In other words, he thinks he'll be able to advance a progressive agenda more effectively if non-progressives believe that he respects their views (even though he doesn't share them).

Btw, has anyone checked out the hit piece on Obama in today's NYT?

He barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament. He dismisses in one sentence his first community organizing job -- work he went on to do in Chicago -- though a former supervisor remembers him as "a star performer."

Senator Obama, an Illinois Democrat now seeking the presidency, suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and "stopped getting high," which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.

"He doesn't remember the names of a lot of people in his life," said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman.

Mr. Obama has, of course, done plenty of remembering. His 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father," weighs in at more than 450 pages. But he also exercised his writer's prerogative to decide what to include or leave out. Now, as he presents himself to voters, a look at his years in New York -- other people's accounts and his own -- suggests not only what he was like back then but how he chooses to be seen now.

Some say he has taken some literary license in the telling of his story. Dan Armstrong, who worked with Mr. Obama at Business International Corporation in New York in 1984 and has deconstructed Mr. Obama's account of the job on his blog, analyzethis.net, wrote: "All of Barack's embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ's temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks."

In an interview, Mr. Armstrong added: "There may be some truth to that. But in order to make it a good story, it required a bit of exaggeration."

The obvious implication, of course, is that he's shady, not quite who he seems to be, a lurker, even a bit creepy, a Democratic Mark Foley (but in a different way). He did drugs, slept in an alley, lived in a dangerous black neighborhood, hung out with homeless people, is secretive about his formative years. It almost reads like the typical writeup done on a serial killer after he's finally caught, with the neighbors saying that he was polite but kept to himself, and no one quite knew what he was up to or about.

The writing is on the wall for anyone to see. If he somehow beats Hillary, the smear campaign against him is going to make what they did against Clinton, McCain, Gore, Cleland, and Kerry look like an unfavorable movie review in the NYT. It's going to reveal a side of the GOP that's always been there but rarely quite this openly creepy. And the article didn't even mention the inevitable middle name. This is going to get unbelievably ugly real fast if he gains traction (and I'm not sure that it will all be coming from the other side--Wolfson strikes me as just the type).

Sure it looks like Hillary's going to get the nomination, but you never know, the American people might decide to start thinking for themselves once again.