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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
So we find ourselves in a political doldrum. The daily deluge of news and hysterics from the campaign season turned off on November 5, sending the media into a frenzy of reporting on nothing more than embarrassing speculation and innuendo. Must. Hang. Onto. Ratings. and. Clicks. Watching MSNBCCNNFOX these days is like watching Showbiz Tonight. Will Hillary take the SoS job? What about Joe the Evil?
Of course, their audiences and visitors play right into this. But I don't recall Obama or his approved spokespeople saying a single word about Clinton (beyond Obama's gracious remarks on 60 Minutes) or Lieberman (beyond that they don't want to referee Senate squabbles). And yet a whole cottage industry of concern trolling on both points has emerged. As has the complete overstatement of the "Team of Rivals" business. On 60 Minutes, Obama mentioned reading a lot of Lincoln because he thought "he was very wise." Not sure how we leapt from that innocuous statement to Lincoln's cabinet being a template for Obama.
It's also getting tiresome hearing that the "progressive left" (now reduced to commenters on Daily Kos and FireDogLake) own the keys to the kingdom. Talk about ego! How about instead of the characteristic worrying, we find some new websites to visit and TV shows to watch and let the Obama administration take shape as it will. Or at least shut up for five minutes.
Change was always about issues, not about people.
Five days of careful consideration when a former President is involved is not a lot. I would certainly hope there is as much time as needed despite pundit demands for more drama to feed their machines.
I wouldn't depend on media for vetting a Secretary of State, and I am glad the future Administration isn't either. The media has been left to speculate, which is not a substitution for vetting but sometimes pundits don't understand the difference. The media will survive their self-imposed dramas, the rest of us are.
In the meantime, there is an intense drama in Congress about the Auto Industry. What happens there impacts directly millions of people. Whoever is chosen for Secretary of State, very possibly makes no difference to those people's lives or the economy. But apparently that doesn't have the celebrity factor necessary for maximum cable punditry.
Obama isn't even officially president yet, and already everybody's got an opinion on what he's doing wrong.
Joan, I have to question your assertion that the left is his "base," that somehow they're responsible for his election. I want to see the figures that support that contention. I strongly suspect that you're wrong--that Obama was elected by a broad coalition of leftists and centrists, of blacks, whites, and Hispanics, of young and old, of Democrats AND independents. His responsibility is NOT to the Left; his responsibility is to all of us.
I also disagree about the Lieberman pardon. Revenge is a fun thing, but it usually creates problems, even as it satisfies our primal urges for justice. Back in the Seventies, the university I attended had a great tactic for silencing student activist critics: it gave them jobs. Nothing shuts someone up faster than a paycheck. Just so with Lieberman. He is going to be hard-pressed to spout any more anti-Obama bs now, and it is more important to have him voting with the Democrats than it is to slap his wrist and make him stand in the corner for an hour.
We can be "right," or we can accomplish something. That's the choice. It's easy to sit in front of a computer screen and decide what Obama should do, but the bottom line is this: the man ran an incredible, almost perfect political campaign against impossible odds and won. Clearly, he's not stupid. To paraphrase an old cliche: Those who can, do; those who can't, blog about it.
are mistaken in their surly and narrow assessment of the tidal wave of public support that brought Obama into office.
Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MoveOn, Campaign for America's Future, Democracy Now, and a dozen other groups that got a lot of us off our behinds to get out the vote were important in terms of a well-recruited ground war. Along with the campaign, and various permutations of the DNC. I worked with several, along with veteran's groups. Grassroots, baby, grassroots.
However, it was Obama's message of change and hope and a constituency hungry for those very things that brought about this victory. Despite that,it wouldn't have had a chance, against the GOP hate-machine without those legions of passionate foot soldiers spreading the word and leaving bread crumbs to the polling places.
Notice the anonymous source was an "aide". I campaigned nationally as a surrogate for Kerry, and what we found was that some aide's carried around a lot of petty resentment that it didn't all seem to be about them. Amateurs. How dare we!
It's a sad Democrat who would gleefully spit in the face of the foot soldiers that brought them victory. Shame.
Obama, a person of courage and integrity? That doesn't jibe with what I've seen.
Time after time he's taken the cautious, measured, triangulating approach. And with his broken promise on the FISA filibuster and telecom amnesty, not to mention this inexplicable and seemingly self-destructive Lieberman capitulation - does he really think that Lieberman won't use the power of his chairmanships from day one to tear his administration apart? - Obama has proven that the only "change" we can expect from his administration is, if you'll pardon the expression, skin deep.
Five days sifting through the complicated life of a political and social power broker like Bill Clinton is nothing. Why should it seem sinister?
This needs to be vetted thoroughly, or ... we know what will happen. The Obama team knows its politics...anticipate and diffuse.
No more George Bush shooting from the hip and glancing into people's eyes like twin crystal balls.
Thank goodness.
I think Joan the one thing I learned during the primary and the campaign for the general is Hillary Clinton is one of us. She isn't her husband, she has her nose to the grindstone, she studies, she is smart (those are things I already knew) and she wants to do what is in the best interest of the US. She is a strange yet fantastic pick for Secretary of State. She is a great advocate for women. I think she will be great if she decides this is what she wants.
As a supporter of Obama's from the beginning I don't think the Kos crowd needs to be thrown a bone. I want to see what happens here. I am curious to see who else he picks and thank god he is using people who worked for Bill Clinton, look they were smart and competent and that is what American's are looking for, smart and competent, especially competent. Bill Clinton's Administration was competent! They know how to run a government. Good, that happens to be what we need.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
