Obama Repeat
In a way, this is the only question I have for Barack Obama, and I won’t go back to it because I keep repeating it ad naseum of this blog. Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy Kos suddenly popped up with it, but I have something to say about how Kos frames it.
This question still requires an answer:
Sharpton went on to criticize Obama on other issues, including his relationship with Sen. Joe Lieberman, who’s controversial within the Democratic Party.
“Senator Obama and I agree that the war is wrong, but then I want to know why he went to Connecticut and helped Lieberman, the biggest supporter of the war,” Sharpton told TV.
Obama talks a great “anti-Iraq War” game. But when he had a chance to help do something about it — help get rid of its biggest cheerleader in the Senate, he decided to campaign for Lieberman instead.
Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.
It is impossible not to be cynical about this, and I can refer to a book I referred to yesterday, Walter Karp’s Indispensable Enemies on politicos taking a stance on an issue and then supporting someone with very different stances onto committee chairs, thus always being able to take a popular position while propagating the other — wittingly sometimes, other times not.
Here the problem is mostly ingratiating oneself into a Good Old Boys Network of the Senate. It is a funny power game, that, and whatever reason Obama had to toss his chips in with the networks behind Lieberman he choose it.
But what pops out at me about kos’s entry here is a rather striking bit of impotence with even this here Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy.
Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.
And what are you going to do about it? Understand, Obama has just raised a record amount over the blogosphere and has taken another turn in the evolution of blog-land — the “Facebook campaign” which is he seems to be reaching to something other than the “hardcore” of the Deaniac-types (think of it as the rockstar element — Oprah? Best seller books? And he’s so… clean and articulate!) in raising this record funds. He has reached a different audience here, there’s some other gate that has been stormed by someone else, and we go from there.