Vermonters for Obama met last night for the first time and it went quite well, with about 30 people in attendance.

VDB writes up its thoughts on the evening…

One of the points that came up was how Obama is a candidate of a new generation unburdened by past societal divisions. You’d never hear Obama asked why he got deferments during Vietnam.

Well Chris Bowers wrote a very good post last night that lays out in detail that exact point, inspired by a Paul Waldman piece from TomPaine.com. The “culture wars” of the baby boom generation just don’t apply to Obama.

Bowers writes…

The “culture wars” are simply another front in long-standing struggle over identity that has dominated American politics for some time. Identity remains by far a greater determining factor of how people will vote than other demographic indicators. Along with the struggles of Latino and Asian immigrants, and although to this point it is little understood, one of the great post-1960’s fronts in the culture wars has become the values and posited identities of the “creative class” versus other classes. I believe that it is this division that largely explains the generally wealthy, Generation X heavy, white and highly-educated demographics of the netroots, for example. It also explains the gulf online when it comes to old political arguments about competing in the south, moving to the left, right or center, and why we seem more willing to build new institutions than work with existing ones. Those were all the big fights in the Democratic Party back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, with the move toward ideological coalitions, the development of single-issue advocacy infrastructure, and with the success of the Republican “Southern Strategy.” Those are the political battles of the past, from the days before the “Creative Class” began to take over. We don’t see those old arguments as central, and we want to get past them.

I think Obama, simply in terms of his demeanor and his biography, strongly appeals to politicos from a new generation and a new socioeconomic class because he strikes them in some sort of gut, intuitive level as being from that class. Multi-ethnic, post-Vietnam, highly educated, raised in a major urban center–these are many of the cosmopolitan, self-creating, forward looking aspects of life for many younger professionals. As much as we may or may not like Bill Clinton, coming from a little town in Arkansas is not a story many Americans can relate to anymore, because we just didn’t grow up that way. Even John Edwards’s story of growing up in a mill town when the mill closed seems very, very rustic for a northeasterner such as myself, since our mills closed down sixty years ago to move to places like North Carolina. These rustic visions of America simply are not where people are at these days, especially news junkies and activists within the Democratic Party and the bluer parts of America. Those people instead look to places like Harlem, where Bill Clinton now keeps his offices. People moving into the gentrifying areas of Harlem probably like Barack Obama quite a bit, and probably feel some sort of gut-level, identity-based connection with him that they can’t even quite put their finger on at this point.

I can’t quite put my finger on it either, but the rise of Obama, I believe, is largely based on a new vision of personal identity that will inevitably come to impact our national political discourse. Whether or not his speeches and policy ideas continue to live up to that identity remains to be seen, but it does give him an edge on the rest of older, predominately Baby Boomer field that, generally speaking, will not trumpet their urban or multi-ethnic roots. If he can continue to tap into this new identity and socio-economic wave, his campaign will be difficult to defeat, especially if it is combined with strong African-American support. A coalition of African-Americans and the professional, creative class (both within the netroots and the party establishment), would be a devastating coalition in a Democratic primary that I am not sure anyone could defeat.

For four reasons, George Will thinks it just might be ObamaTime, too.

Apologies for his phrasing…

First, one can be an intriguing novelty only once…
Second, if you get the girl up on her tiptoes, you should kiss her…
Third, he has, in Hillary Clinton, the optimal opponent…
Fourth, the odds favor the Democratic nominee in 2008 because for 50 years it has been rare for a presidential nominee to extend his party’s hold on the presidency beyond eight years…

And this article in the Chicago Tribune sounds an awful lot like Obama has little doubt that he’ll be running for the nomination…

“Do I have something that is sufficiently unique to offer to the country that it is worth putting my family through a presidential campaign?” he said. “Politically, I think I would be a viable candidate. So that’s a threshold question and I wouldn’t run if I didn’t think I could win.”

…

Obama said he was not concerned about being able to compete either in fundraising or in staffing should he enter the race.

“I don’t want it to sound like raising $50 million to $60 million is easy,” he said. “It’s hard, but I think it’s something that we could do.