I supported Obama not just at end of the primary when it became clear he was going to win, but from the beginning of the primary when most here were so devoted to the pandering phony, John Edwards. All the hit pieces and hysterical misreadings of Obama's remarks coupled with the ol' chip on the shoulder from his diaries of yesteryear and his public utterances to the effect that he finds dKos "boring" highlighted one thing: Obama just isn't a Daily Kos kind of guy.
Fast forward to the day after the election. The old bugbear of Lawrence Summers is back. "He thinks I'm an idiot because I'm a girl," cries one kossack. "Not so," another sagely demurs "He thinks you're an idiot because you're a woman." For this level of commentary, one might be served just as well by the likes of RedState or Free Republic.
You see, to Kossacks, the nomination of Larry Summers to be Treasury Secretary is not an issue of finding the best economic minds to guide the ship of state through troubled waters, oh no. It's about strategic communications: What sort of message does this send? It's about the culture war: Forty years of feminist deconstruction comes to this? It's about "morality": Boy, if someone gives credence to ideas I don't like, I don't see how they're any different from Bush!
"Ah!" they say, "But that's where you're wrong! The fact that he's said things of an impolitic nature that moreover reflect irreverence toward notions I consider sacred just goes to show that he's not amongst the finest minds in his field! The fact that it's so easy to take potshots at him -- look at this memo he wrote! -- just proves he's not even as smart as I am!"
Anyway, I HOPE to see a lot more of this from President Obama. I appreciate the value he places on expertise over ideology. An unswerving commitment to ideology over expertise is the bedrock of the failures of the Bush administration. But it is also that belief in politics and strategic communications above all else amongst the Rove Republicans that that gave birth to the dKos outlook. It's all about "framing" and "Overton windows." If you're nominating someone, they'd better be a member of the Federalist society! So on and so forth...
Ultimately, Obama created his own movement and isn't the slightest bit beholden to this place. This bodes well for the future, to be sure.