I had a conversation about the various campaigns and their internet strategies with a reporter yesterday, and we were chatting about who was doing best. Clinton, Dodd, and Richardson are using the blogs as a messaging vehicle, whereas Edwards sees us more as a constituency. Both are reasonable strategies, though I prefer the latter. The Obama campaign basically does nothing. It's interesting. Whenever Edwards, Dodd, Richardson, or Clinton gives a major address, I have content in my inbox so that I can put it up here to discuss with all of us. Not so for Obama. I don't know why this is, but the reporter I was talking to said that he also has a tough time getting in touch with Obama, and major funders have told me the same thing. There's a paralyzing sense of inaction on the Obama campaign, and I think at this point we just have to conclude that it comes from the top.
Throughout 2005-2006, Obama's excuse for inaction, which I hit him on quite early, was 'I'm just a freshman'. But this was always a ruse, an excuse for not leading, especially on progressive issues. Obama after all was tutored by Lieberman in the Senate, and has done everything he can to fit into the culture of an institution he consistently derided as thinking too small or as too Beltway. The episode that stands out is the shameful period during the Military Commissions Act, when Obama was silent until it became clear the bill was going to pass. Here was Atrios at the time expressing frustration all of us felt:
Hey, Senator Obama, now'd be a nice time to stop fucking talking about "America coming together" and start getting America to come together to oppose torturing people.
This was another one I liked, when Atrios was encouraging people to call Obama's office.
Ask when his office is going to issue a statement in support of or against torture.
While he came out against the MCA, it was on the day the bill passed, and it was too late to make a difference. Making grandiloquent speeches on progressive issues when he knows it does not matter is his MO. It's just who he is.
In his political dealings, Obama has actually been much worse. He refused to surrogate for Lamont in the General election after a lukewarm endorsement he had to make. The Lamont campaign had to beg him to send out an email for Lamont, after Obama had gone out of his way to back Lieberman in the primary. In other displays of DC-think, Obama backed, strongly, Tammy Duckworth over the grassroots progressive Christine Cegelis in the IL-06 primary, and often backed Chicago machine candidates over reformers after winning a Senate seat that progressives had helped him garner. Obama isn't one of us, and in his political career he has shown himself entirely unequipped to lead in a time of extremism. It doesn't much matter than he worked as a community organizer in his twenties. At crunch time, Obama is almost always absent, or even on the other side.
As Chris and I have noted, today is his 'big speech' on Iraq, and it was simply irrelevant to the debate. Here's Dodd, going after him:
I was disappointed that Senator Obama's thoughts on Iraq today didn't include a firm, enforceable deadline for redeployment, and dismayed that neither he nor Senator Clinton will give an unequivocal answer on whether they would support a measure if it didn't have such an enforceable deadline.
It is clear to me - especially after yesterday's testimony - that half-measures aren't going to stop this President or end our involvement in this civil war. I thought it was clear to Senators Obama and Clinton as well after they finally came around to supporting the Feingold-Reid measure and voting against a blank-check supplemental spending bill this spring. If 'enough was enough' then, why isn't it after the bloodiest summer of the war?
Senator Obama has a gift for soaring rhetoric, but, on this critical issue, we need to know the substance of his position with specificity. Without tying a date certain to funding how does he plan to enforce his call for an immediate redeployment?
The only specificity Senator Obama offered was a call for a new constitution, but that will do nothing other than provide the Iraqis and the Bush Administration another excuse to delay -- the ink is barely dry on the constitution they have.
It is going to take bold leadership to change our course in Iraq. We need to do more than write letters to the President, we need to be clear with him.
I urge Senators Obama and Clinton not to backtrack on the need for a firm, enforceable deadline and state clearly and directly whether they will support an Iraq measure if it does not include one."
This is exactly right. Obama will not lead on Iraq, but worse than that, he will not even address it. A speech that refuses to deal with funding votes in the Senate and residual troops for the President post-2009 is not a statement on Iraq at all. It's as if I were to ask him if I could borrow his extra umbrella because it's raining outside, and he were to passionately talk about the need for it to stop raining. He's just avoiding the subject. And why should I pick Obama if I want someone who avoids the subject? I can get a better version of that in the form of Hillary Clinton. At least she's honest about not being an incrementalist, instead of bashing DC in speeches while doing nothing to change the culture he's very much a part of. |
