WBZ-TV political guru Jon Keller took a moment on his blog Sunday to examine how Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has avoided some of the baby-boom generation Democratic pitfalls Keller chronicles in his book "The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint or American Political Disaster."

First, Keller says the Illinois Democrat's campaign avoided the typical baby boomer liberal "indifference - or even outright hostility" toward voters who are reluctant to pay higher taxes. Obama carefully avoided being labeled a "tax and spend liberal," Keller noted, "albeit through a transparently phony tax cut plan for ‘95% of Americans' and a pledge to go over the federal budget ‘line by line,' a fairly useless exercise given the president's lack of a line-item veto to reign in the earmarking orgy that will surely be given fresh lubrication by the defeat of the anti-earmark [Republican nominee] John McCain."

Keller also wrote that Obama's tax plan took a hit when he told the now-famous Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher that he will "spread the wealth around," evoking the idea of a tax and spend Democrat. Nevertheless, Obama gained voters' confidence by staying calm and collected during the Wall Street meltdown and avoided the harsh partisanship on the issue that has plagued other Democrats.

"Obama, with his characteristic good manners and self-discipline, has avoided the obnoxious finger-wagging with which Democrats have so often driven beleaguered taxpayers into the GOP column," Keller wrote.

Second, Obama avoided identity politics at all costs, Keller noted. "If race plays into the outcome on Tuesday, it won't be because the Obama campaign made it an issue," Keller wrote.

Keller also said that Obama didn't fall into the trap set by his primary defeat of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, of New York.

"By choosing [U.S. Sen. Joe] Biden over Clinton, Obama also spurned the blueprint's admonition to pander to gender," he wrote. "That was left to the GOP nominee."

In his book, Keller wrote of an anti-American strain in baby-boomer liberalism, where Democrats are often willing to criticize the country's foreign policy or world stature. Obama subtly avoided such "love of America bashing," Keller wrote, by adding a flag pin to his lapel.

"Obama comes out of a political culture where skepticism of American motives is part of the received wisdom, no doubt about it, a culture where a dirt-bag like Bill Ayers can be a mainstream player," Keller wrote. "But once again he's smart and disciplined enough to know that it's not worth scratching that itch if it means blowing the race. Hence, the flag pin, so casually dismissed by Obama a year ago as a tacky affectation of knee-jerk militarism, is now a staple on his lapel."

Obama has also wisely avoided hyperpartisanship, Keller said. Obama has rarely been seen with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Keller wrote, let alone many downballot Democrats. (Obama did shoot this ad for Oregon Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, but hasn't done many others.)

"There has been a conscious effort to play down the partisanship that boomers on both sides seem to love so much," Keller wrote of the Obama campaign. "I notice he steered clear of the ridiculous finger-pointing engaged in by the likes of Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi after the credit-market collapse they helped engineer."

Keller wrote that this has helped Obama with Independents and some Republicans who are tired of partisanship. It also insulated him "against the predictable closing charge by McCain that Obama's election would unleash a partisan frenzy in Washington."

In concluding, Keller noted that Obama is "clearly a student of recent political history" and has learned to avoid these classic Democratic blunders. But, ultimately, Keller sees that Republicans, not Democrats, have fallen victim to these problems this year.

Obama "is lucky that the desire for victory and - forgive me - change was so strong that it carried him through a Democratic primary process that usually forces the blueprint's imperatives onto the party nominee without serious self-damage," Keller concluded. "It also helped that the Clinton campaign was so inept. And if the polls turn out to be right, the epitaph of the 2008 campaign may be that when it comes to knee-jerk adherence to the boomers' worst conceits, it was the Republicans, for once, who swallowed far more of the generational Kool-Aid."