Base to Obama: Come In, Please
Barack Obama | Liberals and the Left
by RJ Eskow | November 4, 2009
from Smirking Chimp
As Year One of the Obama Era draws to a close, the recent Arianna Huffington/David Plouffe exchange illustrates a structural defect in the coalition Obama's seeking to build. And make no mistake: Some might call it The Year of Living Non-Dangerously, but it looks more like a deliberate strategy. It's not waffling or weakness: Barack Obama wants to become the Tony Blair of American politics.
The President seems to be deliberately moving his party rightward in order to capture the political spectrum from center/right to left, freezing out the Republican Party. It worked for Blair, but will it work here? Or will he lose his base in the process, damaging his own effectiveness? 365 days after his election, here are some pointed - and sometimes painful - questions.
In many ways disappointment with the Obama Presidency was inevitable. The President consciously (and tactically) presented himself as all things to all people, a kind of Rorschach Test on which people could project their own hopes and dreams. But a million different dreams had to collapse into a single reality when the real-life Presidency began, in much the same way that a "probability wave" of many trajectories collapses into a single photon in physics.
(More here.)
by RJ Eskow | November 4, 2009
from Smirking Chimp
As Year One of the Obama Era draws to a close, the recent Arianna Huffington/David Plouffe exchange illustrates a structural defect in the coalition Obama's seeking to build. And make no mistake: Some might call it The Year of Living Non-Dangerously, but it looks more like a deliberate strategy. It's not waffling or weakness: Barack Obama wants to become the Tony Blair of American politics.
The President seems to be deliberately moving his party rightward in order to capture the political spectrum from center/right to left, freezing out the Republican Party. It worked for Blair, but will it work here? Or will he lose his base in the process, damaging his own effectiveness? 365 days after his election, here are some pointed - and sometimes painful - questions.
In many ways disappointment with the Obama Presidency was inevitable. The President consciously (and tactically) presented himself as all things to all people, a kind of Rorschach Test on which people could project their own hopes and dreams. But a million different dreams had to collapse into a single reality when the real-life Presidency began, in much the same way that a "probability wave" of many trajectories collapses into a single photon in physics.
(More here.)
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