On Jun 27, 2008, at 2:30 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
> Right. Obama lives in a society in which public opinion matters.
> Ergo, if he wants to get anywhere, he has to cater to public
> opinion. What a surprise. Isn't that how democracies are supposed
> to function?
>
> --- On Fri, 6/27/08, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am really surprised that otherwise intelligent people
>> fail to understand this basic fact. This is the god's
>> country and ANY politician, not just Obama, must kowtow to
>> these popular sentiments to be electable. If Karl Marx
>> himself run for president in the US he would pe sprinting
>> rightwards as well.
Public opinion is a complicated thing. Depending on how things are framed, a lot of Americans are more "progressive" than they're given credit for. Obama's playing to elite opinion at least as much as he's playing to mass opinion. But even in the context of playing to mass opinion, he's moving further right than he has to. He went out of his way to pander to AIPAC, and he went out of his way to pander to Bill O'Reilly on child rape. He didn't have to side with Thomas and Scalia the other day.
But mainly I'm having "I told you so" fun with the left Obamamaniacs.
Doug