Blue Crab Boulevard

There is an interesting take on Barack Obama and the message he is delivering from Daniel Henninger today. Henninger points out that Obama is a marvelous speaker with fabulous delivery - but that the message he is delivering is uniformly bleak.

Is Sen. Obama peaking? Probably not. The across-the-board growth in his Potomac numbers was impressive. The more appropriate question would be, is the Obama wave cresting?

Barack Obama has ridden these primaries like a skilled surfer, catching big emotional waves and riding them spectacularly, letting this new force carry him forward. Even the biggest waves, however, eventually break on the shore.

The conventional critique of Sen. Obama has held that his pitch is perfect but at some point he'll need to make the appeal more concrete.

I think the potential vulnerability runs deeper. Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar. It's a downer.

Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama's physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!" Can what?

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:

"Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It's a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they're not rich . . ."

Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories."

It ends: "We can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dream will not be deferred; our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come."

I am not saying all of this is false. But it is a depressing message to ride all the way to the White House.

A glossy coat of rhetorical "hope" slathered on a bleak, depressing message could, indeed, become a problem. Henninger contrasts Obama's speech with the one John McCain gave. I'll send you over there to read the whole thing, it's worth it. Primaries are always about motivating the base, the general election is where the real policy difeerences will have to start coming out.