If Obama can help people with high gas, heat/power & food bills to get practical, cash-in-pocket help, the last major working/middle-class barriers will fall. There are ALREADY hundreds of cash incentives - from governments, utilities, community groups, etc.

Whether he ends up CHOOSING her or not. He MUST NOT be seen to be being strong armed. He has made a point about being able to negotiate with difficult adversaries from a position of strength. If he cannot manage to do that with a member of his own party. His message will be diluted and fatally weakened.

While campaigning in the "red" states, Obama needs to empower the people with the idea that their votes are not a foregone conclusion. He needs to emphasize the audacity of Republicans who make assumptions that just because historically certain states have voted in certain patterns that it is the power of the people to decide in this unprecedented election.

Why not start a project where senior citizen supporters of Senator Obama call fellow senior citizens in battleground states? My father and step-mother -- senior citizen New Yorkers -- really want to do this and they would commit to making a certain numbers of calls each week. They are Jewish and also want to call Jewish senior citizens to persuade them to vote for Senator Obama.