This Bothers Me Too!

Jill at B@B is upset that Obama doesn’t seem to realize that he actually won the Presidency by quite a bit and unlike President Bush actually has a mandate.

I really wanted to be wrong about this one. God knows I was wrong about John Edwards, and it is to my everlasting shame that I was. But when I just couldn't bring myself to get on the Obama bandwagon back when I was choosing a breakout session at Yearly Kos 2007, it was because of what I saw as a troubling tendency to capitulate to bullies in the name of "changing the tone." I wouldn't mind if he were simply a centrist, because given the media mouthpieces we have in this country and a peculiar American tendency towards willful ignorance, I'm not sure that even a speaker of his gifts and charisma would be able to sell a truly progressive agenda to a bunch of people who think that a song called "Barack the Magic Negro" is a lighthearted joke. But whether it's the malevolent influence of Joe Lieberman as his early mentor, an unwillingness to admit to himself that the kind of politics the Republicans play in Washington is a far cry from what they're able to get away with in predominantly Democratic Chicago, or if he just plain is a Republican in disguise, it's looking more every day like his idea of bipartisanship is less oriented towards persuasion and more the Harry Reid style of letting them take his lunch money and thanking them for doing it.

I hope that we are both wrong and like Krugman says it is just a “Head Fake.”