We've got the purists and the pragmatists on KOS waging a hard battle over Obama's stance on FISA. The purists are winning. Is that good politics?
For most of the day, Hunter was clearly winning the war for the purists. With over 1000 responses to his "Even Obama Thinks you are Stupid" diary most of which supported his point that Obama had sold out, the purists were kicking tail. Several similar-themed diaries over the past few days have hit 600 or more responses - giving Obama hard punches to the mid-section.
But tonight the pragmatists struck back hard with a clever night time raid. JeffLeiber rounded up over 300 and planted the pragmatist flag down hard.
So, Kossacks - are we purists or are we pragmatists? Kind of looks like the former by a ratio of at least 3:1. I have to say - I'm not happy about that. Why? Because the pragmatists often win and the purists often lose.
Isn't Chicago-style politics practical politics? Isn't Obama's trans-partisanship theme anti-purist? Why do the the purists think that Obama was ever really one of them?
The pevalent view here on KOS seems to be: pragmatic politics sucks; it's what wrong with the country.
The pragmatic view is much different: there is no such thing as political purity. If you don't understand that you will never win anything in politics.