Obama voted fro this bill for one reason.

The prospect of a McCain presidency. Period.

Think of it this way. You and your two daughters are out boating one day. Suddenly a wind picks up and turns your boat over.

You and the kids are swept into the waves of the deep sea water, struggling to hang on to each other. Suddenly a wave washes over the three of you and one child is swept out of your arms before you can do anything about it. You KNOW this means death for her. What do you do?

It's a hard decision, isn't it?

You value more than LIFE the lives of BOTH your daughters but if you let go of the one to risk getting the other, you stand to lose them both.

FISA was a difficult decision for Obama, no doubt. On the one hand our constitution is under assault and it pains him. (one daughter is slipping away)

But the stakes are SO high in this election. Our very country is at risk. Without a strong immediate turn around this country will begin a swift decline into a third rate nation. (This represents losing BOTH daughters, BOTH of something you love). If you don't believe that this country is in great threat, watch Tom DeLay on Hardball from Wednesday and see what he says about the possibility of Bush initiating a move against Iran before he leaves office. Witness all the Israeli and Iranian posturing in the region. See what positions McCain takes on Iran, Russia and a continuation of Iraqi occupation, even if they don't want us there. People, our very country is in the balance.

Whether you like it or not, YES Obama voted this way for political expediency. MOST Americans aren't constitutional scholars, are not even paying attention. And the honest to god truth is that most Americans would say "Well, I'm not doing anything wrong so I'm not worried about it. Our government needs all the tools available to track down terrorists".

I understand WHY that argument is bad but it IS the way most Americans think. (BTW the blogosphere is not reality, its a small subset of a very specific demographic. Don't be fooled. Not a word about FISA on the evening news or local news or even morning shows like Today Show. THIS is where most Americans get their news. They are NOT watching CNN or MSNBC).

So Obama made a very very tough choice. No less difficult than watching your one beloved daughter drift away into the sea while you do everything in your power to hold on to the other one (i.e. saving our teetering country by doing what he must to win this campaign against McCain). He wasn't willing to risk letting go of "one daughter" to save the other. He wasn't willing to risk losing the average voter (which is the majority in America) because they think he would not be tough on terrorists (or worse, maybe he IS one!)

He understands that saving at least ONE daughter is THE most important thing right now. A McCain/Bush presidency could mean the end of much more than our constitution.

That's why

Sure it was calculated. Senator Obama does not want to be portrayed as "soft on terrorism".

Of course John McCain's claiming credit for a GI bill that he never voted for and politically opposed is even more calculated.

The only difference is that, come October, all of our media reporters will still be talking about Mr. Obama's calculation while "Maverick" McCain will get another free pass from his "base".

Ask Hillary to be VP and pray she accepts.

Are you seriously trotting out "this is what most Americans really think"? You sound like a cross between Maureed Dowd's pyschobabble and David Brooks' condescension for "real Americans". How the hell do you know that most people think the way you do?

I have my own thoughts on this, but have you been reading Greenwald? He breaks down all the stupid cliches you're spouting piece by piece. The "let's avoid looking weak by doing whatever the Republicans want so they won't call us mean names later" philosophy has worked oh-so-well up to now, so gosh, I can't see a reason to stop.

Please pay just a little bit of attention to what you're saying.

Who benefits from the FISA vote?

Democrats alienate constituents. In fact, the majority of voters don't want to give up their civil liberties for this crap. So it wasn't a political cave-in.

Republicans are voting for it, but are giving huge spying powers to the next administration, almost assuredly President Obama and a strongly-Democratic Congress. So are they voting in all these powers that the Dems can use against them?

I'll repeat the question. Who benefits? If you can connect the collected information to power accruing to those who collect it, then the intelligence agencies, the NSA specifically, gain the power. That is, our two political branches, the executive and legislative, are subservient to our intelligence agencies.

If you lived in East Germany in the 1980s you would have no problem in understanding this. That's how police states operate. When they have the power to control they control. And to maintain that control they change the rules to further their control.

Until Dems stop slapping their foreheads and saying, "That's crazy!" they will be condemned to remaining in this state.

The notion he's a secret Muslim mole.

Hoyer and Rockefeller basically told Obama that this bill was going through with or without his support, and that if he didn't want to be embarrassed by his failure of leadership that he needed to pretend to go along with it.

The alternative: the bill passes in spite of Obama's opposition, and in spite of any Dodd/Obama filibuster. For some reason Obama thought this would be too embarrassing.

So instead, he decided to piss off his most passionate supporters. Was his calculation correct? Hard to say at this point, but as one of the pissed off, I would have preferred the opposite approach. His decision tells me that Obama is willing to fight for anything that doesn't require any possibility of him losing the fight. That's an ugly character flaw.

And this is a problem that all stems from having a first-term Senator running for the Presidency. He may be a media darling, but he isn't necessarily held in the same esteem by people who have been working on Capitol Hill for decades.