The Economist says that Obama, for all his talk about being the candidate of hope and bipartisanship and a new way forward, he ”can sound pretty darned depressing.” 

[T]he front-runner’s speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico. The man who claims to be a “post-partisan” centrist seems to be channelling the spirit of William Jennings Bryan, the original American populist, who thunderously demanded to know “Upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight-upon the side of ‘the idle holders of idle capital’ or upon the side of ‘the struggling masses’?”

There is no denying that for some middle-class Americans, the past few years have indeed been a struggle. What is missing from Mr Obama’s speeches is any hint that this is not the whole story: that globalisation brings down prices and increases consumer choice; that unemployment is low by historical standards; that American companies are still the world’s most dynamic and creative; and that Americans still, on the whole, live lives of astonishing affluence.

But he’s not the only one who paints a gloomy, sad picture of America.  His’s opponent does, too.  McCain is the only candidate on either side that has said anything about the necessity of globalization and how some jobs won’t be coming back anytime soon.  This is Obama’s weak spot: the necessarily dark picture of America he must paint to justify change, hope, and him.  If McCain can turn that argument back on his opponent (either one), he could do well for himself.