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Dittos

Feb 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm by Chris

In this campaign, neither Obama nor Clinton are making any attempts to transform American political discourse away from its current, conservative dominated conventional wisdom. Instead, they throw conservative jabs at each other about being too partisan, Harry and Louise, national security fearmongering, supposedly raising middle class taxes and, at some point, probably about coddling illegal immigrants (arguably, Clinton was already skewered on that back in late October at the Philly debate). This just is not transformative progressive politics from either camp. Right-wing frames are consistently being employed to attack Democrats.

Russ Feingold, who yesterday I characterized as the one clearly transformative progressive in the U.S. Senate, harshly criticized John Edwards for talking like a tough, transformative progressive, but not standing up to fight like one in the Senate. While that is a reasonable criticism of John Edwards, at least he was talking like a transformative progressive. In the current debate, I feel as though we are getting neither the talk nor the walk. Instead, apart from a few comments about NAFTA (which are bogus), mandates (when neither health care plan offers much of a progressive solution), and the AUMF vote on Iraq (which, while important, was also in the past), pretty much all we get are Clinton and Obama attacking each other from the right while reinforcing right-wing frames. It really sucks.

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5 Responses to “Dittos”

on 29 Feb 2008 at 6:00 pm1Barry Walden

I couldn’t agree more. I had this sense that this time around, the electorate is going to utterly reject and ignore the right wing slime machine, because of the enthusiasm they have for the possibility that we can talk seriously about the important things for America, and that Obama is the embodiment of that hope. Look at the turnouts in the primaries.
Obama is in danger of squandering that enthusiasm if he doesn’t back off from this gutter issue backbiting. So far, he has done pretty well, no thanks to Hillary’s continually drawing him into these non-issue bickerings. Hopefully, she will be done by next week, and the real challenge will begin for Obama. He must show himself to be solid on the important issues, with specifics on his plans and his accomplishments. If he does, and with Hillary’s enthusiastic support, the Democrats will overwhelm the wingnuts and the rest of the Republican party (what’s left of them).
on 29 Feb 2008 at 6:38 pm2brendancalling

yeah, you won’t hear me arguing with that statement.
that shit, no matter who the candidate is, is a bad omen.

house dems floated a trial balloon about caving on FISA today. Not impressed with the democrats today.
on 29 Feb 2008 at 7:15 pm3Macjazz

Anyone who expects Obama to generate true progressive “Change” is in for a rude awakening, I think. I say this as someone who is rooting for him to be the Dem nominee at this point, simply because I think he’s got the best chance to beat McCain. I could be wrong about that, and I’ll certainly vote for either of ‘em against the Republicans in November.

But I’m not fooling myself about who he is. He’s just less bad than what the other side has to offer. Bowers is right, Obama is no savior, and he’s not going to fix things on his own. It’s no accident that his rhetoric at times echoes Republican talking points (as does Hillary’s as well). He ain’t Paul Wellstone.
on 29 Feb 2008 at 8:19 pm4Ron

I think you’ve nailed the character of the Dem primary discourse and I think Macjazz gets the why. Neither candidate is a progressive or can offer anything in the way of true progressive rhetoric or leadership.
on 29 Feb 2008 at 8:35 pm5Marc Davidson

What is amazing is that the Obama advisers don’t understand that one million people have contributed to this campaign in the hope that this will be a transformative election and not just politics as usual. Clearly the nation is hungry for real change. It is obvious to everyone but the tin-eared advisers that running on a progressive agenda is a winning strategy.
Truly the Wellstones out there are very few.
Wake up Obama and Clinton.

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Dittos

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