While you could point out any number of mistakes these organizations have made in the last few months, perhaps the most glaring is their belief that they could use the momentum from the 2008 election to push their dream bills through to passage. Their sometimes misplaced tactics haven’t helped their cause either, pulling silly publicity stunts and waging a terribly mismanaged media push. The real meat of it was their misconstrued overall strategy of shoving this legislation through, over the opposition of nearly all republicans and a good chunk of moderate Democrats.

This was just plain foolish. They had to know that they would have a hard time getting moderate Dems to vote their way on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or card check if you prefer). They couldn’t have been so blind as to think the Blue Dogs would just roll over on their health care plan, with it costing so much… right?

Some polling has shown a bit of a shift, but numbers have been relatively steady on the issue of the secret ballot being favored over card check, and how wary the public is when it comes to expansion of government into health care. With the debt rocketing into the sky at an historic pace, and promised cost savings being debunked by the CBO, rather than work with the swing votes in the Senate to find a compromise these groups, and liberal organizations like them, have chosen perhaps the most ineffective strategy they could take.

Demonize the moderates.

There is a reason why politicians tone down the partisan their rhetoric after winning primaries, and why many are now saying that 2010 might not be so bad for Republicans after all. Attacking representatives who speak for those of us who worry about liberal overreach and a need for fiscal sanity helps nobody but the Republican party. Democrats may have the majority, and 60 votes in the Senate, but liberals do not… and this will not change any time soon.

Realizing this and working with the center, rather than attacking us, will allow these organizations to make progress on their legislative goals, keep their solid majority and stem the tide of independents that are now beginning to peel their support off. The silver lining of all of this, from my more centrist perspective, is this is leading to even more people leaving both parties. With over 40% of the population now identifying as independents, it is just a matter of time before something happens that turns the independent groundswell into a movement.

From the negative side, Janet Daley at Britain’s Telegraph argues that Obama is handing the reins over to liberal Democrats in Congress:

[W]hy, when [Obama] went to such pains to assemble a huge and widely experienced team of White House economic advisers (even going to the lengths of parading them at a press conference before he took office) he then handed over the actual drafting of his economic policy to the old Democratic fixers in Congress. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, are now, for all intents and purposes, running the Obama recovery plan.

Needless to say, Daley has a very low opinion of Pelosi’s and Reid’s motives and capabilities.

From the positive side, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, writes in Salon that Obama is plotting a radically ingenious course likely to remake America and end the economic troubles started under Reagan.

The basic idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows from the top down. Lower taxes on the wealthy make them work harder and invest more, and the benefits trickle down to everyone else. Rarely in economic history has a theory been more tested in the real world and proven so wrong. In point of fact, nothing trickled down. After the Reagan tax cuts, increases in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, the median wage actually dropped. Meanwhile, most of the income went to the top. In 1980, just before the Reagan revolution, the richest 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. But by 2007, the richest 1 percent was taking home 22 percent.

Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. Obama’s program increases taxes on the top and uses the proceeds to raise the living standard of average Americans by giving them lower taxes, better schools and more affordable health insurance. That may not seem very radical, but compared with the last quarter century it’s revolutionary.

Reich notes that Obama’s administration is working hard to present his programs as incremental changes, but Reich sees them for the radical change they are.

Here’s why I think these two narratives are likely to compete for public attention for at least the next two years:

First, on the Daley side of things, Reid and particularly Pelosi are certainly harmful to Obama’s hopes for change. They seem far more interested in political payback and rewarding key interest groups than they are in improving government. As long as the current Democratic congressional leadership is in place, Obama will have to either fight the good fight or acquiesce to bad policy. So far, he’s done more acquiescing than some of us would like, thus setting himself up to be labeled a pawn of the liberal/establishmentarian wing of his party.

On the Reich side of things, he’s putting the Obama presidency into the kind of framework from which legacies are born. If the economy turns around, Reich’s narrative would give Obama the kind of big idea, reformer credit which only Roosevelt and Reagan have enjoyed in the last 75 years. A good economy in 2012 would give Obama the opportunity to run not just as a competent manager but has a political savoir, potentially ushering in an era of “trickle up” dominance.

The difference in the positive and negative narratives is that the negative is based on a very real problem (the small mindedness of the Democratic congressional leadership), while the positive is based on the hope/belief the economy will indeed rebound and we’ll be better off afterwards. I would go so far as to say for the “Obama as savoir” narrative to work, the president must first solve the “Congress as stone-around-the-neck” problem first.

Right now, none of us knows what the next few years will bring. But don’t expect that to stop the world’s pundits from trying to define Obama before a single result is in.

One thing that has long baffled me has been the idea on the American Right that Europe is some kind of socialist hell-hole that borders on Communist. The thrust of the argument always seems to be that European government is so large and intrusive, and it public mores so lacking and dare I say nihilistic that it is something akin to Hell on Earth. Mark Steyn, not surprisingly, expresses this attitude fairly succinctly, writing:

Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you’ve spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory. In the same way, few of those Americans who want to introduce Canadian-style health care to the U.S. have ever had surgery at the Royal Victoria. Indeed, America is full of immigrants whose hostility to Euro-Canadian public policy derives explicitly from their prolonged exposure to it.

Of course, the definition of “Europeanism” is ill-defined. So far as I can tell, it’s a reference to a government with a large social welfare system combined with a secularized social policy. The assumption, which is largely based on a false equivalency that social safety nets = socialism = Road to Serfdom and that United States = World’s Only Bastion of Free Market Capitalism = World’s Only Free Country, is that these “Europeanist” policies make Europe an absolute hell-hole.

Despite my deep love of the free market, I’ve always found this chain of thought to be utterly absurd. For starters, the idea that Europe is some kind of hell-hole at all doesn’t seem to line up with reality, as Alex Massie points out:

Never mind that, according to the most recent World Values Survey, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden each reported higher levels of happiness and “life satisfaction” than the United States. That isn’t to say that the US is unhappy, merely that there is more than one route to happiness. And that’s the point: europe (however broadly defined) and the United States are each remarkable success stories permitting a greater percentage of the population than at any point in history has the opportunity to make their own choices about how to lead their lives.

But there’s more to it than this. If “Europeanism” really is that much of a restraint on freedom, one would expect that European nations would have exceedingly tightly restricted economies, with comparatively little economic liberty. Thankfully, that lunatic left-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation has long compiled a statistical ranking of economic freedoms around the world.

In the current iteration of this list, based on data from late 2007 to early 2008, shows the good ol’ USA ranked 6th – right behind Ireland and New Zealand, and just barely ahead of Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK. But things get even more interesting when you look more closely at the data. After all, the argument seems to be that larger and more expensive government leads to less economic freedom (amongst other problems). And yet, when one looks at measures of economic freedom other than the size of government, one quickly finds that the US is outperformed by numerous European countries and Canada. Canada for instance surpasses the US in things like Fiscal Freedom (ie, taxation), freedom from corruption, business freedom, and trade freedom; Denmark in business freedom (where the Heritage Foundation considers Denmark just about perfect!), investment and financial freedom, property rights, and labor freedom; the UK and Netherlands in investments, property rights, and corruption; Iceland in business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, property rights, and corruption; and Austria and Belgium also comparing pretty favorably.

Meanwhile, there are a number of governments that seem to score extraordinarily poorly on these measures despite having relatively small governments. In fact, by the Heritage Foundation’s measurements, the US actually has a larger than average government compared to the rest of the globe, but has a far smaller government than most of Western Europe and Canada, most of which – including Sweden, with the third largest government in the world according to Heritage – score in the top 30 most economically free countries in the world. The sole exceptions are Portugal (#53), France (#64), and Italy (#76).

Meanwhile, countries with relatively small governments seem to largely be ranked pretty poorly in terms of overall economic freedom as I previously discussed here. If you rank the countries by size of government (keeping in mind that higher scores equal smaller government), the “best” governments are, in order: Burma, Liberia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and the Central African Republic. None of these are exactly bastions of economic freedom in any other respect.

This isn’t to say that smaller government equates with less economic freedom generally – I don’t think it does, and one can’t ignore that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Chile all have rather small governments combined with quite a bit of economic freedom. Instead, it’s simply to say that there is a complete lack of evidence of any sort that “Europeanism” is a first-class ticket to disorder, totalitarianism, or regulatory hell.

Meanwhile, whatever the flaws of secularism (and in the case of so-called Human Rights Commissions, it’s pretty clear that there are quite a few such flaws), it’s worth noting that Europeans seem to have a closer attachment to their culture and history than just about any part of the US outside the Deep South. Indeed, in France, the desire to preserve that culture and history is probably one of the biggest causes of French restrictions on economic liberty, which results in a level of protectionism that is noticeably higher than the rest of Western Europe (except for Italy).

On the other hand, the idea that the solution to American problems lies in adopting European-style policies (whatever that may mean) is pretty foolish as well, for the simple reason that the U.S. isn’t Europe. We are a far more culturally and ethnically heterogenous society than any European country, we are far larger in terms of both population and area than any Western European country, and – as is the case with any two countries – we have completely different established institutions upon which to base our policies, as Ms. McArdle recently noted.

Regardless, can we please stop pretending like Western Europe is the closest thing to Hell on Earth or, in the alternative, some kind of socialist paradise? It’s neither – instead, it’s just a collection of several different governments that in general seem to have each found a balance between government and liberty that works pretty well for the specific people who are subject to that specific government’s jurisdiction.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It’s a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists — the feminists, the gay militants, the “world peace” utopians — are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

Yikes. Now, of course, McCain is being somewhat hyperbolic in his characterization of the coalition of the political Left. But in many ways there is a fair amount of truth to McCain’s fundamental point, which is that the response of the political Left to the economic crisis has dramatically undermined the basis for any theoretical coalition of “liberaltarians.” To be sure, McCain thinks that the entire concept of such an alliance is a “luxury” that never had any chance at success, but the more pertinent issue is the role of the economic crisis in exploiting the divide between liberalism and libertarianism/classical liberalism. This is a particularly difficult truth for me, as I have repeatedly gone on record predicting that “libertarians,” broadly defined, are likely to continue their recent trend towards the Democratic Party in terms of their voting habits. Heck, I even put my money (and daughter’s toys) on the line by making a bet to this effect with John Schwenkler.

One of the things that has happened in the early days of the Obama Administration has been some fairly good (but by no means great) steps in the direction of restoring civil liberties and reigning in executive power. While this is something libertarians such as me have absolutely cheered, the reality is that these issues were a major part of what was pushing libertarianism to the left in recent years. As victories have been earned on those fronts, the entire basis for that move leftward is getting removed (although history tells us that we’re not about to see a complete restoration of civil liberties and balance of power anytime soon, either).

To be sure, really good bases remain for a left-libertarian coalition on certain specific issues, especially the War on Drugs. And I still fully agree with the great FA Hayek, whose opus Road to Serfdom describes many of those we now call liberals as essentially misled classical liberals (that we now call libertarians). And that says nothing of his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” – still relevant nearly half a century later.

So I still think that, at some point in time, progressives and libertarians will be reunited within a political coalition separate and distinct from conservatives. But at a minimum the progressive response to the financial crisis, with its finger-pointing for the crisis almost solely at deregulation and its use of the stimulus bill as a means for implementing all sorts of pet projects that have little to do with stimulus even under a Keynesian analysis, has brought the economic divide between liberals and libertarians to the forefront in a way unseen for decades.

To be sure, I think conservatives – especially conservative politicians – have played a role in the whole situation, both by saddling us with massive debt in the name of the War on Terror and by repeatedly (and falsely) campaigning on the idea of Obama as a socialist (and thereby turning an unwinnable election into a de facto referendum on socialism). But the fact is that the political Left, led by Congress, is now using this opportunity to implement wide-reaching policies that are anathema to libertarianism.

Simply put, it appears that liberals and Progressives, at least the influential ones, have once again taken up the mantle that regulation is always (or almost always) good, and so is just about any form of non-military government spending. As Virginia Postrel notes discussing the refusal of influential progressives to concern themselves with the effects of the abysmal, horrible, no good Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act:

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

And this is the problem the rebirth of dogmatic support for regulation has created for any liberaltarian coalition. Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends. This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.

All that said, Will Wilkinson is no doubt correct that all this talk of a left-libertarian political coalition misses the entire point of “liberaltarianism,” which is not properly understood as being about coalition-building:

I think Obama and the Democrats are already in the process of screwing it up. The romance of transformative hope is going to wear off pretty quick as all-but-uncontested Democratic policy deepens and lengthens the recession. There’s a lot of culturally and psychologically liberal people out there who are, and are going to be, interested in a liberalism that actually works. I want to use this time of ferment to work on developing the missing option in American politics: an authentically liberal governing philosophy that understands that limited government, free markets, a culture of tolerance, and a sound social safety net are the best means to better lives.

One of the major reasons I continue to support the concept of “liberaltarianism” is that ultimately I think it can only serve to increase the pathetic influence of libertarianism on American politics, turning libertarians into true political free agents that must be pandered to, year in and year out (if you use the broad “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” definition, we’re large enough a group to be worth pandering to). Just as importantly, it promises to improve libertarianism itself by encouraging a purer form of classical liberalism that is not, as Wilkinson says, “pretty well shot through with conservative reflexes bred by the long Cold War alliance between libertarians and the right.” Or as Reihan Salam notes in a sentence that speaks particularly well to me: “The liberaltarian idea, as I understand, is to start rethinking coalitions that appear to be natural because they’ve been in place for so long.”

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Over the last few months, there has been much finger-pointing as to which particular sect of the old GOP coalition is to blame for the policy failures of the last 8 years and the electoral failures of the last 2 years…..I think these accusations are deeply misplaced – the problems have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of “talk radio” dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a “true” conservative or Republican.

This dogmatism has become terribly pervasive, dominating the party infrastructure and including many of the most prominent faces of conservatism both online and on the air. It is a dogmatism that is in some ways pushed by a wide variety of conservatives – free market conservatives and libertarians, religious conservatives, and defense conservatives. And yet it is also a dogmatism with which large elements of each of those groups take significant umbrage.

In and of itself, though, a little dogmatism is not necessarily a unique hindrance to a political party or movement’s electability or even its legislative agenda – political dogma has existed for at least as long as political parties have existed, and without some of it political parties cannot distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Instead, the problem with this particular form of dogma is its all-around meanness. Under this dogmatism, dissenters of any stripe are treated as the enemy, regardless of whether the dissenter’s general viewpoint could be described as “conservative,” and regardless of the dissenter’s political affiliation. Wide nets are cast to stereotype anyone who may be adversely affected by implementation of one of the dogma’s tenets. Where a particular tenet relies on a particular fact, and a suggestion is made that the fact is inaccurate, the personal loyalties of the questioner are called into question – even if the fact is demonstrably wrong.

What’s important here isn’t that GOP dogmatism (or political dogmatism more generally) is overly ideological – quite the opposite, actually. Instead, the problem is that it doesn’t recognize its lack of a firm ideological basis, turning the individual policy preferences of whichever strain of conservatism is most passionate about a given issue into a litmus test for some imagined “master conservatism.” Because this dogmatism represents the conclusions of numerous different philosophies, though, it cannot rely on the ideological arguments that gave rise to the policy preference in the first place. For instance, relying on principled libertarian arguments for a particular economic policy is not possible when you take a position on social policy that is inherently at odds with those arguments; similarly it is not possible to rely on principled religious conservative arguments for social policy when you take a position on economic policy that is directly at odds with those arguments. In short, the problem with dogmatism isn’t that it elevates principle over the common good – it’s that it is almost completely devoid of principle in the first place, a fact which Conor Friedersdorf seems to get. The result is that this imagined “master conservatism” is forced to rely on arguments that rely on a sense of fear and an “us against them” mentality.

This is not to say that this type of dogmatism is without value – it’s useful as a means of creating party unity and “getting out the base.” Nor is it particularly the province of conservatives – liberals and Democrats most certainly have their own type of fear-based, “us against them” dogmatism. Instead, the problem here is that the dogmatism has become far too pervasive, both in terms of those who insist on this dogmatism and – as importantly – in terms of the number of issues to which it extends (even extending to issues that have no inherent connection to policy preferences, such as whether Iraq had WMD’s, whether global warming is real or imagined, or whether AirTran was morally correct in its refusal to permit a Muslim family to reboard a flight after they were cleared by the FBI).

For instance, it’s one thing for talk-show hosts to rant and rave about “Defeatocrats,” the “homosexual mafia,” etc., since their purpose is not to persuade but is instead almost exclusively to rally the people who are already predisposed to agree with them. It’s a far different thing, however, when that attitude extends to campaign tactics, and/or a huge percentage of “talking heads,” whose purpose is at least nominally to persuade people to either vote Republican or to support a particular policy position.

Similarly, it’s one thing to rant and rave against a particular group as a means of motivating your “base” and maybe to scare the bejesus out of some fence-sitters into supporting your position. It is a far different thing, though, to do this on virtually every issue. So while Muslims, for instance, may be a tiny minority group whose support on any given issue is not worth being concerned about losing, the combination of Muslims, gays, social safety net beneficiaries, Latino immigrants, war opponents, etc. is a pretty large group.

By relying on rhetorical arguments that demonize so many groups and by making those arguments through so many different mediums, this form of dogma dramatically reduces the “pie” to whom conservatives may appeal – both for voting purposes and for purposes of winning support on policies that have nothing to do with the issue on which that group has been demonized. As Rod Dreher points out: “…if you build your political movement around constantly pointing out that it’s Us vs. Them, pretty soon you’ll find that there aren’t too many of Us left.”

But again – this problem is not one that is uniquely the province of conservatism or the Republican Party. Instead, it is a problem that will inevitably arise as any particular political coalition becomes ever-larger and attains a certain level of political success on issues where there is near-uniform intra-coalition agreement; in order to maintain the successful coalition, the party needs to manufacture loyalty on issues where there is less intra-coalition agreement. This is, however, an unsustainable strategy due to the way in which it “shrinks the pie” by demonizing policy opponents, even if they happen to be in the same political party. Eventually, the pie becomes small enough that the party can again find a coherent set of positive principles around which to build, and the cycle will begin anew.

The extremes of this cycle are just exacerbated today due to the way in which modern technology allows politics to pervade so much of everyday life. Eventually, the Dems will face similar problems as a result of their own successes, even as the GOP rebuilds around some as-yet unknown set of principles with a relatively broad appeal.

(Cross-posted at Publius Endures).

They wanted him to appoint left wingers. He hasn’t.

So what to make of this?

Obama talks…

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama, rejecting liberals’ criticism of his emerging cabinet, today strongly defended his decision to choose more experienced, centrist aides for his inner circle, arguing that the nation needs sure hands in a time of turmoil — and that it’s his job to bring the change he promised voters.

At a press conference to introduce his economic advisory board, Obama said it would send the wrong message to the nation if he stocked his cabinet with newcomers, especially given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deepening economic crisis. Veterans, he said, bring the wisdom to help him shape his agenda and the know-how to execute it.

“What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking,” he said in his most detailed comments on the issue. “But I understand where the vision for change comes from. First and foremost, it comes from me. That’s my job — to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure then that my team is implementing.”

Honestly, if Obama is angering liberal critics now, this probably bodes well for his administration and the promise of bringing unity to Washington. Because, like he says, he’s leading the call for change, but in order to do that he has to have people who know Washington in order to do that. And if he were to take the first term Clinton model and start appointing people nobody knows, those folks would face institutional barriers that would prove counterproductive. Yes, there’s a risk that these appointees won’t be able to bring about change, but I think it’s much more likely that insiders will be able to user their existing networks to signal to everybody that change is coming.

In other words, you can’t turn this town upside down right off the bat, and if liberals don’t get that then they don’t get how Washington works.

More as it unfolds…

William Greider of The Nation wonders if Barack Obama’s recent appointments indicate he won’t be the progressive savior many of the left hoped he’d be.

Obama’s choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.

Greider focuses his worry on Obama’s support for the recent financial bailouts and specifically on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s role in the Citigroup bailout. Greider’s complaint?

Wasting more public money on insolvent mastodons is the least of it. The real scandal is it doesn’t work. It can’t work because the black hole is too large even for Washington to fill. Government should take over the failing institutions or force them into bankruptcy, break them up and sell them off or mercifully relieve everyone, including the taxpayers.

I think it’s too soon to judge whether or not the bailouts are working. And Obama’s appointments fill me with a lot more confidence than would a slew of economic ideologues. What we have to remember is that we are in the very, very early stages of this financial crisis. We are not in a depression and we do not need radical maneuvers. We need a smart, coordinated approach. That seems to be the direction Obama is planning to head.

Obviously, just throwing money at the problem without stipulations on how that money is used is not the best solution. There have been some mistakes made in the initial release of funds. But, at this juncture, I still prefer trying to fix the system we have rather than blowing up the whole thing. Capitalism does not work without credit. Getting the markets flowing is more important than ideology.

You don’t have to agree with O’Rourke to enjoy this article. Some excerpts:

There was no need to piss off the entire black population of America to get Dixie’s electoral votes. And despising cracker trash who have a laundry hamper full of bedsheets with eye-holes cut in them does not make a man a liberal.

…

And “bioenergy” is a fraud of John Edwards-marital-fidelity proportions. Taxpayer money composted to produce a fuel made of alcohol that is more expensive than oil, more polluting than oil, and almost as bad as oil with vermouth and an olive.

…

Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world’s rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we’ve been doing of that lately.)

…

Anyway, it’s no use blaming Wall Street. Blaming Wall Street for being greedy is like scolding defensive linemen for being big and aggressive…

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That’s not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. “Jeeze, 230 pounds!” But you can’t pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters–all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs–think so too.

Ahh, it’s like mouthwash for libertarians. Read it.

h/t: Sideways Menken

Nevertheless, when the Republicans or Democrats win an election, their respective hardcore bases demand that their party govern from the ideological edges. Both sides like to claim that winning elections prove the nation has demanded ideological leadership and that a failure to provide such leadership will end in the party’s defeat.

Wrong.

The opposite is demonstrably true. Governing from the ideological edges guarantees failure.

And that brings us to the second thing hardcore partisans often fail to understand: elections are determined by the mushy middle — that amorphous collection of independents, malcontents, imbeciles and the indolent who swing their vote from side to side based primarily on which party is delivering the goods and which party isn’t.

There must be nothing more annoying for hardcore partisans than to realize that the fate of their governing power rests in the hands of people who flip-flop between the parties and can’t make up their minds until a few weeks before an election. How in the world is it that the direction of our nation is continually decided by those with little to no ideology?

Well, the fact is, many Americans see government as primarily a service provider. It builds roads. Protects us from enemies and catastrophes. Makes sure there is a level playing field by enforcing laws. The bread-and-butter things that parties either do well or do poorly.

The mushy middle is not like hardcore partisan ideologues who see government as primarily a means to change society and the nation itself. For these ideologues, the providing of services is secondary to the achievement of transformative goals, whether those be the establishment of socialism or the enforcing of Christian law or the abolishment of government itself (to give a few extreme examples).

That’s not to say that there is no place for transformative ideas or ideology in government. That’s just to say that ideologues typically make for bad managers. And bad managers lose elections.

If hardcore partisans on either side want to retain power, they need more self awareness. They need to see the negative consequences of their ideas and address those failures rather than wishing them away. That’s one reason why John McCain’s tax argument failed. Supply-side economics, for all its validity, creates some negative consequences. But hardcore Republicans refuse to acknowledge such problems and, as a result, they lost credibility with the mushy middle who care far less about the creep of socialism and far more about how they’re going to pay the bills this month.

Hardcore Democrats hoping for profound change on an ideological level, should take heed of the lessons of the past. They have the power to make some sweeping changes. But if they neglect the basic responsibilities of governing or ignore the negative consequences of their ideas, the new Democratic age will be a short one indeed.

As Barack Obama continues to attract throngs of supporters and polls keep indicating he will win by a more than comfortable margin, I find myself wondering how much of the Obama phenomenon is simply a massive rejection of President Bush and how much is an honest-to-God shift in our political culture.

On one hand, the Obama campaign is as much a successful marketing effort as anything else – with its on-target branding, flawless stagecraft, massive ad buys, media relations and air of inevitability, this is not just one of the finest political campaigns I’ve witnessed, but one of the finest marketing campaigns of the last decade.

That said, I also think something more profound is going on here. When Obama defeated Hillary Clinton, his victory represented the ascendancy of a new generation of Democrats – international in their mores, savvy with technology and organized in a way the left rarely is. Recently, I serendipitously labeled Obama an iDemocrat. That label seems about right for his core supporters too.

In my admittedly nascent theory, iDemocrats are the left’s version of value voters. Except rather than valuing the ideals of America’s heartland and rural areas, they value the ideals of the coasts and big cities where government interventionalism is high and international-style multiculturalism is prevalent. Sure, they care about the concerns of traditional lunch-pail Democrats but, make no mistake, the iDemocrats aren’t your father’s liberals. They’re not an offshoot of a labor movement. They’re an offshoot of globalization and all the integrations of culture, technology and liberal ideas that represents.

That’s what makes Obama’s presidency potentially more than just a return to New Deal/Great Society liberalism. Obama is a step forward for Democrats. The question is: is the step in the right direction?

What do you think? Am I way off base or is there something to this?

Circulating the wires today is a 2001 Barack Obama radio interview clip concerning wealth redistribution. As with all things political, your perspective and your prejudices will determine your interpretation of this clip.

Some see it as no big deal. Others see it as proof that Obama is all but a Marxist.

I understand the right’s desire to turn this clip into the smoking gun proof that Obama is going to seize our wealth and turn us all into comrades. I think many on the right have convinced themselves that such a nefarious goal is “the truth” about Obama and see evidence of that truth in every Obama utterance, much like many on the left tend to see every George W. Bush move as an attempt to enrich his cronies and advance theocracy.

There’s plenty of reasons to be concerned by Obama’s tricky tax plan, but I’m not going to play along with this “Obama’s a socialist/Marxist” nonsense.

First of all, the clip in question is an intellectual discussion not a policy debate. In many instances, Obama is speaking theoretically. When he does directly address his own philosophies, one of the clear points he makes is a major positive: he believes change should come through the democratic means of legislation rather than the manipulation of courts and the misuse of the Constitution.

On the matter of wealth redistribution, he’s clearly in favor of it. But why is this a surprise? Equality is the central tenet of liberalism. Universal health care. Affirmative action. Gay rights. Welfare. Minimum wage. Labor laws. Hate speech laws. Progressive taxation. They’re all attempts to equalize us. When handled responsibly, the drive for equality promotes a necessary level of fairness within our society. When handled with too much fervency, the drive can trample other rights and lead us towards distasteful moral equivalencies and, ultimately, the kind of totalitarianism spawned by communism.

So, the concern isn’t that Obama supports redistribution of wealth (both parties support it to varying degrees). The concern is with how much redistribution he supports. Are his goals within the American mainstream or are they radical? While I’m sure many believe Obama is hiding his true objectives, I’d argue that his platform gives us as clear a picture as we’re likely to get of how much redistribution Obama desires. And, I gotta say, as much as I dislike the messiness of his tax credits, Obama isn’t suggesting any radical moves. Could he support something more onerous once in office? Sure. But, even with a Democratic majority, there’s little likelihood that anything radical will get through the legislative process.

I think it’s important to note that, like all mainstream American liberals, when Obama talks about redistribution, he’s talking about equality of income. He wants what liberals always want: for the government to give a helping hand to the poor and for the government to place various restrictions on the rich to keep them from centralizing too much of our nation’s wealth.

This is not a radical philosophy. If Obama had used words like “income fairness” or even “wealth equality,” the radio clip in question would have remained on whatever shelf it was found. But “redistribution” sounds scary. It’s this election’s bogeyman word and some are going to keep treating the radio clip like the smoking gun that proves Obama’s wicked plans. As for me, I think I’ll assume the more likely scenario: Obama is a liberal.

Shocking. But true.

Will he be “at war” with his base or “at war” with the nation?

If he wants to be a two termer, he’ll be at war with his base.

What do you think?

Need a woman’s point-of-view this election season? How about two? CitizenSugar provides readers with an entertaining look at breaking news, politics, and the most hotly debated issues.

Featuring summaries of the day’s headlines, profiles of newsmakers and the people behind their success, discussions of the issues that matter most to women, and a regular look at the intersection of Hollywood and the Hill, CitizenSugar provides readers with the Sugar Network’s unique mix of editorial and user-generated content. CitizenSugar is a conversation and conversation-starter, and we’re set to bring that conversation to Donklephant!

Two distinct voices lead the discussion on the site: Citizen and Liberty.

Citizen is a a true compassionate conservative with a major interest in humanitarian issues in Africa, India, and beyond. She’s a pragmatic conservative, small-town farm-girl-turned vegan, not afraid to shoot straight.

Liberty, a San Francisco native, defends the progressive principles she believes in, like tolerance, civil liberties, diplomacy, and government transparency.  Liberty also loves to compare how different cultures and countries address societal concerns, such as treatment of women.

Tomorrow night Citizen and Liberty will each tell you who they think won the final debate right here on Donklephant.

Stay tuned!

Perhaps my temperament is due to the simple fact that I grew up a Democrat in a profoundly Republican town. Rage was useless. The only hope I had of joining a political discussion was to speak reasonably and acknowledge the intelligence of my opponents. When such niceties were impossible, I learned to hold my tongue.

During the Bill Clinton years, I was profoundly turned off by the unceasing Republican attacks on Clinton, particularly the most scurrilous rumors spread by talk-show hosts. I came to believe that Republicans were uniquely gifted at proliferating hate. My response was to not vote for a single Republican between 1994 and 2001.

Then something radically changed my view.

I moved to Washington, DC and came face-to-face with the underbelly of my own “side.” During the first four years of George W. Bush’s presidency, I saw a level of hate and anger that shocked me. From enraged marches to hateful signs hung on lampposts to casually spewed vitriol at cocktail parties, I discovered that unhinged partisanship and blind hate is not a disease congenital to only one party or one political leaning.

By late 2004, I had become an independent for a variety of reasons, not least of which was my inability to continue tolerating the hatefulness on my own side. Then I joined the blogosphere in early 2005 as one of the few “centrist” voices and encountered a noise-storm of hate that made my personal DC experiences seem like a tea party. Much of the animosity emanated from the left in a desperate and unyielding attempt to portray Bush and his Republican colleagues as the largest bunch of crooks, thieves and murderers to ever lead a nation. I quickly learned that going against leftwing orthodoxy was the surest way to get my comments stuffed with hate-you-grams.

Interestingly (predictably, even), that intense level of vitriol quieted some after the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006. It even quieted in the lead-up to that election as the usual instigators busied themselves with the very real possibility of victory. Now that Barack Obama looks poised to take the White House and complete the total Democratic takeover of the U.S. Government, I have a hard time finding examples of truly hateful lefty speech, except here-and-there in comment sections and at the fringes where even Obama is considered part of the American imperialist conspiracy.

Suddenly, when it comes to partisan anger, we’re talking about unhinged John McCain supporters. I’d like to think that this rightwing nuttiness is just a temporary loss of bearings due to the election. But I’m afraid the modern political landscape is too ripe with fervent partisanship to avoid the kind of impotent rage from the right that we so recently saw from the left. In my most cynical moments, I’m afraid the shouts at McCain rallies are just the tip of the iceberg.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re reaching a fatigue moment where the over-emotionalism of the last decade-and-a-half will quiet down. Maybe with an economic slump and a better-executed war abroad, we can exile the hate to the fringes where it belongs. And maybe Obama will surprise the hell out of me and actually be a uniter. Whatever happens, I’ll still be one of those annoying independents telling people to simmer down and trying not to get upset every time I’m accused of false equivalencies. Because, the thing is, hate is destructive, whether it’s just a little bit of hate or a whole lot of hate. And if you’re not speaking against it, you’re tolerating it.

Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind today.

Virginia for the first time in 40 years is up for grabs.

… do you know how John McCain pays for his $5,000 tax credit you’re going to get, a family will get? He taxes as income every one of you out there, every one of you listening who has a health care plan through your employer. That’s how he raises $3.6 trillion, on your — taxing your health care benefit to give you a $5,000 plan, which his Web site points out will go straight to the insurance company. And then you’re going to have to replace a $12,000 — that’s the average cost of the plan you get through your employer — it costs $12,000. You’re going to have to pay — replace a $12,000 plan, because 20 million of you are going to be dropped. Twenty million of you will be dropped. So you’re going to have to place — replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the “Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.”

The thing is, Biden wasn’t telling the whole story. In fact he his statement was very misleading. He made it sound like Americans will be shortshrifted their health care, as employers dump their health care plans and force Americans to have to buy health care with very little help from the government.

Now, I do think there is a lot to be desired in McCain’s plan. For one, I don’t know if will help ensure the nearly 50 million currently without any health insurance. But Biden’s assessment of the plan is at best, misleading.

Writing in the New Atlantis, Joseph Capreta explains in pretty clear terms how the plan would work:

Suppose a worker gets $50,000 in cash wages and $12,000 in health insurance.

Right now, he pays federal income taxes on the wages but not the health insurance. Let’s assume, for reasons of simplicity, that the tax rate he is paying is a flat 25% on his wages. He therefore pays $12,500 in federal income taxes. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $37,500.

Now, under the McCain plan, his employer keeps paying the premium, which is now counted as income to the worker. He therefore pays federal income taxes on $62,000, or $15,500.

But he also gets a tax credit of $5,000 for health insurance, which means that, all in all, he owes $10,500 in federal taxes, or $2,000 less than he does today. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $39,500.

If the worker decides to buy his insurance in the open market instead of through the employer, the result will be the same. His employer is indifferent to how he pays his worker as long as total costs are the same. So instead of paying premiums, the employer pays his worker $62,000 in cash wages and does not pay anything toward insurance. The worker again owes $15,500 in taxes on this compensation, and he also must buy health insurance costing $12,000. So, his pre-tax income is $62,000, he owes $12,000 in health insurance premiums, and he owes $10,500 in federal taxes (after claiming his credit). His after-tax, after-health-care income is the same: $39,500 ($62,000 – $12,000 – $10,500), or $2,000 more than today.

So Biden was being very simplistic in saying that people’s taxes go up and we get a measly $5000 check. Yes, taxes would go up because wages would go up. However, the tax credit would help offset some of the tax bite. Ross Douthat explains a bit better than I ever could:

This is an argument you hear frequently from liberals: That McCain’s plan will tax employer provided health insurance, which is worth roughly $12,000 for a typical family, which in turn will lead many employers to stop offering said health insurance; meanwhile, the plan will give the same family a tax credit worth only $5,000 to pay for the same plan they used to have through their employer. This makes the whole thing sound like a pretty rotten deal, but it also begs a pretty big question: What happened to that extra $7,000 that employers were spending on health care under the old dispensation? To hear Biden tell it, it’ll just vanish into thin air. But that’s just absurd. Right now, that $12,000 plan is part of your compensation; it’s just that the current tax code incentivizes employers to pay you in health insurance rather than in cash, because the health insurance is tax free. But that doesn’t mean that if health insurance stops being tax free and employers stop including it in your package of salary and benefits, they’ll suddenly cut everyone’s compensation by $12,000; they’ll cut it by the cost of the tax deduction, presumably, and wages will rise to roughly where they would have been if employers had never been incentivized to pay their workers in health care. So the typical family will get their $5,000 credit from the government, and something like the remaining $7,000 they need to buy health insurance will show up in their paycheck. Except that a lot of Americans will actually come out ahead, rather than just breaking even, since McCain’s plan offers a flat credit regardless of income, whereas under the current system the dollar value of your tax deduction – and thus the compensation your employer is incentivized to give you – goes up as your income rises.

As I said before, there are some good reservations about McCain’s plan. It’s just that the concern that Biden brought up, just isn’t one of them.

Greenwald’s screed reads practically like satire, but since he’s got all the humor of a slab of granite, he’s clearly decided that defeat equals victory. Why? Because Greenwald sees the Blue Dog Democrats as enablers of George Bush and the evil Republican empire. The fact that a conservative Democrat is far more liberal than, say, a mainstream Republican completely escapes Greenwald. Since Blue Dogs don’t follow lockstep with the hard-left agenda, they are the enemy.

Here’s Greenwald in his own words:

Democratic leaders must learn that they cannot increase their majority in Congress by trampling on the political values of their own base. It’s crucial that they understand that they will not gain seats, but will lose seats, the more they accommodate the right’s agenda. That, in turn, will happen only if progressives target for defeat selected members of the Democratic caucus who are responsible for that right-wing-enabling behavior. That is the only way to eliminate the incentive for the Democratic leadership to continue to follow the strategy of increasing their own power by mimicking Republicans. Those who disagree with that — who object that it is oh-so-terrible to cause the defeat of any Democratic incumbents, no matter how complicit and irrelevant — have the responsibility to identify what alternative strategy they think should be pursued in order to alter the behavior of the Democratic Party in Congress.

Greenwald has every right to pursue his own political agenda and use the mechanisms of our electoral system to do so. But if he thinks starting a civil war within the Democrats will improve the party’s image and ability to get things done, he’s clearly entered an alternative universe.

Conservative Democrats are moderates. They aren’t radicals. And, sure, they are more likely to collude with Republicans than progressives but America needs its non-partisans, its members of Congress who represent mainstream predilections as well as the mainstream’s resistance to radical change.

Getting rid of Blue Dog Democrats won’t improve Congress. Getting rid of corrupt politicians just might.

Maybe Greenwald should start there.

While Keith Olbermann is on vacation, Rachel Maddow is filling in. In general I think this has been a trade-up. I like Maddow. Don’t agree with her most of the time, but I like the way she thinks. However, when a journalist television personality decides to crawl in the bag with a political candidate, it is apparently required that said personality must twist themselves into an intellectual knot on the air in defense of their object of affection. It does not matter if it is Rush Limbaugh carrying water for big spending, big deficit, big government Republicans under GWB, or the regularly scheduled Keith Olbermann and Jonathon Alter Obama Infomercial. Maddow’s broadcast on Monday was another case in point.

I agree with Alan’s post, that the cover is not the real story. The real story is the reaction to the cover by Obama, his campaign, his supporters, and the attitudes betrayed by the reaction. As always, the tone is set at the top, with staff and supporters taking their cues from the leadership. Obama’s reaction:

“ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports that when he was asked about the controversial cover during a press avail today, Obama shrugged and then said, “I have no response to that.”

Think how differently this story evolves if Obama instead looks at cover, laughs out loud, says “That’s great. They missed a few points, where is Reverend Wright?” But he did not say that. Instead we get an official Obama spokesman taking offense, and earnest Obama supporters go into high dudgeon and pile on.

Rachel Maddow takes it to another level, saying:

Jonathon Alter then reprises his role as an accommodating sidekick fielding loaded questions from Rachel. I wanted to include the transcript here, but MSNBC has linked the wrong transcript to the July 14 show. Instead I am paraphrasing and interpreting the conversation between Maddow and Alter.

You can watch the actual video here, and tell me if I got it right:

MADDOW: Jonathon, Isn’t the real problem here that way too many Americans are too stupid to get the joke?
ALTER: Yes, Rachel, 13% of Americans are so stupid that they tell pollsters that they believe these lies, so there are consequences from an image like this and the New Yorker should have considered the consequences of stupid Americans seeing this image.
MADDOW: In that context do responsible journalists and commentators like us have a responsibility to explain to stupid Americans that Obama is not a Muslim every time this comes up?
ALTER: Yes Rachel, this is part of our responsibility – to take the time to refute these lies for all those low information (stupid) voters out there who are not paying attention. But it is still a problem because these voters are so stupid that they will just look at the picture, not get the joke, and not listen to us.

True to his word, Jonathon Alter dedicated his column yesterday to once again explaining to the stupid American voters that Barack Obama is not a Muslim and further explaining that the New Yorker cover is a big problem because Americans are too stupid to get the joke.

“… the New Yorker cover, now being displayed endlessly on cable TV, speaks louder than any efforts by Obama supporters to stop the smears… negative images burn their way into the consciousness of voters in ways that cannot be erased by facts. With one visual move, the magazine undid months of pro-Obama coverage in its pages.”

Look, I have no problem with Alter’s thesis (reinforced in Alan’s post here) – that the “Obama is a Muslim” lie must be challenged, confronted and corrected in the strongest possible terms. I have done so myself at DWSUWF and at Donklephant and will continue to do so.

But perhaps Maddow and Alter, and other Obama supporters wringing their hands about the 12-13% of “low-information” voters who might be influenced if they accidentally see the cover should consider another possibility. Perhaps these voters are not all ignorant and stupid. Consider what Craig Crawford said on MSNBC a few hours later –

David Shuster, substituting for Dan Abrams on “Verdict!” joined those on the left who are hand-wringing about the same poll, when Craig Crawford floated the right answer:

SHUSTER: “…there is some new polling from “Newsweek” that underscores Obama‘s potential problem. Twelve percent think he‘s a Muslim and 12 percent say he used the Koran for a Senate swearing in ceremony, 39 percent believe he attended an Islamic school in Indonesia, while 26 percent think he was raised a Muslim. None of those are true. Craig Crawford, how, in your view, should Obama address this?”
CRAIG CRAWFORD, MSNBC ANALYST: “…But, as far as the percentages of people believing he‘s a Muslim, he‘s got time, he‘s just got to keep making the case, putting those speeches out there, and talking about his faith, and trying to deal with it. I‘m not sure a lot of this people actually believe this. I think they just don‘t like him and don‘t like to say it.“

Bingo. Here is the real “joke” – While there are indeed wingnuts on the right who really believe that Obama was a Muslim, or that he is the Anti-Christ, or he is an Islamic “Manchurian Candidate”, or whatever stupid thing they want to worry about today, it is entirely possible that most of that 12% in the poll do not really believe it. They just like messing with the pollsters and left wing pundits who get their panties in a bunch whenever they read polls like this. And if that is the case, the real joke is on condescending pundits like Alter and Maddow who are so so concerned about the impact a magazine cover might have on these “low-information” voters.

Jonathon, Rachel – Relax.

They’re just messing with you.

Post Script: Should you think that the attitude to voters betrayed by Maddow and Alter are an exception, consider the comments to Alan’s earlier post here, here and here. Of course, not everyone on the left feels that way. Tom Watson, Gawker and Jon Swift get it (intelligently and amusingly) right.

^{Excerpted and x-posted from two posts at “Divided We Stand United We Fall“}

Morris makes a good point and he could end up being right, but it’s important to remember that the Democratic Congress of 1993 and the one we’ll have in 2009 are two very different entities. First of all, the 1993 Democrats were on their last gasps of power and full of so much corruption and indolence that the current lackluster Dems look like virtuous go-getters in comparison.

Secondly, as Democrats have learned to pick up “red” seats, their coalition has begun to include more-and-more representatives and senators who are by no means “liberal.” Congress may end up being solidly Democratic but that doesn’t mean it will be solidly liberal. Obama, if he chooses to be a centrist leader, could cobble together the votes necessary to push through his agenda rather than being forced into a liberal one.

Of course, this assumes Obama is a centrist, which is far from proven. That’s why one-party governance is always risky. The lure of the ideological fringes is often too great for the party in power to resist.

Divided government, although often fraught with gridlock, usually produces more tempered and pragmatic results. I’m not sure John McCain wants to run on “a vote for me is a vote for divided government” but since we can assume Congress will be Democratic we can also assume that a McCain administration will, if anything, be unable to pursue a rightwing agenda with as much ease as Obama could pursue a leftwing one.

If the goal is to keep the government as close to the center as possible, a McCain presidency combined with a Democratic Congress could be our best option. Of course, that assumes McCain would be willing to compromise rather than try to seize as much executive power as possible. But that’s a post for another day.

Here we go again. On Wednesday Olbermann completed a pair of remarkably similar and truly jaw-dropping contradictory broadcasts on the issue of FISA, telecom immunity, and of course, Obama’s support for same.

Glenn Greenwald called him on it in his Thursday column “Keith Olbermann: Then and Now“, and kicked off a left field food fight in the process. I’ve quoted Glenn extensively in my exchange with Justin on FISA this week, so thought this might be of interest here:

“On January 31 of this year, Keith Olbermann donned his most serious face and most indignant voice tone to rail against George Bush for supporting telecom immunity and revisions to FISA. In a 10-minute “Special Comment,” the MSNBC star condemned Bush for wanting to “retroactively immunize corporate criminals,” and said that telecom immunity is “an ex post facto law, which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive and blatant collaboration with [Bush's] illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass email.” Olbermann added that telecom amnesty was a “shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism — the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government.”… Strong and righteous words indeed. But that was five whole months ago, when George Bush was urging enactment of a law with retroactive immunity and a lessening of FISA protections. Now that Barack Obama supports a law that does the same thing — and now that Obama justifies that support by claiming that this bill is necessary to keep us Safe from the Terrorists — everything has changed. Last night, Olbermann invited Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter onto his show to discuss Obama’s support for the FISA and telecom amnesty bill (video of the segment is here). There wasn’t a syllable uttered about “immunizing corporate criminals” or “textbook examples of Fascism” or the Third Reich. There wasn’t a word of rational criticism of the bill either. Instead, the two media stars jointly hailed Obama’s bravery and strength — as evidenced by his “standing up to the left” in order to support this important centrist FISA compromise…”

No need to add to Greenwald’s analysis, but I will state that in my unbiased opinion, Olbermann’s exhibition was one of the most egregious displays of gratuitous world-class journalistic ass-kissing I have ever seen. I can’t figure out how to embed the videos here, but they are both in my x-post at “Divided We Stand United We Fall” if you want to see them side by side.

Glenn’s concluding comments:

“What’s much more notable is Olbermann’s full-scale reversal on how he talks about these measures now that Obama — rather than George Bush — supports them. On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it’s proof that Obama won’t “cower.” Grave warning on Olbermann’s show that telecom amnesty and FISA revisions were hallmarks of Bush Fascism instantaneously transformed into a celebration that Obama, by supporting the same things, was leading a courageous, centrist crusade in defense of our Constitution. Is that really what anyone wants — transferring blind devotion from George Bush to Barack Obama? Are we hoping for a Fox News for Obama, that glorifies everything he says and whitewashes everything he does?”

This is where it gets interesting. Keith Olbermann then posts a diary on Kos to defend himself:

“I don’t know much about Mr. Greenwald and I didn’t read his full piece, but I do know that the snippet he’s taken out of the transcript of my conversation with Jon Alter last night makes it sound like I was saying defying the left was a good thing. I was actually contrasting it to not cowering to the Republicans, simply as a different thing. Same point, in essence, tonight with John Harwood. It certainly does underscore the degree to which the presumptive nominee trusts his own mind. Did Mr. Greenwald note that I asked if we shouldn’t worry that this Obamaian certainty could turn into something like President “My Way Or The Highway” Bush, or did he leave that out? I do think Mr. Greenwald’s suggestion of some kind of betrayal on my part is simplistic and childish. I’ll take the Dean interpretation of this. If it isn’t the Senator’s game plan, he’ll catch hell from me about it later.”

So - It is on. But in this battle of intellects, I’m afraid that Olbermann brought a knife to a gunfight. Greenwald replies today:

“Olbermman then denies that he was justifying Obama’s support for the FISA bill but then goes on to do exactly that:

“Seriously, there is little in the polls to suggest McCain has anything to run with other than terror . . . . So why hand them a brick to hit him with — Obama Voted Against FISA — if voting Aye enhances his chances of getting himself his own Attorney General to prosecute FISA.” – KO

How can Olbermann accuse me of distorting his commentary and deny that he’s rationalizing Obama’s support for the bill and then write the above — which does nothing but justify Obama’s support for the bill? That’s exactly the mentality I was criticizing yesterday — that Obama should be excused for supporting this assault on core Constitutional liberties and the rule of law because doing so is necessary to avoid appearing Weak on Terrorism. That’s the behavior which Obama has repeatedly vowed to reject, and it’s that precise mentality that has to be extinguished, not perpetuated. What is most disturbing here is that people (including Olbermann) who for so long have vehemently criticized Democratic leaders for capitulating to Bush and trampling on the Constitution out of fear of looking “Weak” are now invoking that very excuse to justify what Obama is doing here (that’s what Olbermann explicitly did in his Kos reply). To excuse Obama’s conduct on that basis is to perpetuate Democratic complicity. Obama had — and will continue to have — a critical opportunity to reject and debunk that rancid framework, and it is his embrace of that framework here (”I’m going to give Bush what he wants and trample on the Constitution in order to avoid being ‘weak’”) that makes what Obama has done here so harmful and worthy of criticism.”

Heh. Your turn Keith.