I really like Obama too. I was supporting the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 and he was one of the original Dean Dozen members, the group of political reformers that Democracy for America endorsed as its first act of being a post-Dean campaign group. Obama came to a DFNYC event at Cinema Classics, he's a very charismatic guy but what you realize is that he's one of us, he's a longtime political activist/organizer who has been working to make progressive change in the political culture and the community.

I also saw Obama twice at book signings at Barnes and Noble Union Square, one the week after the election in 2004 and one last October, and both were totally mobbed. Instead of entering through a side door from the green room to the fourth floor event space, like others do, Obama came in through the front entrance downstairs and took the escalators up, and you could hear the cheering as he made his way upstairs, high fiving people and shaking their hands. It was a rock star entrance, one I've not seen when the Clintons or other VIPs have appeared there.

I think there is a whole demographic of younger voters, under-35, who do not relate to most of the washington power-elite because they are of older generations. Obama is playing that up, in speeches where he puts out that his formative years were the seventies and eighties, not the fifties and sixties, and that a lot of people are tired of baby boomers who act like nothing has been relevant since 1968. Tired of people who say they are the "greatest generation" and generation x and y who came after are just lesser generations eating their dust and enjoying the fruits of their labors. There is plainly a desire for younger candidates whose world view is more contemporary than 1968. Obama is the candidate who appeals to those who have that desire.