What’s up with that? Barack has been getting a lot of press here and overseas. A media watch is on his every step and conservatives are finding him attractive, likeable. Today, Andrew Sullivan had 2 entries on Obama – one is linked to a NYT story that’s walled.
“I think Barack Obama is the most interesting persona to appear on the political radar screen in decades. He’s a walking, talking hope machine, and he may reshape American politics,”– Republican operative Mark McKinnon.
Next, Sullivan links to and quotes from a long article in the New York mag News & Features `Dreaming of Obama’ – Can the junior senator from Illinois take America? with a post under the header
Obama v.Kos
“A nice little swipe from the senator from Illinois”
“One good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me? And increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s all just exactly what I would expect.”
I’m not surprised that Obama made that statement. About two years ago, Obama’s posts at the orange place were not well received. He was flamed. I was appalled at the reception. Enough said.
Here are some more excerpts from Dreaming of Obama:
“If Barack disagrees with you or thinks you haven’t done something appropriate,” says Tom Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, “he’s the kind of guy who’ll talk to you about it. He’ll come up and reconcile: `I don’t think you were truthful about my bill.’ I’ve seen him do that. On the Senate floor.” [.]
“What Washington does,” Coburn says, “is cause everybody to concentrate on where they disagree as opposed to where they agree. But leadership changes that. And Barack’s got the capability, I believe–and the pizzazz and the charisma–to be a leader of America, not a leader of Democrats.”
Are we ready for a black president whose middle name is Hussein, or Is Obama “black enough”?
People often like to ask whether the country is ready for a black president. “The test is not a Barack test,” says Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988. “It’s America’s test. Phenomenal blacks are wonderful, but they ain’t new. Do you know how qualified Paul Robeson was? All-American, Phi Beta Kappa, Othello?”
Obama: “I don’t want people to pretend I’m not black or that it’s somehow not relevant. But ultimately,” he says, “I’d want to be a really great president, you know? And then I’d worry about all the other stuff. Because there are a lot of mediocre or poor presidents.”
Reporters from The Independent, UK caught up with him in California as ‘Obama sought to convert evangelicals over to Democrat cause’
“If Barack Obama ends up running for the White House, expect to see this footage run over and over on a television screen near you: the charismatic black Democratic senator from Illinois talking the language of God and receiving a standing ovation from a packed crowd at one of the country’s most prominent conservative evangelical mega-churches.
Mr Obama entered the political equivalent of the lion’s den[.]
Many evangelicals were appalled that he should be invited to address their own, given his liberal attitude to hot-button issues such as abortion and gay rights. One fundamentalist leader said he represented “the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality”. A coalition of “pro-life” groups said they could never work with someone who advocated “the murder of babies in the womb”.
Curiosity aside, many of his Republican colleagues and Republican operatives offer nice compliments. Hmmm. Obama, on a direct question if he’s running for president, replied No…but, that ‘he could change his mind.’ I’m filing him as serious about a presidential bid.
But I’m not for Obama throwing his hat in the ’08 race. Why?
I.dred.it. – all the mean spirited attitudes – rampant across this land reminds me of 1968. We’ve ramped up the hate. I say to Obama watch your back.
And as Hillary eyes a ’08 bid she is said to be casting her anxious eyes on Obama. Of Hillary and Obama, the question presents; Will they last?
Both Hillary and Obama should look north. At the weekend in Canada, a ten month campaign in two races for leadership – one race for the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, (a prime minister-in-waiting) and the other, Leader of the Provincial Conservative Party of Alberta, (an instant premier) – front-runners can and did finish last. Front runners who peak too early are prone to their support collapsing from fatigue.
The results in Canada reveal voters are way ahead of back room politics – establishment politicians.
Delegates at both conventions voted:
Front-runners with baggage. No
Front-runners without experience. No
Front-runners who are pro-war. No
What’s the issue of our time? Stop the wars and divert the billions to funding a sustainable environment and social justice that by extension includes single payer universal access to health care.
From The Independent, UK article linked above:
“Evangelicals may care about abortion and gay marriage, but they also care about the Iraq war and the environment and issues of social justice, polling data shows.
“One good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me? And increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s all just exactly what I would expect.”
Where is the surprise in that. Daily Kos is entirely predictable and has been for a long time, maybe even since its inception. Surely Barack is just stating the obvious. The predictability of daily Kos is based on it having a particular line within the Dems.
I hope I am more surprising. But there is always an element of giving people what they want and expect.
Personally, I see Daily Kos’s front-page as a lot more diverse than most people do.
Kos I find predictable, not that that is a major criticism.
Meteor Blades and Hunter are inspiring to me as writers, although I am now familiar enough with them that they rarely surprise me.
Armando was incisive and smart. His comments were a detriment, but his analysis was quite good, and often contrarian.
Bill is just flat out funny and not predictable.
The rest of them are a mish-mash that are generally good but, yes, predictable.
But Daily Kos is most noted for their failure to toe the progressive line. That might be considered predictable by people that are familiar with them, but it is contrary to their reputation as radical leftists.
I don’t know anyone in the blogosphere who would consider dKos a bastion of leftism…
right, but you would never know that from reading the papers.
what’s “paper”?
</snark>
But the users of that website represent themselves as such. Also complicating the matter is their misuse of the appellation “progressive.”
Geez, I thought this post would just scroll off into cyberspace – without a comment.
The lack of civil discourse over at the orange place turns off many.
BooMan both you and this blog do offer surprises but then again this isnt intended to be a Dem establishment blog is it?
DK is an establishment Dem site. It’s not supposed to be surprising. The only substantial complaint that Kos’ faction has about the current leadership is that they don’t win enough elections. They want to replace the leadership with candidates who win elections. Everything else, and I do mean everything, is secondary to that goal.
Whether that kind of faction is a necessary evil or not, I don’t know. I do know that anyone who goes looking to DailyKos for something genuinely new or innovative or radical from an ideological standpoint is wasting their time. DKos is a partisan site, not an ideological site, as Kos himself is fond of noting.
Obama’s remarks are, on the face of it, perfectly correct. Pragmatically, I think he’s probably just distancing himself from a site that popularly perceived to be radical, and however absurd that may appear to actual radicals, it makes sense from the perspective of a general public that gets its news from FOX and CNN and who thinks the ACLU is out to get them.
Does that mean I like Barack Obama? No. He reminds me too much of Bill Clinton: charismatic, but ultimately a middle-of-the-road political opportunist.
That said, history is generally not made by the politicians who make it to the White House. Successful politicians do their little triangulating dance, and the positions they are triangulating against are driven by the more visionary and radical types who command a following large enough for the winners to appease, but not large enough to win the top offices. It’s become fashionable on the left to dismiss the radical voices of the 60’s, but it was those radical voices, unelectable themselves and often not even seeking office, who fueled a general leftward swing in US politics that did not fully sputter out until 9/11. The fringes determine the position of the center.
In that sense, a triangulator like Obama might be a good choice for president. I’ve had enough of narcissistic presidents with a vision of their own. Clinton I and Bush II were both unmitigated disasters for the left. We don’t elect leaders to serve their visions; we elect them to serve ours. And as generally unimpressed as I am with Obama, if the alternative is a guaranteed loser like Clinton II, I’m okay with him.
I don’t know, the average visit length on Daily Kos is a whole 7 seconds and that’s with the new dairy draft feature. 7 seconds isn’t a number which indicates that most peiople find DK even very interesting. I think Obama was being too charitable.
Thanks for this info. I find Obama’s religiosity disturbing and distasteful but I’m impressed that he has no desire to suck up to the DK crowd.
Obama’s first diary was one of the best diaries ever written in the site’s history, IMO.
One point Obama makes it that people can disagree respectfully about issues and work together to find commonality. But that’s not possible in a totally polarized political environment (i.e, the Bush hating rhetoric that was at the time a front page mainstay).
There were a lot of Daily Kos readers that found that a backhanded insult and they spoke loadly. Then there were a lot of Obama “fan letter” replies. I think Obama took a good deal of time writing that diary and I think he was keenly interested in its reaction and especially any ideas that came out of it. IMO most replies were pretty predictable. I doubt he learned much.
Nevertheless, what he said wasn’t directed at Kos personally. I think it was more about his own diary.
His diary was vacuous, and many at that site had every right to be offended. But I do not believe it is in Obama’s interest to use DailyKos and the blogosphere as a political strawman.
I don’t see Obama gabbing about Kos in his stump speech. If you’ll remember he reacted to the site when asked about it in a magazine interview.
Like I wrote, he probably reacted to the question in a way that a Diariest would react.
That’s pretty cool when you think about it, eh?
No, not at all, for his diary was supercilious, patronizing and full of admonitions.
I agree Obama’s diary was one of the best. He’s smart and articulates well.
Again, for me it’s the civil discourse thing. We need to remain open to ALL ideas. Two years ago I had a diary entry on the recommended list; well received with over 130 comments, it taken down by the proprietors – under 2 hrs of being posted. Let’s say it was not allowed the natural course off the list.
Why? I had linked to a post at Truthout.org – concerning a hot issue. Another well known website owners complained that they had an exclusive prior arrangement with the writer of the article at Truthout. Go figure because Truthout kept the article up.
Just know several good top tier presenters no longer post at dkos.
Obama is shrewd. If he swiped at Kos there was a reason beneficial to him. Nuff said.
Agreed. Why potentially alienate that many active people unless there was good reason.
But what keeps churning in my mind: How did Obama go from zero to presidential candidate in the blink of an eye. And then a small, obscure part of me thinks that (put on your tinfoil hat here) by putting Obama out there, some may be scared into supporting Hillary by the thought of a black president.
How did Obama go from zero to presidential candidate in the blink of an eye.
Media. And an engaging personality. And, sadly, the novelty factor: a new face, a black face, but not too black.
I have a lot of friends who think Obama is fantastic. They heard his speech at the Democratic convention. They saw clips from Oprah. They don’t have any idea what he has voted for or against during the past two years. They have no idea about how after winning his primary on the backs of the grassroots, he totally disregarded them in his backing of Duckworth in her primary. They see this likeable well spoken guy who isn’t too scary and that’s all it takes.
I feel really let down by Obama on a lot of fronts, but the one thing he really stuck his neck out on was his oppostion to the war and he has been consistently reliable about that.
I feel really let down by Obama on a lot of fronts…
Speaking as one who’s still “wandering the car lot” (depite my comments below that Obama passes my initial screening) I would be interested in hearing more about your reservations (with links, if you have them).
Sorry I didn’t reply to this sooner. No internet access at work. I just got in and am a little brain dead, but here are some of my concerns.
My gut instinct is that Hillarycorp. is actually behind Obama’s rise. This is all pure speculation, but I wonder if the two of them don’t suck all the air out of the competition and then have a deal to be on the ticket together. Just a hunch.
Question of the week:
From the New York Times
Does Obama complicate the field for Hillary?
Al Gore would take it.
isn’t this a Sista Souljah moment? He seems determined to run right, and not miss opportunities to slam us “crazy extreme lefties” (boran2’s words from another thread).
Let’s apply his own test: what’s the last surprising thing we’ve heard from Barack Obama?
Can’t think of a thing to your question but the he has apparently hopped on the ‘bomb Iran’ bandwagon. He thinks that is something we have to be prepared to do if they you know get to ‘unruly’ I guess. I guess for him then that would be ‘the right war at the right time’.
He is charming, easy on the eye and articulates well. That is all I know of him at this time except he was against the war. He also wasn’t a Senator at the time. He had everyone at hello when he gave that electrifying speech at the Dem convention. We all want someone to sweep us off our feet whether it is romantically or politically. He still has alot to prove for me.
We all want someone to sweep us off our feet whether it is romantically or politically. He still has alot to prove for me.
Mrs. K.P. has the former covered, but politically, let Google be your friend – I did (see comment below).
My thoughts towards Obama were that he was a bit green (no pun intended) to be running for president, but everyone seems so excited about him that I decided to use Google to see if he has credibility on energy and the environment…
And I was pleasantly surprised by what I found:
Obama’s green credentials (from 2004)
Obama on energy independence
Obama’s rankings by pro- and anti-environmental groups
So, if Gore doesn’t run, I’m ready to look long and hard at Mr. Obama…
But I’m not for Obama throwing his hat in the ’08 race. Why? I.dred.it. – all the mean spirited attitudes – rampant across this land reminds me of 1968. We’ve ramped up the hate. I say to Obama watch your back.
Sadly, that thought crossed my mind too. For us aging Boomers, 1968 still casts a long, dark shadow and probably always will…
Has nothing to do with what he has to say about internet blogs though. For me it’s all about his reaction to “hysterics about the War”. Sorry but he’s just so fucking lackadaisical about the whole deal and people really are dying. He’s so nonchalant about it all I suspect he’s on lithium.
but there is also such a thing as la la land and I’m full up of la la land these days.
I’m shit full of getting surprised by my politicians too right now! What an idiot, and the best thing he’s said in ages is that the only person more over hyped than he is is John Stewart on the Daily Show. NO SHIT BABY!