You can feel the end even as we start.
Anybody out there remember what it’s like to be disappointed by a president? Instead of, you know, mortally embarrassed? Outraged? Terrified?
God, hes left as on aur oun.
Anybody out there remember what it’s like to be disappointed by a president? Instead of, you know, mortally embarrassed? Outraged? Terrified?
Well, yeah. Seven years ago.
I’d really like to believe that the getting along and the unilateral end of partisanship will mean that President Obama would use his bully pulpit to cut off the excesses of the partisanship is date rape dead enders.
That isn’t how it’s worked out so far.
I love the idea of Sen. Obama. Was a big partisan during his Senate race. I just get worried after a certain amount of keeping the powder dry that maybe instead of saving it for the big battle the candidate is hoarding dry powder.
I could be wrong to be concerned. I certainly hope I am. I’m tickled that people are coming into the process, and I think it’s terrific that those people are chosing a message and a man rather than an interchangeable Centrist Ken™
Still, it worries me that Sen. Obama has more than once used his bully pulpit to promote the DLC position in the Senate, and it worries me that I perceive his campaign as running against, well, me.
I truly don’t believe that those are unreasonable concerns, and it troubles me that a campaign built on lack of divisiveness would dismiss me for having them instead of, say, addressing them.
I should maybe strive to be less gnomic in such utterances? (Oh, but where’s the fun in that?)
If we must maintain a duopolistic oligarchy (as it seems we must), Obama’s about the best candidate out there for heading up the right-wing opposition to whatever party I’d most like to call home. (It would show we’d succeeded in dragging the overall Overton window leftwards a bit.) The unalloyed hope one sees drummed up in some corners of the Narrative (by Taibbi, of all people, pre-caucus) worries me a bit, and is another facet of the overall conversation on Hope (below, and elsewhere). —Does no one remember having their heart broken? (Of course they do; I hyperbolize.) (One of the most pettily frustrating aspects of the past 8 years has been hearing over and over again how because I’m of the Left, I must therefore have supported Clinton in every regard. Does no one remember the ’90s? Etc. etc.)
But I still fully expect the junta to declare martial law and cancel the election. What limit is left for them to test? —In that context, a return to a simmering 8-year temper-tantrum at the marginalization of the voices I know need to be heard seems like little more than disappointment. That’s about all the hope I can muster.