These are my thoughts on the speech tonight.  I'm watching the replay on MSNBC now (12:45 am CST), and I have just one question: is the instant reaction of the so-called 'McCain Voters' that they have scrolling below the screen even the slightest bit credible?  Is it useful in any way?  Is Obama giving an excessively anodyne, deliberately uncontroversial speech and I am just not hearing it?  Because even when that red (McCain) line on isn't jacked all the way to the very top, it still never drops below three-quarters of the way to the top.  It frequently is running above the approval Obama is receiving from his own supporters.

I mean, I know Obama is all-in on the bipartisanship play.  But to my ears this speech is about as close to a Democratic wet dream that we could expect from this erstwhile collaborator.  I mean, he frequently has Nancy Pelosi jumping out of her Depends (sorry, that was low).  And Barbara Boxer looked not much less enthusiastic.  

Maybe I'm just too moderate, or too used to the political strategies of the last Democratic president.  (Who, I should add, for all his faults I now believe to have been a political genius.  I was too young at the time to appreciate it; he was just 'the President,' doing what presidents do.)

But the way I heard it, this was a straightforward call for Americans to allow their government to lead them into the new century according to its lights -- a call for the reintroduction of government into American economic life, i.e. a spirited defense of the liberal-progressive project.  

I was as horrified as everyone else by Gov. Jindal's comments and delivery, especially with regard to Katrina.  But he had one point I have to give some credence to, namely that when the recovery comes, it will be led by the (transformed, rejuvenated) private sector.  For the life of me, I don't understand why Obama allowed him that opening.  Instead, he could have preempted this line of criticism from Republicans by seizing that middle ground.  There is no controversy about the notion that over the long term, American economic health depends on a viable private economy.  The debate, I think, is really over what should be the government's role in getting us through this very rough patch, and then in reorienting the nation to its new economic imperatives and in helping the private sector take its first steps down that (new, green, globalized) path.  If Obama doesn't agree with that analysis, then that's a very good reason not to use it rhetorically, but I actually think that's almost exactly what he thinks.  To my mind, Obama's most powerful meme in the campaign was that we are what we have been waiting for (resulting in its being the most derided by established interests in the media and elsewhere.)  I would have used that idea to say to the American people something like the following: "In the short run, you need your government to fix what it has done to this nation in the last eight-plus years.  But then it will be up to you, with the help of hopefully enlightened policy from your government, to lead yourself into a new economic age.  First we [the government] must fix the financial and physical infrastructure that we have let crumble, then on that edifice you, private citizens and groups thereof, by your own lights can build yourselves a new economy that meets the challenges of a global age."  This would have had the effect of freezing Bobby Jindal out of his best point; as it turned out he did that just fine on his own, but there will be others--it's better to kill the message than the messenger.  So in a sense even I, a progressive, wished the rhetoric had been a bit closer to the center than it was.

In any case, what's up with MSNBC's McCain voters?  I realize that Congressional Republicans are hugely out of step with their own rank-and-file.  And I realize that McCain voters are not representative of all Republicans nationwide.  But does that realistically result in total Obamanic conversion for these McCain voters?  I mean, they're still presumably anti-government Republicans, mostly.  And this was a pretty unabashed Democratic stemwinder -- again, to my ears.

I'd love to hear any and all theories of this McCain-voter reaction on MSNBC (MSNBC now officially in the tank (not!), prescreening FAIL, whatever it might be).  Also any reaction to my views on Obama's positioning of the progressive agenda, I'd love to hear that too.  I'll check back in the coming days.

Thanks to all for reading!