Would He Really Have Voted Against The War? By: Mark W Adams

Image courtesy SiFu Tweety Fish and some other folks
who weren't exactly thrilled with Hillary or Barack from the get go.

Didn't ya kinda hope he wouldn't break your heart until next year?

There was something inevitable about Barack Obama pissing off the netroots way before he he let anyone else down. We pay attention, so we're the first to know when his liberal credentials fail our tests.

The primaries are over. We have now entered the battle for the low-information voter. The people who don't or won't even start paying attention until the conventions or later, seeking out the center, the easily swayed. Now to me, this is a tried-and-true strategy that is antiquated and misguided. More people than ever are engaged, paying attention and energized by eventuality that George Bush will no longer be entitled to the honorific, "Still" President.

Centrism and triangulation are strategies, but not ideologies. They do not provide a core set of beliefs, a structure upon which to develop a decision tree. A Centrist stands for . . . nothing. And save for the Villagers on the Potomac, they do not exist in real life.

First he lagged behind all the other candidates on proposing truly universal health care, waited to see what everyone else did on funding the war then followed Hillary's lead after pressure from Edwards and Dodd and shouts from us rabble, took a stupid stand on dirty liquid coal, equivocated on public campaign funding, and I said nothing.

He told the ladies still stinging from Clinton's narrow loss to get over it, and I said nothing.

I took the advice of friends and allies not to bash a fellow Democrat, and when it looked like he had it won about five months before Hillary would admit it, I criticized her for not going along with the program. I never thought he was our best candidate, but to me he was better than Senator Clinton and all her baggage. But he wasn't the liberal champion I want and believe we all need.

He's a parade chaser, judging (very well, I might add) which way the public is leaning and running out in front, but always leaving a safety line so he can walk it back. Smart politics, but hardly inspired leadership. In fact, it's not leadership at all.

Yes, yes. He was against the war and wants us to believe that if he had been in the Senate, on the most highly charged vote in decades with historical significance we can still only guess at five years later, Barack Obama says, "Yes, you can believe" that he would have stood with the brave, principled minority and actually voted NO on the Iraq War.

Balderdash. Not after we saw him leave Chris Dodd out to dry in his fight against immunity for the telecommunication giants.

Folks, he ain't all that special, JUST WAY BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE! If he was more than the projected hopes and fantasies of whatever we want him to be, he wouldn't be so many things to so many people. (John McCain so, so very much worse. He's nothing, so very little to so many.)

I saw a lot that made me wince, but it never seems as blatantly (I hesitate to use the word) calculated -- but close -- as Hillary Clinton. Knowing how important it is to rid this world of Republican Party rule, I said nothing.

Now the guy, my guy, the authentic liberal guy who pushed and pushed and pushed him to do the right things, say the right words and vote the right way (rather, the "left" way actually) wants me to send him money.

I got a fundraising letter from John Edwards on behalf of Barack Obama today -- and I'm sending nothing.