Ranting to /dev/null

What do you think about this:

"...it is necessary for Democrats to...enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era."

That sounds suspiciously similar to FDR's plan of "progressiveness" whereby the American people are taxed til they puke.

Let's quote the whole section so that we have some context before we get bent out of shape...

"According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog [rob - Daily Kos] - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country."

Obama's comments are far more reasonable than those of many other leading Democrat politicos, e.g. Kerry and Gore. After all, he is an Harvard Law School alum. But there's considerable irony in his calls for nuance, sensitivity, and co-operation in the context of comments such as these:

"I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton."

"The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion."

Obama is posturing as the voice of reason in the Democrat progressive caucaus - and God knows they need one - but despite the flaws of the Bush administration's policies and actions {and their name is Legion}, the comments above merely rehash the crude, cliched dichotomies which consistently pre-empt sincere discussion in American politics. If you're going to keep nattering on about "tough choices" and "difficult situations," you should demonstrate a recognition that there is at least some intellectual weight and moral sincerity to the opposition's viewpoints, and attempt to counter them *on the merits*, not with dismissive Red Coast rhetoric that implies all Republican stances derive from a marriage between intellectual impoverishment and cowboy bravado.

If the painful choice between Democrat and Republican were simply a matter of "poor and vulnerable" vs. "Halliburton and homophobia" the Democrats would be bringing in at least 75% majorities in every election. By promoting this facile and grossly unfair misrepresentation, Obama simply perpetuates the kind of emotional-charged myopia which ensures that politics in America will continue to be a matter of reflexive party propaganda rather than reasoned exchange.

I'll readily grant that Obama is guilty of the same kind of dichotomies that he accuses his moonbat brethren of committing, and there is suspiciously little difference between "pay as you go" and "tax and spend", as both are interventionist in their rhetoric.

But as Julian so eloquently points out, it's a hell of a lot better than anything else the Left has produced in the last six years. Gore went completely gonzo with this week's speech, Deano is just nuts, and Hillary is, well, still evil. We need an opposition party, and we need one now, and I'll take Obama over anyone else at the moment.

So why did Barack vote against Roberts, then?

As an IL state senator Obama voted against a ban on partial birth abortion and is known for his adamant opposition to any efforts to pass pro-life legislation.

That best explains the vote against Roberts. Unfortunately, his pro-abortion politics are (in his mind) inextricably tied to the rest of his politics.