A month after declaring his entry into the 2008 presidential race, Illinois Senator Barack Obama appeared in Oakland for a massive campaign rally on St. Patrick's Day. Well over 10,000 people packed into Frank Ogawa Plaza to hear him make his case for why he should be elected President of the United States. While the first democratic primary isn't until January 2008 and the general election isn't until November later that year, the diverse crowd cheered Barack Obama as if he were a candidate in the final stretch of an election.

Obama said that the US is in growing trouble, both domestically and internationally. He said we shouldn't have gone to Iraq and we need to bring the troops back as soon as possible. He said a massive cynicism has overtaken the US, and that it divides the country. He offered his vision of hope to combat that cynicism. He also said that this country needed to get serious about alternative energy sources such as wind and solar for a variety of reasons.

Video and Photos | Beyond Chron: Obama Brings Substance to His Message of Hope | New American Media: Throng Greets Obama in Oakland | LA Indymedia: Thousands Attend Barack Obama Campaign Rally

While some see Obama as too "liberal" to get elected, many on the Left question his commitment to core progressive ideals. In "The Audacity of Hope", he states "I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised.... I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military.” He has even stated that he may favor surgical missile strikes on Iran and Pakistan and has boasted that Bush hasn’t taken a hard enough line on foreign threats to the US.

Barack Obama's stance on gay rights is also unclear. Obama supported gay rights during his Illinois Senate tenure; the Human Rights Campaign gave Obama a high grade on its scorecard for members of the Senate based on their sponsorship and voting on key issues of importance to gay and lesbian citizens. Obama, on the other hand, has been slow to respond to questions on gay rights during his Presidential campaign. After Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that "homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral", Obama didn't respond to repeated questions about his position on the morality of homosexuality for several days and then only gave a vague answer. Obama's stance of marriage equality is also to the right of many Democrats. Obama's campaign spokesman during his Senate campaign stated that "Barack Obama is opposed to gay marriage but believes in civil unions as a policy." During his Senate campaign Obama went on to say that his Christian beliefs dictate that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Writing for the Advocate, Irene Monroe points out that Obama's "affinity to conservative Christian beliefs not only informs his decision on the issue of marriage equality, but it also solidifies his decision about us in a community of believers like himself." In his book, Obama writes, “I must admit that I may have been inflected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attribute them to God... My work with pastors and lay people deepened my resolve to lead a public life. ... I had no community or shared traditions in which to ground my most deeply held beliefs. The Christians with whom I worked recognized themselves in me; they saw that I knew their Book and shared their values and sang their songs.”

Beyond Chron: Barack Obama’s on Our Side – But is He a Fighter? | How Barack Obama learned to love Israel | Senator Obama Supports Black Farmers | US Senator Barack Obama and the war in Iraq | Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative | Barack Obama and the Winds of War | Obama and the Middle East: The Next Big Bamboozler | The Democrats Rising Star: The Obama Myth | Obama’s Liberal Record Might be a Bigger Hurdle Than His Race | Obama Hypocritcal on Gay Marriage? | Gay Democrats Respond to 'Morality' Statements of Senators Clinton and Obama | Don't bet on Barack: LGBT voters may want to think twice about support