i mean, all the much-heralded New Voters and Youth Support will vanish if this happens on a wide scale. young people are ideal and have powerful passions. it doesn't mean they are stupid.

Exactly. Why dash their hopes before they've even voted?

While we know that whoever we choose will eventually disappoint on some issues, it's ridiculous to suck the enthusiasm out of your core supporters.

If we're willing to teach them.

In this game, the only chips any of us have in front of us are votes, money, and to a much lesser extent, speech. (BTW: There is plenty of Rhenquist and now Roberts Court caselaw on the books that says money is speech. Not many Americans know this, but some of us have--and were likely born with--more speech than others. Just check your bank account.)

Obama's about-face on FISA was a dealbreaker for me, and I made that clear to my family and friends, most of whom are planning to vote for him. I made it clear in an email in which I asked them to support the ActBlue campaign that Glenn and others have organized.

Why?

Because there's nothing "left wing," "right wing," "liberal," or "conservative" about the 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. It couldn't be more red, white and blue; it is quintessentially American. It is one of the rights our forefathers fought and died to secure in a revolutionary war.

A skillful and courageous politician--and Obama has revealed himself to be neither--would have been able to make the case for our 4th Amendment to the American people.

There are a couple of things that may be happening right now. Glenn seems to think that Obama's tack to the right over the last few weeks is a calculated attempt to take the mythical "center." The implication is that what Obama hopes to accomplish by abandoning his heartfelt beliefs is take a larger slice of a key section of the electorate in the general election. That's certainly a possibility.

Let's put aside the tactical wisdom of this move for a moment. (As Glenn amply demonstrates, this tack to the right has been an utter failure for Democrats in the past several elections.) If that's true, then the position that Obama and his handlers seem to think has traction among the voters of the "center" is a radical right-wing interpretation--indeed a gutting--of the 4th Amendment.

There's also the possibility that Obama actually believes what he is saying about FISA, the recent Supreme Court rulings, etc.

Let's remember that our current administration's take--and Now Obama's--on the 4th Amendment was formulated in "War Council" meetings and memorialized by John Yoo, David Addington, and others with a true disdain for due process and any other constitutional or procedural impediments to what they perceived to be their masters' right to unfettered power.

This voter is not a mind reader. I'm a fact reader. The commenter who brought up battered woman's syndrome--a recognized defense in many jurisdictions for women accused of murdering their abusive spouses--raises what I think is a fruitful analogy.

Obama is asking us to trust him; to believe that he's really a "good" Democrat despite all of his backtracking on FISA, his campaign promise-breaking, and his support of the radical right-wing of our Supreme Court in the last few days. (Honestly, were his comments on the child rape decision--the Court found it unconstitutional to execute the perpetrator for many good reasons--even necessary?)

Does anyone who desperately wants to see this country get back on the right track realize what a humiliating position Obama has put his primary supporters in?

I plan to withhold my vote for Obama in the general election because this is the only language in which I can say, "I oppose you," without actually voting for John McCain.

If the Democrats lose by another slim margin in November, then maybe they'll figure it out: Don't alienate the progressive wing of your party.

Please join me in withholding your vote for Obama this November and supporting the ActBlue campaign.

P.S. Please withhold your vote for Obama. Silence is power!

seriously, the whole premise of obama's candidacy to nonprogressive voters has been that here is a black candidate who not only embodies the best of america's promise, he is nothing to fear.

____________________________________________

This is the gist of Ralph Nader's notorious point, admittedly inartfully expressed as Obama "talking white". Nader would've done better to say it your way.

Is there a corollary to Murphy's Law pertaining to public utterances? There ought to be-- something along the lines of (to use a bunkerism) "anything that can be misconscrewed will be misconscrewed".

Actually, this phenomenon is also a function of how "controversial" the speaker is, although this quality is in turn a function of how the corporate media has reported on the speaker previously-- it's a transactional spiral. By which I meantersay that the media is generally eager to pounce on the nuances of comments by such disparate figures as Nader and Don Imus (I'm not a fan) in the first place because they're scripted as wild and crazy surds.

PS: Many fine comments here today, too many to cite individually. Glenn's post is, of course, spot-on.

Here's a vote in favor of sinjan's suggestion:

At the same time, I think it could be more productive to oppose moves like Obama's telecom immunity flip-flop by making sure that the telecoms themselves get as much bad press if not more. Where are the ads comparing them to all the other war criminals who were "just following orders"? Where are columns that compare the complicity of today's corporations with Bush's war on terror to those of the past? Sure you can find some ads in good British stand up comedy (link at sig) or the odd foreign written best-seller like the Shock Doctrine. But I don't think it's enough.

In addition to going after Hoyer and friends, we should be publicizing the telecoms' lawbreaking and how they're getting away with it.

Did the Hoyer ad run in the Washington Post Thursday as planned? I haven't heard any reactions.