The Washington Times blog published an important piece that illustrates why it's important for bloggers to understand the power of words, especially their own.
Freshman Senator Barack Obama, whose youthful optimism, charisma and oratorical skills have thrust him into the Democratic presidential arena, has been in the Senate for less than two years. But he is already coming under fierce criticism — not from Republicans but from Democrats — for not having done anything to earn his fame.
The criticism come from Democratic strategists and analysts who like him and think he has great talent, but who nevertheless question his risk-adverse posture, his tendency to bob and weave to avoid controversy, to stick to platitudes that endear him to his audiences but who is unwilling to lead on big issues and wage contentious battles.
More below the fold ...
The Times continues, quoting dKos diarist, David Sirota...
"The national media is swooning over Obama, begging him to run for president. Yet, at the same time, they are implicitly acknowledging that he has actually not ‘developed significant legislative initiatives,’" writes David Sirota, a Democratic campaign strategist who helped anti-war liberal Ned Lamont defeat Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary (only to lose to Lieberman who ran as an independent in the general election). "In other words, we are to simply accept that the Obama for President wave has absolutely nothing to do with anything that the man HAS DONE," Sirota recently wrote in his political Web site.
Obama "doesn’t actually seem to aspire to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office), and doesn’t seem to be interested in challenging the status quo in any fundamental way. Using his Senate career as a guide, it suggests that any presidential run by him is about him, his speaking ability and his fawned over talent for ‘connecting’ (whatever the hell that means)," he writes.
I've taken issue with Sirota and a few other dKos diarists for criticizing Obama using the narrative that the Times has now happily republished -- particularly since this particular line of argument is closer to truthiness than the truth.
It is simply not reasonable to attack a Senator for failing to get a progressive legislative agenda pushed through the GOP-controlled Senate. It's less than fair to argue, without basis, that the rationale for a Senator pushing a progressive agenda is that they are contemplating a run for the White House. And it's categorically untrue to say that the Senator that we are talking about, Barack Obama, is unwilling to take important positions on issues that liberals care about including health care, the environment, and energy security:
Let's begin by dispensing with the notion that Obama has not developed "significant legislative initiatives" or shown leadership on issues that progressives care about. He has proposed several pieces of legislation to make the United States less dependent on foreign oil;help auto manufacturers address health care costs if they produce more fuel-efficient cars in their fleet. He has introduced several pieces of legislation to improve the quality of health care, expand patients' rights, and protect people living in contaminated areas. And he has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at ethics reform in government (indeed, he headed the Senate Democrats efforts on ethics).
My point is not to start another pie fight. My point is this: Are we so short on right wing narratives to debunk that we actually feel a need to carry water for them?