No destiny wind propels McCain.

[saltpoint]

A destiny wind blows for Obama, though, and one notes the deep blue of the horizon.

John Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon, then was taken from the nation by violence and mourned as a hero, but what makes the mourning deep and sustaining is that his candidacy and his presidency drew on myth and history and poetry as attendant energies.

Neither Bush ever managed that.

And McCain doesn't either.

I don't think Obama will carry Alabama or Kentucky. But states the GOP took for granted with Dubya are now in doubt, and some of them are even trending blue. If McCain understood what Kennedy meant to the nation, or was possessed of the instinct for the arts and myth and history and poetry, he wouldn't be trailing Barack Obama by the margin of error in Indiana a week or two before Labor Day.

"The highest purpose of art," Bob Dylan said, "is to inspire. What more can you do? What more can you do for anybody than inspire them?"

Hard work remains, and in politics it's ok to run up the score to buoy down-ballot Democrats. Let's do that hard work, and let's do win those down-ballot blue races.

Obama is on a high plain with the wind at his back. It's a destiny wind. And it feels real good.