It's About the Middle Class, and Elephants

James Carville and Stan Greenberg on "On Point," Wednesday, 7/11/12. (here) said

1. Obama is tied or only slightly ahead of Romney in the polls. 
2. Obama and Romney present profoundly different visions of the challenges facing the United States and the world, and, consequently, strikingly different solutions.Actually, Romney offers no solutions, only vague promises that he can do things.
3. In order to win re-election, President Obama has to focus on the future and the middle class. 

I agree. I also think Obama is doing a good job, particularly on foreign policy. Bin Laden is dead and American combat troops have left Iraq. Operation "Olympic Games" is slowing down Iran's nuclear ambitions. (Part of the reason for this may be that the Rush Limbaugh, the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch Sheldon Adelson, the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court, etc. - can't stymie the President on foreign policy the way they can on domestic policy.)

Carville and Greenberg focused on the economy.

• Unemployment is at 8.2%, 
• Under-employment is another 4% to 8%, 
• That's 13 million unemployed and another 6.5 million to 13 million underemployed. 
• Wages, for people who work for a living, are stagnant or dropping. 
• Energy costs are going up, real estate taxes are going up, housing values are, at best, stabilizing.
• College costs are rising, and the career prospects for recent college grads are in the toilet. 

Carville and Greenberg basically said "In order for Obama to win re-election, he needs to present a vision for the future that addresses these issues." I agree there too, however, I see a herd of elephants in the room that I didn't hear them talk about:

1. Obama's mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father, however, was African, and Barack Houssein Obama is a funny name for a US President. Still, enough people were inspired by his candidacy, rhetoric, and character to vote for him in 2008.  Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been proud.Yet Obama is an African American. Still, it seems to me, white boy that I am, that there may be some people who are "concerned" about Obama's race, and this is the real sentiment under all that "Birther" nonsense.
2. While he's African-American, he doesn't talk like Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mohammed Ali. He's a cerebral, analytical, lawyer. If Bill Clinton was the first black President, then Obama is the first Jewish President. Actually, he's the first Vulcan President, or at least the first since Wilson. Obama's a "Servant Leader." Ambitious but not arrogant. Sure of himself but not full of himself. Not full of self-doubt and insecurities, but full of an awareness that while he's unique and wonderful, so is everyone else.  He's a President who, if - when - his wife says "take out the garbage;" he takes out the garbage. I can see George H. W. Bush doing that, and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton (course he would smile at Hillary and she would melt), and Al Gore, but not George W. Bush or Willard Mitt Romney. They would have help to do that - servants. ("W" would joke with them, give them nicknames, and dimly be aware of the ages of their children. Romney wouldn't even know their names.) Most of the folks in Washington don't understand this. Clinton might. And Richard Lugar, the soon to be former Senator (R) from Indiana.
3. Fox News, the GOP, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson (Newt Gingrich's Sugar Daddy), Rush Limbaugh, etc. have been focused, since before the inauguration in January, 2009, with trying to make Obama fail, pretending that trying to force the President to fail is not the bad for the United States. When in reality 
4. Our environment is increasingly polluted. And our economy - and the global economy - is on a largely unsustainable path.  We have, mostly in the last 50 years, burned so much coal, oil, and methane that we have added about two trillion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, increasing the concentration of CO2 by about 50%, from about 260 ppm to 390 ppm. The scientific consensus is that this is sufficient to change climate and weather.  As Bill McKibben put it, we have changed Earth into Eaarth.