that Al's pen is mandatory in Denver? As many others have mentioned, excellent post.  Also, Al, someday share the secret as to how you manage to keep the comments so consistently good on this site.

As for the post itself, I found the most pertinent part (to me anyway) to be "or fill-in-your-pet-issue-here, have to first educate and organize the citizenry to demonstrably agree with them before they can realistically insist that any political candidate stick his neck onto their pet chopping block."

Basically, most of the folks that I associate with are not as "into" politics as those of us reading and commenting here.  These folks are a little left of center or a bit right of center, but for the most part, are concerned with their kids, their jobs, the pet that needs to get to the vet, etc.  They have a general sense of what is going on, hell there is a reason the Decider polls at 20-some percent approval.  The challenge for us is to understand that we are unlikely to turn these folks into political fanatics, but to continue to explain and enlighten them to the fact that there is one candidate that will try to change the way politics are done in this country. And that candidate is Mr. Obama.