NYT: Obama’s Test: Can a Liberal Be a Unifier?

[Pirate Smile]

Obama’s Test: Can a Liberal Be a Unifier?



By ROBIN TONER
Published: March 25, 2008

WASHINGTON —

-snip-
Mr. Obama, in an interview that was conducted on March 15, in the midst of that controversy, said he was confident that Americans were eager for a new kind of politics and were convinced that “a lot of these old labels don’t apply anymore.”
He said he was a progressive and a pragmatist, eager to tackle the big issues like health care and convinced that the Democrats could — and should — rally independents and disaffected Republicans to their agenda. Only then, he said, could the party achieve what it has so rarely won in modern presidential elections: a mandate to do big things.

“Senator Clinton’s argument in this campaign,” he said, “has really been that you can’t change the electoral map, that it’s a static map and we are inalterably divided, so we’ve got to eke out a victory and then try to govern more competently than George Bush has. My argument is that if that’s what we’re settling for, after seven or eight years of disastrous policies on the part of the Bush administration, then we’re not going to deliver on the big changes that are needed.”

-snip-
Mr. Obama seems to be promising less a split-the-difference centrism than an ability to harness the support of all those voters who yearn for something new, beyond the ideological stalemate. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote, “They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”
In many ways, the Obama campaign is challenging the fundamental political premise that has prevailed in Washington for more than a generation: that any majority coalition must be carefully centrist, if not center-right. Bill Clinton ran in 1992 as a candidate willing to break with liberal orthodoxy on many issues, including crime and welfare, and eager to move the party — which had lost five of the six previous presidential elections — to the middle. Mr. Clinton’s New Democrats assumed a certain level of conservatism among voters.

Mr. Obama and his allies are basing his campaign on a different bet: that the right-leaning political landscape Mr. Clinton confronted has changed. Several major Democratic strategists, and outside analysts as well, argue that the country has shifted to the left because of the Iraq war, the economy and seven-plus years of President Bush, and that it has become open to a new progressive majority.

-snip-
Still, many of Mr. Obama’s supporters say he has recognized this new political climate in a way that Mrs. Clinton has not. They say he is ready for a new, self-assured era in which progressives (few have returned to using the word “liberal”) make no apologies about their goals — universal health care, withdrawing troops from Iraq, ending tax breaks for more affluent Americans — and assume that a broad swath of the public shares them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25obama.html?hp

[forkinsocket]

1. Obama voted for his party line 97% of the time in '06%. the answer is no

Here's the link with the 97% figure:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23276453/

Don't get me wrong. Voting 97% with the Democrats is a good thing, and I do not believe "unifying" the country is a good thing. Uniting with Republicans is not desirable. They brought us the Iraq war.

With this said, it is hard to believe that Obama will compromise or create a new group called "Obamacans", because he has a history of not compromising.

His rhetoric is full of unity stuff, but that's all it is. Rhetoric.

[TheDoorbellRang]

3. well, you sure didn't last long n/t

[grantcart]

5. lol drink . . . nose . . . . spurting . . . keyboard . . . need a towel

people have to think about that one for a while lol

[TheDoorbellRang]

7. I think that must be some kind of record

TS'd on his first post...must have been an incarnation :spray:

[BattyDem]

8. One post ... and it's pizza time?

That's got to be a new DU record! :rofl:

[culacano]

9. 97% Wow. Honestly, I had thought he was a moderate

I'm surprise to learn how liberal he is.

Good catch.

[Cha]

2. Obama has already shown

he can unify by his campaign and since when is Obama Liberal? If they mean by Liberal that he is more into helping people than corporations then I guess he's Liberal.. Why don't they use the word Progressive?

[culacano]

4. Why run away from the world liberal?

I say let's be proud.

[Cha]

6. I'm proud of it but I know how

they've made it into an unpleasant sounding word and Progressive is what he is as opposed to "regressive" which is what mccain is.

[high density]

10. The front page of MSNBC currently has this NYT headline in large font

I guess the idea is: OBAMA LIBERAL. BE AFRAID. Then in the article we have the Obama = Clinton idea being flaunted about.

I'm not impressed in the least.