Why Obama Needs a Mandate

To restore America in a time of economic crisis and partisan hatred, a hairline victory will not be enough. True, George W. Bush turned a deficit of popular votes and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision into a mandate to start the wrong war and try to dismantle the Constitution, but that won't be enough for the first African-American president.

Democrats need an all-out effort in the final three weeks, and it's encouraging to see both Clintons out on the campaign trail with Joe Biden in Pennsylvania yesterday, with the almost-candidate back in fighting form.

"Sending the Republicans to solve this economic crisis," Hillary Clinton told voters, "is like sending the bull to clean up the china closet. They broke it and we're not buying it anymore. Barack Obama and Joe Biden...will lead us out of this economic crisis."

Biden was in cheerleading mode: "I have never seen as many Americans knocked down as I have in the last past eight years. It's time to get up. So get up Pennsylvania, get up Scranton, get up deliver and this election for Barack Obama."

Former Reagan political adviser Ed Rollins is comparing the political landscape to that of 1980, when angry voters rejected Democrats and turned to Reagan "in droves" once they felt comfortable with the idea of him as president.

"Barack has met the threshold," Rollins says. "Once Reagan met the threshold, people wanted to get rid of Carter and they did in a landslide. This is going to turn into a landslide."

The polls don't show that, and there is always the X Factor of unspoken racism--the Bradley effect--that could keep the election close, but Barack Obama needs what FDR got in 1932 to lead a solidly Democratic Congress to get the country out of Iraq and onto the road of economic reform.

America does not need the chaos of a close election.