threevalued's Blog

threevalued Commented on Are Obama's "New" Politics Really New? by Greg Sargent

2008-12-21T04:14:44Z

I apologize in advance if this is an old point, since I didn't have the patience to read 129 comments. But it seems to me that this discussion (not just here) misses a key point: Obama is not about "kumbaya" for the sake of peace and love; he is about making government an effective tool to deal with the urgent issues that require governmental action, but don't necessarily involve people's emotional and ideological commitments. I was struck by the fact that at the end of Greemwald's post he says the following:

Ultimately, the reason politics is unavoidably "divisive" is because people have really divergent and irreconcilable views on passion-provoking controversies. That's what politics is. It's what it always has been. At some point, Obama either will or won't repeal DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell; he either will or won't rescind Bush's anti-abortion regulations and appoint new Supreme Court Justices likely to re-affirm Roe; he either will or won't close Gitmo; he either will or won't withdraw from Iraq; he either will or won't investigate Bush war crimes; he either will or won't deliver on his promises to unions, etc. People feel very strongly -- and very differently -- about those issues.

Notice that this list does not include: solving the economic crisis, dealing with global warming, or improving education, to name just three salient issues. Admittedly, people's ideological passions can intrude even in relatively objective cases like these, and one person's "pragmatism" may be another's "betrayal". But there is still a clear difference, imho. Obama seeks to build coalitions that can deal with problems of this order, without the intrusion of issues of the sort in the Greenwald quote above.

threevalued Commented on Are Obama's "New" Politics Really New? by Greg Sargent

2008-12-21T04:13:00Z

Ultimately, the reason politics is unavoidably "divisive" is because people have really divergent and irreconcilable views on passion-provoking controversies. That's what politics is. It's what it always has been. At some point, Obama either will or won't repeal DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell; he either will or won't rescind Bush's anti-abortion regulations and appoint new Supreme Court Justices likely to re-affirm Roe; he either will or won't close Gitmo; he either will or won't withdraw from Iraq; he either will or won't investigate Bush war crimes; he either will or won't deliver on his promises to unions, etc. People feel very strongly -- and very differently -- about those issues.