Obamamania!

It's been a remarkable few days, eh? Obama's explosion is THE political story. Everything else is all filler. Little fixes for the political junkies until the ship comes in on Tuesday. He's Elvis and the Beatles, JFK and some RFK thrown in. I know he's not big on dwelling on the past, but if present trends continue someday in the future, he himself will become a frame of reference by which phenomena are measured.

There's just one thing that should have him worried now. When asked if Obama would win the Democratic nomination, the Matthews Meter returned a 12-0 verdict that indeed, he would. Could that manyTV pundits be right? If so, that would be another development of historic proportions. Some of these were the same people who predicted Gephardt if not Lieberman in 2004 if memory serves. Senator Clinton can take some comfort there, but the road ahead of her is starting to look rocky and steep.

All in all, I think that Obamamania is a good thing. People need something - someone - to get excited about. Everyone who is firmly in one camp or another is excited by his or her candidate of choice, but Obama seems to have an IT factor that's bigger than that. I'm one of those Democrats who could be happy with almost any of our original candidates in the role of president. I'm pretty confident that any of them could do a very fine job. Nonetheless, I have to admit that it's a lot of fun watching this thing happen.

By the way, have you noticed that when a Democratic candidate has charisma it doesn't interfere with having brains as well. Doesn't seem to be as true on the other side, by and large.