Barack Obama has reached rarified political air and the precipice of greatness by standing for something. For his staunch and uncompromising ethical commitment to progressive ideals, his promise to pursue them with integrity and his raison d'être of bringing substantive change to a broken country and a political system on life support. That is what inspired an almost hysterical adulation, motivated legions of fervent progressive supporters and enabled him to defeat the Clinton machine in the primaries. It was not pandering to moderate conservatives. Yet this is what Obama, Plouffe and Axelrod have decided to do.

An AlterNet article Republicans Have Handed Democrats a Winning Election Issue (http://www.alternet.org/environment/95469/) proposes that the Democrats, and Obama in particular, should shift the focus of the energy crisis to renewable energy and away from offshore oil.  According to the article, they should place the emphasis on renewable energy and allow the Republicans to filibuster in Congress against a bill proposing to extend subsidies to the renewable energy sector.  The filibuster would expose the Republican’s real agenda, which is to continue to support the oil industry and cut off funding for renewables.

I'm (obviously) supporting Obama in this cycle, from the beginning of the primaries til now; but thought I'd post this just for fun; I actually composed (and then deleted) a version of this diary a couple years ago. For what it's worth, my post-Obama candidate for 8 years from now...

[Beginning of make believe]

My dream candidate is a state governor who grew up working class and made himself prosperous by his own efforts. He knows his way around a union hall; while he's been both a union member and management, one of the things that made him want to start a business is he didn't have the stomach for the kind of screwing over of workers that is part and parcel of being a middle manager in many large companies.

There's a story circulated about him that he once missed an important vote in the state assembly because it was opening day of deer season, and he was nowhere to be found.

He is passionate about doing what he can to make sure that workers get a fair deal in America. Reliable rumor has it he once threw a Democratic Party official out of his office, with instructions never to return, because that Democrat had dared to make a crack about "the damned union chiselers."

There's nobody so easy to make a doormat out of, as the person who lays down in expectation of being defeated.  I'm beginning to hear the same BS come from Democrats as has come time and again, this crud about how there's no way we'll win, or how the Republicans will steal the election once again.  I hear it, and my first impulse is to reach through the screen and beat the shit out of people.

Y'all deserve it sometimes.  Just because polls, stupid, impermanent polls suggest a lead is narrowing, just because McCain's advertising is working a little now, you folks start getting nervous, and worse, start cleaning the spot you're planning on laying down in.

Maybe I can help you get use to laying down.  Just stand there while I take a few swings at you.  Hell, if you're planning on taking a beating from the Republicans, why deny me a little of the fun?  Yeah.  Right there will do.

I’m supposed to be finishing another story tonight, but I’ve just come from Darcy Burner’s primary night party...and I have in front of me the results of the important races tonight in Washington’s newfangled "top two" primary.

It is unfair to extrapolate the results of elections in the "People’s Republic of Washington" directly onto a national map, but as I look as these results it seems fair to say that if any Republican strategists aren’t sweating bullets this morning it’s because they’ll be hustling for votes in towns like Maggie Valley, North Carolina (don’t forget to stop by Saratoga’s for the Wednesday night jazz...)...or, perhaps, Bessemer Bend, Wyoming.

For the rest of the Republican community, tonight’s events are not good news.

We have a fair amount to cover, so let’s get to it.

There's a thing going around called, "Why I'm Voting Democrat." As can be expected, it's idiotically wrong-headed and scurrilous, citing false point after false point of jingoism and scare politics. Most of you have probably seen it, or will see it.

Here is my response. If you want to send it out in answer to the Democrat one, or just in general if you like it, feel free to do so. You may use any or all of it, edited or unedited, for content or length. I know it's kind of long, because once I got started ...  

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I’m voting Republican because Al Gore is a Democrat and he has started this hoax about global warming, and wants to make me pay more for gas, or drive a tiny car, instead of my All-American Hummer (which the Republicans gave me a tax deduction for!!). Or else Al Gore will force me to drive a slow electric car, like his gay friends in Hollywood. I believe that if someone investigated it (not the New York Times, which is socialistic) they would find that Al Gore has used the money from all those baloney awards he won to pay off scientists and news liberals to say that there is global warming. Because Al Gore hates my car.  

and ignore the other. What the one hand does is good, blessed and honest, and has the moral authority to point out those whose motives are unclean, dirty, and underhanded. Just don't watch that other hand.

   You think that kinda sounds like the GOP? Their service to the country we all call home is pure and holy, while we as libruls' and secular progressives are dirty, vile, and manipulative. We do not know what it is to be Americans, to know what our great creator has in store for our holy country, but they do. How could we, as we think the constitution has hidden meanings and the founding fathers actually meant seperation of church and state(Thomas Jefferson and SCOTUS have nothing on Chuck Norris), and the fourth amendment was really serious about that whole search and seizure.  

The south is known as a Republican stronghold in the last few years after long Democratic traditions, and Democrats are once again standing up to fight for the South. NC and VA are springing up to be swing-states, and Democrats are fighting all over the South for House and Senate seats.

I have been a bit astonished by the extent to which progressives generally and Democrats specifically have anonymously and publicly  doubted Obama's ability to deliver the election.  We have internalized the victimology of the last eight years.  We have been "psyched out" by the right wing and we are in a nervous tizzy over every downtick of the polls.

Now we shriek in agony because of the LA Times poll!!  If we are this weak, we do not deserve to win.

Do we have Battered Progressive Syndrome?

Off with your tin-foil hats, lefties.  Bush ain’t gonna find sanctuary in Paraguay no more.  It’s his own fault really, because he failed to put freedom and democracy on the march down there.  It’s hard work to be President.  So many wars; so little time.

I found this today.

Apparently it has been going around the internets so I thought I would post it.

Very beautiful.

Why did you make me black Lord?...

Jump to see entire poem...

The Bush administration has wreaked havoc on the constitutional principle of separation of powers.  The abuses of the executive branch have undercut both the legislative branch (signing statements, stonewalling subpoenas, and outright lawbreaking) and the judicial branch (suspension of habeas corpus, weakening of other constitutional protections, etc)

With that groundwork laid, what might happen with Obama (or a Democratic successor) in control of such an enormous amount of executive power?

There it is again!  McCain questions Obama's judgment.  It was a  drum beat on NPR today.  It is ridiculous.  George Lakoff must be screaming about it and I am unable to resist  ranting here!  How does he question Obama's judgment?   John McCain is promising that he can bring us victory!  Yup, for the first time in world history if we elect this man he will bring us victory in the occupation of another country!  He did not tell us what that meant.  Incidentally, he framed it as a "war".  But GWB declared the war over some years ago.  We are into an occupation.  Just a while ago we had an increase in our occupying forces.  The people who said the war was over some time ago called this increase in troop levels a "surge".  Today John McCain said that Obama lacks judgment because he still fails to acknowledge the success of the surge.  These are the front lines of the framing wars and Lakoff has warned us about them.  It seems that the warning that we can only lose the debate by accepting their framing still needs to be understood.  Look below the break and let's try again.

I have been a bit astonished by the extent to which progressives generally and Democrats specifically have anonymously and publicly  doubted Obama's ability to deliver the election.  We have internalized the victimology of the last eight years.  We have been "psyched out" by the right wing and we are in a nervous tizzy over every downtick of the polls.

It is no secret we need our Congress to move in a more Progressive direction. We not only need to elect more Democrats to Congress, but we need to elect Democrats to Congress that will remember who got them elected and what they are supposed to fight for once they are there. On a myriad of issues, we need Demcrats that will go to Washington and fight for the real change that we need in this country.

It's hard for me to imagine why Obama would choose serial loser Joe Biden to share his stage, but until today I never really had any reason to suspect that Biden would actually endanger the ticket.  Thanks to Harper's Magazine I now do have such a reason.  Joe Biden is involved with lobbyist Stephen Payne and his attempts to solicit pay-to-play "gifts" for the Bush Presidential Library.

Ok, this will probably get torn to shreds, and my feelings will not be hurt.

The point I hope to make in this diary:
Due to advances in technology and culture no matter who is president their actions will be attacked/and viewed as an impeachable offense by 1/2 the population.

It started with Nixon and has gotten more pronounced as time has gone on.

I doubt it is because the quality of the presidents has gotten any better or worse. I mean they've always been pretty constant, I would think.

<More after the break>

Here in the Central Coast of California, we are in the target for Republicans and their wet dreams of offshore oil drilling. We have some seriously important races that are getting drown out with the Presidential fervor....one of them is for State Senator for the 15th District. The State Democrats didn't raise a finger to put up a Democratic contender against Abel Maldonado (who tried to get on both the Republican AND Democratic Primary ballots)...but, a determined former UPS worker mortgaged his house and got enough signatures to be on the November ballot. JIM FITZGERALD, you GO boy....