It seems that the lights have finally come on and the Obama buzz has worn off amongst the far left.
Glenn Greenwald relays the following that was written by Digby, who Blogs at Hullabaloo.
The villagers and the right made it very clear what they required of Obama — bipartisanship, technocratic competence and center-right orthodoxy. Liberals took cultural signifiers as a sign of solidarity and didn’t ask for anything. So, we have the great symbolic victory of the first black president (and that’s not nothing, by the way) who is also a bipartisan, centrist technocrat. Surprise.
There are things to applaud about the cabinet picks — Clinton is a global superstar who, along with Barack himself, signals to the world that the US is no longer being run by incompetent, extremist, political fringe dwellers. Holder seems to be genuinely against torture and hostile to the concept of the imperial presidency. Gaithner is a smart guy who has the trust of the Big Money Boyz, which may end up being useful considering the enormous and risky economic challenges ahead. Emmanuel is someone who is not afraid to wield a knife and if we’re lucky he might just wield it from time to time against a Republican or a right wing Democrat. Napolitano seems to have a deft political touch with difficult issues like immigration which is going to be a battleground at DHS. And on and on.
None of them are liberals, but then Obama said repeatedly that he wasn’t ideological, that he cared about “what works.” I don’t know why people didn’t believe that. He’s a technocrat who wants to “solve problems” and “change politics.” The first may actually end up producing the kind of ideological shift liberals desire simply because of the dire set of circumstances greeting the new administration. (Hooray for the new depression!) The second was always an empty fantasy — politics is just another word for human nature, and that hasn’t changed since we were dancing around the fire outside our caves.
If you want to press for a cabinet appointment at this late date who might bring some ideological ballast, I would guess that labor and energy are where the action is. It would be really helpful to have somebody from the left in the room when the wonks start dryly parceling out the compromises on the economy and climate change. But basically, we are going to be dealing with an administration whose raison d’etre is to make government “work.” That’s essentially a progressive goal and one that nobody can really argue with. But he never said he would make government “work” for a liberal agenda. Liberals just assumed that.
I could not have said it better myself. I watched as the Left; both moderate and far left, made Obama into a Messiah-like figure, who would right all of America’s wrongs. It was simply a myth. Obama is not superman, nor is he God. He is simply a man. A man who chose to try a make a difference in the political realm. I do not agree with Obama’s Political ideology; but I do admire the guy for deciding to do something to make change, instead of sitting on the sidelines and complaining; which is what a great amount of Americans do.
Another Quote from this that strikes me, as a bit odd, is this:
But Barack Obama is a centrist, establishment politician. That is what he has been since he’s been in the Senate, and more importantly, it’s what he made clear — both explicitly and through his actions — that he intended to be as President. Even in the primary, he paid no price whatsoever for that in terms of progressive support. As is true for the national Democratic Party generally, he has no good reason to believe he needs to accommodate liberal objections to what he is doing. The Joe Lieberman fiasco should have made that as conclusively clear as it gets.
That is because, that is what gets elected, Americans as a rule; tend to back away from extremists. Cynthia McKinney is a perfect example of that. Obama knew that if he was going to get elected, he had to run his campaign as a centerist and as a moderate Democrat, otherwise he would have lost.
