to: bburton@barackobama.com

subject: the progressive base

Dear Mr. Burton,

On October 24 of last year you made the following statement:

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

Can you please assure me (an active Obama supporter who has donated a whole lot of my time and money to the campaign) that Senator Obama will honor that promise next week, when the Bush-Hoyer FISA "compromise" comes onto the Senate floor?

Please ask the Senator to rethink the unprincipled decision he articulated yesterday. If he shows some real leadership and backbone on this matter, I promise you that I and many others who care deeply about our Constitution and the rule of law will continue to work tirelessly for his November victory.

If Sen. Obama continues to support this horrific assault on our rights, then it will be sadly obvious that he's just another self-serving phony. I pray to God that isn't the case. Perhaps he has made the calculation that there aren't enough people who really care (about the Constitution & the rule of law) for it to affect his polling? If that's the case, then maybe this country does deserve him after all.

Sincerely,

I read it when it came out, and went back and read it again. I don't see where Holds are discussed. My question is a proceedural one--I'm not asking odds.

I've supported Obama both financially and by making phone calls on his behalf, but instead of contributing to his campaign again, I sent the money to ActBlue.

I understand the impulse to ignore that and declare it all so corrupt that it's not worth caring about, but ultimately, I think that judgment is somewhat irresponsible, even self-indulgent -- which isn't to say that I don't empathize with some of the sentiments underlying it.

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Let me say this about that: so may one judge another.

By this I meantersay that such judgements must be made by each of us in the tangle of our wits, hearts, experiences, and consciences. And while I'm not refuting Glenn's statement, I will note an element that begs the question: the "impulse" may manifest more intensely for some than others, depending on the range and sensitivity of the person's Crap Detectors-- or, if triggered often enough, may rise to the level of a presentiment or conviction.

And the functional or operational consequences of "yielding" to such impulse(s)-- though whether one "yields" to convictions that seem to force themselves upon one is itself semantically problematic-- is a personal, private struggle. One must somehow cope with one's honestly come by predilections for fatalism, defeatism, despair, cynicism, bitterness, nihilism, etc.

Glenn being Glenn-- and praise be to him!-- giving oneself over to paralyzing negativity feels or seems (there's no more precise verb I can think of) irresponsible and self-indulgent. That's fine with me, because I admire his tireless virtuosity. But from inside the Shadows, it could be equally argued that projecting optimism and championing incessant activism "within the system" in the face of evidence that the status quo is structurally corrupt and rigged beyond reform is a form of whistling past the graveyard-- and thus, is itself irresponsible or self-indulgent.

It depends on where one is coming from-- which is a neat segue to another of my incessant hops into the Wayback Machine: speaking of predilections, I was very much a bong-sucking member of the high school Freak contingent, Class of 1973. At that time, a local mall record shop was selling colorful posters featuring alleged quotes from rock stars of the day.

I still remember one in particular which immediately caught my eye. When I came out of the store, my waiting buddies wanted to see which one I'd chosen. It was a quote attributed to Janis Joplin, to wit: "Don't Compromise Your Self. It's All You Got." (I especially liked that way "Your Self" was written; it seemed more lapidary and pointed than "Yourself" would've been.)

My buddies howled and high-fived with satisfaction-- they knew that was the one I'd choose. Was I so transparent? Apparently!

The poster didn't survive, alas! I wish I still had it. Perhaps this is simply a foolish consistency of mine, but I still look askance upon the conventional piety lauded throughout history, and endorsed by such diverse persons as Joseph Conrad and Sigmund Freud, that "maturity" is being "well-adjusted" enough to abnegate one's Self for the greater social good.

Here I stand; God help me; I can do no other. I just don't hold with abnegation.

To one, an apocryphal Janis Joplin quote; to another, the Serenity Prayer...

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PS: FWIW, I stick around and do my bit in my own little way because I admire Glenn and support his work and goals; in a way, Glenn challenges and "tests" my abiding pessimism, and I deem this tension to be constructive and worthwhile.

to have this pig go directly to the calendar.

There aren't going to be any steenking holds. Not from Dodd, Feingold, or anybody.

No filibuster. Nada.

Stick a fork in the forking Democraps. I'm through with them.

I was taken by this comment at Marcy Wheeler's place yesterday

#5 Professor Foland June 20th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

So I’m trying to think ahead, and I am very unhappy. This is a really troubling dynamic.

Digby quotes the WaPo as saying:

the negotiations underscored the political calculation made by many Democrats who were fearful that Republicans would cast them as soft on terrorism during an election year.

I was told flat out by my (extremely blue, extremely against immunity) congressman’s staff that this was exactly why it was happening, and (again, just flat out told) it was (rough quote) “because the leadership thinks you, and people like you, learned a lesson from voting for Nader.” This is one of the congressmen on our side; one of the 30 who joined the Republicans to throw a wrench into the leadership’s PAA extension last year.

So, as I asked at Digby’s–Is this going to keep happening? Every time between now and November that the Republicans say “Boo”, will this be the response? Are we going to see the Blue Dogs pushing the Democratic leadership into capitulation on an Iran War Resolution?

How long does Obama plan to wait before fighting this dynamic? Or will we be treated to a firm pledge to conduct the Iran War with due oversight?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/06/20/obama-replied/#comment-79524

It's that nowhere else to go feeling that has me so frustrated. They are correct. I do not want to see a repeat of the 2000 election. They know it. And, they know, I know it. Checkmate. It was one of the reasons I mused early in the primary when it came down to just Clinton and Obama, whether there wasn't a progression of succession that might have made sense. That we needed a mechanism by which to get out from under the calculations which would surely follow Gore v. Bush - by both the voters and the Democratic Party. I never did figure that out, but it haunts me still. Never mind the implications of Professor Foland's musings about the soft on terror meme and Iran.

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They timed the release of this perfectly, and I don't see how they could have done it without the collusion of some of the people who are now righteously denouncing this bill. Washington is a small world, and political people talk to each other. People who are against this had to know, but they kept quiet about it until it was too late. Why?
- Martin Gale responding to Kitt

There is a piece of this, however, the timing of which couldn't have been more inauspicious. That was Obama's announcement to forgoe public campaign finance, and MoveOn's announcement to drop their 527 and solicit donations from their supporters/members. In both cases it made it *very*easy for folks to hit the unsubscribe button. That piece was NOT well timed. I can well imagine that Obama would have preferred to delay any announcement as to his position on this FISA compromise, er, capitulation.

I don't imagine the political calculus was easy getting Obama to this point, and I don't imagine Glenn and the progressive blog world is making it any easier. That's a good thing, in my view. For now, I'm sticking with my support of the ActBlue/Coalition. If that counter-weight can keep its momentum it will be something Obama and the Democratic Party will have to keep in their array of simultaneous equations. That system of equations may not have a solution that I'd like, but I won't make it easy for them to ignore me.