It’s increasingly obvious that desperate Republicans are well on the way to convincing themselves that offshore oil drilling is some sort of heaven-sent electoral silver bullet. Check out this statement at RealClearPolitics by supply-side economic warhorse Lawrence Kudlow:

As Sen. John McCain and the GOP leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election. Is there a Republican tsunami in the making?

You might dismiss this as a disposable comment from the peanut gallery, if it were not for the fact that conservative House Republicans are currently threatening to shut down the federal government (a tactic that didn’t work out too well for the GOP back in 1995) if Congress’ Democratic management doesn’t instantly facilitate a vote to lift the long-standing offshore drilling ban.
This conservatives’ excitement over the alleged power of the offshore drilling issue emanates from two public opinion data points that they assume are connected: polls showing significant majorities of the public favoring more offshore drilling, and John McCain’s rise to parity with Barack Obama in some national polls.
On the second point, there’s no concrete evidence I’ve seen indicating that McCain’s recent slow drift upward in tracking polls is primarily or even significantly attributable to the Drill Now! Drill Here! message.
And on the first point, polls have long shown that given a straight-up yes-or-no choice, Americans favor just about anything that will increase energy stocks, though promoting alternative energy sources typically rank first. A CNN poll last week showing big majorities for offshore drilling is often touted by Republicans as documenting the power of this issue. But that poll actually showed (as pointed out by TNR’s Eve Fairbanks) slight drops in support for offshore drilling during the course of the current GOP campaign. And getting to the substratum of the issue, the poll also indicated the public is split down the middle on the proposition that offshore drilling could have an immediate effect on gas prices.
The longstanding support of most Americans for a comprehensive energy strategy that includes all options helps explain why Barack Obama is making it clear he’s not an absolutist on domestic oil and gas exploration. But unlike some progressives, I don’t necessarily view that as a flip-flop or “surrender.” It’s long been a basic talking point among pro-environment Democrats that expanded domestic production of fossil fuels, where consistent with environmental needs, should be a part, albeit a small part, of any overall energy strategy.
The key point about the positioning of the two presidential candidates and the two parties on this issue is that Obama and Democrats consistently favor a balanced, alternatives-and-conservation-heavy approach, while McCain and Republicans are now going out of their way to signal that domestic oil and gas drilling are their overriding priorities. And that exposes them to a potentially lethal counter-attack.
The same CNN poll that conservatives are crowing about shows that 94% of Americans think that U.S. oil companies are a major (68%) or minor (26%) cause of rising gas prices. The Bush Administration is viewed as a major (54%) or minor (35%) cause of the problem by 89% of Americans. (“Democrats in Congress” are viewed as a major cause by 31%, and a minor cause by 45%).
It is very important that the Obama campaign and Democrats generally make the following points:
(1) McCain’s sudden championship of virtually unlimited offshore drilling represents a recent (June 2008) flip-flop conducted in close conjunction with an identical flip-flop by George W. Bush.
(2) This flip-flop was towards the maximum position of U.S. oil companies, now enjoying record profits, who immediately showered some of those profits into the campaign accounts of John McCain.
(3) There’s zero evidence that reversing bans on oil drilling offshore or in national wildlife reserves will have any immediate effect on gas prices, and 100% evidence that a oil-o-centric energy policy will perpetuate dependence on foreign-controlled oil markets and U.S. oil companies.
(4) McCain, Bush and the GOP continue to pursue not only bad and oil-company-driven energy policies, but bad and special-interest-driven policies on health care, housing, globalization, pensions, economic insecurity, public and private debt, and income inequality. And that’s just the domestic side of the ledger.
If Democrats relentlessly pursue this message, then it’s all to the good that Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that oil drilling is the only domestic talking point they need. Let them continue to back themselves into this corner. Let the Kudlows of the world continue to make their Rube Goldberg arguments that oil market speculators (yet another target of public ire) will reward pro-drilling, pro-oil-company-profits policies with lower oil prices. Let conservatives continue to argue that perpetual semi-occupation of Iraq is necessary to protect the access of multinational oil companies to that country’s production. Let the GOP make itself the symbol of Congress’ futility by threatening to shut down the entire federal government until oil drilling is extended into sensitive areas affecting actual voters in specific parts of the country.
Give ’em enough rope, and Republicans will soon regret making Drill! Drill! Drill! their primary economic talking point in 2008.

As you probably know, demands by the United States that its forces and personnel be entirely exempt from Iraqi law has been a sticking-point in negotiations with Baghdad over a Status of Forces agreement to govern the U.S. presence in Iraq. But as the Progressive Policy Institute’s Jim Arkedis points out in a post at his fine new national security blog, allourmight.com, the problem also extends to private security contractors (PSCs), such as the famous private army run by the North Carolina-based company Blackwater Worldwide.
Arkedis unravels a new GAO report that seems to offer reassurance that PSCs are operating under the rule of law. But in the fine print, he discovers that PSCs continue to enjoy immunity from Iraqi law under an obscure order from the long-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Thus:

In laymen’s terms, nothing has changed – security contractors remain immune because the CPA order is considered Iraq law, and the CPA gave contractors a get-out-of-jail-free card in 2004.
Almost more disturbing is that the GAO leaves the distinct impression in the “highlights” that the situation is vastly improved. Most Congressional staffs only have time to read the executive summaries, and may never dig down to find the devil in the details.

When it comes to the challenge of restoring full Iraqi sovereignty, this is a devil indeed.

(Note: this is a portion of an item cross-posted from Beliefnet.com)
I’m less certain than Mara Vanderslice that John McCain’s recent pattern of decrying Barack Obama’s “messianism” is a deliberate effort to label him as the Antichrist. It’s not that I consider Team McCain incapable of “dog whistle” appeals to the Christian Right; their candidate has certainly mastered those dark arts in a variety of abstract references to his hatred of “judicial activism,” which to that audience means legalized abortion, gay partnership rights, and church-state separation. But unless John Hagee spent some time whispering in McCain’s ear during their brief public partnership, I wouldn’t guess he or his campaign advisors possess the kind of theological dexterity necessary to paint the 666 on Obama’s forehead. But maybe Mara’s right. We’ll see if McCain’s campaign continues using religiously-charged terms like “the anointed one” in references to their opponent.
The more obvious problem with McCain’s attacks on Obama’s charisma is simple hypocrisy. No recent presidential candidate in either party has done more to build a cult of personality around himself and his biography, from the arrogant assertion that he is uniquely a “straight-talker,” to the massive investment his campaigns past and present have made in the proposition that his courage and suffering as a POW should fully qualify him for the presidency and rebut any criticism. (Yes, I know he has a long record in Congress, but even many Republicans admit that record is something of an incoherent mess, particularly given his vast flip-flopping during the current campaign cycle).
McCain has also been an eager participant in the self-parodying WWRD (What Would Reagan Do?) idolatry so common among conservatives. And let’s don’t forget (which is easy to do given subsequent events) that during the brief moment of triumphalism before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, many conservatives engaged in an orgy of messianism about George W. Bush as a towering world-historical figure who was decisively and single-handedly smiting the forces of Islamofascism by deposing Saddam Hussein (another candidate for the Antichrist job in some Christian Right precincts) and creating a pro-American revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.
One party’s “messianism” is clearly another’s “charisma.”

Over the weekend, Barack Obama’s campaign notified the Credentials Committee that he wanted Michigan and Florida to have full voting rights at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
This was a totally predictable move, based on a desire to heal wounds in those two states now that their voting status at the Convention has no bearing on the nominating contest.
But it’s still amazing to realize that it was just two months ago when this issue was making front page headlines and roiling the party with passionate arguments about fairness, representative government, and even equal voting rights. It seems like eons ago, doesn’t it?
By comparison, there’s nearly three months left before election day, with a host of important intervening events, most notably the conventions, the presidential debates, a vast array of paid media, and perhaps (at least on the Democratic side) the most impressive get-out-the-vote operation in electoral history. Those Democrats who are currently panicking over the close polls should calm down for a while. At least there’s no longer much risk of over-confidence for Obama, eh?
Getting back to the FL/MI issue, some party stalwarts are worried about the residual effect of the latest decision, according to the New York Times‘ Katherine Seelye:

Mr. Obama’s “request” to restore full voting strength to Florida and Michigan is likely to cause heartburn for party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar.
By granting Mr. Obama’s request, the party will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the calendar next time because there will be no consequences.

Well, yeah, but remember this important fact about the calendar: If Obama wins in November, and escapes a major primary challenge in 2012, then he will be in a position to do whatever he wants to do to the prmary/caucus timetable, with “no consequences.” Indeed, it would represent one of those rare moments when major changes in the entire system for nominating Democratic presidential candidates could become entirely possible.
But if eons have passed since June, and we’re light years from November, then 2012 can be barely imagined.

Jon Chait’s L.A. Times column yesterday suggested that Barack Obama needs to spend some time away from uplifting, positive campaign events, and go after John McCain with hammer and tongs. Indeed, said Chait, McCain’s stubborn resilience in the polls is probably attributable to the entire focus of the campaign on Obama, which enables the vulnerable Republican to feed doubts, however clumsily, about his opponent with little to lose:

A recent poll found that half the voters are focused on what kind of president Obama would make, while only a quarter are focused on McCain. Obama has attracted more media attention — and more criticism: A Center for Media and Public Affairs study found that, over the last six weeks, the major news networks have expressed proportionately more negative assessments of Obama than McCain.
McCain may be committing lots of blunders, but the blunders aren’t hurting him because the spotlight is on Obama. McCain is getting attention for his attacks on Obama, especially his frequent insinuations that Obama lacks patriotism.

Chait goes on to suggest that Obama may be making the same mistake as John Kerry made in 2004, eschewing negative campaigning on the theory that voters had already reached judgment on the Republican Party and its candidate.
I generally agree with Jon’s prescription, but have a somewhat different take on the Kerry precedent, and on the factors that may be leading Obama to resist a more sharply partisan campaign.
The relentlessly positive 2004 Democratic convention that Jon cites was less the product of a flawed grand strategy than of an overreaction to some focus groups that showed undecided voters harshly rejecting partisan appeals. (As Jon notes, and as Drew Westen emphasized in The Political Brain, such reports represent what voters would like to think about themselves, not how they actual react). The instructions to convention message staff to ruthlessly stamp out references to the GOP, or even to Bush, in everyone’s speeches, came down quite late. (As one of the unhappy enforcers of that edict in a rehearsal room, I subversively let a few partisan notes make it onto the teleprompter, but not enough to annoy, much less swat, a gnat.)
A somewhat different misjudgment–though it’s hard to say it really had an effect on the outcome–was made by Team Kerry in the homestretch of the campaign, reflecting the virtually universal belief of political scientists that late undecided voters (whose “wrong track” sentiments were extremely high) would break against the incumbent. That’s why last-minute polls showing a dead heat cheered the Kerry campaign, and also why they bought the early exit polls showing a victory in all the key states.
Having absorbed the lesson, I don’t think the Obama campaign is making the same mistake, but they have their own reasons for downplaying partisan attacks that connect the dots between McCain, Bush and the GOP. For one thing, Obama has always disparaged excessive partisanship and other examples of “politics as usual.” For another, he’s still hoping to win a small but significant slice of self-identified Republicans, not to mention winning genuine independents, who are often lukewarm towards partisan Kabuki Theater. And let’s don’t forget there are elements of Team Obama, with significant support in the netroots, who think it’s important that the candidate repudiate Democratic as well as Republican malefactors in Washington, and the Clinton as well as the Bush legacy.
This last consideration is reminiscent of the decision made by Al Gore in 2000 to detach himself from his own Democratic administration, and campaign against “the powerful,” as defined by a list of unpopular corporate actors. I’m sure it made sense at the time, particularly given Gore’s conviction that he had to separate himself from Bill Clinton. But it also tended to make voters think they were choosing between Al Gore and the pharmaceutical companies rather than Al Gore and George W. Bush. Eventually a lot of voters listened to the Bush’s campaign’s disingenuous claims that they, too, wanted a Patient’s Bill of Rights and a Rx drug benefit, and by failing to connect the dots between his shadowy enemies and his actual opponent, the reborn neo-populist Gore ironically succeeded in blurring the lines between the parties more than Bill Clinton ever had. (Yes, yes, I know he actually won, but I’m one of those who thought he could have won by a margin that would not have enabled Katherine Harris and the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the popular judgment). With Gore spending much of his time shadow-boxing unpopular corporate villains, Bush, the chosen vehicle of an unholy alliance of theocons and K Street greedheads, got away far more than he should have with projecting himself as a “reformer with results” who simply offered a different “change agenda.”
Barack Obama may be in danger of repeating Gore’s even more than Kerry’s mistakes. As Jon Chait suggests, John McCain’s entire candidacy is based on a dubious effort to maintain his brief 2000 “maverick” image after having shamelessly pandered to the conservative ascendency of his party, while actually championing one of its worst legacies, the Iraq War. He presents a big fat target for a negative but entirely fair and fact-filled campaign. Everything I know about the Obama campaign suggests that it’s not at all averse to the occasional, strategic, cut-and-parry attack on McCain. But Obama really does need to spend less time on broad-based indictments of “Washington” or “lobbyists” or “politics as usual,” and spend a lot more time talking about his actual opponent, the actual opposing party, and the actual incumbent that links them.

With two Roman Catholic governors, Kathleen Sebelius and Tim Kaine, reportedly on Barack Obama’s short-list for the vice presidential nomination, it was inevitable that comparisons would be made about their relationship with their church. Catholic historian Michael Sean Winters has an article up on the New Republic site that argues Sebelius would have a harder time appealing to her co-religionists than Kaine.
Winters offers two reasons for that judgment: (1) Sebelius has been publicly rebuked and asked to refrain from taking communion by her bishop after she vetoed a bill restricting abortion providers in Kansas, making her an obvious target for a revival of the “wafer war” quasi-excommunications by conservative bishops that dogged John Kerry in 2004; and (2) aside from getting along with his bishop, Kaine, unlike Sebelius, has made his Catholicism a central feature of his political persona.
I’m not an expert on Catholicism, but do know something about John Kerry’s experience and about Catholic opinion. And based on that, I’d say Winters’ second point is more compelling than his first. Kerry’s “religion problem” mainly flowed from his admitted reluctance to talk about his faith and its relevance to his public life. In combination with his conflicts with conservative bishops, his reticence made him seem a nominal Catholic or even a bad Catholic, even though he was actually a lot more religiously observant than George W. Bush. And that in turn probably reduced his appeal to Catholics qua Catholics.
As Winters says, Sebelius could have the same problem. But if, on the other hand, she did find a way to articulate her faith in a convincing way, her conflict with the local hierarchy might actually help make her a champion to the significant majority of Catholics who don’t agree with the church’s position on abortion, and who may soon be itching to rebel against conservative threats to massively expand the “wafer wars” by witholding communion from regular church-goers who think or vote “wrong.”
Conversely, while Kaine’s proud Catholicism (not to mention his missionary service and his Spanish-languge fluency) is undoubtedly a political asset, his lack of friction with the church is partly attributable to views on abortion and LGBT rights that are offensive to some Catholics and many non-Catholics, and moreover, aren’t very consistent with those of Barack Obama.
I’m not “endorsing” either candidate or anyone else (though it should be noted that another apparent short-lister, Joe Biden, is a Catholic with long experience of navigating ecclesiastical shoals). But if Obama’s interested in appealing to Catholics by his choice of running-mate, it’s not just a simple matter of picking the candidate least objectionable to the more conservative ranks of the hierarchy. A clear majority of American Catholics are “objectionable” to these bishops, and that’s important to keep in mind.

Michael Duffy’s generally solid Time piece on Barack Obama’s “dilemma” in choosing a running-mate used half a blackjack metaphor, suggesting that he had to decide between “doubling-down” and “compensating.” As an occasional blackjack player, I’d say the second option is to “buy insurance”–choose a running-mate who could help reduce a potential McCain “blackjack” hand based on Obama’s lack of experience, especially in foreign policy.
This stylistic quibble aside, Duffy’s got the basic question right:

Does Obama counterbalance his relative inexperience in general, and in foreign policy and defense matters in particular, and go with a trusted old-timer or pick a fresh face, someone who can pose as an agent of change, a relative newcomer just like himself?

Outside the Obama campaign itself, which has (maybe deliberately) dropped a lot of contradictory hints on this question, the choice between reinforcing or complementing Obama’s appeal often breaks down on ideological and generational lines. Netroots folk, in particular, who think of Obama’s candidacy as representing a “crashing of the gates” of both parties’ center-left-to-right “Washington Establishment” naturally think he should “double-down” by choosing another anti-Iraq-War outsider. Lots of Democratic veterans, mostly (but not exclusively) in the ideological “center,” worry endlessly about McCain’s ability to paint Obama as a recent state senator who has no business becoming commander-in-chief, and prefer a “reassuring” running-mate with more experience, particular on national security matters.
There are also arguments within arguments. Some progressive national security wonks agree that Obama has work to do to become credible as a commander-in-chief, but contend that he must do that by convincingly articulating his own foreign policy and national security vision. If he can do that, a “reassuring” running-mate is unnecessary; if he can’t, then putting Sam Nunn or Joe Biden or some general on the ticket won’t do much good, and could do harm on other fronts.
Many double-downers like Markos Moulitsas often cite the mold-breaking example of Bill Clinton’s choice of Al Gore in 1992 as the “reinforce the message” template Obama should follow. The analogy is accurate so far as Gore’s ideological, regional, and generational profile was concerned. But as Big Tent Democrat riposted to Markos, Gore, a congressional veteran with a strong defense background, also “compensated” for Clinton’s lack of Washington or foreign policy experience.
If Gore was actually a “two-fer,” or a compromise between the reinforcing and complenting functions, some see the same qualities, says Duffy, in Evan Bayh, a former two-term governor from a red state who’s also served for a while on the Senate intelligence and armed services committees.
But in case this doesn’t seem complicated enough, cutting across the “double-down” and “buy-insurance” debate are strong objections by Democratic factions to particular candidates with either profile. GLBT and feminist activists have major issues with “reinforcer” Tim Kaine and “complementer” Sam Nunn. Those who believe Obama’s running-mate must share his “right from the start” position on the Iraq War object to “reinforcer” Kaine, “complementer” Biden, and “two-fer” Bayh. And “reinforcer” Kathleen Sebelius would supposedly offend hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters who think it would be an insult to the former candidate if Obama chose a “less-qualified” woman.
In other words, there are no easy choices for Obama, as I argued some time ago in supporting the Unity Ticket concept, since an Obama-Clinton ticket would at least have the logic of healing primary wounds.
At this late date, insofar as Obama-Clinton is by most accounts not an option, there are really two questions that remain. Does Obama feel strongly about the choice between doubling-down and buying insurance? And is he willing to take some untimely intraparty flack for choosing someone who will cause serious heartburn among elements of his progressive base of support?
If the answer to the second question is “no,” then my final handicapping thought is that Sebelius is the “reinforcer,” and Biden the “complementer,” who are most likely to get the nod, with Bayh likely only if Obama insists on a “two-fer.” If Obama doesn’t mind making intraparty waves, then all bets are off, and Nunn, Kaine, and God knows who else, could be on the table.
Does that clear it all up for you, dear reader? No, I didn’t think so.

The latest McCain campaign attack line on Barack Obama, representing one of the few options for mocking the Democrat’s highly successful overseas trip, and building on the older idea that Obama’s some sort of egomaniacal Messiah figure (“The One,” as McCain’s staff calls him), has been that he’s pretending to have already won the presidency. This meme got a boost today from WaPo’s Dana Milbank, who had some irresponsible fun with the idea that Obama’s gone from being the “presumptive” nominee to the “presumptuous” nominee who’s engaging in a “victory tour” and “acting presidential.”
Since a lot of the people mocking Obama’s “presumptuousness” are also predicting that Obama could lose because Americans just can’t envision him as Commander-in-Chief, this is a pretty disingenuous criticism. But the particular complaint that really makes me crazy is this one, as articulated by Milbank:

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House, causing Republicans to howl about premature drape measuring.

We should all hope that both candidates are putting into motion some planning for a post-victory transition. That’s particularly true of Obama, given the vast personnel and policies changes invariably associated with a change of party administration. Anyone who remembers the chaos and lost time and opportunities associated with Bill Clinton’s transition operation in 1992 wouldn’t want to wish that on any president. And somehow, I doubt that most critics of Obama’s “presumptuousness” had issues with George W. Bush’s open transition planning during the Florida crisis of 2000, which had the cover, of course, of Bush’s claim that he had already won.
The idea that directing staff to begin thinking about the transition represents some sort of “taking the eyes off the ball” mistake by Obama doesn’t make any sense, either. Certainly his policy staff has some spare time; with the candidate’s agenda and platform already in place, their labors will be largely limited to new developments; nuances related to the candidate’s travel (viz. the deployment of his foreign policy advisors during the overseas trip); and later on, debate prep.
What would indeed represent dangerous “drape-measuring” behavior? Staff infighting and jockeying for future position in a “presumptive” administration. As I recall, a fair amount of that went on during the Gore and Kerry campaigns. But if that’s happening in Team Obama, it’s certainly been well-hidden–as opposed to Team McCain, where the candidate’s unfortunate tendency to blur the chain of command and tolerate rivalries among advisors is a bad sign not only for his campaign, but for a McCain administration.

The popular everything-about-religion site Beliefnet has launched a new blogging site today for religious progressives called “Progressive Revival.” The charter participants are a pretty interesting group, ranging from best-selling authors like Marianne Williamson and Michael Lerner, to religious scholars like Randall Balmer and Susannah Heschel. I’m in the small cadre of mainly-political folk, along with Mike McCurry and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
My first Progressive Revival post was a brief item on Tim Kaine’s faith background, reflecting today’s buzz about him as a potential running-mate for Barack Obama:

As Barack Obama gets closer to his choice of a running-mate, speculation today is focusing on Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, whose allies are letting it be known that he’s being fully vetted as a short-lister.
Kaine’s political strengths and weaknesses are pretty well known. He’s a very successful politician in a state that hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1964, but that may be winnable this year. He’s a civil rights lawyer by profession, but has built on Mark Warner’s efforts to reach beyond party lines for both electoral and legislative support. On the other hand, he’s still in his first term of office (and ineligible to run for re-election in 2009), and has no significant foreign policy experience.
It’s Kaine’s faith background that makes him an interesting option for Obama.
He’s not only a practicing Catholic (an area of relative weakness for Obama during the primaries); he once served as a missionary in Central America. (His Spanish-language fluency is definitely an asset beyond Virginia). And in his 2005 gubernatorial campaign, he provided an interesting example of how faith can provide a defense against wedge-issue attacks.
His Republican opponent, Jerry (No Relation!) Kilgore, launched a barrage of ads attacking Kaine’s opposition to the death penalty, as part of an effort to convince Virginians that the Democrat was well to the left of the popular Warner. Kaine responded by attributing his death-penalty position to Catholic teaching, and then argued that he could be trusted nonetheless to enforce the death penalty after he took the oath of office on a Bible. By most accounts, Kaine won this exchange decisively, without changing his position or acting evasively.
If Obama and his team are fully familiar with this incident, it may add to Kaine’s appeal as a running-mate, given the avalanche of wedge-issue attacks the Democratic ticket is going to undergo in the fall.

As Kaine’s name has bounced around the blogosphere today, there’s definitely a bit of a backlash developing, not only because of the resume-limitations mentioned above, but also because of misgivings about his position on abortion (supporting Roe v. Wade, but also supporting some abortion restrictions–including those on so-called “partial-birth” abortions, with a “health” exception–and strongly favoring demand-side “abortion reduction” strategies).
But if it’s true, as the CW holds today, that Obama’s pretty much down to a choice of Kaine, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, or Kathleen Sebelius, there’s not a name in that group who wouldn’t displease a significant number of people.

As regular readers know, one of the missions of TDS is to promote civil, empirically based discussion of intra-Democratic Party issues, with the aim of fostering principled party unity.
With all the recent, FISA-fueled talk of holding congressional Dems more accountable for their votes and views, Salon published an exchange today between Glenn Greenwald and yours truly about the advisability of threatening or carrying out primary challenges to selected Dems, particularly the Blue Dogs.
Glenn’s piece is here; my response is here. For the record, the thrust of my hold-your-fire argument was that (1) it’s not that easy to divine the views of the “Democratic base” in order to construct the limits of acceptable Democratic opinion; and (2) if Obama wins, we’ll be dealing with an entirely new, post-Bush environment in which today’s intraparty discontents may need to be reviewed, and may be moot.
Much of the reaction on the Salon site followed the Kabuki Theater of “center” versus “left” tendencies on the subject; Glenn and I both got trash-talked an awful lot. For a more nuanced reaction, check out Big Tent Democrat’s take at TalkLeft.