As for "negative stereotyping", I have you pegged as a snot-nosed 20-something pseudo-intellectual; if I have any of that wrong...I'd be surprised.

I am double that age, white, female, former union member, worked in corporate for years, feminist. In short, everthing Hillary is supposed to be capturing.

Do try to get out of the house.

You mean working class fraud. I will give him credit for being a silver tongued devil, but that's the sum of it. The media has been crushing on him since the beginning of this campaign so he's gotten more than a free pass. They make excuses for everything he does. His campaign doesn't have to spin his faux pas anymore, Harry Smith & Tim Russert will handle that for him. He feeds his children a steady diet of resentment & hate whitey & jews, " it's okay, all black churches do that". Obama's lawyers foil any plans for revotes in Michigan & Florida, " he's not responsible for what the state delegations decide". His people start calling for Hillary to concede," he can't help what his surrogates do, he wants everyone's vote to count". (Although, in his first run for the Illinois legislature his lawyer paid the other candidates to bow out.) You have to hand it to him, he's an ace con man. It shouldn't take people too long to figure out he's not at all what he claims. I just hope its not too late before Kerry & friends hand the presidency to the Repubs AGAIN.

I don't want to answer to no one who never rolled a 121 game in bowling.

A president has the power to veto legislation and pardon criminals, which means that in the end, a legal background is something of a plus.

This is why the Democrats tend to go with lawyers, having someone who can actually read legislation and has some training in understanding the consequences of that legislation

is something of a plus in a post which is basically 50% of the time, all about reading legislation and vetoing the crap.

Plus, it helps to have someone who can read a contract being in charge of signing major treaties.

Now your "Working class hero" type doesn't actually have the skill set to do that as well as your latte liberal lawyer. The latte liberal lawyer has some training in legal issues, and knows legalese, your working class hero is more likely to be the type screwed over by the legalese, or to ignore that portion of the job except for where it conflicts with that "working class hero"'s religious views or lobbyists.

The trouble is, politics is governed by people who do not see this. They want to have someone who is just like them running the country, because people just like them are losing their homes, their livelyhoods and their prospects. It is a genuine wish to change things, tainted with some genuine arrogance.

Thus you have people who are anything but "Working class heroes" who are normally still of good will, trying to run as "Working class heroes." It comes off as false and in the end, insulting.

Obama would be better running as he is, GW Bush ran as a "Working class hero" and look at where that landed America.

I think that most people know it is a game, few actully think that the candidate relates to them or will remember them in 5 minutes. It is what it is. Most of that is because the game is rigged so that only the richest can pull of a successful run.

I'm not sure that the candidates really know what it is like in some of these areas. They may get a primer (local food, team, beloved old man who won the Medal of Honor and now runs the rec center that keeps kids off the street), but remember that these people are constantly being shuffled around and operate on almost no sleep. I saw Kerry in 2004 refer to the Philadelphia Art Museum (where his biggest rally was) as "this great Library", and supposedly he ordered a cheese steak w Swiss (although that is likely made-up, as all Democrats get accused of doing that..going back to FDR). Similar gaffes abound on every campaign. It is tougher than you think.

Obviously higher stakes when they are President, but we cannot test that in any real way. The best we can do is observe the candidate and make sure they don't have "macaca moments".

What it does do is prove that the person can be fast on their feet and connect with people - if only in a superficial manner. In the scenarios you cite, the Pres would need to convince Israel that attacking Iran would be unwise. Prior experience is no indicator either - people like Herbert Hoover were very effective in some manner, but awful Presidents.

And does it not say something that our current President was a total coward who would never meet with anyone on the campaign trail who was not pre-screened as a total GOP loyalist? And go figure - now that he is in the Oval Office he is completely isolated from reality, surrounded only by "yes men".

But in the age of spin you are probably right that the bar is much lower and the risk minimized.

Screaming psychophants? Wait a minute. That may describe Bush's hand-picked and vetted crowds, but not Obama's. Unlike Bush, Obama's crowds are not hand-picked. Sounds like a little jealousy from the Bushie crowd.

So let them vote. The voters will decide whether Obama's or Clinton's campaign strategy is better, and so far they've been going out of their way to keep things more-or-less even.

I'm an Obama supporter but I'm not so naive as to think everyone will just jump on board before November if the superdelegates hand him the nomination on a technicality. What's more important than either candidate winning is that whoever wins does so convincingly and by the book. That's why I supported a revote in Florida and Michigan.

I hope voters attend these rallies and listen critically to both candidates rather than blindly following one or the other (I mean that for Obama too-I think "obamamania" sells him short.) In the end though, as Krugman's last 2 columns so elloquently pointed out, what's most important is that SOME Democrat wins this fall, so we can restore some credibility to our country and some balance to our financial markets.