...until it's not.

It takes a true hack to blame Nader for the loss of the 2000 election.

Gore won, got butterflies in his stomach at the thought of doing the BRAVE thing, and instead handed it over to Bush.

A bunch of spineless cowards hide behind words like "pragmatism." - and we all lose.

NAFTA
FISA
DEATH PENALTY
AIPAC

Let's see what Obama adds to the list next week, at least he's consistent.

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He thinks his intellectual cowardice is a sign of virtue. He thinks that his various retreats win him something.

He is indicative of everything that is wrong with the Democratic party right now. You have a bunch of psuedo intellectuals who repeat trite little lines they learned in their freshman polisci class like 'Politics is the art of the possible' and they think it is a sign of deep thought. They are so fucking behind the curve that they cannot imagine that those who disagree with them have taken account of their argument and dismissed it for what it is, the puffed up buffonery of a weak mind.

When you only work within the established consensus you have no chance of changing the consensus. When that consensus is terribly terribly wrong on so many issues, it doesn't matter if you have someone in power who wants to do good. They will still be constrained by the consensus that constrained them while they are running. So lets imagine that Obama goes several months saying stupid or bat shit crazy things to appease the people who have been swallowing conservative lies for 30 years. He gets elected and finds that if he wants to get re-elected (to get power to do good as Altermann so naively puts it) he has to keep saying stupid things. Except now saying stupid things means stupid policy gets enacted. Even in his second term he will find that to keep congressional democrats on board he has to keep saying stupid and evil things, and keep supporting stupid and evil policy, becuase they want to get elected and will abandon him if he makes it the least bit harder for them to do so. Anyone paying attention to the Clinton presidency knows how the politics of cowards like Altermann ends. You get things like telecom deregulation, banking deregulation, DADT, DOMA, and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996.

If you don't change the consensus then progressive governance is impossible, whether a progressive wins or not. And you can't change the consensus by reinforcing it. Altermann and people like him are just too damned scared to do the hard work of crafting arguments to change people's minds. Or they recognize they lack the wit to do it.

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Even the 2006 election was a loss for the democrats.

"Impeachment is off the table." - Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the White House

Mark that one down for the history books - the moment the president became unaccountable to the people, the moment he became a king, thanks to pragmatic democrats.

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When you come over to someone's house for dinner, you don't burn it down and put up a house of your own.

Or maybe you just don't mention the people who used to live there.

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a political party called the Progressive Conservatives so I guess you folks down there could have a President like that as well. I just hope he doesn't fail and fold like the party did up here.

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capitulation?

On all major issues, he has accepted the extreme right position:

1. FISA: from a pledge of voting against the bill to advocating Bush's argument for FISA;

2. Campaign finance: when a man like McPain has a higher moral ground then you on any issue, you know you are a sellout!

3. Economy: Advocating free-market fundamentalism;

4. Civil Rights: Irresponsible and ultra-conservative style criticism of liberal Justices ruling on death-peanlty; And I'm expected to believe this guy is going to nominate liberal judges?

5. Peddling discredited racists views on African-American: was Obama channeling Reagan or his racists grandmother when he singled out African American men for being bad father?

yeah, he didn't get my vote during primaries, and he ain't getting it Novemeber.

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I have long feared that Obama is much more conservative than most of his supporters would like. As a senator he votes on very few things. Rhetoric is great, but until I see how you vote, I can't really guage where you stand on the issues.

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Sometimes I can not figure out which is worse, the Demolishcrats or the Repugs. Mr Alterman is typical of the cowardly Dems that whine and plead with the public to keep accepting the lesser of evils because the consequences would be worse. If Nader or Dennis had been elected the fact is we would not be here right now because they have courage and the will to make America "take its medicine" and to put the bad boys of the corporate government in the stocks. Mr Alterman, you are a disgrace.

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"Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support their ability to hire and fire based on faith."

I would say Obama is a conservative...he he ha ha.

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I do not mean to nitpick, but this video was not a "duking it out", it was the centrist version of O'Reilly or the rest of talk radio. Alterman monopolized the entire time, spoke over Escobar, and essentially refused to acknowledge any argument to the contrary of his viewpoint. He even threw in a good ad hominem at Escobar for suggesting that Obama may not be a real progressive.

Escobar raised an excellent point; we do not know what Obama actually believes. He does a great job speaking out both sides of his mouth, trying to be everything to everybody. If you read his "Patriotism" speech, you see this double-talk. He does his best to attack the liberalism to placate the right wing.

What Sen. Obama has managed to do is allow individual people to define who he is, individually. An Obamamaton can continue to repeat, "even though he had the opportunity, and passed it up, to say to the people who wield power on the Israel-Palestine issue, 'people are suffering', He really thinks like me."

It is a crock. Would Alterman be OK if we nominated a conservative (like the Democrats have been doing to win House seats) for President, just to win?

This needs to stop being about a person, and start being about issues. I could care less who the standard-bearer of a party is, so long as the party stands for the correct issues. Obama has failed to do that. He has gone on the offensive (in true conservative style) against the Court for the decision prohibiting the most cruel and inhuman of penalties, this past week. He has told people in his patriotism speech that it is never right to question the service of soldiers, just the war in which they fight (never mind that it is their willingness to participate that allows the war to continue).

The Senator from Illinois is just as centrist as anyone of the "New Democrats" of the 1990s.

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If you read Alterman's work, you are aware that he is a liberal, not a progressive. What's the difference? A liberal is a reformer who wants government to do good things to help people's lives. A progressive is someone who understands that there are structural problems in our society and that new wine in old bottles is not sufficient.

Every Democratic presidential candidate of the past 30 years has been to the right of Richard Nixon on most matters. Does that make them conservative? By some standards, for sure. But they surely have not been progressive. Nor is Obama.

The Obama phenomenon is not really different from the Bill Clinton phenomenon of 1992. Clinton ran to the left of his record (as governor) in the primary, tacked right in the general, and governed largely from the right (no need to recount the particulars, I hope).

Anyone who expected different from Obama needs to spend some more time studying the US political economy and history.

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It's peculiar to me that it's always Democrats that have to compromise with Republicans. When is it ever the other way around? Democratic candidates need to have a challenge from the left to prevent them from becoming completely identical to the mainstream GOP. How much good came from Clinton's two terms of compromise in office? I'm tired of the half-hearted liberalism the Democrats dish up. Where has it gotten us?. Clinton's compromising left us with more people rather than less without health care, more non-violent offenders in prison, more capital offenses on the books, less manufacturing jobs, more monopolization of the media and more gay people being kicked out of the military. Is that progress?

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I have been a strong Obama supporter up until recently. If he leans any further to the right, he'll fall over. I think Nadar would be a good choice for me this time around. I am really tiring of this so-called "realist" game. It never gets us anywhere and routinely traps us into corners once wer are in power. If so many Democrat supporters want a Republican in office, then they should just vote for McCain and do the deed. If they want REAL change, then Obama should represent their wishes.

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Obama isn't conservative or liberal and he definitely isn't "pragmatic" or a "realist". He is in fact, looking more and more like a "hollow man", a cypher whose only real trait is ambition and whose only real objective is to ascend to power. Not to do anything the least bit useful for the rest of us with that power once he gets it. Which makes it no real power at all. Bill Clinton was all that and surrendered everthing he promised the minute he took the Oath of Office. He had the position and the political "success" but he was unable to achieve anything with it except maintain an unjust status quo and benefit indirectly from the dot.com boom. From what boom will Obama benefit?

Anyway, how many independent votes will Obama pick up by supporting warrantless wiretaps, expanded gun rights and an expanded death penalty? Opportunistic macho swaggering on defense, guns or the death penalty won't to get you over. You'll be accused, quite correctly, of pandering. Are rightwingers and "centrists" going to vote for the guy who "tacks Right", or the guy who has consistently been Right all along? The only way to re-claim the loyalty of independents and centrists is to DELIVER SOMETHING! Actually use government to solve a problem in agriculture, education, health care, public safety or some useful bread and butter government function. Then crow about it every day. If you deliver, you will peel off enough votes to broaden your base. The Dems have to aim over the heads of the half-wit chatterers and troglodytic tooth gnashers like Broder, Stephanopolus, Gergen, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ignatius, Friedman, et al. They have to aim straight at the electorate, not the interlocuters, the elite mouthpieces and "opinion-makers" and not at the Washington insiders and not at that part of the electorate that is willfully ignorant, in denial and beyond reach. Obama isn't doing that by tacking Right on the advice of that pack of bloodless apparatchiks who pretty much run his campaign. Of course, you need the bloodless apparatchiks if when you want to preside ceremonially over empire, rather than actually changing the empire.

Obama is likely to make fools of a lot of people like Eric Alterman, who should really know better. People who believe things like the myth of "electability" and the "art of the possible". I'm kind of a fool myself. I hope I am proven wrong and Obama really is a progressive, moving Right tactically to gain power. Well, hope isn't always connected to the facts...

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Zbigniew Brzezinski.

If you'd like to see the present paradigm on steroids, up Obama.

If the PTB want him, there's something wrong with the picture.

Mark my words.

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no one really knows what Obama stands for. That is what has been so clever about his campaign. Obama has run as a blank slate on which every sort of idealist have written their hopes and dreams on.
I perdict that he will ultimately find some way to sit the FISA vote out - because that's what he does when the iron gets too hot. The scary thing is that the problems that will be handed off to the next president are going to be so massive, unlike anything we have ever encountered, that there is no way he will be able to continue the shuck and jive once he is elected. At least not for long. Then what?

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Rocky Obama is an honest man trying to ignore a fabric of lies. He cannot say the Pres is a liar. He cannot say the war is a crime. He cannot tell the truth and still get elected. Controversy will only alienate him from the masses who watch the mainstream media for their news. Shattering their illusions won't get their votes.

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...........and it's obvious. I hope he's just pandering for votes rather than expressing what he thinks is right, but who knows? Because of his recent capitulation to the religious right on funding faith-based charities, I'm suddenly much less passionate about who wins in November. How did the US get to this state where we have a conservative party and a right-wing-extremist party?

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look how people have responded to The new face of fascism, or rising oil prices--it stinks but they keep eating. If I were runnin for President (and if it wasn't just a stage for puppets) I would say what the fascist media and men behind the curtain want to get elected and then do the opposite--using the podium as leverage--speaking to the people, explaining in depth issues and educating. I would radically reform America in the face of threats. What can the people or media do--but fold--the people will quickly catch on and follow. Anybody who doesn't like it will eat shit --that's what they do. '--impeachment is off the table' None o these bottom-feeders actually obey consensus (of the people) and the people are mostly ignorant. Thats why we elect leaders, that's why our forefathers thought it best to create an electoral college (right or wrong) and that's why Jefferson and Thoreau tell us to beware the media. Jefferson claimed a person that doesn't read at all is better educated-informed than a person who only reads newspapers. He also said the day the press is no longer free the day we lose democracy.

I would also form a private security force to protect me tripling their salaries.

I wish that is what Bama Mama is doing but sadly he is not. My vote is for Kucinich. He's not pretty but he's morally courageous. He has integrity, honor, and commitment.

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