I just posted a much angrier piece on another site, arguing that what are now called "progressive independents" are, as their forebearers in earlier elections have been, brutal to ordinary people without realizing it. Their lukewarm support for and criticism of Obama--withholding contributions, giving the Right talking points, and such--can help enable the Right to continue its devastation in Iraq, much less continue the degradation of social programs, education, health care, and much more. 

I admit to a lack of scholarship and rigor on this point owing to a lack of time, but it has, since my baptism during the Humphrey-Nixon campaign, seemed that the progressives who withhold intense support on the grounds that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican campaigns, do have devastating effects. Like some influential bloggers and pundits, Choamsky is now, once again, saying there is no difference regarding the current Democrat dominee. Note that Reagen was elected by only 26 percent of the electorate. The progressive independents comletely abandoned Carter. Perhaps it seems specious to argue that these same sort of folks, in sitting out the Bush-Gore election or voting for Nader, unintentionally paved the way for the horrific devastation in Iraq. But this proposition is at least worth discussing.
 
What really are the effects of what often seems a kind of scholarly, hyper-patriotic zealotry that has more in common in tone and purity with the Right than with America as a whole?

I think I sympathetically understand the hopes and aims of these Lefties, having carried, "Nixon Sucks," signs in Union Square in San Francisco and participated in many other such radical adventures during the 1960s. I believed as Alcoholics Anonymous devotees do that you have to hit bottom before you can make significant change. My hope was that, as the country slips into a truly unbearable condition, the masses will awaken. Ooops. Come the revolution, we've still got the same batch of average and right wing folks to deal with. Note also that contrary to popular opinion, AA-based treatment's success rates are no better than no treatment at all, as an award winning research psychiatrist from Dartmouth established. Their logic is facistic--it's brutally demanding. You have to stop drinking before you get help stopping drinking. To the millions of sufferers who fail at AA and die of alcohol poisoning and to the progressive independents, I say, Make the bed to fit the patient.

In this presidential race, the patient is the American people and the people of the world with whom we interact significantly. The emerging treatment for alcoholism is called "harm reduction," which is an unfortunately abstract term. It means that instead of demanding that people quit drinking, instead of demanding purity, the professionals go out under the bridges and into the bars and meet people where they are and help them on their terms. For Obama, it means compromising when the compromise enables him to sustain a relationship with enough of a majority to enable substantial change. He has to go where the majority are rather than jack them up, throw mud in their faces, and denounce them for being stupid.

This is a very difficiult thing to do. It requires immense intelligence and sensitivity, and no one I know of, including the true geniuses I sometimes work with, creates lasting change without making frequent mistakes. Indeed, most of the successful folks I know expect to make close calls that turn out to be mistakes, as in Obama's FISA vote. As I tell my son as he's practicing the trumpet, you have to expect mistakes while keeping in mind the big picture--that you're talent is already proven and that you just need to keep advancing.

Obama's talent is already proven. His heart and soul is already proven. Read his books and read the news reports of what the people in Harvard, Chicago, and the Illinios State Senate who worked with him say about him. He's been doing what he says he wants to do for many years; there's no mystery here--the guy is a proven prince. There's no candidate in memory who had more of what it takes to create change in this country than this man. Of course, he's not everything we want. I disgree with some of his positions and he goofs, but he's damn good enough to deserve intense support from everyone on the Left. We do desperately need him, especially in light of the alternative.

Of course, my plea doesn['t mean we can't disagree and even heavily criticize him. But withhold intense support? That seems grossly inhumane.