"No, He Won't"

Daniel Larison on Obama.

And here's Peter Suderman on the "Yes, We Can" video:

[T]here’s another side to Obama’s appeal, an emotional side that has less to do with intelligence and more to do with teary-eyed inspiration, and that is the side on which this video focuses on almost exclusively. Put in black and white, scored with a little acoustic riffing and soulful, expertly Pro-Tooled background singing, he becomes a vector for treacly indie-yuppie political fantasy. I’m surprised Zach Braff didn’t make an appearance. The whole thing plays like a smug grup love-in. Love me, Park Slope!

Except it’s worse than that, lower; it’s not pandering exclusively to the young, urban liberal crowd, but to a broader, more suburban cohort that draws its cues from them. This is the secular, liberal equivalent of megachurch-friendly Christian pop, sugar-coated and sanitized, as bland as a t-shirt from the Gap. It’s pseudo-inspiration, processed and prepackaged into a generically trendy, banal mush that robs its central figure of any of the unique qualities that make him a compelling candidate to begin with. It has all the personality and life of a character from Laguna Beach.

But then, maybe this all I should expect from one of the musical talents behind “My Humps.”