Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey

Obama is still "stuck at deuce"

Hillary Clinton has won Pennsylvania by at least 10 points and like Punxsutawney Phil has guaranteed another six weeks of campaigning. I thought it would be closer, and hoped it would be close enough to justify her leaving the race. No such luck.

As much as Obama's nomination retains its sense of inevitability, this is not good news for his campaign. At this point in the race, with so much momentum and money on his side, why do a majority of Democratic voters continue to keep Obama at arm's length? State after state has had the opportunity to end the race and each time, the vote has gone to Clinton.

I have to agree with the Clinton camp at this point. There is no reason for her to drop out and her continued success (even built on so much unpleasantness) shows that Obama has some serious weaknesses as a candidate. Unfortunately for the Democrats, after each election the number of voters who say they'll vote for John McCain if their candidate doesn't win goes up.

If you want to understand the state of the never-ending race, look no further than today's column by Maureen Dowd - Wilting Over Waffles. It's a brilliant and entertaining piece. There are so many terrific lines I could quote the whole piece, but I'll limit myself to these two:

Her message is unapologetically emasculating: If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran?

Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce.

Read the whole column for more. There's even a quote from Dr. Seuss.

Family Reads lands on Alltop

Our fun family project, Family Reads, has found its way to the books category on Alltop! You'll find it at books.alltop.com.

What is Alltop? Alltop is a slick new site from author, serial entrepreneur and certifiably nice guy, Guy Kawasaki. The site selects a number of quality blog and news sources on a given topic and gathers all the content on single, lovely looking page. They have a number of topics already and more are being added all the time. We're thrilled to be included in the books category alongside some great sites.

Here's how Guy and his friends describe Alltop:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — ”aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.” You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet.

My favorite topics so far are startups, venture capital, politics, twitter, mac, gaming, and of course, books. No matter what your interest, Alltop is a great way to stay on top of a topic, while being introduced to new sites and people. Definitely worth checking out.

You may remember that Guy was also kind enough to contribute a piece to The Blogging Church. I told him that I now owe him two favors (three if he starts playing PackRat). I have a feeling my favors will somehow involve hockey.

How a blog devolves

I love most Hugh MacLeod cartoons, but this is definitely one of my favorites. What better way to sum up the evolution of the typical blog, something I've been guilty of here as well.

Hugh posted the cartoon as his goodbye to Twitter. He deleted his account, believing that his time could be better spent drawing and writing. Less than a week later, he's back (twitter.com/gapingvoid): "Too many people I do business with are also on Twitter. Being off it was impossible. My bad." I'm still working out the balance myself. Nevertheless, thanks for the great cartoon, Hugh!

The real world is the one you choose to live in

Another excellent post on the Signal vs. Noise blog, this one by Jason Fried: Urgency is poisonous. 37signals recently moved to a four-day work week and this post gives an update on just how well it's going.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency. Urgency is acidic.

Emergency is the only urgency. Almost anything else can wait a few days. It’s OK.

The comments on the post are particularly interesting. Many argue that the approach isn't possible in most companies, client-driven environments, or the "real world". Here's Jason's response:

Ah, the mythical, absolute “real world.” The real world is the one you choose to live in. Your world is no more real than my world. I’m sorry you’re trapped in yours.

It's a worthwhile conversation about an entirely different way to look at the life of work.

Read the full post.

Click and print on Family Reads

We added a fun, convenient feature on Family Reads today. You can grab a PDF that lists all the books we've reviewed so far (each certified as dependably delightful) and print it to take with you on your next library trip. The list is organized by level, so you can focus on the books for your children. Our thanks to Ben for maintaining the list for us.

You can check out the post here. Also, this is great for any friends or family who may prefer print to the web, so feel free to pass it along. Enjoy!

Download the PDF

Amazing Journey

Today marks the four year anniversary of Leave It Behind! I've written nearly a thousand posts since then, but more importantly had the chance to meet and get to know a lot of wonderful people. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts through comments and emails — it's truly been an amazing journey.

Recently I was given the chance to use some of my experiences and background to help make my favorite blogging tool just a little bit better. I've been using TypePad to publish this blog since 2004, along with our new Family Reads site and a few other projects. Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type, started a Customer Advisory Board for TypePad to help guide the software and make sure it's meeting the community's needs. They were kind enough to invite me to participate and I eagerly accepted. I love giving feedback on UI design and testing new features, and to do so for this company and this tool is a privilege (and an unpaid one at that, just to be upfront). On the plus side, I finally got to sign an NDA (no secrets for you!) and I'm holding out hope for a t-shirt.

If you're a TypePad user and have some questions or wishes you'd like me to pass along, I'm happy to do it.

Right now, I'm thinking about blogging more than actually blogging. The past six months at the coolest game startup on the planet (creators of the best game on Facebook) have been incredible. Each day is filled with new ideas, things to learn, and fantastic people. I've had the chance to think more creatively than ever before, which leaves a little less creativity to share at the end of the day. You can follow my daily thoughts at twitter.com/bb, which has become a very fun community and outlet.

I had a wonderful email conversation with my friend Julie about how blogging differs for each of us. It's something I'm still mulling over. I hope to share some of that in the near future.

In the meantime, thanks again for being part of this journey and in many ways making it possible!