Fast-forward '08--Obama heads South

Sigh. It's not the right time really to think about the 2008 Presidential primaries, not with the fraught '06 election coming up, but that doesn't mean people out there aren't thinking about it.

The last few days have seen a certain amount of discussion, pro and con, about the likely entry of Sen. Barack Obama into the primary race. He's certainly another "radical liberal" to the wingnuts (votes against Roberts and Mexican-fence filibuster cloture and "tax reform", oh my!), but he called George Bush a "complicated person" and a "decent person" on Meet the Press, which amounted to "sickening praise of Bush" as far as Matt Stoller is concerned-- another Joe Lieberman! So, let's just say the jury is still out.

Be all that as it may, Jonathan Alter in a Newsweek discussion post said:

. . . an Obama adviser told me that if he runs, he would launch a huge voter registration drive in the South. The aim would be to so expand black registration that Southern states would no longer be gimmees for the GOP. At a minimum, it would pin down Republicans defending their base in the South.
The little-known clincher is that Obama has personal experience in voter registration. Before entering the state Senate in 1996, he ran a registration drive that registered more than 100,000 new black voters in Chicago alone.

OK, that may well be his advantage for the Democratic primary in 2008, but if Sen. Obama can achieve that for his party in the fall 2008 election, well! Recognizing that his personal interest is a fair issue, and that his own candidacy might be a key motivator for folks to register and vote, let's hope his vision and abilities extend to more than just his own candidacy.