Half Way Home: Chuck Todd assess the 08 Race at Halfway Point [View All]

What a fun article. Chuck Todd discusses both parties and looks at where we were 6 months ago and where we are today. I copied part of the democratic one for today but, the whole article is worth a read.

Already down to two for the Dems?
The Democratic race is a bit more stable right now but how we got there from January to today has been surprising.

No one is shocked that Hillary Clinton is still the leading candidate but the most underappreciated story of the Democratic race is the rise of Obama. It’s not just the money, it’s also the fact that he’s such a solid No. 2 already. I think many of us expected Obama to be a player in this thing but I don’t think many of us thought we’d already been in a “Will it be Clinton or Obama?” conversation this early in the process.

It’s a fascinating contest of realism vs. idealism; most of the time realism defeats idealism in politics except when it doesn’t. Republicans picked idealism in ’64 and ’80 and one candidate led the party to its greatest defeat and the other led it to one of its greatest victories. That’s the thing with idealism: it’s a high risk/high reward proposition. Obama’s job for the next six months is to keep his flock of idealists excited while also reassuring the realists in the Democratic electorate that he’s ready for the job.

Clinton has just the opposite challenge. She’s already the candidate of realism; what she needs is to create that sense of excitement around her without having to lean on Bill Clinton.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19654377/page/2/