Conventional wisdom is growing among the bobbleheads that Barack Obama’s Iowa Caucus win was a repudiation of us liberal bloggers and the “angry left.”
I guess that’s why there’s been so much jubilation about the caucuses among us liberal bloggers–we enjoy being repudiated. (My blogger buddy LowerManhattanite didn’t exactly feel repudiated, however.)
Time’s Joe Klein, who remains very high on my “people I want to smack real hard” list, wrote,
Iowa’s decision was about style, not substance. Obama didn’t offer many new ideas and precious few that were different from his opponents’. He offered civility. At one point, Clinton tried “Turn Up The Heat” as her slogan and, throughout, John Edwards’ rhetoric was so hot that it eventually burned him to a cinder. Obama’s unspoken slogan was “Turn Down the Heat.” The blogger Daily Kos endorsed Obama at first then, frustrated by the lack of fire, un-endorsed him. The far left wing of the Democratic Party may have to rethink the value of vitriol now.
Putting aside the fact that “Daily Kos” is a site, not a blogger — the blogger Great Orange Satan Kos responds to Klein here. Kos says he never endorsed anybody, and further –
My frustrations with Obama had nothing to do with “lack of fire” from Obama, but from my perception (arguable, of course) that he was directing his fire at progressives and progressive institutions. But again, I’m well aware that expecting the truth and accuracy from you is a fools errand.
A lot of us have been frustrated with Obama these past few months over one issue or another, but his not being nasty enough was never a problem. Ezra Klein wrote last week of the Obama campaign:
On the down side, some of his closing-weeks attacks are a bit, err, worrisome. Going after trial lawyers, for instance? Flooding the radio with ads claiming “Clinton would force people to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it” and “Barack Obama will cover everyone”? Suggesting that nominating Al Gore was a mistake and suggesting, wrongly, that Kerry was a divisive figure when he was nominated? Some of those statements are simply conservative arguments being uttered by a progressive. Some simply aren’t true.
On one level, this is politics, and all these folks are trying to win, and you’re not going to find any candidates pure as the driven snow and innocent as the newly-born. But Obama’s comfort attacking liberals from the right is unsettling, and if he does win Iowa, it will not be a victory that either supporters or the media ascribe to the more progressive elements of his candidacy. Instead, they will search for the distinctions he’s drawn, and, sadly, a number of those distinctions point away from the heart-quickening progressivism of much of this race, and back towards the old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias.
The truth is, our greatest fear is that Barack Obama will turn out to be another Hillary Clinton — all centrist caution and status quo bias. (Note that Clinton now is attacking Obama for being too liberal.”)
Another twit pushing the “repudiation” angle is the ever-brainless Dean Barnett, who says,
Here’s a dirty little secret that the liberal blogosphere will probably try to flush down the memory hole in the coming weeks – they didn’t like Barack Obama. They had reason not to. When they stamped their little feet over Obama doing something like having a Gospel singer with decidedly non-progressive views on social issues campaign for him, Obama ignored them. That particular storm caused Markos Moulitsas to declare the Obama campaign in the throes of a full meltdown.
The gospel singer was a rabidly anti-gay bigot named Donnie McClurkin, and yes, many of us took great offense at an association between McClurkin and Obama. The Obama campaign scrambled to add an openly gay minister to the program to quell the complaints, and Obama issued a statement repudiating (today’s word) McClurkin’s toxic views. It was a nasty blunder on the part of the Obama campaign.
However, these past few months nearly everyone running for the Dem nomination has been hit with criticism from us bloggers. We are equal-opportunity critics.
Obama incurred the wrath of the progressive blogosphere, and good God, a miracle occurred – he won anyway. Unlike his principal contenders who sucked up to the liberal bloggers at every available opportunity, Obama showed indifference or even hostility to their agenda. His success reveals the liberal bloggers’ lack of king-making ability. This particular emperor has no clothes.
The fact is that the liberal blogosphere has most definitely not tried to play at being king-makers in this election. Hardly any of us have endorsed any one Dem candidate. There was much affection for Senator Dodd, and I suspect John Edwards is the first choice for many, but most of us have not endorsed.
A progressive blog-reading audience of roughly 100,000 people has alternately enthralled and frightened the Democratic party for a couple of years now.
A recently compiled list of the top 100 liberal blog sites by traffic (of which this blog came in at number 97, although that was before my site went down for days and messed up my stats) has the top sites getting 600,000 - 300,000 visits a day. But Barnett was never one to let his biases get bogged down by facts.
Obama either saw that foolishness for what it was, or was sufficiently committed to his principles that he refused to pander. If he paid a price at the Iowa caucuses for this “gamble,” it was one he could afford. More likely, he paid no price, as the progressive blogosphere is deeply unrepresentative of the Democratic party rank and file. We learned that much last night.
I’m not sure yet what we’ve “learned” from this campaign — it’s too early — but more than anything else I was thrilled by the young people and independents who came out for Obama. If that amounts to a repudiation of the “Democratic party rank and file,” so be it. The young folks in particular may be showing us where the Dem party needs to go, and it ain’t back to the DLC.
Update: The Weekly Standard needs to get its story straight. The blog post before Barnett’s — in which he chuckled because Obama’s win “repudiated” us — says that we leftie bloggers are furious with Keith Olbermann for “belittling” Barack Obama’s Iowa Caucus win.
I watched the MSNBC coverage, and hadn’t noticed this belittling. Olbermann’s anti-Obama bias seems to exist in the mind of one diarist in desperate need of a reality check. As one commenter said,
some hardcore Obama fans simply cannot let go of the idea that their candidate must not be criticized or anything negative said about him.
Jesus Christ, you WON, get a fucking grip. Calling Olbermann, Krugman and any progressive that has been sticking his neck out for YOU in a sea of Republican media propaganda a “hack” and worse is exactly why people like me could not support Obama in the primaries.
He was just pointing that FACT out to make a point that not all state primaries allow independents; yet fanatic Obama supporters see it as a conspiracy and then try to smear Olbermann like they did Krugman. If there is anything worse than a sore loser, it’s a paranoid gloating winner. Get over yourselves.
Update 2: The Right, of course, is never angry.
