What does democracy mean to you?

You do not make progress with out compromises.

I've seen it so many time in teh past. Afr lefties vote for an independent or Green who has no chance in H of winning in a TWO PARTY system. They thus split the votes off of the Democrats and allow the republicans to win.

Obama has not changed his position on reproductive rights.

You have other choices. Vote for Ralph Nader. If it spoils the little love fest of Republican and Democrat creeps on capitol hill, so be it. For those who support the "the bill would have passed anyway, and he took an issue away from the Republicans, and we just have to win at any cost..." theory, I say this: Leadership. If fear of a Republican attack is what compels your vote, you not only should not be president, but you should not be in congress. You shouldn't even be on your local city council. Your responsibility is to vote for what is right for your constituency and or your platform, not what is right to get elected and or to avoid potential trouble. Obama lost my vote today. I do not feel represented by the Democratic party anymore, so I never give them my instant regard again. For those of you here who feel you align with the democratic party, now is the time to ask yourselves why. Screw this lesser of two evils voting. Vote for anyone other than these two.

Every time I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins, McCain does something new to make sure I have to.

Who else would you vote for? I mean, has your vote really been in question?

To me, it's clear that Obama is doing what politicians do: moving to the center to get elected. I'm an idealist who always hates that instinct in politicians. But Kucinich types never get close to being elected, so what do I know?

Anyway, I'm not unsympathetic to your disappointment, I'm merely surprised that you would consider voting for anyone else, given your admitted contempt for those of us who voted for Nader in 2000.

But when I was discussing the FISA "compromise" with my husband, he brought up an important point I hadn't considered -- if there were lawsuits and criminal prosecutions brought for warrantless wiretapping, who do you think would end up getting jailed and/or financially ruined? The high level CEO's and board members who made the cozy deals with the Bush cabal, or hapless midlevel executives who carried out instructions from above? Put it this way: who paid for the abuses at Abu Ghraib? Any officers? You see my point.

Now I'm not some obedient little wifey who agrees with every word my husband says (just ask him!!) but he, unlike me, has experience in private sector business, and he knows how the nasty, dog-eat-dog game is played.

So I'm prepared to consider that there are two sides to this story, and that Obama may have debated some important nuances before voting yes. But I devoutly hope he'll adopt Nicholas Kristof's advice in his column a couple of days ago: if his justice department can't prosecute, then President Obama should establish a "truth and reconciliation commission" on the South African model, with iron-clad subpoena power, to investigate and expose what was done in the name of "national security" from 9/11/01 to 1/20/09.

What are you chuggin' down? A quart of Cold Duck?

I say pull the lever for a straight Republican ticket this fall. The Democratic "leadership" is so craven and groveling I can't discuss it without getting apoplectic. Throw the Dems out for being pathetic, and let the Repukelicans deal with the God-awful disaster they have created.

While I am not surprised that Obama is just another politician, I am disappointed. I had hoped he had a few principles. Sigh.

Democracy is about power my friend. Who has it, and who doesn't. And for the past 8 years, we progressives have had very very little. And as a consequence of that, we have seen our economy shredded, we have seen our environment plundered, and we have seen thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of people (Iraqi and American) slaughtered in a war based on a lie.

So you know what, I don't like FISA, but if voting for a watered-down version of the bill gets Obama in the White House, I'm a happy happy man. How much worse will things get if we let John BOMB BOMB BOMB Iran McCain sit in the Oval Office? How many more soldiers and civilians will die? How much worse will our economy get?

Grow up your whiners, politics is about strategy and compromise. And it is a high stakes game! And at the end of the day, if Obama doesn't win the White House, the sins of FISA will be the least of our worries.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, voted against the FISA bill, but I think "what ifs" are unproductive. Matthew Yglesias' self-justifying fiction that, if she was the nominee, she'd have done what Obama did, is silly.

Of course Clinton would have voted against FISA had she been the (presumptive) nominee — just as Obama would probably have voted against it had he not been.

Had Clinton won, she would have been doing the same things Obama is doing now — reaching out to those Democratic constituencies who opposed her in the primary, including progressives and younger voters.

Obama is playing a conservative game because he thinks that nobody who is unhappy with his FISA vote will care in a year. Plain and simple.

He has yet to be proven wrong.

... but find it very, very hard to conceive of Hillary Clinton as my champion.

Somehow, I can't forget that she took my vote for granted throughout the nomination fight, and was obviously planning on continuing to do so, at the expense of anything resembling principle, for the entire election.

She obviously would have chickened out just like Obama did if she'd won the nomination. Her entire history screams that.

That said, I'm glad if losing the nomination has freed her up to pretend to be a champion of decency once again, as opposed to pretending to be a champion of rottenness and mass murder. Note that I don't grant her the power or willingness to do anything but pretend, because I do not believe she has any principles at all.

Still, a politician that does the right thing for cynical, made-up reasons can be better than one that fails to do the right thing at all. I'm listening to see if Hillary can be an effective leader, no matter her cheap (or lofty) motivations.