Everyone is smarter than Obama

Amazing. The man who overturned the unbeatable, inevitable Clinton machine apparently no longer knows how to win an election. From what I read, Obama and his team have almost totally blown it and are in danger of punting the general election the way Hillary did the primary. Thankfully, he does have one chance to escape this doom: Pay attention to the pundits and commentators who know how to rescue his failing campaign.

(Sidebar: Apparently the polls that show him increasing his lead over McCain in nearly every category, every demographic and many states that Democrats never win — outliers. Aberrations. Indefensible errata that cannot stand up to the force of opinion-makers' opinions.)

Here's Arianna's take: "Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers" —

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

The venerable and all-knowing NY Times: "New and Not Improved" —

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.

Or how about the Associated Press? "Analysis: Obama's centrist emphasis gives GOP ammo" —

Is Barack Obama close to being shadowed by giant flip-flops and, worse, having the image stick with people all the way to the voting booth?

Or how about 60s radical Tom Hayden? "Barack at Risk" —

From the beginning, Obama's symbolic 2002 position on Iraq has been very promising, reinforced again and again by his campaign pledge to "end the war" in 2009. But that pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents [excepting Bill Richardson] have ignored or avoided until now.

And on and on and on.

Now, if these were people with a long history of knowing how to win the presidency, that would be one thing. Arianna looks back at Gore and Kerry and sees danger for Obama. How she sees Obama in either of those two candidates, however, is beyond me. This is an unprecedented candidate running the kind of campaign never before witnessed in American politics. And yet she is certain he is on the brink of repeating Kerry and Gore's mistakes.

The Times? Allegedly David Brooks had the week off (and we got an excellent piece from Paul Krugman instead, always a great trade-off) but this reeks of Brooks' ersatz non-partisanship. The Times, with unintentional transparency, speaks for all those who know better than Obama about how to run his campaign by admitting his recent moves are "perplexing."

I find this not at all surprising.

The only way not to be perplexed by Obama is to have paid attention to his entire life's work, to what he's been saying throughout the campaign (and in "The Audacity of Hope"), and to be one of the millions of Americans who decided to support Obama as their first choice, not because their other candidates dropped out. Standing outside the Obama campaign — or movement, which is a more accurate representation of what's going on — it's easy to misunderstand Obama. Standing on the outside, looking at Obama as just another candidate, albeit with terrific speaking skills, makes it easy to misread what he's doing and why.

Standing on the outside, Obama becomes what Arianna, Tom and others want him to be. Tom Hayden knew all along Obama was not a "peace" candidate of the kind he'd prefer to support, but somehow disappointment is still there because — Obama is not the kind of "peace" candidate he'd prefer to support. Obama never has been and never will be the kind of anything candidate people might want to support. I'd prefer a pacifist president, but I know I won't find one who can actually get elected and fix the health care system. I support Obama on his terms, not mine.

The people with national platforms to speak and write are less generous. They want their candidate, and they want Obama to become that candidate. In the eyes of left and leftish commentators and activists, Obama is already, in many ways, a failure. But that's what happens when your demands of another human being do not match the reality of who that person is. We will continue to get these kind of articles, op-eds and punditiological ruminations, not only through the rest of the campaign but throughout Obama's eight years in office. No matter what he accomplishes, he won't accomplish the right things in the right way — at least he won't for a lot of people.

Including me. Tough noogies. I don't expect him to. I don't expect any politician to get everything right, as I perceive "right." Hell, I don't get "right" right a lot of the time. Thankfully for my sanity, I don't expect to and, more importantly, I do not demand that the world conform to what I perceive as truth — at the moment. That's what 5-year-olds do: demand the universe be exactly the way they want it to be, right now and forever. I don't want that, and, for my president, I don't need that.

I need a progressive president, and that's why I support Obama so fervently. He's going to have different views on a lot of policy issues, and I'm cool with that. What matters is not the policy as much as the process. A progressive president like Barack Obama understands that it's how we get to whatever policy we end up with that matters. For progressives, that process is about involvement, information, an inclusion: Help people know as much as they can about an issue, all sides and permutations. Get them involved in the process, not just as bystanders, well-informed as they may be, but active. Decision-makers. Changes agents with the ability to formulate the final policy. And get as many people involved as possible: the whole range of opinions, beliefs, ideologies, etc. That's what a progressive does.

And that's Obama has done his whole life. That's what make him a progressive, and if he decides he has to support a shitty bill because it's the best he's going to get in 2008, then so be it. He did not blow off supporters as he came to his decision. He explained carefully why he made his decision and that he knows it will not sit well with a lot of backers. He stopped short of saying "Tough noogies" but he made it clear: He will do what he believes is the right thing at the time he has to act. He won't kowtow either to political pressure or political expediency.

This is a bad thing, how? Oh yea, right. Because you disagree with his decision. Sorry, Arianna and Tom. You may understand a lot, but you have yet to grok why millions of people support Barack Obama. It has very little to do with how he votes on certain issues. The Obama campaign/movement is about the process of creating a nation that brings people together and finds new ways to fix all that is broken. You guys are stuck in old-style politics of opposition and power. When you get past that and understand that the world has changed, let us know. You'll have something worth listening to then.