Barack Obama is an establishment politician. I know, I know people do not want to hear that, but he is. He always has been. People can believe what they choose, but the facts are undeniable. Non-establishment politicians are not surrounded by the David Axelrods and Rahm Emmanuels of the world. Obama is an exceptional establishment politician. But he's not grassroots. I'm sorry. He has used the grassroots community every step of the way to achieve his goals, but he's never shown any kind of tribalism or loyalty to them. His entire history is one of disappointing people who thought he was the champion of their cause. He did it at the Harvard Law Review. I have a friend who wrote policy papers for him during his Senate race, and after Obama won, was replaced with Daschle's people.
Also, this support base you speak of is mythical. There is not one base of support. It should be clear from looking at the electoral maps that his support is heterogeneous. It includes leftist progressives and Rockefeller Republicans, the GLBT community, and a homophobic African American constituent, it is grassroots citizens and Washington insiders. He's a human Rorschach test. Everyone except McCain supporters believes they are his base. Now, if you are Barack Obama, how do you please your base? Because your base does not even agree with itself! So instead of cherry-picking ideological tribes to pander to, I think he should make decisions based on his own wisdom and how effectively they will make America a more safe, prosperous and just nation. And that's all he's promised. And that is all I expect from him. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
What matters is that if he doesn't live up to at least some of his promise in an obvious way, his support will crumble and the next cycle will go to whatever foetid creeping thing crawls out from the far right.
He may have screwed over supporters before, but the country as a whole is too big to screw over, and he doesn't have the luxury of doing that again. His charisma buys him some breathing space, but there has to be some delivery and pay off too - he's not going to be able to fool all of the people all of the time.
As for trusting his wisdom - why? Things will get better or they won't. Wisdom isn't the issue - results are.
That said, he owes the GLBT community. His failure to come out more clearly against Prop 8, among other problems, allowed the Mormons and their allies to prey on ignorance of the legislation in minority communities, especially among black folks (and to a lesser extent Latinos). There's clearly an issue of homophobia among them. We've known that for years, and leaders who are minorities have talked at length about it for a long time.
They need to step up and make this the civil rights issue it so clearly should be, so that we can throw this stupid ban out in two years. Obama, Jesse Jack Jr, Bill Richardson, the mayor of Los Angeles, Cory Booker -- they all need to fix this. Starting, like, now. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Warning : story has about 2000 comments. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
If blacks had voted against it in the same proportion as Latinos (53%) or even whites (50%), it still would've failed. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
