Meanwhile, in "New Pennsylvania" . . .

That is, New Philadelphia, Ohio, which Barack Obama, apparently channeling Dubya, referred to as "New Pennsylvania," the Democratic Party's nominee sought to get some momentum back after the Palin Revolution by promising to pass legislation guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work.

SWNID thinks that this is the most troublesome sign so far from the Obama campaign. Trying to counterpunch on gender, the best Obama has is a liberal holdover from the 1970s.

Of course, the only women who would benefit financially from equal pay legislation are female labor lawyers. And Senator Obama seems to have had ample opportunity to introduce or at least co-sponsor equal-pay legislation for the last four years, so we're not exactly sure why he hasn't.

But we're as concerned about Obama's lack of resources to fight back as we are with the economic lameness and political hypocrisy of his proposal. It begins to appear that Obama doesn't know how to move to the center and appeal to independents and disaffected Republicans. He's got only the left's boilerplate from the last three decades: higher taxes on "the rich," government planning of industrial development, regulation of the marketplace, and more giveaways than ten military budgets could pay for. And if you lose, it's because the Republicans stole the election.

If Obama wants to regain momentum, he's got to offer more than a litany of giveaways and regulations. It isn't 1932, and in point of fact, the New Deal didn't work especially well then anyway. Most people mostly understand that.

Obama is the first African-American to be a major-party presidential nominee because he is the first to seek the office who had political credibility (contra Alan Keyes or Al Sharpton) and was not entirely tied to the civil rights establishment (contra Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton). But he looks like he might not be elected for the same reason that Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were not elected: there just aren't enough liberals in America to elect a liberal President.