Obama has made significant progress on image front: NYT

New York, Aug.30 : The New York Times has said that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has made significant progress in terms of molding his party and his image ahead of the November 4 presidential poll

In an editorial, the paper claims that the Democratic Party of 2008 is different from the one that lost the last two presidential elections.

"It is bigger, younger and less visibly linked to traditional Democratic interest groups," it adds.

It also says that Obama has removed all doubts about his skills as an orator, and this proved more emphatically when gave substance to his many promises of hope to the American people.

He was also successful in his mission to state that the Government has responsibilities, which it was not fulfilling under President Bush.

He tied his opponent, John McCain, tightly to Mr. Bush and to an "old, discredited Republican philosophy.

According to the NYT editorial, Obama also challenged McCain's absurd charge that because Obama opposed the war in Iraq, he will leave America defenseless.

"We are the party of Roosevelt," he said. "We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country," he said.

The party rallying around Obama in Denver looked noticeably different.

Part of that is real: His campaign's unprecedented registration drives have brought many new voters into the party and, "we hope, permanently into the democratic process as a whole."

But the paper cautiously adds that that the process could have been stage-anaged.

Obama's strategists also believe that their route to victory lies in the careful selection of battleground states, and in the vast expansion of their base of voters.

ANI