The Barack Obama who stepped before 70 plus thousand people at a stadium in Denver tonight, was a far different Barack Obama than we’ve seen before-detailed, aggressive, assertive, and ready for a fight with John McCain.

Obama’s acceptance speech was the speech critics thought he should have delivered earlier in the campaign. But it was probably the sort of speech that would have done him more harm than good.

In the speech tonight, he clearly articulated what his political agenda for the country will be if elected president and he offered a road map on how he hopes to achieve his goals.

Can he realistically achieve these goals? All–or even most–of them? Probably not. But that is not the point.

The point is, Obama has prided himself on being a cipher–a blank slate that reflects back to the viewer whatever he or she wants to see. He said as much in his own book.

But the Barack Obama who accepted his party’s nomination for president tonight was anything but a cipher. You may not agree with him–and many won’t–but there can be no mistake who he is and what he stands for.

Let the battle begin

Because Obama has claimed he was a post-partisan candidate, above the fray, different from all the rest, the Republicans no doubt were counting on him being a push over when pitted against the far more experienced John McCain.

But Obama may be a bit of a hustler, fooling his rivals into a false complacency.

This Obama came out swinging—careful to praise his opponent’s patriotism –while challenging him to a political fight which now promises to be far more spirited and, no doubt, far more dirty than most would have thought possible only a few weeks ago.

Obama still has many of the same problems he had before: Despite his insistence that the campaign was about “you” and not him, it is a bit hard to swallow someone who says he stands before a stadium crowd with “humility”—and, his followers still come across a little too much like disciples of Jim Jones for comfort.

Obama’s lack of practical experience is still of major concern.

And, there is plenty of time for Obama to make a major blunder that will doom his chances of moving into the White House.

That said, watching his performance–and , make no mistake about it, it was an excellent performance by any measure of good speech writing and making–it seems almost inevitable (pre-ordained, some of his more religious followers might contend) that the next President of the United States will be named Barack Obama.

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