2008 Presidential

This comes from Andrew Sullivan who has been one of the top 10 Cheerleaders for Obama for quite some time now. What struck me about Sullivan’s list is that the conservatives around me who intend to vote for Obama have a few of these very reasons. I shouldn’t have thought of them as being unique, but I did. We all seem to think of Republicans who would vote for Obama as worn down and out of choices, when, in fact, there are many — like Sullivan — whose decisions are energized by the possibilities of an Obama administration and not a dispirited lesser of two evils pick. Like Andrew, they are choosing Obama for reasons that don’t offend their conservative sensibilities, but are free of the doctrinaire adherence to the requirements of the Christian Nationalist and nonconservative wings of the party. Bravo, Andrew. Bravo to all of my republican friends and co-workers who recognize themselves here. Here are a few items (but go see the whole thing!):

The wankery from the right is unabated AND apparently this s a dress rehearsal for what we may be in for over the next four years should Obama win.

Now that we’ve put away the black man attacking white female supporter of McCain, we’ve moved on to the new subject of the Looking Glass. Today that subject is a seven-year old panel discussion of which Obama was a member where our right rabbits are beckoning us to follow them in their assertion that Obama has claimed it a “tragedy that the Supreme Court did not pursue a redistribution of wealth”. This is headlined over at Drudge so we have strike one and two right there.

Jake Tapper at ABC has a link to the entire radio program (there is a opportunistically edited version floating around out there that is, of course, more crazyness) plus some germane excerpts from the discussion. The take away is that Obama isn’t complaining about the Supreme Court — he is complaining about the strategies and tactics of the civil rights movement:

one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways, we still stuffer from that.”