Obama as Ryan Giggs
Some trouble is a-stirrin’ at HuffPo today, as Tom Edsall writes about Obama beginning to move from the left more to the political center (hence the Giggs comparison–I’m a nerd). Edsall’s argument is based primarily in the staff he is hiring, which disappointingly includes Lawrence “before I was a blatant sexist I was named Larry” Summer, former president of Harvard. While Edsall does not take an assailing tone in the piece, reading some of the comments is a bit shocking. Huffington Post has been decidedly pro-Obama for some time, but this story has caused significant backlash against Obama in the comments.
The story is here, and I’ve reprinted my comment on the story below:
many of us (like myself for a while) supported John Edwards despite knowing that his economic policies would never appeal to most Americans.
Honestly, I’m really surprised by what I am reading in this thread. Personally, I know the country’s politics are not the same as my own, and I have come to terms with the fact that changing that will not be in one fell swoop, but rather gradually.
It looks really immature for us as liberals to just come out and decry all conservative policy and call it evil. It may very well be horrible policy (again, I believe it is)–but over half of the country voted in favor of it in 2004, even after the Iraq War started going down hill.
As liberals, we can’t just ignore conservative view points–we may even have to, I daresay, pander a bit to them just to get elected. One of the reasons I have become so supportive of Obama is his dedication to not taking money from lobbyists and PACs; it’s something that a lot of us like. But then he goes and breaks that rule by speaking at AIPAC–arguably one of the most powerful lobbies that controls our foreign policy. Why did he do it? Because you need to do that to get elected.
Its great to be liberal and self-righteous and all, but you can’t actually make a difference in the world if you don’t get elected first.
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Tags: advisors, Barack Obama, center, democratic nominee, election 2008, john mccain, new politics, Obama, old politics, pivot, pivot to the center, playing politics, policy advisors, political process, politics, race for the white house
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