My regular readers have noticed I haven’t talked much about the presidential campaign lately, other than a few posts against McSame. But there has been some serious issues in the progressive community that Obama just is not addressing properly, such as back-tracking on off-shore drilling, and the FISA vote, that has really put a thorn in a good progressives side.
Now, most good progressive have known that neither Obama or Clinton were progressives. However, when we looked at their voting records, Clinton was a smidgen more progressive in her votes than Obama. But, for many Obamaniacs, that little difference (and the difference was there) was all but ignored. Please note, that I, personally, feel how a Congresscritter votes for the people or puts corporations ahead of the peoples matters greatly, and when the field was narrowed to a choice between Obama and Clinton, I had to go with Clinton simply becasue on a couple of key votes on domestic issues, she was more for the people.
Since Clinton suspended her campaign, progressives have been hit with several disturbing decisions by Obama, and the overall contention that he was “moving” to center. News flash, he was never that far left to begin with, contrary to rightie’s contentions, and playing to the center and right of center voters is, to me, a bad decision that has failed in the past (Kerry?), but is better characterized as his base.
Probably the most disturbing development I find is the VP search. Evan Bayh? Tim Kaine? These names, and the others on the supposed short list for VP, are enough to make a good progressive want to stay home in November. (Please note — a good progressive will always exercise their right to vote, staying home is a euphemism to show disgust)
But, now we have a twist, that, had one watched the Democratic Rules Committee closely in May, one expected, but perhaps not so soon. Personally, I didn’t expect this until closer to the convention, but nevertheless, whether this is a good move by Obama or not, I cannot forget his stance just 3 short months ago. Obama wants full voting rights for Michigan and Florida voters.
Now Senator Barack Obama, the party’s presumptive nominee, has asked the credentials committee to let the two states have full voting rights at the convention after all.
The request is likely to be granted since it comes from the all-but-certain nominee, who now controls the party apparatus.
What??? The DRC is likely to grant this request? Shorter version, screw the rules. Literally, this gives states the go-ahead to break the rules in the next presidential primary cycle. If the DRC gave a rat’s ass about the voters, they would fix the rules between now and then so that voters in the primaries would not be screwed in the future — a rotating schedule of first states (if they so choose) would be a good (and fair) fix.
Beyond the rules, now Obama recognizes the people of Florida and Michigan, but lets not forget, he didn’t care about them when Hilary was fighting for them.
The status of the two states was an explosive issue throughout much of the primary season. Back then, the Obama camp was on the other side, arguing that the two states broke the rules by moving up their primaries and should be punished.
Sigh. And you wonder why I just can’t bring myself to write about this campaign.
