Who is the target audience, here?

I ran across a couple of headlines that made me think today.  First, we have "World wants Obama as president."  We also have a bit about the British Prime Minister supporting Obama.

I have to wonder, when I think back a few months to Obama's world tour, where he claimed to be a citizen of the world, who is the audience he's campaigning for?

My friend at Kill the Cat said, "Anti-Soma is not going to vote Democrat if Jesus Christ himself came down from his banqueting table and ordered them otherwise.  They were never looking for a reason to vote for Obama..."  Well, my friend is wrong: I'd vote for anyone I agreed with, regardless of professed political party.  Honestly, there's really not much difference anymore between Democrat and Republican.  

I have to wonder, though, who the current Democrat Presidential candidate is targeting in his campaign.  If he's targeting middle America, he's failing.  If he's targeting America's elites, and Europeans who cannot vote for him anyway, he's succeeding.  Wildly.  

I think I understand why Europe really likes him.  They know what they'll get with him.  He's pro-talk diplomacy.  McCain believes as much in peace through superior firepower as through discussion.  He's pro-world, willing to believe that no nation needs national sovereignty when there's a world body ready and willing to govern all nations in the name of world peace.  (Ideally, that would be nice, but as I said in my post on Utopia, I do not believe that humanity in general is ready for peace.)

Once again, I think these messages resonate less with middle America than Obama thinks they do.  I think he may be trying to reach that target audience, but I don't think he or many (if any) of his advisers understand what will resonate with the typical flyover country voter.

Update:  And this is why I hate politics: it doesn't matter if Obama actually called Palin a pig--intentional or not, he just really started the mud flying.  I honestly think it was more just another thoughtless joke that backfired, but that's not how it'll be taken.  While I enjoyed Camille Paglia's thoughtful analysis of the Palin pick and what Obama's doing wrong (even though her vampire metaphor was one that I applied more to Hillary than McCain), the self-reflection it shows is far too rare, on either side, for me to truly enjoy politics.  I've learned to understand them, mind you, from sheer self-defense.  It doesn't mean I like them.