other than using the word “crisis”, not really. he’s not talking about privatization. he’s talking about increasing taxes on wealthy people to “fix” the program. don’t get me wrong, i don’t think it needs fixing and i think it is dangerous to talk like it does (SS is the big negative next to obama’s name IMHO). but obama’s solution is a progressive solution, and it is the one i would support if i did think it needed one.

and besides, the big problem with lieberman is not SS, but lieberman’s foreign policy (endless war in iraq, new war in iran). obama’s foreign policy is completely different from lieberman. indeed, on iran he’s really the only sensible candidate of any of them. if you want to see rightwing framing, look at some of edwards’ and clinton’s remarks about iran.

What progressive leadership did he show in the Senate? Not votes - leadership. I don’t remember him carrying water on anything big. Did he? Did I miss it?

click on my hilzoy link above. most of the bills she discusses are things obama sponsored, not just stuff he voted for. the highest profile bill was the one to require earmarks to be labeled with the name of the person who inserted them into the bill.

and again, you’re holding obama to a standard that edwards couldn’t meet either. my impression is that edwards sponsored a whole lot less legislation in his full senate term than obama has in his half-term.

as for the memyself comment above. while i think he/she is being a little harsh. you did paste in most of the lambert post. in my mind that’s endorsing what he said. i mean, if you didn’t endorse it, why did you post it?

I repeat: I posted Lambert’s post as is. He added the statement you complained about, not me.

I don’t mind taking a hit from readers over something I actually did.

However when you post an intentional distorted misleading interpretation of something - well it only makes me question your motives and wonder how weak you must feel your own arguments are to have to resort to that sort of dishonest tactic.

I tend to stop listening to people who are dishonest with me. Just saying.

Here’s what I’m asking: What progressive leadership did he show in the Senate? Not votes - leadership. I don’t remember him carrying water on anything big. Did he? Did I miss it?

Also, as I pointed out in our local election, there’s a huge, important difference between being a legislator and being the chief executive. It’s a very different set of skills.

huh? he hasn’t adopted any of lieberman’s policies as far as i can tell. in fact, obama is the only major candidate who’s talking sanely about iran (not even edwards is considering direct talks with the iranian government. and clinton mocked obama for even suggesting it), while lieberman is urging bush to attack the country. he’s still against the iraq war.

and, contrary to the oft-repeated myth, obama has actually sponsored quite a bit of legislation in his not-even-one-term in the senate. hilzoy outlined what he did in a post last october. and he has a remarkably good record at getting stuff passed.

obama is not a “slightly more liberal technocrat”, he’s actually proven himself to be quite progressive. i do have my problems with him: he’s adopted the rightwing framing of the social security issue, and his health plan falls short of universal coverage. but i have just as big problems with edwards on different issues (he remakes himself every few years depending on where he sees his political niche, and aside from iraq edwards’ foreign policy is vague-to-bad)

The atmosphere in a state senate is far different from the U.S. Senate. He attached himself to Joe Lieberman and has mostly been a very safe, cautious vote ever since. I don’t blame him for being cautious, but that doesn’t make him the man I want representing the Democratic party. (BTW, George W. Bush was famous for working with the Texas state legislature, and we all see how well that worked out.)

People keep saying, “He’s better than any Republican.” Well, that’s not really the issue. I don’t think this is a matter of simply putting in a smarter, slightly more liberal and competent technocrat in the White House instead of the disaster we have now. It’s that the political system is so thoroughly corrupted at this point, we need someone who will fearlessly attack the root causes. I believe the nation’s at a turning point, and I don’t think electing someone as cautious as Obama will cut it.

i haven’t signed on the obama bandwagon–in fact, my support is evenly split between edwards and obama. but i do think that a lot of the criticisms of obama i have seen in the blogosphere are wildly off base.

then maybe you should look at his legislative record rather than what he wrote in a 2-year old kos diary? or the fact that he spoke out and actively protested the iraq war at a time that few other politicians were (even though he was beginning to plan to run for u.s. senate)?

i find the knee-jerk dislike of obama by certain bloggers on the left a little bizarre. when i lived in chicago, obama was one of the strongest progressives in the state government. i certainly have my reservations about some of his rhetoric (particularly about social security), but i have reservations about all of the candidate’s rhetoric on one subject or another.

and, in any event, he is far better than clinton, and far far better than any republican.

But part of Obama’s strategy is to talk to Republicans, and by Republicans he doesn’t mean the ones in Washington. He means voters who are unhappy with where their party’s taken the country. He’s offering rank and file Republicans somewhere to go…the Democratic Party.

Yup. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

And nothing you wrote changes my mind that Obama lacks the fighting spirit to stand up to the Republican attack machine. Nothing in his post indicates he’s ready to lead - only that he knows how to read a audience. Now, you may think that’s the kind of nominee we need, and that’s what the primary process is all about. Me, I want a fighter. That’s why I support Edwards.

I’ll also point out that I expressed similar doubts about John Kerry, and I was right.

Instead of your excerpts from the statement coupled with misleading comments that misconstrue what Obama was saying, here is one paragraph that sums up what he was saying better:

“I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, “true” progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive “checklist,” then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.”