There are those Obama supporters who are just deeply bugged that not all the bloggers who supported Howard Dean in 2004 accept the premise that Barack Obama is his Second Coming. And then, painful irony, they often praise Obama's bipartisanship, or ability to work across the aisle, or however they put it.
How's that again? I, for one, don't remember supporting Dean because he was bipartisan. Or because I thought he was the most progressive candidate. I supported him because he called out the fundamentalist takeover of our national dialogue, because he wanted to know what so many Democrats were doing supporting stupid Republican policies. I supported him because he was a partisan Democrat who knew how to sound like a member of the opposition and didn't attack other Democrats, liberals or progressives from the right. He knew what side he was on, even when he said that he wanted to appeal to Republican voters because he thought he could better protect their interests.
The oomph of the netroots back in 2004 was, whichever candidate a person got behind, mostly lined up behind the premise that the Republicans needed to be fought good and hard. As far as I remember, anyway. The Bush Dog campaign, as well as the "more and better Democrats" meme, is the current iteration of that same motive force. The liberal blogosphere was then, and has continued in the mainstay to be, a vehicle for encouraging Democrats to act like an opposition party and criticizing them when they don't.
Now the Obama folks come around after the Donnie McClurkin fiasco, the kiss off to the blogs, and the attack on Krugman, to wrap the Dean 2.0 mantle around Obama's shoulders in expectation that they'll be met with swooning agreement. If not, we must not be real Democrats. We've lost our progressive cred, our fighting spirit, we're sellouts.
Criminy.
I don't hate Obama, and if he wins the primary, I'll vote for him in the general. Like I would any of the other Democrats with a chance at winning. (Thank gods that doesn't include Biden.) But don't tell me Obama's something he isn't.
And don't even get started trying to convince me that bipartisanship is the solution to all our problems. My conviction that bipartisanship means a willingness to cave in Democrats and a refusal to yield in Republicans is if anything even stronger than it was four years ago.
Whomever wins is going to have a hard slog against a Republican party that fights every battle like a cage match to the death. That's just how Republicans operate these days and you have to legislate with the opposition that you have instead of the opposition that you wish you had, as they say. That nominee, and I hope, eventual president, is also going to find that many Democrats who hold bipartisanship as a high ideal are better at attacking fellow Democrats than gearing up to go toe to toe with Republicans for reasons that can only be guessed at.
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