To establish some bona fides, I've been reading Daily Kos since the Iraq war first began, so I'm not new. But I have never felt the need to post or comment until recently. I need to speak up now, however, because this site, and most of the left blogosphere, has become a nightmare.
Let's take a step back to almost exactly a year ago. Obama had positioned himself over the debate, the Republicans were plunging every knife they could find into him, the media was covering the blow by blow...and sites like Kos were freaking out. Second-guessing Obama was rampant and the basic premise was - Obama, take the gloves off. Josh at TPM was following suit (he's a muckracker and goes where the muck is), Open Left was in revolt, AmericaBlog, Hilzoy... There were only two voices who actually understood and spoke accurately about the situation. Al Giordano and Andrew Sullivan.
This year we've basically been without those two voices. Al Giordano, despite a headline on his site that he "Reports the United States", has decamped to Honduras and will report on nothing else. And Andrew Sullivan took August off, although he provided us with a few moments of sanity, such as this column
What happened last year? By taking the strategically unimportant month of August on face value - as a recess filled with garbage (notice that even Rove didn't try to sell his war in August) - Obama let the Republicans take as much rope as they wanted. And by the time the real debate started, the Republicans had positioned themselves as Palinites, angry, negative, racist, irresponsible, led by demagogues with no serious contribution to make - giving Obama enough rope to hang them by.
I'm not the first to say, "sound familiar." But please folks...does this sound familiar?
Now look, I'm not saying that we need to be dittoheads. BUT - we need to be smart enough to understand strategy and patience enough to wait. We need to have some basic faith in the American people (sorry, we do, you live in a Democracy that despite its flaws is a damned good one filled with hundreds of millions of good people) and we need to understand that we have a role to play. Next August when we are talking about the 2010 campaign and Obama's campaigning (he won't compare in X, he won't campaign in Y, he won't respond to Beck saying Z), is every post going to be doom and second-guessing (I could not believe that I recently saw people recommending a post calling for Obama to have a primary opponent if he didn't sign a bill with a public option - REALLY? Here, take a look at this link to understand some of the fundamental changes that Obama is bringing to government). In so doing, we make it harder to rally the troops, tell the media that Obama has no base (and thus they feel even less compunction to worry about us in their coverage), and frankly depress the hell out of us.
Basic facts - August does not matter for elections or legislation; but Obama has twice now used it for the exact same purpose - to position himself as the serious voice in September. A health insurance bill with a trigger - that was always going to be all we could get from Snowe - is not the end of the world as long as its a good trigger. In fact, it's going to be life changing. We won't have to worry about pre-existing conditions, caps on coverage, and rates set by medical history.
So let's focus on that trigger in September...please. Let's make sure it is low enough as to be useful, and please, let's fight the battle where it truly is - not giving a shit that Beck managed to lose a week torpedoing Van Jones (honestly, this will not impact the future of the United States), and start developing some real leadership.