Check out this picture from a Boston Globe article on today’s runoff election:

The caption below the photo says, “Jim Martin, the Democrat vying for the US Senate seat in Georgia, posed with rappers (from left) T.I., Young Jeezy, and Ludacris during a campaign rally in Atlanta.“

Here’s a question I have: who in their right mind thought, in a state-wide runoff, it would be a good idea to have Martin appear at public venues with these Kings of Misogyny?

The article is actually pretty good in its opening paragraphs, saying:

Jim Martin, the Democrat trying for the second time in a month to unseat Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, was standing in one of Barack Obama’s old campaign offices the other day, circled by a staff paid for with Obama’s dollars, facing a large banner bearing Obama’s image.

The postcard-sized handbills stacked around the room were old door-knockers printed to promote the Obama-Martin ticket, crudely cut in half for their new purpose. “For President,” some of them still read, in Obama’s familiar Gotham typeface.

“I have a little bit more help than I did before,” Martin said with a little smile. The longtime state legislator and former human resources commissioner, who waged a lackluster campaign for lieutenant governor two years ago, carried the unsettled air of someone who had been pushed by an unexpected inheritance into flashier digs than he ever expected to call his own.

Further, the question that is asked directly after that exerpt — “Is there a sustainable Obama coalition, and is the Obama machine durable? Has Obama created anything greater than himself?” — is one which has a clear and obvious answer, but an answer which Democrats will probably spend anywhere from the next two to eight years avoiding.

The fact is, Obama has always been about moving himself forward, regardless who is advanced or pushed back into oblivion by his tireless self-promotion and self-aggrandizement.

Remember, this is the man who during the general election campaign performed whiplash-inducing 180°s on Iraq, on abortion, on the DC gun ban, on FISA and telecom immunity, on welfare reform, on the death penalty for child rapists, on debating John McCain “anywhere, any time,” on the financing of his campaign, and on too many other issues to recount here (not to mention on Jim Johnson, on Jeremiah Wright, on Wes Clark, on Austan Goolsbee, on Samantha Power, on Tony Rezko, and on Scarlett Johansson, as well as on too many other people to recount).

The constant delusions of grandeur — and constant need, whatever his current level of accomplishment, to make himself feel even more important through false claims of importance and ridiculous iconography (imitation White House Rose Garden, anybody? How about fake Presidential seal? And — even Obama supporters can honestly admit the level of absurdity on this one — holder of the Office of the President-Elect? Perhaps I missed the day that became an actual office, complete with its simultaneous campaign-related requests for money and use of the official-business-only .gov domain) — that Obama insists on enjoying are further signs that this truly is a person who cares only about himself and his own advancement, and who will shed all friends, supporters, and coattail-hangers-on, both in the personal and electoral worlds, for the opportunity to get ahead by just a little bit more.

Barack Obama is carrying those 10 million email addresses and 3 million cell phone numbers into the White House with him to serve his own ends, not to retain a tool for the purpose of making that grassroots army available to other Democrat candidates and issue-advocacy organizations.

He may, at points in the future of his choosing, assign his devoted followers to assist others — like Jim Martin here in Georgia — but the bottom line is, Obama has created an army of activists who are very clearly loyal to him, and to nothing and no one else.

And that’s just the way he wants it.