Barack Obama Diary, Oh.My.God!!!!

[sandnsea]

I think you guys are going to LOVE IT! No, it doesn't mention Senator Kerry's name at all, but it says so much of what we've been saying for months now.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/30/102745/165

[ginnyinWI]

1. it was very good

It could have come from JK himself--the ideas are the same, in my opinion. I've said it before--Obama is another JK in the making. He has brains, heart and the necessary gravitas to become a great statesman, and who knows, maybe president some day.

[LittleClarkie]

2. DailyKos is going apeshit though

They hate it. Hate, hate, hate.

[WildEyedLiberal]

3. Of course they do

Out of touch fuckwads. Let them alienate Kerry and Obama, and see how far it gets them.

[JI7]

5. what is their problem with Obama ?

and especially his letter ?

[LittleClarkie]

6. Okay, to be fair, as I looked at some of the diaries

I realized that many Kossacks appreciated Obama's comments and thanked him for coming. But there are starting to appear various diaries saying how disappointed they are in Obama, one who said he was disppointed in his fellow Kossacks for "sucking up" to Obama in his diary and various other expressions of disapproval.

The haters are calling him DLC-lite, basically. He's not even on the DLC list. Geez.

[sandnsea]

7. Basically, they can't fuckin' read

That and they're completely convinced that everybody thinks exactly like they do, or they're corporate whores or idiots. I can't believe how they distorted Obama's very sincere words and honest desire to begin mounting a real campaign to reclaim the Democratic Party and the country. That's why I keep begging them to go to the Green Party, at least then the country would know the difference between leftist zealots and Democrats.

[politicasista]

4. Nice diary. Too bad the haters will never get it

Thank you Barack. :yourock:

Thanks sandnsea for posting this. :hi:

[CBHagman]

8. A breath of fresh air.

It does my heart good to read that. Thanks for linking us up.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of our fellow DUers spend their whole lives divorcing spouses, dumping friends, and throwing martinis into the faces of anyone who dares differ with them. I wish everyone would just cool down and take a hard look at what it's really going to take to get the good stuff done. And if we want to get stuff done, we're going to need to expand the party, not shrink it, and work with GOP allies (Yes, Republican allies).

[TayTay]

9. This is absolutely true!

The best description of good politics that I ever heard was the one Tip O'Neill ued when he called it, "The art of the possible." That means that you have to find allies wherever you can and work the rooms. Sen. Obama is right to ask the left wing of the party to cool it and stop denigrating everyone who votes against a holy lefty goal. It's not helping.

The challenge to this group will come when Sen. Kerry works with Sen. McCain again on legislation. It will happen. We have very strong opinions on McCain in here, but you often have to cross the aisle and approach Repubs to get anythign done. (Real legislation that helps vets, maybe helps with funding issues which are a total mess right now and so forth.) Sen. Kennedy has crafted a bill with Sen. McCain on immigration reform. Not only is that a good idea in and of itself, but Kennedy is trying to take a Repub club out of their hands and prevent the 'thugs from beating us over the head with it next year. (The 'thugs have immigration as a point issue as well as their usual guns, gawd and gays.)

This is grownup politics and smart politics. The practitioners of the 'art of the possible' know this and know they have to sometimes do things that their base finds unsavory. That is where the art comes in.

[k j]

10. Right on...

Just completely (well, the faith-based comment could have been deleted in my opinion, LOL) right on point.

[Dr Ron]

11. Along these lines

I posted this at Democratic Daily (delayed due to server problems) and I do specifically compare the Roberts vote to Kerry and the IWR:

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=739

Litmus Tests and Democrats
October 1st, 2005

There’s plenty of talk in the blogosphere about whether we should tar-and-feather, castrate, or otherwise ostracize those Democrats who voted for Roberts. Some question if they can support someone for President in 2008 who voted for Roberts. Here we see the problem of litmus tests. If it was those right-leaning DLC’ers voting for Roberts, it might be easier, but we also had people like Russ Feingold voting yes.

The mistake being made by those agonizing over this question is in selecting the wrong litmus test. The real question in comparing candidates is not how they voted on confirmation of a justice nominated by the opposing party, but of what type of justice they would nominate if President.

There are many reasons beyond support for Roberts’ views which could explain why a liberal Democrat might have voted yes. They might feel lacking questions of competence, there were no grounds to vote no. They might see Roberts as preferable to an open right wing ideologue. They might feel that appearing reasonable to the public on this vote, where confirmation was inevitable, they place them in a better position to filibuster the replacement for O’Connor if necessary.

There certainly are reasons to argue with any of these rationals for voting for Roberts, but a disagreement on such issues of Parliamentary tactics is a poor reason to fail to support someone for President. What is important is that most (and hopefully all) of the Democrats who voted for Roberts would have never nominated someone such as Roberts if they were President. (Naturally any Democrat who would nominate someone like Roberts is not worthy of support, but fortunately Zell Miller is not a viable candidate for the 2008 nomination).

We saw a similar error in the blogosphere over the Iraq War Resolution. Some Democrats voted yes in order to support war under limited circumstances (if we were actually proven to be endangered by WMD) and to give Bush the leverage to get the UN inspectors back into Iraq. Such a yes vote did not indicate support for war if Bush failed to prove we were endangered by WMD. The real litmus test on Iraq was not over how someone voted on the IWR but whether they would have gone to war if President under the circumstances that Bush went to war. Some who voted for the IWR, such as John Kerry, pass the litmus test, having made it clear they opposed going to war in the absence of being threatened by WMD. The same might also be said of other Democrats who held the same position prior to the war as John Kerry, and would have voted the same at the time, but did not have to cast a vote. This includes Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Despite holding essentially the same position, we see a tremendous amount of Kerry bashing due to concentrating on a single ambiguous vote and not the Senator’s full position on an issue.

In both the Roberts vote and the IWR vote, concentrating on the issues that matter rather than on questions which are more a matter of Parliamentary tactics would help reduce some of the unnecessary division in the party.