Ooooohhhhh-bama!

Just sharing, draw your own conclusions:

On last night's local news, there was reporting on the ice and snowstorms that forced both Democratic candidates to cancel yesterday's appearances, and also footage from Saturday night's Democratic party dinner in Milwaukee that both attended.

Hillary looked sharp and rested in a royal blue suit (just thought I'd note, for those of you solely into fashion and appearance coverage.) The newsclip from her speech sounded strong to these ears: all about how you can't bank on a soaring speechmaker making every promise in the book, but why it's best to elect someone with the wherewithal to fulfill the carefully chosen promises that are made. Results over rhetoric, so to speak.

Obama's clip (no fashion or appearance notes; he looked the same as always) surprised me, I must say. He was responding directly to Hillary, it seemd... "Just words? Just words? I Have a Dream: just words? ... We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident: just words?"

The funny thing was, you could pick up on just a bit of shock in the pause between the two phrases, when the room seemed silent. Surely he's used to an outroar of support there, and looked around as if "Gee, that usually works when I pack the stadiums." Then we he went on with the "We Hold These Truths" bit, again there was no obvious outcry of passion.

Nevermind what you think him hitching his bandwagon to Dr. King's dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Nevermind that some would say he's gotten a lot of support, cheaply at that, just for alluding to the fact that he's potentially the first black man to serve as president.

It just struck me, in the brief moment he was delivering and maybe not getting the passionate applause and Amen's he's used to, that maybe he's starting to wise up that what plays in Iowa and Utah maybe won't work so well in Ohio or Texas. Or Wisconsin, where many have learned to be discerning customers who don't automatically think that black is better, and content-free cant can't sweep you in as commander-in-chief. He'd be better if he were made to work for it -- not just cribbing famous words of the past and delivering them in a practiced voice.

Hillary's right: in the end, it doesn't matter the tone or sound of your voice in getting the job done. Give me an ugly boss anyday, or a professor with a grating sound quality who know's what they're talking about over an empty suit with excellent delivery but not much to back it up. The "I'm black" tricks that have helped his career along thus far surely won't work everywhere, where people are used to working alongside and competing against people from different backgrounds and races. Again, just because you won those Red States and smaller Blues in the primaries, doesn't automatically translate to unthinking support of all areas in the general.