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I never thought I would compare Obama to Luke Skywalker, but after today’s Town Hall meeting I can’t resist.

“Return the Jedi” is my least favorite of the original Star Wars movies (though no worse than the more recent sequels). There’s a very silly sequence at the beginning where Luke and his friends seem to be loosing every fight and every attempt to escape from Jabba the Hutt. Our heroes are about to walk the plank and tumble into the maw of desert monster when Luke tells his captor, “This is your last chance Jabba…surrender…OR BE DESTROYED!” Jabba laughs, of course, but then it turns out R2-D2 is carrying Luke’s spare light sabre, and within minutes Luke has snatched victory from the maw of defeat.

Substitute Senate Minority Mitch McConnell for the alien mobster, and frothing-at-the-mouth wingnuts for Jabba’s sycophants. They may look like they’re winning, but they just don’t know what they are up against. Turns out Obama, our hero, has just been spotting them a few points to make the game more interesting.

I hope I’m right. Like a lot of people, I’ve been worrying that Obama and his administration are letting the chance of winning real reform slip away. But then I think about all the times over the year leading up to his election to the presidency when I thought he was losing. Times when Obama and Hillary Clinton were beating each other up and potentially creating openings for the Republicans in the process. Those dark days of the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Days when a few too many people interviewed on the news were expressing the belief that Obama was a Muslim, leading me to think he would be sunk by sheer stupidity. The aftermath of polls that showed the race very tight, tighter than it ever should have been, and pundits saying the support for Obama was actually weaker because of racist attitudes not necessarily captured by the polls.

Obama always showed an ability to make a comeback then. The Wright controversy was followed by a brilliant speech on race in America. Obama made peace with Hillary, and the supporters of the two weren’t as determined to tear their party apart as many Democrats feared at the time. The stupid people made the news, but the American electorate as a whole turned out not to be quite that stupid.

Ominous music swells in the background, all seems lost, and then comes hope and redemption.

I hope that’s what we’re seeing now, as Obama goes head on against absurd right wing talking points like “death panels” that are out to kill Grandma. I want to believe that all those dishonest tactics from the opposition will wind up making them look foolish, not make us feel foolish for ever believing in hope and change.

I found the Town Hall tremendously encouraging. Now, if Obama can just stay on message and keep making the case, without getting distracted by any more self-inflicted wounds that require a “beer summit” to put to rest.

That Luke Skywalker strategy is a little too stupid to work outside of a movie, and even that dunderhead Jedi probably wouldn’t try to pull it off twice.