Throwdown

by digby

Glenn Greenwald and Keith Olbermann have gotten into a dustup over the FISA legislation in which John Dean seems to be the arbiter. (Isn’t the blogosphere grand?)

Anyway, everyone can have their own opinion about the merits, and whether or not Keith or Glenn are taking the right tack in terms of Obama’s agreement to support the compromise. Unsurprisingly, I favor Greenwald’s argument on this. I just don’t think it’s really necessary to support this compromise in order to win this election and I think that at the very least we should have these programs examined by a new Justice department before anybody makes any more laws on the subject. It’s entirely possible that an Obama administration will simply reinstate them — the willingness to support this compromise suggests that it will. And I wouldn’t support that under any circumstances. But the idea that it has to be done in order to win the election I think is wrong. You can appeal to swing voters in some other way than trashing the constitution. (Here’s a novel idea. How about making a better argument?)

Having said that, Obama is the Democratic nominee and he’s a far more liberal, modern, open minded leader than John McCain could ever dream of being. Indeed, he is in every respect a fine candidate who I am proud to support, despite his campaign’s decision to use some moldy old tropes to offset some of the public’s mistrust of a young, liberalish, African American nominee. It’s going to take years of hard work on the part of progressives everywhere to make that something that politicians no longer believe is necessary or desirable.

Obama has opened up some avenues for his supporters to talk directly to him. From Jane Hamsher:

It’s also interesting to note that the tools created to help organize Obama supporters against his opponents are now being used to organize themselves to communicate with him. There’s a new group on “MyBarackObama.com” called “Senator Obama — Please Vote Against FISA.” Stop by and tell the Senator that you’ll be voting for him in November and hoping that in the meantime, he does the right thing.

It’s unlikely to make a difference in this vote, of course, but it’s necessary to go on the record and keep talking about these things if you want them to change. If we can change the political zeitgeist, someday conservatives will be the ones having to risk offending their base for a change.

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