But even before he was elected there was plenty of waring. Apart from the record of previous Democratic administrations, was among other things Biden's rhetoric in Seattle about doing a lot of things that would be "unpopular". One respect in which the Democrats are objectively worse that the Republicans is in the efficacy of their brainwashing technique (cf. the Nato/Kosovo). More inportant, IMO, than debunking Demo policy (which is still very important) is combating their PR.
> From: dhenwood at panix.com
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:44:07 -0500
> Subject: [lbo-talk] peaceniks silent as Obama assembles team of hawks
>
> <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/16034.html>
>
>
> Doves keep the faith as Obama team tilts right
> By: Jonathan Martin
> November 27, 2008 09:04 AM EST
>
> Leading opponents of the war have mostly been silent as president-
> elect Barack Obama, who first built his national image on the
> foundation of his early opposition to the Iraq war, assembles a group
> of national security hands that is anything but a team of doves.
>
> It's a disorienting moment for the peace wing of the Democratic Party,
> at once elated America selected a new president opposed to the Iraq
> war and momentarily disoriented by the imminent removal of a commander-
> in-chief whose every action they've opposed for the past eight years.
>
> “Shock has paralyzed them for the moment,” said Steven Clemons, a
> senior fellow at the New America Foundation who writes The Washington
> Note, a popular foreign policy blog. “We are in an Obama bubble now.
> And it’s tough to step out and be first to deflate the bubble.”
>
> Especially, he added, before that bubble takes shape.
>
> “You’ve got some people like myself who are saying there may be an
> interesting design in what Obama is trying to do. Maybe it doesn’t fit
> easily in a neatly sculpted box of liberal pacifist and warmonger
> hawk. Maybe it’s more complex than that.”
>
> Still, it’s clearly a team that tilts to the right of Democratic
> foreign policy thought.
>
> Vice-president-elect Joe Biden initially backed the war in Iraq and
> has supported other military interventions in his long Senate career.
> Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also supported the Iraq war resolution, a
> vote that Obama framed as a critical failure of judgement during the
> primary. She's also taken a harder line on Iran than the president-
> elect—and is in line to be his Secretary of State.
>
> Jim Jones, a retired Marine General who advised Clinton, Obama and
> John McCain during the campaign and has refused to disclose his
> partisan leanings, is slated for National Security Adviser. And
> running the Pentagon? For at least the first year of his
> administration, it’s virtually certain that the new president will
> retain Robert Gates—the Secretary of Defense appointed by President
> Bush.
>
> Liberals scored one victory, though, when a top candidate to take over
> the CIA withdrew from consideration this week after concerns surfaced
> over his views on the agency’s interrogation methods. In a letter
> taking his name out of consideration, John Brennan said he didn’t want
> to be a “distraction” to the president-elect.
>
> Yet most leaders on the left are keeping to themselves any criticisms
> of the centrist quartet that will help shape and implement Obama’s
> foreign policy.
>
> For now there is a measure of trust from liberals who believe Obama
> will hold to the principles he espoused during the campaign: end the
> war in Iraq, negotiate with adversaries and restore America’s standing
> in the global community.
>
> “We should have a simple sign on our wall saying, ‘It’s the policy
> stupid,’” said Tom Andrews, the former Maine congressman, riffing off
> James Carville's 1992 Clinton campaign mantra. “Many will give
> President-elect Obama the benefit of the doubt about who is executing
> the policy as long as there is no comprise or backtracking on the
> policy itself,” added Andrews, who now heads the group “Win Without
> War.”
>
> There is, Andrews noted, a reluctance to carp before Obama is even
> sworn in. “He hasn’t been president for one second yet,” the former
> congressman observed.
>
> Progressives who knew Obama before his ascent onto the national stage
> also suggest that he’s remaining on the same course he's always
> charted – one that hews closer to the middle than those on the right
> will give him credit for or those on the left would prefer.
>
> Maryiln Katz, a veteran of the peace movement dating back to her days
> as a member of Students for a Democratic Society, helped organize the
> October 2002 rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza where Obama declared his
> opposition to what he called a “dumb war.”
>
> But, Katz recalled, the then-state senator also made certain to point
> out he was no pacifist.
>
> “He asserted his own position in contradiction to [the] anti-war
> movement,” she said. “He wasn’t us. He didn’t pander to the crowd.”
>
> But Katz, a well-connected Chicago public-relations executive, said
> that some liberals chose to ignore the part of the speech where Obama
> stressed that he was not against military force and actually urged
> more aggressive pursuit of al Qaeda.
>
> “A lot of people took his position on Iraq and projected our politics
> onto him,” she said. “And that was never him. It was never true.”
>
> Still, President Obama sounds a lot better than President Bush to a
> peace movement whose members have spent the last seven years in a
> posted of principled, if often powerless, opposition—and who now have
> to find a new point of orientation.
>
> “It’s a real challenge to those of who have grown up in opposition to
> everything,” said Katz. “How do we behave in a way that it expands the
> progressive point of view? How do you maintain an independent NGO,
> issue-based infrastructure based on something other than a culture of
> complaint?”
>
> Some clues could come in Chicago, where from January 1st to the 19th
> (MLK Day and the day before Obama’s inauguration), a coalition of
> liberal groups will rally in Hyde Park at what they're calling “Camp
> Hope” to push for various liberal priorities at home and abroad.
> Still, the language of their "presence" -- they do not call it a
> protest—highlights the confusion as to how to relate to an incoming
> president who is, at the least, less adversarial to their agenda.
>
> The group will congregate daily to "congratulate Senator Obama as our
> new President-elect and recommit ourselves to progressive actions he
> promoted on his campaign trail," states the message on their Web site,
> which adds, “We earnestly hope his presidency will signal the dawning
> of long-needed progressive change in the United States.”
>
> To be sure, there are some voices who haven't hesitated to take on the
> president-elect when he's departed from their line, but those voices
> have found themselves increasingly marginalized by the press and those
> in the peace movement willing to give Obama a chance.
>
> "He is violating the people's mandate," complained Jodie Evans, a Code
> Pink co-founder who emailed from Tehran, where she was meeting with
> government officials and other peace activists. "The people elected
> him over her precisely because of their different foreign policy
> stances. Here we are in Iran, working to establish citizen diplomacy,
> hearing the concerns of the Iranian people and how it feels to have
> [Clinton] say she wants to obliterate Iran. Those comments are not
> taken lightly and [are] seen as policy positions here."
>
> Evans, who with her husband helped raise money for Obama during the
> primary and general election, hinted at how the new president-elect
> has kept the left-wing at bay since winning the election—by focusing
> on the issue that first brought them to his side.
>
> Recalling her interaction with Obama at fundraisers, the veteran
> liberal activist said: "It has gotten to the point where he sees me
> coming and before I am close he just keeps repeating, 'Jodie, I
> PROMISE, I will end the war, I promise I will end the war.' It is
> effective in limiting the amount of time I have to complain about what
> ever is up [to] at the moment."
>
> Those vested in power, though, are less inclined to complain just yet.
>
> "My immediate reaction was that I feel sure that President Obama knows
> that he was elected on a campaign of change, and that includes on
> foreign policy," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), a Bay Area liberal who
> co-chairs the House Progressive Caucus, when asked about the new
> commander-in-chief. “Regardless of who advises him, he must and I
> believe he will embrace a bold agenda that uses our non-military power,”
>
> Woolsey said others in the peace movement are holding their fire
> because they are “so relieved that we will have a leader they can
> trust,” even as, she said, they are “counting on the progressives in
> the Congress to keep his feet to the fire."
>
> So far, though, Obama's yet to feel the flame.
>
> Observed Clemons: “It’s very hard for even leaders of the left to poke
> holes because too many of their followers will say, ‘give the guy a
> break—he hasn’t even been in there yet.' You should see the ridicule
> or hate at anyone that tries to poke a hole in the Obama myth right
> now.”
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