Obama & His Fellow Traveler

Obama interviews with Marie Claire, trying to recoup some of the recent damage caused by his association with a bunch of women haters. "Barack in the Saddle" is perhaps not the most fortuitous title. And given his joking about his then 3 year old listening to Ludacris, he may have a little trouble persuading family values voters that he's sincere:

MC: We live in the era of Jamie Lynn Spears getting pregnant at 16, of teenage girls making "pregnancy pacts" — how concerned are you about the culture your daughters are growing up in?
BO: Michelle and I are constantly monitoring what our daughters absorb from the culture. And I don't think we're alone in feeling that the way the culture sexualizes young girls is a problem — that it encroaches on their childhood. Now, Michelle and I aren't prudes, and Michelle has frank conversations with the girls. Malia will be going into puberty soon, so we want them to be well-informed.

Barack takes a shot at FoxNews (the rest of the media isn't enough for you? Fox is actually most balanced) and disses the "conservative press" (this from a guy who called bloggers liars), and hides behind the gracious Laura Bush's skirts--quite a contrast, by the way, with No Pastel Michelle, who has dismissively referred to her own husband as a fashion accessory (which Marie Claire underscores with "absurdly chic")

MC: Do you think she's misunderstood?
BO: Not by people who've been paying attention. I think that if you've been watching Fox News then probably she's misunderstood, because I do think there's been a fairly systematic attempt by the conservative press to paint her in a completely false way. They latched onto the one gaffe or statement she made about being proud of her country for the first time, which, as Laura Bush acknowledged, was not something that Michelle had meant — that she had not been proud of her country before.

One gaffe? You have only to read her own words and listen to her say them--repeatedly. This seems to be a pattern on the part of Barack Obama--didn't he say the Rev. Wright had only made one gaffe? But the then Rev. Wright and his record showed otherwise.

P.S. Hmm, Barack describes Michelle as a "fellow traveler". What does that make you Barack?

UPDATE: The Politico, "7 worrisome signs for Obama". They thought they'd win in a walk after they clinched:

Instead, his supporters are now suffering a pre-Denver panic attack, watching as John McCain draws incrementally closer in state and national polls – with Rasmussen’s most recent daily national tracker showing a statistical dead heat.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has been privately enumerating her doubts about Obama to supporters, according to people who have spoken with her. Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn recently unveiled a PowerPoint presentation red-flagging Obama’s lukewarm leads among white female voters and Hispanics – while predicting a five-point swing could turn a presumed Obama win into a McCain landslide.

“It’s not that people think McCain will win – it’s that they are realizing that McCain could win,” says Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown, whose surveys show tight races in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. “This election is about Barack Obama — not John McCain — it's about whether Barack Obama passes muster. Every poll shows that people want a Democratic president, the problem is they’re not sure they want Barack Obama.”

The plot thickens :)

HT Mark

UPDATE: Salon, "Why isn't Obama crushing McCain?"