[Updated]
Naturally, my reaction here qualifies as rightwing spin, but this tale leaves me a little underwhelmed.
It shows Obama:
- Misunderstanding legislation and voting accordingly
- W.O.R.M.
-ing his vote (and trying, apparently, to subvert the rules to do so) - Waiting five years before reacting to a problem
- Threatening to kick a political adversary's ass, leading to physical violence
I guess I'm still having trouble getting attuned to the New Politics. The heroes of it are people who — because of personal grudges or failure to properly read legislation — vote against childrens' welfare facilities and who, in the aftermath, verbally and physically assault the opposition.
Oh, I get it: we're all Republicans now.
UPDATE
See also:
- Tristero's response to those who didn't respond favorably to his positive read of this anecdote
- My response to that
- And Tristero's follow-ups here (a response to my post here) and here (a response to my comment, linked in the previous bullet). I respond to both comments, annotation-style, below.
vastleft,
Thanks for your comments. I can easily see where you would think that. However, to respond:
1. We have no knowledge if he misunderstood the legislation or not because we have no real knowledge of what it was. If you care to dig up the vote and the bill, then this point can be discussed. As it is, we don't know enough to know whether Obama was wrong or right. I can easily imagine many reasons to vote against a child welfare bill, if it's a lousy bill.
I am thoroughly puzzled by this line of argument. The report says that "Obama stood up and asked to have his previous vote changed to a 'Yes' for the record, saying he had misunderstood the legislation." Either he misunderstood it or he was lying (is it perjury to lie when petitioning to have your vote changed in the IL State Senate?). And if it was "a lousy bill," are we to admire him for retroactively supporting it?
2. There is no evidence that he tried to subvert the rules. For all we know, changing your vote is normally allowed in the Illinois legislature. It's possible he didn't understand the bill. It's also possible he did, but decided after Hendon confronted him to change his vote merely for political reasons, to curry favor with Hendon. If the latter, it worked, once Obama started talking in a way Hendon could grasp.
I don't pretend to understand the fine points of the Illinois Senate, but he was begging for a mulligan (something we've seen before in many ways) and it was refused.
3. Yes, he waited, and waited, and waited to react to a problem. But it was a specific kind of problem: a personal attack. Refusing to take politics personally is a plus in my book. So is reacting slowly. Very slowly? Yes. There are very few crises, eg Katrina, that require rapid response and good leaders know how to minimize them. I'm sick of hotheads who demand immediate action.
I fail to see the charm of letting a problem fester for a long, long time and then escalating it to physical threats and violence. This is the story of a hothead who demands belated action through inappropriate means. Sorry, but I'm simply not impressed by it.
4. Given the situation and personality, the comment seems called for. Of course, Obama wasn't going to kick anyone around, but Hendon was a self-described street guy who viscerally loathed Obama. Obama was, after five years, finally speaking a language - note, a language - he could understand. It worked. No one was hurt, Obama got the respect he wanted, and he got a supporter for president.
You say "Of course, Obama wasn't going to kick anyone around," but following his threat to a fellow state senator, there's a shoving match. The details are not provided, but as described, I find nothing to be impressed about. YMMV.
As mentioned, I see your point. I just don't agree that those are the important aspects of the story. But I doubt I can convince you and don't think you can change my mind, either. As mentioned, Obama is a complex politician and this story does not lend itself to simple understandings.
Yet you presented it as an heroic (or at least admirable) moment by a gifted and "complex" politician. If this were a story about John McCain would you have been charmed by it? I certainly wouldn't be.
vastleft,
The point of this post is to highlight that a vote for Obama is much more than a vote against McCain. It is a positive vote for a terrifically talented and subtle politician.
If by talented and subtle you mean making a regrettable vote and following it up with verbal and physical assaults after five years of letting the problem fester, then yes.
Saying good things about our own guys is something that we seem congenitally incapable of doing. That is bad mental health as well as rotten politics.
Ah, the "mental health" card. Though I wasn't blogging at the time, I had many favorable things to say about Al Gore and John Kerry. I had many favorable things to say about Hillary Clinton (and consider the mental-health issues evinced by the CDS-sufferers in our party) and John Edwards. And criticism, too. Obama has mostly been a huge dud, taking a hand that could have both won the election and the framing, and played it only for the former. Standing on our heads to convince ourselves that Obama is doing or will do our bidding as progressives — or that dubious politics is brilliant or subtle — lets rather too much blood rush to our heads, which can't be good for mental health.
I said you have only two choices, McCain or Obama. That is a far cry from saying criticizing Obama is praising McCain.
Offering this response to skeptics of Obama hagiography doesn't sound like such a "far cry" to me: "You want a lunatic like McCain whose only answer to problems is war and more war?"
If progressives have no leverage over Obama, it is for the simple reason that progressives have not yet learned to package donations properly. Glenn, Jane, and others are working on that. But it is a simple fact of American politics: control the money, control the politician. Sad an immoral that may be, but that is reality and progressives will have to play by those rules.
The "rules" the progressive blogosphere played by this year are a scandal (or should be). No line of attack against the Clintons was too baseless, no praise for Obama too absurd. You could look it up.
I don't like the faith-based nonsense either and I think it's important enough to make a major issue out of. But it only becomes an issue if Obama is elected. You assume he will "win big." We should be so lucky if he wins. I see the polls as *barely* tilting towards Obama once you factor in racism and margins of error. If Obama wins, and actually is inaugurated - I have my doubts - THEN you will see me complain bitterly about the faith-based stuff.
Obama is acting like a Democrat. He simply is not acting like Wellstone. Guess what? Wellstone never had a chance to become president. Would I prefer Wellstone if he were alive? Or Feingold, who is? Yes, but neither of them had/have a chance.
Tristero, I count on you and the good folks at Digby to hold his feet to the fire once he gets in, as best one can (which sadly, may be not at all, since all he seems to want is the job). Your site was never the Kool-Aid fountain most lefty blogs were, but in toto, this progressive blogosphere experiment was a massive letdown. Where we could have held all the leading candidates' feet to the fire to seize this progressive moment, the prevailing winds were glazy-eyed adulation (or at very least looking the other way) for one semi-finalist, and Drudgian, misogyny-fueled demonization of the other. Had Obama faced legitimate skepticism from progressives, he'd be a much more admirable candidate, he'd probably win by a bigger margin, and he'd pave the way for more Paul Wellstones instead of more Rahm Emanuels.
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Comments
It's ascribing some deeper
motives to something that was most likely a spur-of-the-moment reaction and not part of some grand scheme or political maneuver.
He's just another politician whose leadership has certainly been found wanting so far. If he's had his own ideas, it's not apparent.
People need to stop trying to hoist him up on that pedestal. They look silly doing it.
Updated n/t
.
Bottom line: He voted against kids and with party-line Rethugs.
How much detail on the bill does tristero want to see? Since when is anything the Rethugs kill in a straight party line vote a bad thing? We have our answer: when Obama votes against it, too, in the name of fiscal responsibility. My take on this bit of (sneer quotes) "brilliance", as long as we're all pulling analyses out of our anal cavities??
That Obama's got such a thin skin that the bug housed up his ass as a result of Hendon's fratboy tweaks handed the GOP another victory. Awesome. He can reach across party lines, but not his own ego. Double awesome.
I think VL's first call was right. There's nothing - nada - appealing about this story. There's no way to peel this onion that doesn't make your eyes water.
"bad mental health"?
So, I'm racist, a crypto-Republican, and crazy?
Good to know.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Maybe,
you're just hapless.
You know -- as in Charley Chaplin's 'Little Tramp' or the dad in 'Malcom in the Middle' or "[Ayers, Dohrn]...were leaders of the Weather Underground, an antiwar group whose penchant for violence was exceeded only by its haplessness."
"Clearing the Ayers"
Gail Collins, NYT, October 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinio...
to present a fictional analogous story....
in Mad Men, season 2, episode 3, our dashing semi-hero Don Draper has a bit of rough with Bobbie Barrett, a true broad in every sense of the word, who has threatened Don's livelyhood through her ruthless contract negotiations.
Her husband, Jimmy, insulted the wife of the owner of the potato chip firm he makes ads for, and at Lutece she's holding out for a bonus before Jimmy apologizes to the still-mad potato chip couple.
Don asks for an apology; he doesn't get one.
Bobbie threatens more chaos; he grabs her business, under her skirt, and threatens to bury Jimmy financially.
Bobbie complies, and becomes Don's short-term mistress.
Did Don really do anything wrong?
I mean, he didn't continue to assault Bobbie, he got what he needed for himself and Sterling Cooper, and Jimmy's none the wiser.
Until Jimmy tells Don's wife Betty about the affair, tells Don publicly that he's 'garbage', Betty throws up in the Draper's brand new car, and Don's kicked out of the house, possibly for good.
Consequences, people. The moral is they matter, even outside of high-toned soap operas.
The assumption that Tristero makes
that Wellstone or Feingold could never be President is just another example of the liberal self-hate that's prevalent in the Democratic Party. It's evident in Congress repeatedly capitulating to Republican demands and it's evident in the way Obama's lack of progressiveness is ignored.
When more than half of the electorate already agrees with the progressive agenda, why is it rational to assume that some of the most extreme Republican ideologs can be elected (Reagan, Bush/Cheney, maybe McCain), but solid progressives like Wellstone or Feingold can't?
Seems like Tristero's the one with the mental health issues.
Here's the part that confuses me..
...The two men walked out of the chamber into a back room and shoved each other a few times before colleagues broke them apart, Hendon and other witnesses said. Obama and Hendon never talked about the incident with each other again, but they reached an awkward understanding. Hendon stopped teasing Obama; Obama started voting with Hendon more regularly. Hendon now supports Obama for president...
So, if we are to say that a shoving match is "jaw-droppingly intelligent politicking" *gag*, who got the best of politicking here? In the story, Obama is NOT voting with Hendon. Hendon says something mean. Obama says he's gonna kick Hendon's ass. They go outside and have a shoving match. Obama NOW votes with Hendon.
How is this great politicking by Obama? He's the one who changed his vote after getting shoved around. He now votes with Hendon. Hendon doesn't change sides - Obama does. Right? Am I crazy here? How does this show how he works with others? He capitulates to their side when they apply pressure. It might take Obama a while to get up the courage to capitulate, but he'll do it right after taking someone outside to show how tough he is. I just don't see that as "jaw-droppingly intelligent politicking" either.
Caving. It's what's for Democrats.
I think it goes something like this: should you make the great sin of offending The Precious
, you'll lose his political favor forever unless you let him threaten you so he can save face.
Unless you're a Republican, of course, in which case he'll vote your way just because you're so darn neat.
What was the nature of the Obama-Lieberman encounter?
Here.
The way Obama and his allies, including low-level supporters/volunteers, treat political opponents is not very comforting. Using racism as a weapon doesn't help, nor does Pelosi's call of lack of patriotism for bail out bill holdouts. Oh, and stolen elections? How is this behavior a progressive political step?
Hendon is the guy who had his legislation taken
away from him after working on it for seven years in a row and handed to Obama. I think it was the bill that required taping of police interrogations.
This is why I despise Obots - Tristero is inexcusable.
If we are the ones we have been waiting for, then we have met the enemy and he is us.
Tristero and Digby tried to keep it a square house for a...
... long time, and I seriously respect their service.
But of late, I see a lot of standing-on-heads to make us all stop worrying and love the Obama, whether there's a case to be made or not.
There is no way in God's green earth that any progressive would have found such a tale anything short of heinous (and for good reason) if McCain (or anyone else un-magical) had been the protagonist of this story.
It's hallucinatory to claim that Obama is a brilliant,
talented and subtle politician. He's a dumbass thug who has pulled the wool over the majority of progressive's eyes - and that's all he is. He has no accomplishments to his name that suggest any of those things - just a string of questionable electoral victories. he leads on nothing. He takes a stand on nothing. He gets nothing done.
This post on Tristero's part almosts indicates a psychotic break. I just don't even know what to say.
More on this episode from the LA Times earlier this year.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-...
If we are the ones we have been waiting for, then we have met the enemy and he is us.
Well,
Obama is certainly no dumbass. I have concerns about his scruples and his messianic Narcissism, but I don't see how that makes him stupid.
Also, I prefer to win arguments -- especially with people I respect -- on the merits, rather than throwing around accusations of insanity.
(Perhaps some would think calling Obama a messianic Narcissistic is questioning his sanity, but if the crown of thorns fits that well, I'd say wear it).
There is no way in hell
that any real Democrat would think this is wonderful political strategy.
So now we are elevating one who backs people against the wall and who threatens to "beat their ass"?
This really pisses me off. I don't know what happened to these pseudocarp bloggers but I am just going to take them as pretentious keyboard pounders, opinionated and lacking in common sense. They wouldn't know a real politician, just one of their own making. They have taken the Democratic Party and whored it out for their own amusement and grandiosity.
Pathetic
For a Dem presidential candidate, he is
intellectually substandard. What subject is he brilliant on and where is the proof of that? I haven't seen it and it certainly hasn't been on display in this race. And, he literally has no accomplishments - there is nothing he has done that is unique to him. As a state senator, there was no legislation he created and led on year after year until it passed. In fact, there is no legislation until the last two years when Emil Jones decided to help him become a US senator and shoveled as much legislation his way as possible. Until that point, two amendments that he hds written - at least, one of which was an assignment - were all he had to show for his time in office. As an attorney, he never led on a single case. As president of the Harvard Law Review, and as a constitutional lecturer, he never published anything on the subject of law. His tenure as a US senator, is similarly unremarkable - he's done nothing of note since joining the US senate. He's had two pieces of legislation he authored signed into law (one of which renamed a post office) and has contributed an amendment here and there. There is no evidence of brilliance, talent or nuance - none. That's why I refer to it as almost a psychotic break - where is the manifestation of this brilliance? Of this talent? Obama is 48 years old - plenty of time to have created something of value - yet there is nothing.
That absolute lack of accomplishment and substance is utterly at odds with Tristero's assessment. In fact, there is no grounds for Tristero's assessment - and that's why I referred to it as almost a psychotic break.
If we are the ones we have been waiting for, then we have met the enemy and he is us.
I'm with everyone here.
How Digby, or any other progressive and/or liberal, could have read this and saw the move as brilliant or admirable is delusional. The story doesn't make him look tough or brilliant, it makes him look pissy and calculating, and I'd be saying that regardless of who this was. And, they Obama campaign had the nerve to paint Hillary Clinton as exceptionally ruthless and hyper-calculating.
I'm picturing the reaction...
... if Hillary had offered to punch anyone out.
Basically, if you look at memeorandum, it's suddenly full of stories about how tough Obama is. It looks like another haka to me, so I assume this post is part of that.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Olds Politics
Yeah, there does seem to be a new narrative running into this 9th inning about Obama the Fighter. It's funny, because originally everyone wanted Obama the lover not the fighter. Fighting was so yesterday, so "old politics." Now, they are relishing the new-and-improved cut-throat Obama. They keep repackaging the guy.
BTW, we've already see what happens when a politician threatens to punch out someone's lights: John McCain. He's painted as erratic, unstable, over-aggressive and 'explosive'.
Well, no...
It's all in the spin. For the longest time, it showed that McCain was a breath of fresh air. A, y'know, maverick. Facts are stupid things, as St. Ronnie proved.
That was never the spin on McCain's temper
The only folks talking about his temper were Democrats, and they were spinning it to make him look erratic, unpredictable, and unstable. Maybe, my post wasn't originally clear.
I disagree. It made him a rascal, a fighter.
For one thing, all or almost all the occasions of McCain swearing at fellow Senators were directed at Republicans.
Until the media finally called this for Obama, there was rarely a critical word written in the MSM about the mythical moderate maverick McCain.
Huh?
I just got through reading a Time magazine article about his surlyiness and temper. And, before that, his temper was regularly characterized in cable news media as "legendary," and interviews were done with his staff to downplay this alleged temper.
But would you have read that during McCain's previous campaigns?
No, you would have read about a feisty straight talker who defies convention and takes on his own party. As Somerby has documented at great length, even when obvious negatives were admitted about St. McCain, they were spun into positives until this year, when the press corps found a new hero.
I couldn't find the info in Google
off the bat--we need to keep up both linky and quotey goodness and maybe some kind of preservation of info here--because in 2004 I remember wide criticism of Cheney for even publicly swearing at Leahy and how such "violence" was wrong and part and parcel of the WH lack of respect, etc.
--the point of that was that morals were stretched and Republicans were not kept to the same standards as everyone else. Now it's okay if you're Obama? IOKIYAO? Or a Democrat? IOKIYAD? And that's great? There's this little saying about how power corrupts...Can we please stop this right now before the Dems have far greater power--more of the Congress and the WH? Even if we mostly like them we need to keep pressuring them for bills and policies we like--and pressuring them to stop behavior we disagree with--and in fact it should be easier to do that because we share some of the same framing, eh? Let's not go with "better than" the last Admin., okay? See how that worked out with "better than" the last Congress--2006 was in some ways--the press was against them, not reporting stuff and spinning good votes, but also the 2006 Congress took things off the table right away that they had been elected to put forth. Did we not pressure them enough because now that the President is a lame duck they seem to be wandering further away from the Dems that elected them--for example, no HOLC--and if they didn't have the numbers to carry the vote, they could at least have said a lot about needing to help homeowners but they didn't--with the very notable exception of a few like Dennis:
It turns out that now worse than that is all okay--admirable!--if you have a (D) after your name, even if you never mention the Democrats in public debates?
IOKIYAR
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, mentioned Polk on the House floor Friday during debate over the latest economic rescue proposal.
"This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world," Kucinich said after telling her story (90-year-old woman who shot herself because of her foreclosure.((She lived.)) "This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure, are facing the loss of their home. This bill will take care of Wall Street, and the market may go up for a few days, but democracy is going downhill."