Everyone is being a Negative Nancy. Crying about Lieberman. Crying about Reid giving a nice speech about Stevens. Crying about well, everything.....and using it all as an excuse about why Obama and the Democrats have turned their back on THEM.
Give me a freaking break.
Certainly, there are many Dems that we need to rid of in favor of better Dems. But we have an awful lot of crying about a power change that hasn't even taken effect yet.
The illusion of power is a wonderful thing. You can give someone no power at all, but as long as they feel like they have power, they are happy.
Think about the kinds of change that many people said they wanted. They wanted a change from a partisan Washington that has grown increasingly bitter over the last eight years. Kicking Lieberman out of the caucus is EXACTLY the kind of partisanship that most voters no longer want to see. Obama knows this. And he is smart.
Keeping Lieberman around is a conciliatory gesture, and one that gives Obama some concrete evidence of the change credential that he has run on. Its a symbolic gesture, but also a token gesture. Lieberman is already irrelevant. Obama's first term is about moving the country back to the center. The second will be sweeping progressive reform. And by that time, Lieberman will be sitting on his ass in Connecticut while someone like Ned Lamont is redecorating the Senate office.
Chill the fuck out. Obama is the most progressive president we've had in a long, long time. But he knows that to really heal the country of its ills, we first must heal the ideological rift that infects our country. It was a mere scratch, until the Republican took a butcher knife to the wound a poured salt in it. For us to pull a Bush and publicly come off as standoffish would not signal the change that Obama has promised, at least to the layperson. It would be same story, different party.
So make small gestures of little consequence. Who cares.
Obama has a mandate, for sure. And getting out of Iraq, starting to fix health care, and working on green energy independence is going to be the focus of the first term. But in four years, after we win a bunch more seats and turn Missouri, Montana, the Dakotas, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia blue, you are going to see some truly remarkable results. We are winning the battle of ideas. But Obama knows that as the Republicans completely destroy themselves, his hand only get stronger.
Chill the fuck out. Obama's got this.
Update [2008-11-21 11:48:6 by Keep Oregon Blue]:: I'm certainly not advocating a blind loyalty to Obama, as we know where that's gotten us the last eight years. But I am trying to point out that I think it was a pretty shrewd move, and that we might have to look a bit deeper at some of the stuff Obama does. I know that's hard to do as we've been used to a pretty dumb president.