Obama's blueprint for change is a long read, but it does counter the charge that Obama is an empty suit. His ideas are all solid and progressive (though I doubt they are his). Even if he isn't sharp enough to create policy himself, he certainly has positioned himself correctly on all the issues. I assume Hillary is pretty much on the same page on most of these things. However, it is true that she is more beholden to big money and corporate lobbyists than he is. And that could be a major impediment to getting the job done right. I do wonder whether Obama's plan is so progressive that it will be unacceptable to many who have supported him without actually knowing any of these details. Much of what he proposes is very leftist. Yet, he has campaigned as some sort of bipartisan. It is really hard to imagine that he is going to win over any republicans to such an expansion of the role of the federal government in every aspect of our lives. Personally, I have pretty mixed feelings about it myself. But again, Hillary would move in the same direction and despite her connections still have little chance of flipping enough republicans in the senate to do anything meaningful. (Thank god the president can just end the war without congress being involved, so at least we can count on that.)

So how is any or all of such an agenda accomplished? One way would be to get clear supermajorities of progressives in both houses of congress. That seems unlikely in the next cycle, and by all accounts, is even less likely with Clinton as the nominee. There has been a lot of talk within the Democratic party that she will have negative coattails in many "purple" states that we need to hold on to. The thing about Obama is that he will bring a lot of people to the polls in these red-leaning purple states. It might not be enough to flip any or many of them in the presidential vote, but many of these states have elected Dems to congress just two years after re-electing Bush. The huge turnouts he will draw could magnify this. 

And there is another factor in the mix as well when it comes to getting things done. It bother me to say this, but you have to work with what you have got. Most Americans are religious, which is a large reason why Obama's "revivalist" campaign style (large on oratory and inspiration and light on substance) has been so successful on the grassroots level. It reflects the weak-mindedness of Americans. (Not that all his supporters are weakminded; some probably figured out what I am writing here long ago.) By not taking a public stand for much (besides his opposition to the war), people can project whatever hopes they have onto him. Now, this is a problem when it's a Reagan manipulating the masses this way, but it's quite different when it's a progressive (in terms of the outcome, I mean). Reagan got all his legislation passed despite congress having huge Democratic majorities throughout his terms. How did he do this? Largely with his oratorical skills. Did he sway congress with these skills? No. They all saw him as the empty suit he was. As vacuous as I find Obama, he is a genius compared to Reagan. Reagan swayed the public and congress ran scared. I hate to admit this, but Obama could do the same thing (and Hillary definitely could not). So, even without a supermajority in the senate, he might be able to bring public pressure to bear on the small number of senators he will need to flip (and by most accounts, he could need as few as 4 after the next election, which means only flipping blue-state republicans like Arlen Spector, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins).

Now, my vote probably doesn't matter in the GE since Georgia will go republican in all likelihood (though perhaps Obama could actually flip the south with huge black turnout and because he is more overtly religious than McCain, the latter of whom is not well-liked by evangelicals). Don't get me wrong. The way Obama speaks turns my stomach. If he was president, I would go another eight years without listening to a presidential speech. I am also not sure federal solutions are the way to solve our problems. Ideally, I would rather see a much smaller federal government and really progressive state governments coming up with more local solutions. But the fact is that some of our problems probably just cannot be solved that way. We can't allow a single state to work against the environment or all the polluters will just move there and the net effect will be the same. I also wonder whether a lot of companies would just leave the US altogether if they lost all their tax breaks, were forced to unionize, couldn't lobby anymore, had to protect the environment, and treat their workers well. But I think that is a chance we will have to take. And if they do, perhaps a new green, high-tech economy will rise from the ashes of the old one.

My point is that I keep flirting with the idea of voting for McCain, even changing my registration to NJ where my vote could make a difference. I also have considered a third party. But today, I am kind of curious about an Obama presidency. Unless Hillary wins TX and OH by large margins, he will carry the pledged delegates by a decent margin. He is probably well over 150 ahead after yesterday. She could still win if the superdelegates pick her. It is their right to do this and the idea that they should follow the will of the voters is ridiculous. If they just rubberstamped the existing vote, their would be no reason for them to exist. Obama always talks about not being poll-driven and being able to exercise judgment. Well, most of the supers are (or were) elected representatives of the people. They should certainly be free to exercise their judgment as well without being beholden to polls (i.e., the primary voters). If I was a super, and Obama had won the most states, the most votes, and most delegates, it would probably come down to an electoral college calculus—who could beat McCain in key purple states? Right now, it looks Obama could possibly flip CO, KS, MO, and VA. Hillary looks better in MI, PA, OH, FL, and TX. Either way, I hope this is settled in early March. If it goes all the way to June, the party will be divided and we will likely lose in the fall as a result.

I read an article in yesterday's Times about the planned drawdown of US troops in Iraq and the shift from combat to training in many parts of the country. This is, of course, the plan advocated by the Iraq Study Group before the surge and also basically the plan that Dems have been advocating since the last election. Granted, the drawdown will only reduce troop numbers to pre-surge levels, so it hardly fulfills the the desires of the vast majority of the public that troops were to be from 2006 levels rather than the surge that was actually put into place. However, that is really neither here nor there anymore. What is an issue is that there is a big problem with the current Dem message on the war.

Everyone, left and right, knows we are trapped in Iraq in some form for a very long time to come. So, the issue of withdrawal, fast or slow, is not really as fundamental as the policy and posturing that got us there in the first place. Violence has dropped, though it remains unacceptable. It is also likely that there is really no one left to kill in most neighborhoods as the ethnic cleansing has been successful. This is a really a key point.

Certain factors have contributed to increased stability in Iraq, but our presence there is still a failure. Not because we failed to quell the violence a bit, but because we have destroyed whatever semblance of civil society Iraq ever had and have obliterated any hope of a new one developing in our lifetimes. We have replaced a state that was largely secular before the first Persian Gulf War of 1990 with a what is essentially a fundamentalist-leaning Islamic state with ties to Iran. We have the hatred and contempt of the entire Arab world.

The focus of the Dem candidates should not be to pander to the know-nothing netroots on the left, with regard to the simplistic notion of ending the war now. It should be to appeal to the masses of the American population, who are currently confused about the apparent "successes" being reported in the MSM around the country, including the Times. What these folks are not confused about is that we were manipulated into an unnecessary war by a bunch of megalomaniacs who did not make us safer at all, not to mention destroying the lives of millions of innocents (including those who have been injured, died, been internally displaced, or fled the country)...a number in the range of five million or more.

We need intelligent, rational leaders who will not lead us down a road like this again. I think any of the Dems will fit this bill, though I know many who read TPM consider HRC no better than GWB in this regard. That strikes me as a ridiculous point of view. It is hard to imagine that someone who fought hard against the Vietnam war, not through useless protests, but calculated organizing and thoughtful writing, would embark upon anything remotely like that as president. I assume you netroots folks are aware that HRC's anti-war activities are well-documented, and she is really the only one of the current Dem candidates to have fought so passionately to end our last great debacle of military adventurism. While I have no doubt that Obama would move even more strongly in this regard, I worry that he will ultimately be unelectable in many states because it will be too easy to paint him as soft on terror.