Bob Cesca


The way these last several weeks have shaped up, the dark ride of the Bush years seems as though it's fixing to get darker with every passing, sweltering day.

It's smothering us, yet it remains mostly unspoken probably because we're being presently digested in the belly of it: The Summer of 2008 -- what I'm beginning to refer to as The Summer of Awful -- is shaping up to be one of those cinematic blocks of time that's sure to become the epic setting of books and movies of the future. The heat, the floods, the gas prices, the stock market, the unemployment, the foreclosures, the Olympics in China, the tainted tomatoes, the wild fires, the torture, the eavesdropping, the war, the vanishing Arctic... All of it magnified by this historical presidential campaign. The Summer of Awful. I can't recall a summer in recent memory more overpopulated by history and awfulness and insanity -- stacked up to our eyeballs and so directly impacting each of us on some very personal level.

And so the last thing many of us were prepared to do was to spend what little emotional capital we have left on consternation and hand-wringing with regards to our once-in-a-generation candidate: Senator Obama.

The recent succession of centrist maneuvers by our presumptive nominee has been, in a word, flummoxing. Honestly, I found myself -- a vocal blogotubes Obama partisan since December -- massaging my temples while exhaling, WTF? Simultaneously confounded and disappointed by some of his recent remarks on trade, FISA and faith-based initiatives.

On my day-to-day blog, you can almost bar-graph my blood pressure based on my immediate reactions to these events. He can't really be in favor of this crapwitted FISA Amendments Bill, can he? Did he really just praise the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? Greenwald and Olbermann are feuding? Seriously? Will we be forced to do that which we were dreading had Senator Clinton been the nominee; that is, defend our candidate on non-issues like calculation and triangulation and capitulation? Say it ain't so, O!

It occurred to me, however, that I lost sight of an important variable in all of this. When I wrote my endorsement of Senator Obama in this space back in December, I made note of the fact that I didn't necessarily agree with him on every issue. This was of course another way of saying, He's not as liberal as I am, but I don't care.

Really, though, who ever agrees with a politician on everything all the time anyway? Watching the brilliant (and too short) John Adams miniseries this year, we were reminded that even the founders were contradictory and often frustratingly inconsistent -- many of us watching and wondering, for example, how a colossus of liberty could have signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Fast forward to 2004 when we had to choke down Senator Kerry's Iraq authorization vote, not to mention his support for faith-based initiatives. Carrying this argument further, a diarist for Daily Kos reminds us:

Russ Feingold may have been the lone voice standing up to the first Patriot Act, but he voted for the confirmations of John Ashcroft and John Roberts.


Paul Wellstone was a strong liberal voice in the Senate, yet he voted for DOMA and the Patriot Act.

Dennis Kucinich, aside from being on the political fringe, was a lifelong pro-lifer until he decided he wanted to run for president.

Chris Dodd may do quite well on constitutional matters, but he voted for the Iraqi war, the Patriot Act, and is too beholden to the big banks and the hedge funds which he oversees from the Senate Banking Committee.

You and I could wait a lifetime for a skeleton key presidential nominee to come along who flawlessly interfaces with each of our pet issues, and, consequently, we'd probably die a politically disappointed and overly cynical death.

What attracted me to Senator Obama's candidacy wasn't that he was going to evolve into some kind of liberal messiah who I would agree with all the time. He never really made any promises of that sort, and it was clear -- especially to Kucinich and Edwards supporters -- that Senator Obama wasn't entirely in line with what are generally considered to be netroots or progressive causes. Rather, he's always been the pragmatic liberal whose every slogan and statement -- often employing the collective pronoun "we" -- seeks common ground between deep blue and blood red. He's the liberal who this week, while simultaneously reaching out to evangelical voters, issued an unequivocal statement of opposition against any constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. That's textbook Obama.

After I read the letter of support he sent to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, I remembered why I chose to support the senator's campaign -- and why it evolved into an enthusiasm for a politician that I've never quite experienced in my adult life. So why then...? In the simplest terms possible, choosing to support Senator Obama has never been about issues, but rather, it's always been about, 1) electing a thoughtful, smart president we can reference with pride -- a president who won't flatly embarrass us every damn day, and 2) electing a president who can inspire and negotiate the necessary support he'll need to roll back the darkness of the Bush years.

To that effect, and even though there are many who come close, I can't name another presidential-quality politician who's shown himself to be better suited to achieve these broad goals. Despite how we feel about individual issues like FISA or NAFTA, I think most of us with liberal or progressive tendencies can agree that we have a candidate here who is going to succeed on these challenges, while potentially forming a long-range coalition of support that could one day result in a purely progressive netroots candidate.

Those of us who have been strapped into this dark ride -- arms and legs locked into the tram, following these crimes and scandals and unconstitutional measures for too long... we've been damaged a little. We've been round-house kicked in the throat once too often. Sometimes by members of our own party. So it makes sense when some of us express shock or disillusionment at the actions of a politician regardless of their party affiliation. Besides, there's nothing wrong with criticizing the friendlies (though we're told that, politically, it might be wiser to keep our powder dry until after Senator McBush is soundly defeated). But what has served to keep me sane during these last weeks -- or saner -- has been the broad-stroke recollection of why, irrespective of the finer points, I decided to back this guy named Barack Obama for president in the first place.

If we're able to deliver the mandate he'll require in November -- which means a solid electoral college victory and expectations-defying down-ballot victories -- Senator Obama will help to vindicate our long-suffering, dark ride generation and, thusly, our time in American history -- a time that seems to be so perfectly summarized in thumbnail-form by this current Summer of Awful. If we can keep our attention focused on the big ideas that attracted us to the senator in the first place, he will make us proud.


Link

I hope all the "told you so's" and nihilists on this board read this.
I sent it out on my mailing list, which includes a half dozen local and state wide Obama lists.

Sky, it is interesting that many out there don't realize that in order to win the presidency, you have to do and say certain things. As much as we might hate it, and i do hate it, Obama has to play the game. Just because he got nominated doesn't mean he changed the entire system. Combine that with the fact that he has never been liberal on every issue. Think about his "faith based" plan. That is the kind of stuff he has been setting up in chicago since the early 1990's. This isn't a new position by him.

My dad and brother are a good example of people who have been bashing obama for the last few weeks. It is getting annoying. Just today they were saying "why is he out there talking about religion and his faith? He shouldn't be talking about that stuff at all." And what then? He loses the election, plain and simple. I would love it if he didn't have to talk about religion but he does. Also i hear people saying that he is having a tough time and making a lot of mistakes. I doubt that. I get the feeling everything he has said in the past two weeks are part of his big plan. It is hard to believe the man who ran a flawless primary campaign would suddenly start f*cking up at every turn against a much weaker general election candidate. There are certain things the man is going to have to do and i think a lot of people will be happier when they realize it. Yes it sucks and it is the sign of a broken political system but if he doesn't play the game, he won't win. Getting him elected is worth having to cringe on occasion by the things he must do.

I have for sometime now refered to politics as "a chess game"

It seems like a lot of the people who are actually bitching about this are not the original obama supporters but the clinton supporters who now back obama. They seem to be the ones who are buying into this crap about his flip flopping. There is a lot of "told you so" going on in the world of liberal blogs. Oh well, they will get over it.

And this is a good thing. Get it all out, on the table, and discuss it openly.
Have Obama do what Obama does best and remove the fuse from every spin bomb.

True. As i have said before, i think the man knows exactly what he is doing. Maybe he is trying to reemphasize positions early on, so no one thinks he is trying to "flip flop" in October. Just get it all out there right now, so people know where he is coming from. There are a lot of people out there who probably were paying no attention to his actual positions for the longest time because they supported another democratic candidate.

I was going to edit my last message to also say that a lot of the complaints seem to be coming from clinton supporters who clearly don't know Obama's positions on many issues. They probably weren't paying attention in the primaries and just had a superficial view of him. Now that they are, his real views are conflicting with the simplistic nature of their previous assessment. When a lot of them keep saying he is changing positions, many of us who have supported the man for along time seem unsure what they are talking about (and of course the right wing media is playing into this). But they will get used to it and they will vote. I have always thought they were going to sit around and pout for awhile, even if they are planning on voting for him as soon as clinton was out. This is probably all that is going on and their sulking will end sooner or later.

It's also a relatively slow news day

A slow week i suppose. Thankfully there appears to be a growing backlash to these stories. The NYT ran two op-eds today talking about how obama is a flip flopping fake or whatever, and people on the huffington post and the DU seem pretty outraged about it. Perhaps that is obama's plan? Get his people fired up, which seems to be happening, and let the right wing/media attack erroneously for being a flip flopper, so they can't use the line later?

Perhaps i am over analyzing this but it seems his strategies are always far more complicated than they seem at first. I'm trying to figure out what he is up to.


What sucks for me, is usually i can talk to my dad about this stuff but anytime i bring up Obama, all he wants to talk about is the FISA thing. I'll say he is ahead in montana and he will say "is he still supporting the FISA bill?!" The guy needs to shut the f*ck up about that.

Well, bring your dad over to the computer, sit him down and have him watch this. Again if need be.
In particular, pay very close attention to the second half, all the way to the end.

You might tell them to look at the polls.

Very true. The man continues to slowly trend upward as mccain has stayed stagnant in the polls for the past four weeks. And as for the state polls, McCain is losing red states by the day, while the Kerry states are solidly behind Obama. I find it strange when people say obama is not able to pull away from McCain and close the deal. A 6-7 point lead over another presidential candidate is very high, especially as the polls start becoming more and more reliable as July pushes on. Whatever Obama is doing seems to be working.

There really isn't any potential down side for Obama on his move to the center. Leftists will bitch, but they won't vote Nader, and they won't vote mccain. They'll be unhappy about this the entire time, but they won't stay home, and they won't elect someone else. It's a sane pragmatic campaign move to court those conservatives dissafected by the hell that the hard right has raised, and haven't recieved anything for their votes over the last eight years but increasing pain. He had a small majority moving into the general campaign, and he won't lose a single voter due to this shift.

I think Olberman said several good things in the rant I posted.


One is that bottom line, the most important thing, is that there be no republican in the white house after Jan.
Also, that democratic win be so astounding, so over whelming that this alone will give the new agenda momentum.

It's gonna take some serious magic to roll back the 8 year efforts of the Bush cabal. Obama and his people are very smart and capable people. Unlike Bush, the people around Obama were chosen for their skills.

Personally, the more I see of Obama the less I trust him. In some ways I trust him less than I do McCain. At least with McCain we know what we'll be getting. Obama is the most two-faced candidate I think I have seen, whose views and positions shift from day to day. Some people think that anyone who is not a Republican is A-Ok, but that is not the case. We have to look at who we are putting into office.

I feel dismayed by this candidate.

Frankly, i'm not at all surprised.
You can safely vote for McSame knowing full well that he won't win.



But let's back up a tab or two.
Please AFW, would you be more specific what it is about Obama that seems to cause you such angst?