[T]his notion that Obama won't fight, really doesn't hold up. He sometimes doesn't fight for things that we want him to fight for. But he isn't afraid. I don't know if it's because of that Rosen piece, or what, but my initial impression is that this is very good fight to engage--politically and otherwise.I'd go even further than this. I'm not sure that he's unwilling to fight for what we liberals want him to fight for (with some exceptions) so much as that he's unwilling to fight when we want him to. But the results so far (again, with some exceptions) have been promising.
This is why I get bummed out when I see people like Greenwald all but writing the guy off already. Look, I respect Greenwald and I'm happy that he's doing what he's doing--I definitely don't want to see the sort of hero worship that the right gave to Bush, which ultimately turned out to be self-defeating. Still, I don't think that public liberals have quite figured out the right sort of balance to tell truth to power. There's too easy a tendency to feel betrayed, too many bad memories of lost opportunities, too much confidence in the abilities of special interests to hold progress back. I certainly don't agree with every decision, substantive and tactical, that Obama has made, but what I've seen has been a constant series of forward steps, incremental changes for the better. Obama certainly hasn't delivered on everything I want him to yet--and I don't have a problem with people holding his feet to the fire--but we mustn't lose sight of the big things. Torture is illegal. Guantanamo will be closed, with or without the useless Senate leadership. The stimulus bill has passed and we got a decent credit card bill. None of these decisions were as impressive as they could have been, but they're better than we could have expected with President McCain.
So it is with this sort of mindset that I am annoyed by stories like this. I don't think Obama's a sacred oracle, but it seems like the SEIU ought to be doing more productive things with its time than attacking Barack Obama for something toward which he has only a marginal responsibility. I've generally thought in the past that Democrats were too soft, too fractious, and could use a stronger hand when it comes to party leadership (and stuff like this is why), but there has to be a middle ground here that appreciates that Obama is a human being with good intentions who may need to be pushed from time to time to do the right thing, but that also acknowledges that one shouldn't mistrust his motives until there's actually some reason to do so.
