Steve, your posts suggesting that Senator Obama simply does what he's told by the Democratic National Committee is a strongly-held belief on your part, I'm sure. But to me it's not totally logical. I've tried to examine the facts to see how you've come to your conclusion.

Obama is the one who put together the organization to create and execute the strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton long before she actually conceded defeat. He and his people are the ones who created the online fund-raising machine which has not only dramatically out-fundraised any of the presidential candidates from either party, but has also provided funding to a great number of Democratic candidates for Congress in key states and congressional districts. It has been the people that he's surrounded himself with, not the DNC which has accomplished this. In this election the DNC has been along for the ride and from all that I've seen, Senator Obama has pretty much gotten things his way.

An example of Obama's independence from the DNC might be the way he was able to prevail over Senator Clinton's last-minute attempt to pick up electoral votes from Michigan and Florida. If the DNC really had the ability to influence that situation, who should have prevailed--the well-established Clinton machine or the newbie from Chicago? By that time it had already become clear that Obama had created enough political currency to get the DNC to do things his way, not the reverse. It was Obama that steamrolled the super-delegates to support him, not what might have been expected from a DNC influenced by a still-popular two term ex-President and his Senator wife from the state with the second-largest number of electoral votes in the country. Remember the situation at that time--had the DNC decided to count all the MI and FL votes and influence the super-delegates, Hillary Clinton could still have seized the nomination. But that's not what happened.

So when I read your allegation that Obama is simply a tool of the DNC smoke-filled rooms, I ask WHY? The DNC owes a lot more to Barack Obama than he owes them. Given the same set of facts that somehow has lead you to your conclusion, I come down on the opposite side. If anyone has created a strong political base, it's Obama. The DNC and a whole lot of candidates for Congress will come away from the November election with a huge debt of gratitude to Obama. If he wins the presidency, it will be he who will be in a position to collect a huge number of political IOU's, not the DNC. He'll have the political currency because he created it, not the DNC.