Thank you, Karol. You're right on.

I also thought the column by Gail Collins - printed in today's O - was right on:

We have to have a talk about Barack Obama. I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money. I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about. Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats. Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field? When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.

and...

Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance. On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further. Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say. Touching both bases are Obama’s positions that 1) if people are going to ask him every day why he’s not wearing a flag pin, it’s easier to just wear the pin, for heaven’s sake, and 2) there’s nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists.

Above all else:

Obama has made it clear what issues he thinks all this cleverness and compromising are supposed to serve: national health care, a smart energy policy and getting American troops out of Iraq. He has tons of other concerns, but those seem to be the top three.

Read the rest.

You know, some enterprising young internet guy or gal should set up a site called "the Daily Gaffe" or something. McCain is a train wreck, and with a little work, the campaigns many, many, many blunders could doom him before September.

Aug. 9, 2004 -- Responding to President Bush's challenge to clarify his position, Sen. John F. Kerry said Monday that he still would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq even if he had known then that U.S. and allied forces would not find weapons of mass destruction.

I remember vividly that day in 2004, because it’s when I felt pretty certain that John Kerry was going to lose to George Bush. It was as if he had completely undermined the single strongest reason he could give voters for why they should elect him and throw Bush & crew out on their asses.

I also remember vividly the abuse that those who raised such concerns about Kerry’s overly hawkish positions on the war received – very much along the lines of what Kristin and others are receiving now in expressing concern over the direction of Obama’s campaign. They were told in so many words to put a lid on it – that we could address our concerns over his Iraq position after the election. I’ll also note that, in retrospect, Kerry later (after his defeat) acknowledged what a mistake his position had been.

Given the tactical and strategic brilliance that the Obama team displayed in the primaries, there’s a tendency for many of us to think that we may not understand why he’s dong what he’s doing, but he and his folks must know what they’re doing, are hella smarter at this than we are, and so we should trust that they’re doing what they have to to win, which is, after all, what we want.

But even smart people can screw up, and I don’t think it’s either disloyal or un-strategic to call them on what seem like just plain bad moves – not out of a holier-than-thou, political purist kind of stance, but because it just seems dumb. If, as Jeff describes in his post above, Dems are enjoying a large advantage in intensity of support, then moves by Obama’s campaign that put a significant damper on that intensity threaten to weaken that advantage.

With the possible exception of people like Harry who always find a reason to dislike any Democrat capable of actually becoming President, very few people outside of the activist community have gotten worked up about his "move to the center". Moreover, most will in fact end up voting for him.

The problem from my perspective is that the intensity of support that was apparent during the primary seems to have deflated amongst the politically active. It seems like the competition between Hillary and Obama was more meaningful to many than the real battle between Obama and McCain. Personally I hated the primary battle because I hate getting in fights with people that I generally agree with and support. This lack of intensity means fewer $ and volunteers for Obama when it really counts.

Also, the commentary on the left regarding Obama's "flip-flops" just reinforces the McCain-Bush team's positioning of Obama. Most of the Obama "flipflops" are in fact nothing more than a different rhetorical emphasis rather than an actual change in position (see Kari's post of Gail Collins above) while McCain has made some fundamental changes in policy (taxes, religious bigots) and isn't being called on it by the same people bashing Obama.

Are we going to have to stop referring to the Republicans as a "major party" soon?

See Canada, 1993. From Wikipedia:

In 1993, support for the Progressive Conservative Party collapsed, and the party's representation in the House of Commons dropped from an absolute majority of seats to only two seats. The 1993 results were the worst electoral disaster in Canadian history, and the Progressive Conservatives never fully recovered.

They were literally wiped from the system - ceasing to exist as a legal party. It took ten years and a merger with the Canadian Alliance (a western-oriented social conservative party) for the right to come back in Canada.

Well, it's a wee bit too early to declare the GOP dead. But there are a few dead parties in America's rear-view mirror. In addition to the minor parties that came and went (Free Soil, racist American/Know-Nothing, Liberty, etc), there were three who were substantial enough to win the White House:

Federalist (1792-1816) - John Adams National Republicans (1825-1833) JQ Adams Whigs (1833-1856) - Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore

One of the things I like best about Obama is that he has brought back to political discourse the notion that his supporters, and soon-to-be supporters, are to be treated like adults, with abilities to think critically, to discern right from wrong and to contribute to the national conversation even when we don't think everything is so peachy keen.

I think Obama would be the last person who would say that we should follow him blindly. He knows adults, with intelligence and deep beliefs, don't really do that kind of thing.

He has admitted that he will make mistakes and that his supporters have a right, a duty, to call him on it.

By disagreeing with him, we aren't saying we don't totally adore the guy (I know I do) but that we are creating the kind of society in which a man as intelligent as Obama can continue to succeed.

Karol,

Probably you know as well as I do that a key rule of getting online conversations to be about what you want them to be about, is DIY. Don't ask other people to do it, and especially don't ask them why they're not, because if you do, they will answer you, and the discussion will be about why they're not doing it, not about whatever you want discussed.

So, in that vein, wherever else this thread goes, because I really, really agree with you that we need to be honing our knowledge and rhetoric about McCain, I encourage you to take your great first paragraph and expand it.

Maybe even take it apart into its separate points and think about expanding each of them, or groups that form subthemes. Make them into columns that just blast McCain.

Because what will happen is then people will start to chime in their own ideas about what's wrong with McCain, or expand on how they see a great point you've made, or come in with arguments like, o.k., that's a good point, but it will work more effectively if we frame it this way instead of that. Which as you say are conversations we need to be having.

And I promise you, know that I get to write columns too, I will do some of those too.

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Which is not to say you don't have every right to express your frustrations, or that it's surprising that you chose to do so. But please notice that the same feelings that impelled that choice, are the same feelings that have been motivating people to express their frustrations with Obama.

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I'm less impressed with Gail Collins' article than is Kari. Anyone paying attetion knew that the conversations wouldn't be out in left field. Lots of us who ended up going with Obama did so knowing that the differences with Clinton were small in point of substance, and said so. I repeatedly expressed the worry, going back to before it had just come down to the two of them, that Obama's orientation to compromise could mean reaching out so far that he'll fall out of the boat.

The thing is, there are different ways to compromise. And it wasn't clear, and it still isn't clear, which of those Obama will use, or maybe how much of which ways he will use. I am worried that he may be a Clinton-style compromiser who will do it by triangulating against me and against Democratic progressives. There is a hint of that in his recent use of a caricature group to which I belong, MoveOn.org, as a prop to position himself. I give him a pass on that one because the national level of the group made a stupid mistake with a headliine about General Petraeus. That pissed me off because the substance of the ad was spot-on, but the childish headline gave the lap-dog/guide-dog media any easy excuse to avoid the substance entirely. I've been critical of other aspects of MoveOn national here, and directly to them, including communication with organizers.

But if Obama proves to be a triangulator type compromiser mainly, who works of caricaturing progressives, I won't be quiet about it and sit back and take it. The fault will be his, not ours.

He may prove to be the better kind of compromiser, the kind that knows how negotiation works -- that each side has things that matter more and less to them, and has a clear understanding about what matters most to his or her own side, and works with the dynamics, and also recognizes that there are times when a compromise can't be reached without giving up something essential, and doesn't believe in compromise for its own sake. Obama is plenty smart, and it may be that's how he operates.

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Behind that, however, does lurk the problem of what he considers essential. And on some things I know already that there's a big difference. For instance, I don't really think he is on the right side of the occupation of Iraq. He's just not a lunatic militarist like McCain. Moreover, the Congressional Democrats have completely blown the political possibilities of that issue, and in their kowtowing and selling out have protracted the occupation.

So as an anti-war activist I can't just say, well, I'm going to put that on hold because when the Ds get in, they'll fix things and do the right thing. In fact Obama has said fairly explicitly that he wouldn't all the way along, and more recently has amplified that to make clearer the scale on which he is planning not to do the right thing. So I am going to continue my activism, and I am going to be critical of Democrats who are doing the wrong thing, and trying to figure out how to get them to do the right thing. And that includes Barack Obama.

And this isn't a matter of small differences, not a matter of his not having "exactly the right position." So I need to be thinking about how to deal with the big difference.

Because on that issue, I can't and won't be able to trust him as a compromiser, because he has already said he's willing to give up the essential, starts from a position of having given it up, in fact. So my problem is how we can change his view of that.

He also has missed some of what Gail Collins calls "dumb-avoidance" opportunities, ones that would have cost him nada. A simple no vote on FISA would have been dumb-avoidance (leadership against it would have been smart-embrace). Raising Jerusalem to AIPAC was flinging himself headlong into the arms of dumb. That one's relatively small, he can if he decides treat it the way he's now treating his former position on NAFTA. But it all makes me a little seasick.

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Part of what I have been waiting to see and am still trying to figure out is how much I will be able to work for Obama from a basis of being out there enthusiastically for him, and how much it will be a matter of being out there being against McCain.

Much of the conversation that bothers you, among those of us who unquestionably will be supporting Obama, I think amounts to people reaching the conclusion that it's going to be about being against McCain. Hence my promise to follow your headline suggestion. (This different from the voices who have always been committed against any Democrat, or any except Kucinich -- the two views really are quite different).

I will be trying to figure out the best true things I think about what electing Obama will mean. But in ways that add up, he's making that a harder task than it needs to have been.

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Which brings us to Dan Petegorsky's point. It kind of looks as if Obama is listening to the "professionals" too much about where and how he needs to position himself. And they're wrong. They were wrong for Gore, they were wrong for Kerry, they probably would have been wrong for Clinton in '92 if it hadn't been for Ross Perot, they were wrong for Dukakis.

I hope not, and there are several months remaining for him to work out a better path.

Meanwhile, the federal courts and the Supreme Court remain my lodestone. I know his appointees will be better than McCain's. I know McCain's will lock reactionary ideology over law and justice into the judicial system for a generation or more, making every single other thing I care about harder to fight for or against. That's just huge and structural.

So, Obama in '08!

Bill, amorality troll is on your side. It's irony, right down to the name, where s/he's taking a poke at the "purity troll" meme. Look at the parenthetical -- it's a short version of your bible quote.

Gotta learn to recognize your friends, even if they are being subtle doves playing innocent serpents.