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"America has two great dominant strands of political thought - conservatism, which, at its very best, draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which, at its very best, breaks down barriers that should never have been erected." -- Bill Clinton, Dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, November 2004

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

 

defending Obama in the blogsphere http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4566

posted by Aziz P. at Saturday, March 15, 2008 permalink View blog reactions
Chris Bowers and Jerome Armstrong both argue that the progressive blogsphere has been lax in defending Obama on the matter of his ex-pastor Wright. Bowers argues it's because Obama isnt sufficiently progressive to engender loyalty:

Obama is not a part of any progressive fights, so there's no independent organizing going on on his behalf from people who actually understand the right-wing media and how it operates. He's decided he's a post-partisan politician, and when a politician makes that choice, it's not just a disincentive for partisans to fight for that person.


maybe the major A-list progressive bloggers haven't stepped up to Obama's defense; I don't know. However if you venture a bit further out into the long tail I think you will find plenty of bloggers, liberal and progressive alike, defending him. One example.

In fact you will even find conservatives like Daniel Larison and Captain's Quarter defending him. My own defense on the issue of Wright partly riffed off of Larison's point.

If theres any barrier here, it isnt because Obama is "post partisan" but because this is an issue of faith, which by the larger progressive community condescends towards. Most of the defenses of Obama are from a religious perspective, notably.

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About Nation-Building

Nation-Building was founded by Aziz Poonawalla in August 2002 under the name Dean Nation. Dean Nation was the very first weblog devoted to a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and became the vanguard of the Dean netroot phenomenon, raising over $40,000 for the Dean campaign, pioneering the use of Meetup, and enjoying the attention of the campaign itself, with Joe Trippi a regular reader (and sometime commentor). Howard Dean himself even left a comment once. Dean Nation was a group weblog effort and counts among its alumni many of the progressive blogsphere's leading talent including Jerome Armstrong, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. After the election in 2004, the blog refocused onto the theme of "purple politics", formally changing its name to Nation-Building in June 2006. The primary focus of the blog is on articulating purple-state policy at home and pragmatic liberal interventionism abroad.