The real reason Obama has campaigned on small things — like Big Bird and "Romnesia."

According to Stanley Kurtz, it's a plot to realign the electorate, "creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left."

Somehow, within the lulling smallness, there's a scary bigness.

Obama’s frantic efforts to gin up the women’s vote and the youth vote aren’t only desperate attempts to secure his base. They flow from a deliberate decision not to fight for the center, but to build an independent majority on what is supposedly the “demographically ascendent” left.

Over at The Nation, Richard Kim gets it. Writing about the Lena Dunham “first time” ad controversy, he speaks of it as part of an effort “to realign the electorate towards the Democratic Party for a generation.” But the best place to read about Obama’s larger strategy is “Hope: The Sequel,” the New York magazine piece by John Heilemann that got attention last May.... describ[ing] an Obama campaign willing to risk turning off socially conservative Democrats and independent voters by hyping leftist social issues....

That reminds me of the way Republicans turn off the socially liberal folks (like me) who would be receptive to the rest of what they have to offer. The 2 parties have corresponding strategies, including trying to scare people about how extreme the other party really intends to be. I don't trust any of them.