David has taken a lot of flak from people on the Left and Right, for many things, but I really have to give him credit for his elegant writing. The only thing I’d have added to this essay is that what he’s saying about Obama is equally true for the other front runners, and they all have to be reminded of what leadership really means. Hint: placating the rich and only using the gentlest of language are not qualities of real leaders:

“I Want to Believe” - that was what the X-Files poster hanging in my best friend’s bedroom in high school blared out. An updated, political version of this poster would have the same words over a photograph of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D).
I’ve written a lot about Obama, including a major piece for The Nation magazine last year. In my time studying his career, it became obvious that this is a person who wants to do the right thing and has genuinely strong convictions. But he also seems to believe that the reason our country has such challenges is because all sides of every issue have not come together in unity (I’ve gone back and forth wondering whether this is a sincere belief or merely a justification for overly cautious behavior, but I’m not a psychoanalyst, so I have no idea).

The problem with this outlook is that it fundamentally misunderstands why we are at this moment in history.  Read more 

My boy David has been all over it, and you know it’s bad when he, Kevin and I are all on the same page:

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This is great news. Sirota to work for Lamont:

Clearly, this is an uphill fight - but then, uphill fights are the kind of campaigns I have always worked on. Why? Because trying to change the status quo is always an uphill fight. In 1998, people told me not to work for Joe Hoeffel because they said he couldn’t win a Republican congressional seat in Pennsylvania - but we won. In 2004, people told me I was crazy for working for political outsider Brian Schweitzer because they said he could never win a statewide race in as Republican a state as Montana. Now, Schweitzer is the widely popular governor of Big Sky country. People said Ned Lamont couldn’t win a primary against an 18-year incumbent who grossly outspent him with a massive warchest of corporate cash - but he won. Even after Ned’s crushing primary victory, elite cynics in Washington and the national Republican Party apparatus that is supporting Joe Lieberman still say Ned can’t win the general election. And once again, we’re going to prove them wrong.  Read more