I'm sometimes mistaken for an Obama hater. In fact, I'm something less interesting: a critic from the left. There are much more authoritative and prominent versions of me, like Paul Street and Adolph Reed Jr.  I generally share their views on Obama's politics, but I part company with them when they say or suggest that it's not important that Obama win.

I want Obama to win not just because he's up against a fanatical freetrader who has Norman Podhoretz's foreign policy and James Dobson's position on abortion; I want Obama to win because he embodies important progressive principles that must be defended. It's a central irony of his campaign: while his policies and political philosophy are frustratingly moderate, a victory by Obama would be a victory for vital progressive principles: racial tolerance, mutli-culturalism, general acceptance of difference. On the other hand--and this is the focus of this piece--a defeat would be a devastating defeat for those principles.

"Torture is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

                                            --CIA Counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman
                                                 Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, October, 2002
                                                 
 

Welcome to the blogopshere, critics of the critics. This strange place emerged in the early years of the millennia in response to Democrats' corporate-sponsored, consultant-driven caution, conservatism, and cowardice. (We like to overwrite in the blogosphere.) While the 'sphere has morphed and reproduced--while there is not a single 'sphere--there are a few unifying, widely shared beliefs, chief among them the belief that Democrats should be bold and progressive--no, that they must be.

So to those of you surprised that the place in which you find yourselves is objecting, often with anger, to Obama's scared shuffle to "the middle": where did you think you were?

I've had my share of complaints about Obama (okay, more than my share) but I think electing him is one of the most important thing progressives can do. I also think he'll beat McCain by out-organizing and out-planning him. Which is to say that money, always the mother's milk of politics, is especially important. I'm excited by his 50-state strategy and will do what I can to make sure he has the funds to maintain it.

I don't want to fawn over Feingold; he's just a pol, after all; but he's showing once again why he's the best Senator there is, with apologies to Sanders, Brown, Kennedy, and Reed.

What strikes me most about the debate in the House over FISA is how much it resembles national security debates in 2001 and 2002, with many Dems supporting awful bills for fear of appearing soft. You'd never know that in the interim there'd been a disastrous Republican war.

There's a depressing diaryon the rec list right now. It applauds Obama's support of the FISA "compromise" because it will prevent the media and the right-wing from portraying him as weak.

Not too long ago (as recently as last week), it seemed that everyone in the netroots agreed that we shouldn't let fear of our political opponents dictate important choices on national security.

No, not the economy, nor Iraq, nor health care, nor trade, not even McCain's love affair with the past.

Affirmative action.

Obama has stated that he thinks affirmative actions programs in schools and elsewhere should focus less on race and more on class. He should make this a big issue in this campaign. Doing so could help him not only win the election but build a black-white coalition that could lead to sweeping progressive change.

Already diaried? Probably, but so what? It deserves a few diaries.

This is one of those shocking-not-shocking-at all-reports that have become commonplace in the Age of Bush:
according to a (credible) reporter, Bush is preparing for a permanent occupation of Iraq.

You remember Kyl-Lieberman, right? It became a big issue in the primary because Hillary Clinton supported it. She took lots of heat primarily because it classified Iran's Revolutionary Guard as an international terrorist organization. This week, after McCain criticized Obama for opposing the measure, Obama said he opposed it because of its implications for the war in Iraq, not because of its language on the Revolutionary Guard.

The right-wing press is accusing Obama of flip-flopping, but this, in fact, has been Obama's position all along, or at least since he finally clarified his position. He was wrong then, and he's wrong now.

A black man is the Democratic Party nominee for president. If you're not excited and amazed, you're dead inside, or perhaps merely distracted. People are rightly celebrating the history that was made last night, but I hope another fact doesn't get lost: a progressive is the Democratic nominee for president.

His progressivism can be elusive. His focus on consensus and unity sometimes obscures and even undercuts his progressivism. But perspective is needed. He's the most progressive Democratic nominee in 40 years.

Pew just put out a new poll. The general findings won't surprise you, but the particulars might. It seem to validate the effort of Democrats to link McCain to Bush. (Of course, it's McCain who linked himself to Bush. We're just pointing it out.)

I know you're tired of hearing about it, but I'm going to keep talking about it as long as the Obama, his campaign, and so many Obama supporters refuse to acknowledge the obvious: he's performed poorly among white working class voters in every part of the country.

I'm not sure if it's spin or denial or some combination. (I guess if Hillary were poised to win the nomination, her supporters would be denying her problem with African-Americans.) For a while, when Hillary's campaign was alive and kicking, it made certain political sense to deny the problem, given that it was central to her electability argument. But now that Obama is the sure nominee, it makes no sense to uphold the pretense. On the contrary, failure to acknowledge the problem may prevent Obama from solving it.

We can debate about whether the problem poses a minor or large risk to his candidacy; but on the question of whether he has a problem, there can be no debate. The truth below the fold.

In case you haven't heard what Bush said:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

In the short term, of course it's good for Democrats that Bush in the news, because he has Dahmer-like approval ratings. But the soft-on-national security charge--which was echoed by John McCain--still threatens to hurt Democrats, especially if they continue to respond the way they did today.

His problem, you see, is that Jews are generally progressive. A new poll by Gallup finds that in a prospective match up against Barack Obama, McCains loses among Jews 2 to 1.

Details below.

I've got a friend in the CIA in Pakistan. He leaked me this memo from Bin Laden himself. Pretty interesting...

One of the year's most important stories got lost in the furor over Reverend Wright:

...a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

This is just the latest evidence that abuse of detainees was systematic and that Bush and his inner circle--as well as senior military officials--are to blame.

What do we do with this knowledge?
What does Barack Obama do?

I don't think this has been diaried yet; unfortunately I don't have time to do so in any depth.

John Bolton is calling for George Bush to launch an attack on Iran. Bolton, of course, is no fringe player but a former administration official who has the trust of both Bush and Cheney.

Excerpts of the article, which appeared in the Telegraph on Monday, below.