The More Things Change...
It's been a rough couple of weeks for Obamoids everywhere. Sure he got the nomination, but then he had that rendezvous with Hillary (at least they didn't fist-bump) and started talkin' crazy about guns and religion and death and spying and war*! All of which, it turns out, he's totally FOR!
Paul Krugman got it right in his June 30th op-ed:
Progressive activists, in particular, overwhelmingly supported Mr.
Obama during the Democratic primary even though his policy positions,
particularly on health care, were often to the right of his rivals’. In
effect, they convinced themselves that he was a transformational figure
behind a centrist facade. They may have had it backward.
Were they naive? I choose to think not. Just superficial.
Amid all that caterwauling for change, they may have missed that the change Obama envisioned had to do with compromise, and when you compromise with the opposition, you sometimes put yourself in compromising positions. But rest easy, when compromise is the whole of your beliefs, it's hard to compromise them. Think about it.
Of course, everything in politics is relative. Even the fervor of Obamoids in the primary was due, at least in part, to the virulence of hatred towards his rival. I don't know if McCain will inspire enough fear and loathing to make absolute devotion to Obama make the same kind of sense to some in the general.
Perversely, that could work to Obama's benefit, since the fanaticism of his rabid fan base is about as appealing as a Waco cult to the rest of us. Truth is, he doesn't need them as much now, anyway. So they feel a little jilted as he goes after Evangelicals, deer hunters, and Nascar dads. Who else are they going to vote for? They're like a bunch of crackhoes in a one-dealer town now.
Most of them are catching on that compromising on beliefs is strategy. But what some of them still don't see is that compromising on beliefs is the change Obama had in mind all along. It's certainly a change from the pig-headedness of our current Decider-in-chief.
Will Progressives end up feeling betrayed by the compromises of the would-be next Decider-in-Chief? If you review even a few of their wild fantasies of him thus far — Obama the pacifist, protector of civil liberties, savior of the secular state, and so on — the answer is clear.
The information to contradict them was always there. Some of them may have been blinded by the rhetoric of hope. Others by a peculiar brand of "benevolent racism" (which is what Ralph Nader was talking about). Still others by hatred.
I like to think that they weren't simply taken in by jazzy one-word slogans and a candidate who looks different. I mean, "Change" is the oldest political trick in the book. And it's sounding a lot like politics as usual to me.
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*For a quick primer on Obama's recent ch-ch-ch-changes, click here.
I was having a drink last evening with two friends - all three of us came to be big Hillary supporters over the course of the primaries, to the point that we were so dismayed by the inexplicable national madness surrounding Obama that we secretly admitted thinking about voting for McCain if Obama was nominated. One of the friends was aghast at Obama's announcement of his own faith-based initiative this week and didn't understand how that represented change. "Oh," I told him "now that he's the nominee and has to win a general election you can forget about all that change business. That was all just bullshit." Which it was.
It's something Hillary would do, and shamelessly I might add, because she's never said that she was holier than thou, or holier than anyone, frankly. (Well, maybe holier than Bill, but that's basically a "gimme".) She's a politician, a smart one, who understands that what being in politics means is you have to get elected to accomplish anything. And that means not only compromising your views alot but also pandering in public to people who would otherwise make you gag.
I'll vote for Obama, and I think he might even be a good President if he puts together the right administration. But let's admit it folks, he totally faked us out! He's basically Hillary in a man's suit. Except, as it turns out, he's even more devious. And man, that is really saying something. Maybe there is something there I can believe in. It ain't change, but you have to admire it.
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