I'm not blind to the fact that in this final sprint before tonight's Iowa caucus Barack Obama has gone negative on his Democratic opponents in a way certain to rankle the sensitive nerves of progressives--by attacking them from the right, with right-wing rhetoric. Ironically, this puts Obama, not Clinton, in the position of being the calculating, triangulating centrist--the very feature that is most unappealing about the Clinton political machine. I certainly agree, and I'm not sure why Obama has decided to take this tack. The most plausible theory is the perennial siren song of the so-called "independent voter," whose presence is undeniably filling the ranks of Obama's supporters. Every four years we hear about these voters being "decisive" in a presidential election--and 2008 is no different. Take this, for example:

There is a spectre haunting this year's presidential campaign: the independent voter. Buoyed by the Des Moines Register poll predicting that participation by independents could reach as high as 40% in the upcoming Democratic caucus, Barack Obama is now counting on the independent vote to carry him to victory in Iowa and New Hampshire. And John McCain is hoping that independents will make the difference for him in New Hampshire, as they did in 2000 against George Bush.

John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, the authors of this piece, are heavily invested in understanding where independent voters lean. They wrote a book on the subject that, in light on 9/11 and the Bush boom, looked ridiculous, but from our current vantage point looks prescient. They were right about the trends; those trends were just upset by events outside the normal flow of politics. Indeed, you could argue--and I would agree--that the real aberration was the 2000 election itself, which interrupted a set of shifting demographic trends that all pointed to a long-term democratic majority, at least along the lines of Judis and Teixeira's definition. And that definition depends on a certain set of voters receptive to a post-industrial Democratic pitch. Beyond the obvious fact that these voters don't identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats, what can we say about them? Judis and Teixeira have this to say:

What all these independents share, however, is skepticism about the two party system itself. Many of them voted for Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. They see Washington as dominated by "special interests," and unlike Democrats or Republicans, see the political parties themselves as "special interests." The parties are part of the problem. They look, therefore, to politicians like Gary Hart in 1984 or McCain in 2000 who appear to position themselves above the parties - to campaign as candidates of the "national interest" and to condemn their own party as captive of "special interests." In this year's election, independents who vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses will be looking primarily to Barack Obama, who is running a Hart-like campaign; Republicans will be looking to McCain, who after his early slump, has readopted the language of 2000, and to Texas congressman Ron Paul.

To pull all the threads together, Obama's unity pitch appears to be nothing more than a way of attracting independent, undecided--whatever--voters to his camp. I don't think anyone can realistically and comprehensively understand the specific reasons why these voters are doing so, but is it really plausible to argue that they all are turned off by the two-party system and are expressing that ennui by voting for...a representative of that two-party system? If that is true then it suggests that Obama's campaign and political style are somehow un-Democratic, or at least as far as the caricature of the Democratic party goes. And this, I think, is not just Obama's appeal, but also a clever strategy on his part to create widespread appeal for a a frankly progressive policy agenda. Let's outsource this to Yglesias for a moment:

I think you have to agree that if he really does manage to use this kind of rhetoric to mobilize an unprecedented number of independents to go caucus for the first time on behalf of a candidate who was right about Iraq from the beginning, backs ambitious new programs on climate change and media reform, big new regulations on health insurance companies and new subsidies to people who have trouble paying for insurance, etc., etc., etc. that that'll be a pretty impressive achievement.

It's always worth recalling that George W. Bush talked the talk about repudiating the harshness of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. That duped the brain-dead press and they, in turn, helped dupe a substantial element of the public. But the policy agenda from Bush was always very right-wing, just as Obama's platform is quite progressive.

There's the rub. Substantively, it doesn't matter what Obama says to get the votes--he's honest about the policy he would enact as president, and that policy set is progressive. He's not saying he's a "uniter, not a divider," or a "compassionate conservative." He's saying that he can unite people across the ideological spectrum, which is dubious, but then advancing a solidly progressive--some would say divisive--policy platform. I can't believe that this is somehow an accident, nor can I say that this was Obama's plan all the way back at the 2004 DNC speech that made him famous. I've long maintained that Obama might be egotistical enough (and who aspiring to the presidency isn't?) to believe his own rhetoric, but his more tactical side knows he can use this language to win. Especially when you factor in the brain-dead press-friendly appeal, I think it's clear that Obama is running a campaign that truly does attempt to appeal to all people, by appealing to their own desires most directly. Even his appeals to groups more at home on the GOP side have been so infrequent as to amplify the "what the hell is Obama doing?" question. It's almost as if he's testing how far his appeal goes, including those groups who are in all likelihood preternaturally opposed to him.

This is why I've had a hard time abandoning Obama despite his missteps. Every candidate, Republican or Democrat, has their baggage. That's not the point. The point is that we need to evaluate that baggage and rank it: is Obama's Broder-esque unity rhetoric worse than Clinton's questionable foreign policy ideas? Is it worse than John Edwards' decision to accept public financing should he be the nominee, thereby leaving him vulnerable to months of better-funded GOP assault? The answer is no. For me, those are critical weaknesses, and despite all that I've written here about the vacuousness of Broder-esque unity language, that is only pertinent to political journalists, not candidates. That is the critical difference. And in an election year where the Democratic frontrunners are all in their own ways excellent, I can afford to make my decision based on things as substance-free as rhetoric. Along that dimension, Obama has always been the best, and if his strategy pays off, he will have deserved to win, and will be the most formidable nominee the Democrats have put up at least since B. Clinton, if not deeper in the past.