Quibbles and Bits - 7/3

1) Now THIS is interesting. Apparently the schism in the Democratic party continues. First it was Hillary supporters, dead-enders, who didn’t know the game was up and that Obama was going to bring sweetness and light to the progressive world.

Now it’s the left’s turn under the bus. Quoting from the WSJ, The New Republic has a comment titled Hey Nutroots, You Lost. It’s a short piece and it ends with this:

Why Democrats have ever listened to these people [lefties] is beyond me. Let’s applaud Barack Obama for ignoring the nonsense wing of his party.

Read the rest ->

2) USAToday has a piece on the same topic - blowing off the ones who brought you to the party.

In recent days, Obama has criticized the Supreme Court for saying that child rapists cannot be executed and refused to oppose a decision knocking down a handgun ban. He announced a plan to support faith-based social work and said he would vote for a bill giving immunity to telephone companies that allowed warrantless wiretapping of their customers.

Those centrist positions may help woo swing voters, but they infuriated some of Obama’s core supporters. Nearly 12,000 of them have formed an online group on Obama’s presidential campaign website, urging him to vote against the domestic wiretapping bill.

The article discusses the usual suspects in the lefty blogosphere and their unhappiness with recent Obama position triangulations. What’s interesting here is that these groups are beginning to hear what Hillary supporters heard some time ago:

Some political strategists, however, note Obama is making a calculated shift to win over voters in a country where neither major party claims a majority.

“His supporters should understand this,” said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “He needs to reach out.”

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake doesn’t think there’s any political risk for Obama. “The progressive voters really dislike John McCain,” she said. “That should keep them on board.”

Welcome to the “you’ll be back on board and you’ll like it” party. The bus is on its way.

3) Is this a play FOR the VP slot by Sebelius or a play for NOT BEING on the Obama / ?????? ticket? At realclearpolitics is a short Q & A with Sebelius on whether or not Kansas will turn blue this fall. When asked if she could deliver Kansas, Sebelius hedged by saying “governors count.” But then she noted that Kansas has not voted Democratic since 1964.

4) Another short piece by Tom Bevan of Time describes an exchange between Bevan and Harold Ford, the current Chair of the DLC. Bevan tried to get Ford to say whether Obama is a progressive posing as a centrist or a centrist posing as a progressive. Ford replied that Obama is above such labels. Then he praised Bill Clinton’s presidency? WTH?

First, Obama is above such labels? Huh. That means he won’t be pinned down. Sounds noble, but when the rubber meets the road, it means he’s slippery and you can’t figure out where he might go and the metrics he uses to get there.

Second, Bill Clinton is now being praised? He’s not a racist? I guess this is some of that nice-nice being spread around by a trowel now that the primary is over. Blech.
It’s short. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

5) Reed Galen at realclearpolitics.com, warns against overconfidence at the Obama campaign. He covers some of the missteps of the campaign, including the Obama seal, alienation of Clinton voters, over-reliance on young voters and position flops on public finance and FISA.

However, claiming that he’s single-handedly re-created the public financing system because of the volume of his small-dollar donations is laughable. Add to that his recent decision to support the Senate’s decision on FISA, and its corresponding corporate protection, is completely at odds with the stands he’s taken to date on such issues. He runs the risk, like the limousine liberal set Senator Obama so ably represents, of being accused of sitting in his well-funded ivory tower and telling everyone else to, “do as I say, not as I do.”

Well, duh.

6) The LA Times has a story about a campaign stop in Colorado, where Obama outlined a plan to ask more Americans to participate in national service. He used his experience as a “community organizer” as an example of the transformative effects of such service.

However, glossed over was the indirect reference to how this would be paid for.

He has put out a $3.5-billion national service plan that would double the size of the Peace Corps, recruit retired engineers and scientists to tutor students, and offer college students tuition aid in return for community service.

He has pledged to pay for the plan by closing corporate loopholes and ending the Iraq war, among other things.

7) But apparently that whole Iraq position is up for grabs again. At Politico, Mike Allen has an update about Obama’s position(s) on Iraq.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately, and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month.

Yet, once again in the now familiar Obama slide, he said:

“When I go to Iraq and I have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies. . .””

Obama later said at a second news conference he still intends to stick to the timeline.

The original Obama plan, still on his Web site, promises: “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

In a separate six-page Iraq plan, he says in a section headed “All Combat Troops Redeployed by 2009”: “The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to begin immediately to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year –now.”

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, began backing off during remarks Wednesday on CNN’s “Situation Room,” telling guest host John Roberts that Obama has actually advocated “a phased withdrawal, with benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that called for strategic pauses, based on the progress on these benchmarks, and advice on the commanders on the ground.”

WTH? Does anyone understand this “position” on the Iraq war? How in the world could someone supposedly so smart be so freakin flaky on an issue this important? Must be by design. It would certainly be nice to know which position (immediate withdrawal / phased withdrawal dependent on conditions “on the ground”) is the real one. But maybe the voters aren’t supposed to be able to tell.

8 ) Well, over at Financial Times is an article about Obama’s plans for Iran. Obama is asking the Europeans for more sanctions against Iran, but Europeans feel this will leave them too dependent on an unpredictable Russia for their energy needs.

But European countries have been reluctant to endorse new sanctions banning fresh investment in Iran’s energy sector, an idea mooted by Mr Obama’s supporters. Some European states are preoccupied by dependence on Russian gas and want to have Iran as an optional alternative.

He [Anthony Lake] stressed that Mr Obama, even after withdrawing troops from Iraq over 16 months as he has promised, would maintain “a residual presence for clearly defined missions”. These would include military training, and “preparedness to go back in if there are specific acts of genocidal violence”.

Oh, so we really need to ask what a “residual force” is. Also, it looks like the whole “talks without pre-conditions” is still on the table for Iran.

Mr Obama and his advisers stress the Democratic candidate’s readiness to sit down with Iranian leaders without ­conditions.

And Lake portrayed Obama as:

. . . a tough-minded realist rather than an anti-war politician. “When I joined the campaign, I remember asking someone at the very beginning: ‘Is this a protest campaign or a presidential campaign?’” he said, before insisting that the answer was clearly the latter.

Hmmmmm.

9) Also at FT is a slightly less nuanced story about the faith-based initiative the Obama campaign has begun to outline. Worth a read simply to get a more objective view of the proposal.

Under the plan, Mr Obama would set up a White House Council for Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships that would replace Mr Bush’s Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Describing the latter as a “photo-op”, Mr Obama promised a “real partnership” with religious groups that qualify to receive federal money for social welfare programmes.

“The new name will reflect a new commitment,” said Mr Obama. “This will not just be another name on the White House organization chart – it will be a critical part of my administration.”

Well, regardless of whether one likes this idea or not, it remains to be seen who Obama would staff such a program with or what its ideological / philosophical parentage is. Hey, where ideas come from matters.