vote for whatever flat, tired and utterly cynical politician the Dems roll out in '08. Sigh.

4 years in the U.S. Senate equates to how many years as governor of Arkansas?

For once, the JFK comparisons are not hype. JFK won because he changed the rules that said he couldn’t get elected: his youth, his inexperience compared to the “big boys”, his Catholicism, his mastery of the medium of television.

If Obama can change the rules too, he wins. Hope as a saleable quality, candor and honesty, an innate fairness to one’s opponents. A generational change (he’s almost a boomer, but the Gen Xers get him). And on top of that sheer, unmissable charisma.

And what’s a President for, anyway? A President is not Legislator-in-Chief, but Commander-in-Chief; Head of State not Head of Politics. And through leadership, the national conscience.

The first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After six years of a lifelong failure who was plugged into the gutless Texass governorship by Rover and the boys how can anyone seriously ask if Obama has enough experience to be President. Truman? Ike? Lincoln, for crying out loud. A long resume of ass kissing won't cut it, and Hillary is a mud magnet. Every interview I've seen with Obama has been impressive in the extreme. Name a better choice: Kerry or Gore redux? Vilsak? Please.