I thought Laura Flanders was going to just do another one of those "those silly starry-eyed change dreamers" articles which seem so fashionable right now.

She didn't. Thanks ever so much, Laura!

I'm an Obama supporter, and I frequently get bedeviled by folks who demand specifics, and sub-paragraph analysis, and concrete plans for what will be done and when (I'm talkin' to you, Paul Krugman). While there are many specifics availabe on the Obama website, I answer those bedevilers by saying what is important is not the plans. We've had great plans in many an election. But plans are only as good as the pressure that forces them into law.

We've seen, since Ronald Reagan, how much change money pressure can create. Our country and culture has been distorted almost past recognition to enable and celebrate greed and corruption. That somene like Donald Trump could be considered an icon rather than a national embarrassment would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.

What most of us in the Obama movement are working to create is a massive re-engagement of people in politics that can stand against, and eventually beat back the relentless corrupting of our culture and government by money and power.

The first step is to create the organization. Thank you Howard Dean, thank you Move-On, thank you Barack Obama. We're getting stronger and stronger, and we're ready to start effecting change. We're hitting a tipping point. Hillary Clinton was considered unbeatable. She had the support of the Party Fat Cats, the Money, the connections.

We're beating her. She can stay as a powerful and influential Senator, something she's shown she does very well. She would make a great Senate Majority Leader.

After that, we'll beat the Republican Party and take back the Presidency. Then we'll beat Big Pharma and the Insurance companies and create a decent system of delivering health care to our citizens. After that, we've got the polluters and the Military Industrial Complex in our sights.

It won't happen overnight, in a single term of office, and maybe not in a generation. But it will happen.

It will happen if we get off our backsides and organize, organize, ORGANIZE. Obama is the latest one who is showing us the tools. We are the ones who have to use them.

YES. WE. CAN!

for a thoughtful response... I think the idea of a popular, grassroots movement - plain political advocacy from the ground up -- is the most important contribution from Obama's campaign. This campaign has already been a "change" - with unprecedented involvement across all categories in a political process (the primaries) that generally goes unnoticed except by hardcore political fanatics. I can only imagine what might happen in the future, with a president who actually believes and supports widespread civilian involvement in the political process; to depend on regular citizens to apply great pressure on Washington politics.

Change for Obama is about the common citizen caring and acting on behalf of the nation - by volunteering, by canvassing, by forcing representatives and senators to take their voices seriously without depending on PACs and special interests. It means that the common voter has to be informed, creative, active and self-sacrificing.

He's the only candidate to blatantly state that we will need to make sacrifices: the wealthy need to give up tax breaks in service to the poor and average citizens need to engage in politics through political activism. Our insular lives will need to be exchanged for a greater bond with our neighbors and localities. His groundswell of support indicates that he's tapped into the American population's need to be put to service for a larger good -- to feel useful and empowered.

None of this would have happened if the race were just between Clinton and Edwards (even though I still think Edwards had the clearest defined commitment to remedying poverty).

Even if he doesn't become president, I hope all the people who don't vote for him understand that even their fervor for Hillary was one that grew under Obama's phenomenal influence from the grassroots level on the campaign process.

"Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Emily Dickinson

So also with change. Any person who has lived in a large neighborhood or worked in even a small work place know how hard bought any significant change is made.

Having been in college in Montgomery during the bus boycott and having done dangerous things like integrating the home town movies and the libraries, I wonder how Obama plans to bring about the changes he envisions.

How will he address Putin? What success will he have with North Korea? What of our debts?

Hope for change is but one half of the transaction. Is there anyone who does not want hope fulfilled or change for the better?

I am recalled to a saying sprung from my southern roots: want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one gets full the quickest.

that's getting the people in charge of the nation. mike gravel has a plan to do it. it's called 'initiative for democracy'.

every other 'change' is just a change of faces, a change of 'more' or 'less', but not direction.

a politician can't change things in any fundamental way, change needs the people to stop regarding politics as an occasional entertainment, played by professionals. they have to say "by the people means us."

that's why obama is a phony, clinton worse, and any republican a disaster. the only real change they are looking for is their own face on the 6 oclock news.

So true, I remember the 60's with Eugene McCarthy, RFK, and MLK, freedom march, anti-war march, and march on Washington. There were great hopes and changes. Yet soon reality set in and everybody or almost everybody was back in the rat race to make money and a house with 2 car garage in the suburbs. Today with globalization and stagnant economy the vista is much more limited, not to mention global warming and other crisis looming over the horizon.

Today Hope and Change again filled the TV screen. We are being told past is irrelevant, only future matters. Yes We Can will overcome any opposition. If we vote for the right candidate everything will turn out fine. Iraq? Healthcare? No problem, The Messiah will inspire and unify everyone. Race relations? We are post racial, all past sins will be forgiven.

Forgive me for being cynical. After all class struggle is so passe, so Marxist, so divisional and non-unifying. The young only need to push the lever, voila, poverty will disappear. Utopia is just around the corner as if in a vioeo game. After all Iraq is a video game to the youths, at least most of them not in the military. Future will be present and past in no time, good luck.