Ultimately, these disputes can't really be resolved until Obama is in office. Only then will we know whether Obama's embrace of every establishment and even right-wing figure he can find is a reflection of what the substance of his governing will be, or whether -- as many of his supporters claim -- it's a master strategy designed to diffuse tension and hostility in order to enable easier enactment of his progressive agenda. If Obama devotes genuine efforts to repealing DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell, I doubt anyone will care how many times he hugs Rick Warren -- just as if Obama really closes Guantanamo, withdraws from Iraq and forges a diplomatic peace with Iran, few people will care how much he embraces Joe Lieberman -- though obviously those are very, very large "ifs." Only time will tell.
I have spent most of the last five years writing about things like electoral strategy, demographic trends, campaign messaging, institution building and fighting against heinous legislation. I have enjoyed it to no end, and I think all of these things are very important. However, I am also sick of that being all we talk about. It will be nice to start discussing legislation that both might pass and might not suck. It will be nice to dump theories about Obama and see what he actually pushes once in office.
In short, I look forward to the time when Democratic governance is more concrete and specific than it has been since, well, 1994. Being out of power has a tendency to increase the abstraction and uncertainty about what your party will actually do once in power. Very soon, we will see what our party is actually made of because, come January 20th, there will be virtually no way Republicans can stop anything in 2009. I look forward to this with relish.
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