choices

Thomas Edsall makes a good point on something I've been thinking about for a while:

As two major developments become increasingly likely - a Democratic presidential victory on November 4 and a sustained economic crisis - Barack Obama faces a difficult choice: does he begin now to prepare the electorate for tough times, or does he continue to maintain a politically contrived optimism on the assumption that he can shift gears after election day.

If Obama gets too negative, he risks alienating voters who want to maintain some state of denial (though with the networks fronting the market crisis, this may be difficult). More specifically, it would mean answering the question about what programs he would cut. The arguments against these are pretty strong: we still don't know exactly how bad things would be, and it would be silly to paint oneself into a corner at this point.
Yet at the same time, if Obama hopes to maintain his popularity (and hence governing power) over the next four years {knock on wood}, he may need to prepare the electorate for what is coming. Frankly I'm a little upset that he hasn't been stronger on climate change. He's had opportunities in the debates to bring up the carbon cap, which amounts to putting higher prices on carbon emissions (namely, gasoline). If he's serious about global warming something like this is essential--but without clearing the political ground for it, it's hard for me to see that he'll be able to get anything serious through congress. Conversely, anything he brings up before the election he can claim a 'mandate' for if he wins.

Edsall asked a number of political observers for their opinion, so it's worth reading his article in full (linked above).