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Hullabaloo — ... got short shrift. At Saddleback services the next day, Mike Madden didn't find one worshiper planning to vote for Obama. One day after that, a self-satisfied Warren told Beliefnet he couldn't say for sure whether Obama could compete for the evangelical vote, but he insisted that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier. More at the link... Update III: Greenwald is on the same wavelength. .
Old politics in new bottles
Corrente —
Glenn cannily opines about something we've been talking about for the last year or so: meet the new new politics, same as the old new politics.
I do disagree with Glenn on one thing, which is his presentation of several either/ors — such as closing Guantanamo or not, repealing DOMA or not — as proper tests of Obama's progressive fealty.
Closing Gitmo isn't the same as ending the kangaroo-court tribunals and related debased forms of American "justice." Repealing DOMA isn't the same as legalizing gay ...
There's just no pleasing them.
INSTAPUTZ —
Indeed. When have Democrats not been eager to accommodate the Right, to sacrifice their ideological beliefs and partisan goals in pursuit of post-partisan harmony, to jettison the "Left" in order to attract the Mythical, Glorious Center? When haven't they done exactly that? Isn't that everything they've been doing for two decades now, what has defined the Party at its core? In what conceivable way is this new, and why does anyone expect that it will generate different results now?
Awkward instants
The Sideshow —
... , with Gavin Newsome. And Glenn Greenwald on how very Clintonian Obama's destructive behavior is starting to look: "Reasonable arguments can certainly be advanced in defense of the virtues of Obama's post-partisan theory of politics. But it's simply unreasonable to depict any of it as new. It's exactly what Democrats have been clinging to, desperately and mostly with futility, for two decades at least. Trans-partisan harmony comes only when Democrats agree to sacrifice what they claim their beliefs are, and even then, the "harmony" is fleeting, insatiably greedy and ...
Taking Yes For An Answer
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
... Dish readers will know my own conflicted feelings about the selection of Rick Warren for the Inaugural Invocation. But feelings must at some point cede to reason. And I sense an understandable but, the more I think about it, misjudged response on the part of my fellow gays and lesbians. In our hurt, we may be pushing away from a real opportunity to engage and win hearts and minds. Here's Glenn Greenwald: ...
It's Our Own Fault
Open Left - Front Page —
... Like Matt, I agree quibbles can be made with a couple of the particulars, but in general the centrist wing of the party is ascendant. Or, rather than ascendant, I also agree with Glenn Greenwald that this is basically what we have been seeing from Democrats for two decades now. ...
Trust
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Greenwald responds: Andrew's argument here is the one that Obama loyalists generally are making: yes, what Obama is doing might appear to be exactly the same as what Democrats have been doing since forever -- the accommodationist embrace of the Right, the effort to establish centrist credentials by scorning the Left, running away from cultural issues for fear of being depicted as amoral radicals, surrounding oneself with establishment and conservative figures, etc. etc. (Bill Clinton also had a Republican Defense Secretary). Yes, that may look ...
Obama angers many with choice of Warren
LiberalOasis : The Blog —
... This has become a very big deal in the Progressive community. The dustup over Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich really did not affect the Progressive community. Republicans were up in arms, but Progressives really did not believe that Barack Obama or anyone within his inner circle would be involved in selling Obama's Senate seat. On the other hand, true Progressives believe in equality. We believe in equality amongst the races and in equality concerning sexual orientation. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have clearly stated that they also ...
