I've detected a sense of desperation in the Democrats the last few years. They lost with boring white guys who had an air of elitism about them, and who presented no substance. Now the Democrats are gleeful that they have an exciting black guy who has as an air of elitism about him, and who presents no substance.
There's a reason Democrat candidates can't run on substance: if the voters knew what their plans were, the voters would reject them.
Consider this from Norman Thomas, the 1994 Socialist candidate for POTUS:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.
...I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."
One doesn't have to examine Obama's proposals much to realize where he would take us. Consider his "tax cut for the middle class" as an example.
Roughly 2% of the population makes $250,000 or more, the figure Obama labels as "the rich." And about 12-13% of the population is below poverty level and pays no taxes.
Obama has proposed cutting taxes for the middle class, and paying for the cuts by taxing the rich. He's proposed college tax credits for the middle class. He's proposed at least a dozen if not two dozen items that would be enormously expensive, directed at the middle class, and paid for by "the rich."
How is 2% of the population going to be able to pay for handouts to 85% of the population (the middle class)? The answer is that they won't be able to. No matter how wealthy they may be, they would either have to flee the US or go broke.
Taxing businesses to pay for these programs won't work, as businesses are already being driven under. GM is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the airlines are going broke, the housing industry is falling apart...going after businesses to raise the money for the handouts would decimate the businesses that employ the middle class.
That leaves only one other revenue source for the handouts to the middle class: the middle class. The 85% of the population receiving the free goods will fund those goods somehow.
The only possible way for those like Obama to achieve their long-term goals is to nationalize all businesses, completely redistribute income, control the labor pool ("you are going to do this job now"), and put the power of making decisions into the hands of a very few at the top. In other words, Soviet-style communism, which may indeed be the goal of Obama and his ilk, but he and they can't talk about it publicly.