FAir point well made, not that I was banging on about his race anyway (See other peoples posts)
I know you weren't but you accused Sheepshagger of confusing facts with hype so thought I'd redress the balance
I'm more concerned with his policies, or lack thereof. The comparisons with Blair are rather interesting in my opinion. Blair came along promising the earth but has actually delivered nothing of any substance.
The comparisons with Blair are rather facile actually. I can see the appeal of the comparison in that both came in on a tide of feel-good and a sense of a fresh start but that's about it.
* Blair came in at a time of economic prosperity (and arguably built on it) - Barack is facing possibly the biggest global bust we've ever seen
* Blair came in at a time of peace and helped start wars - Barack is saddled with those wars and is going to have to shut them down
* Blair's feelgood factor was encapsulated in "Things can only get better" - Barack said in pretty much his first statement that things are going to be tough (and drew comparisons with FDR and JFK for doing so)
But leaving all that aside the idea that Obama lacks policies is simply nonsense - anyone who saw the McCain/Obama debate will know that both sides have very detailed policies (and indeed very detailed attacks on each other's positions which would not be possible without such details being public) on inter alia:
healthcare
education
foreign policy (specifically the wars)
energy
taxation and the economy
In fact if you look at the Joe the Plumber thing that was only possible precisely because Obama had published detailed taxation policies which "Joe the Plumber" claimed would cost him umpty-thousand dollars and prevent him from taking over the business he worked for and launching his global plumbing empire. The fact that both sides had published detailed taxation plans was also why when it turned out "Joe the Plumber" had not actually told the truth about his work/financial circumstances, media analysts were then able to calculate that "Joe" would have been better off under Obama's proposed tax regime.
I think you've been badly misled by the "online political commentaries" you referred to earlier in this discussion who've either through their own ignorance assumed Obama has no policies (because they don't know about them) or more likely have simply ignored the facts for the sake of setting up a ostensibly appealing but sadly fallacious comparison between Barack and Blair. Maybe you should change where you get your sources of information from or at least back check the "facts" the right-wing blogosphere's arguments claim to rest on?