...because as glenn notes, you think the other side is going to let up? no chance of that: it knows this is the time to make the greatest impact on an incoming administration.

draw the lesson from clinton (no progressive, he); his first term was defined by his early missteps, which all came from trying to placate and coopt a conservative cadre that was relentless about its interests.

progressives need to make clear over and over and over again that they are not about to let this white house lose its way from the first principles that elected it. and guess what? when the obamanauts see that they can make headway on that agenda without the sky falling, they will gain confidence in continuing to do what they said they would.

progressives have to remain tough, and hard, and loud. because the other side will not rest. ever.

...and we see that we're going to be extremely disappointed, not to say outraged, by what obama will and, more to the point, won't do.

he was always a rorschach candidate, and never very progressive. the fisa vote told you all you needed to know during the campaign. and now, we are going to see him dismiss the very issues that drew him support.

remember when we took such heart from his statement that if crimes were committed they ought to be investigated? don't bet the rent on that one. or on closing guantanamo. or on green energy (unless you include his support of nuclear and clean-coal technologies). and now we see that he is going along with whatever the conventional washington belief system is on the middle east.

lower your expectations while there's still time.

...typically my reflex might be to not appear on such a right-wing outlet, if only because they demonstrate an almost criminal impulse to distort the points a progressive interviewee might try to make. and yet, as you say, it's important to use the opportunity to try to reach a new audience, else we all just wind up talking to ourselves.

the single greatest point you made is the primacy of diplomacy -- that war should always be the LAST option, something no bushite would admit. (as for proportionate response, that's another topic the hawks have trouble differentiating.) the second greatest point was to slap down references to hitler -- the right no longer recognizes how it has diminished the standing of the holocaust, by trotting out adolph every time they want to justify an action they endorse.

really well done, glenn. watch out, you may be invited back. which is, of course, the point.

...which is to distill the essence of what the washington villagers' perspective is; we outside their circle might call it skewed rationalization after the fact.

thanks for the jackson and brandeis quotes. i find it unsurprising that there is no adequate rejoinder to the core truths contained in them except, as some commenters here would have it, The Fawn Hall Exception: "sometime we must go above the law."

every time "we" do, it works out somewhat less than expected or hoped for, doesn't it?

the strength of the law is its application; when it is set aside from use because of the high rank of the offender, the corruption stains us all, and weakens all our institutions. those who fail to recognize that really don't have a good understanding of this country's precepts.

...which is that the corporations that run the networks have agendas that REQUIRE the distortion of news and analysis.

there may have been a sainted time when the newsroom was insulated from such pressures. but that time is long gone. let's not forget jack welch in 2000 called nbc news to tell them to call the election for bush. these days, no call to the newsroom is necessary: the news personnel themselves consider any audiences that DON'T understand what the marching orders are to be saps.

that is, the personnel don't need any external pressures; they internalize the value system as their own.

and let's not forget how the bush administration showed them how to do it (if they didn't already know): with the illegal warrantless wiretaps, the bushites didn't deny it, they just kept on doing what they wanted, knowing that no one in a position to call them on it would do anything. and they were right: congress and the courts and the msm all gave them a pretty free pass.

nbc's behavior follows that m.o. -- not unlike union-busting corporations taking their cue from reagan's breaking of patco.

...that is, the electorate is encouraged to read into these nominees what they want to. then, often, the winning candidate turns around and works from another agenda.

not only was bush 2000 predicated on that kind of vague reassurance, you could make a compelling case that clinton 92 was as well.

others here have noted the fisa vote. that's the defining one for me -- that's who obama is: a politician, gifted, yes, oratorically soaring, able to invest millions with hope, but a politician still. on fisa, he said he would do one thing, then did exactly the opposite, then tried to make the case he had not changed course at all. and this on the single most important vote of his senate career.

so yes, i guess we have to be satisfied that after 8 years of crazy, the center starts to look pretty good. but i think we also have to realize that regardless of how ready the country would be for a true progressive agenda, washington is not, nor may it ever be.