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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Keep Those Obama Phone Calls Coming

The FISA debacle could happen as early as Friday. Nobody has seen the final bill except the cretins who are moving it forward, including the lobbyists who wrote it. Because the scared bunnies at the DCCC are so worried about keeping power and saving their blessed freshman Dems from criticism (even though it won't), this bill has to be fast-tracked and pushed through under the dead of night.

And if you think that we only have to wait for Obama's election to end this kind of backroom dealing and lobbyist-written legislation, consider that he is trying to protect an incumbent who is one of the worst reactionaries in the Democratic caucus, who supports the FISA bill completely, who defines himself by total resistance to Democratic values, and who will not be an asset to anything resembling a progressive agenda:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has taped a radio commercial on behalf of U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Savannah, who faces a July 15 primary challenge.

It's the first case of Obama involving himself in a local race in Georgia.

Details of when the ad will start airing and where it will be broadcast - the 12th District covers much of east Georgia, including portions of Augusta and Savannah - were not immediately available Wednesday.

But the Obama campaign made clear to my colleague Aaron Sheinin that it sees Barrow, a two-term Democrat, as an important ally. We've got calls into the Barrow campaign, but haven't heard from them yet.


As Matt Stoller notes, this is part and parcel with Obama consolidating the party. He wants to do a favor for a conservative Democrat who might be in a position to return the favor for him. Regina Thomas, the progressive challenging Barrow, will support progressive values and doesn't need any favors, the logic goes.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

This is everything Obama claims so vehemently to oppose, claims he wants to end. And yet the Congress under the control of his party is about to enact a radical bill to legalize vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunize telecoms who broke our country's laws for years. And not only is Obama doing nothing about any of that, but far more, he's actively intervening in a Democratic primary to help one of the worst enablers of all of this stay in power, while helping to defeat an insurgent, community-based challenger.

None of that is enjoyable to write or accept, but those are just facts. There is a disturbing tendency on all sides to view Obama through a reductive Manichean lens -- either he's the embodiment of pure transformative Good who is going magically to cleanse our polity the minute he takes office, or he's nothing other than a mindless, passive tool of the establishment whose pretty rhetoric masks a barren ambition for power and who is no better than McCain. Neither of those caricatures is remotely accurate, and a John McCain presidency would be an unmitigated disaster on every level.

But it's critical to keep in mind that Obama is a politician and, like all people, is plagued by significant imperfections. He has largely entrenched himself in, and is dependent upon, the power structure he says he wants to undermine. Uncritical devotion to political leaders, including him, is destructive. Obama needs pressure, criticism, checks, and real scrutiny just like anyone else in power in order to keep him accountable, responsive, and faithful to the principles he claims are the ones driving him.


That's absolutely right. I called on Obama from the moment he clinched the nomination to shut down this FISA bill. It undermined his national security argument, trashed the Constitution, and delivered immunity to lawbreaking. Now he's not only indifferent to such calls, he's actively enabling those "Democrats" who would do the deed.

I guess you could become disillusioned and turn away from politics entirely, smugly tell everyone you know (and some you don't) that you were right all along and Obama's no saint (though I certainly never said he was). Or you can hold him accountable. The Strange Bedfellows coalition is building, having raised nearly $200,000 in a day, with more to come. We will stand up and demand our civil liberties and our Constitutional rights, and attack those politicians, from either political party, who seek to undermine them.

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