the disappointments seem to pile on weekly.

The only thing that keeps me going that having Barack around means the pace of the destruction of our country's values will slow down

the now, sometimes, i wonder.

Blogs (and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald) have taken the place of more traditional news sources because they have a memory. Not so long ago, a newspaper story would have a little backstory, and there might be a siidebar placing the event in context and an oped piece with an arc of history.

Journalism has been replaced by ideological advocacy. The 24-hour news channels have shortened even their attention span.

"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." -- Jerry Garcia

I almost wish McCain won the election because at least then we knew what was coming. There never was a bait and switch.

This is very similar to supporters of Bush and Co. Not to say there was a bait and switch here, either. As Glenn (and others) have pointed out, Rabid Obama supporters seem to justify each and every one of their idol's moves to save face in one way or another, much like movie critics so intent on supporting one actor/director or another no matter how horrid the production is.

Personally, if elected, I could see Hillary much more likely to push for investigations and prosecutions than Either Billy or Barack.

Bush felt it was "safe" for him to admit he personally authorized the torture of KSM.

In an interview with Brit Hume that aired today on Fox News Sunday, President Bush admitted that he personally authorized the torture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said he personally asked “what tools” were available to use on him, and sought legal approval for waterboarding him ...

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/11/bush-authorized-torture/

These so-called "leaders" of ours haven't fooled me for decades now. The only bright spot in our national character I've seen recently is the rise of the internet and truth-telling whistle-blowers like Greenwald.

Along with many millions who agree with you, I encourage you to keep at it, Glenn. And from the bottom of my heart and the top of my spirit, I - WE - dearly thank you.

THERE'S NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS COLUMN

I've read the same thing from the same author before. This author has an originality problem.

And it would help if the author at least tried to be accurate. Bill Clinton moved dramatically to the LEFT after his inauguration, deceiving lots of people who thought they had voted for the moderate that he was during his 1992 campaign.

This move to the left failed in Congress and among the American public. Thus, the Democrats suffered one of their worst electoral losses ever, losing the Congress for the first time in decades in 1994.

The Dick Morris "triangulation" strategy was the result of getting hammered in the 1994 election and was not part of Clinton's initial first-term strategy although the entire content and tenor of this column makes it appear that it is.

More deception from the master.

And a Republican Secretary of Defense? Horror of horrors. How about picking the best people regardless of political party instead of leftist or rightist ideologues? That's what a real leader should do, not cater to the ideological myopics.

And Dukakis ran for president in 1988, not 1998.

Shalom,

ZWrite

I've been following your articles on this issue and i think you're right on.

My general feeling is that this postpartisan garbage is the way the Democrat party reassures the corporate oligarchy that things will be business-as-usual.

PE Obama would not even have won in the primaries if not for the support of progressives, and it will deeply sadden me if he spends four years ignoring his base in favor of cozying up to the ruling class.

I too am worried about Obama's presidency. Silent and passive on Gaza. Wavering on Guantánamo. Not interested in prosecution of Bush law breakers. Cozying up with Republican leaders. Bailing on Burris and letting the freaks in the dem leadership act like fools. You're right - Washington politics as usual.

re: dawkinsfan00

There was no bait and switch, though; Obama has promised post-partisanship from the begining ("there is no Red America or Blue America, only America;" he was also noted for being especially comfortable with Christian rhetoric before the primaries). The real question is why we seemed to have no choice other than Obama and Clinton; Edwards was shown the door very early on and nobody else ever had a chance. Whether this stems from media framing, fundraising control by elite donors, or simply a dearth of left-learning talent stemming from decades of kowtowing to conventional establishment wisdom I do not know--but I suspect all three had their parts.

It is interesting that in a year where the left had (and has, let's not be defeatist quite yet) considerable power for concrete and substantial change, all of the oxygen was instead absorbed by the prospect of symbolic, if profound, change, in the first-of-their-kind candidacies of BHO and HRC. I don't want to deny the importance of a black or female president, but it is certainly a microcosm of post-Vietnam liberal politics; even now, with a collapsing economy, a pretty big section of the activist left is hung up on the almost entirely symbolic loss of Prop 8. Perhaps we have no one to blame but ourselves.

This phenomenon is yet another example of the different meanings of Republican electoral victories, which are universally hailed as sweeping mandates, and Democratic ones, which are at best aberrations, fraught with danger. Bush, who promised a "humble" foreign policy and a "change of tone" in Washington, was lauded as "bold" when tilting far to the right despite losing the election. No one questioned that even the most cockamamie and destructive policies, the craziest judges, and the mean-spirited attacks on any critics were anything less than his "due."

Worse, the predictably disastrous outcomes of his policies, which fell like rain for eight years, were explained away as almost meteorological events that "no one could have predicted." Thus an entire administration slid into upward failure, where medals of honor and promotions were bestowed upon those who deserved a pink slip and/or jail.

But woe to any Democrat who might actually deign to behave like one. The "dangers" of, say, protecting the environment, expanding access to health care, or tightening regulations on our kleptocratic financial system are endlessly trotted out, and a bewildered public is assaulted with nonsense about how, say, not torturing people or prosecuting flagrant war criminals would surely have the direst consequences.

Sadly but predictably, it seems that the most eager exponents of the Bush Legacy Project are precisely those who praised, admired, and told us how wonderful things really were all these years, despite glaring evidence to the contrary... The Village Idiots, who have managed to fail, if not upward like Kristol, at least laterally like Ignatius et al while the country was looted like the Baghdad Museum.

Clearly, these narcissistic cretins have a vested interested in shoving the criminality, stupidity, and moral turpitude of the Bush years under the rug, since without some drastic intervention their credibility would be even lower than the President they all have been making excuses for all these years.

Would that any of them would have the humility, or plain common sense, to simply admit that Republican policies have failed, and it's time for their complete repudiation. No, far better to speak of the peril of "looking backward." The sight in the rear-view isn't very pretty, and "no one could have predicted" that.