A picture's worth a thousand votes

Barack Obama, far right, permits a commoner to touch His hair.

This is a real thing:

There is a now iconic picture of Obama and a young boy in the Oval Office. The president of the United States is bowing, bent at the waist so the young boy can touch his hair, so the young boy can feel that he and the president have something in common. When I first saw the photograph I knew I had finally voted for someone who would affirm my faith, who would live up to the audacity of promising hope.

Sometimes, all hope requires is one moment and that moment, that photograph of the president and a young boy is what I most needed to believe my hope in Obama was well placed, to believe that while the president is just one man, the presidency is so much more when held in the hands and heart of the right man.

That's from "90 Days, 90 Reasons," a website that aims to rekindle the magic of 2008 by reminding voters that Barack Obama is the cool dad you always wish you had; a man who is better than us, yeah, but benevolent and loving enough to make us believe we are almost one and the same. Like an American Jesus.

Seeking to connect to the average voter by way of mostly rich and usually white men, the site also provides a platform for the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie to declare, as a privileged hipster who believe me sucks in concert is wont to do, that "Marriage equality is undoubtedly the most important civil rights issue of our generation." The most important; like, more important than every other civil rights issue. That's what he's saying.

It's almost as if all those hundreds of thousands of poor brown people locked up in cages for non-violent drug offenses don't even exist -- because in the day-to-day lives of most liberal Democrats, and indeed most Americans, they don't. Out of sight, out of mind, like all the other poor and oppressed people you won't find chiming in on the Internet about the greatness of Our President.

Update: The most insufferable case for re-electing Barack Obama you will read all day, courtesy McSweeney's. Spoiler alert: Ralph Nader makes an appearance, as do naive, "disappointed" progressives who are just angry because "Obama hasn’t addressed their particular pet issue."