Q, w/A -- Obama's Senior Staff

 "jeffmcnary" asks:

could the current stall-out in the obama campaign come as a result of his senior team having never been this far "up-river"? .... the obama phenomena has been driven by a media team, not veteran organizers. can these people really put something together to rattle "electoral" college bastions?

First, I don't think there's a current stall-out -- to the contrary, Obama's been on a slow, steady rise in the polls, such as this Gallup tracker. (To the extent such things mean anything.)

The broader question is certainly legitimate, and we won't really know for a while whether the team is up to the task. One positive sign, from Democrats' perspective, is that the organization seems to run very smoothly (from what we can tell), without the kind of ego-clashing, internal-miscommunication, etc. that can keep a campaign from firing on all cylinders.

Also, while some of the top folks are, as you suggest, more from the media/communications side than field/organization, they've got plenty of the latter: Steve Hildebrand, Jim Messina, Patrick Gaspard, Jon Carson, etc. And, their field team is MUCH bigger and better organized than McCain's.

What I think we have seen recently is that many of the Democratic Party elite have the same concern as expressed in this question -- which has been leading them to be more worried than they need to be, and to press too hard on the campaign to change tactics.