Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

The Long Days Of Obama’s Summer

Ain’t no fun being Obama these days. Just ask the candidate, who cracked to the press corps the other day, “It’s not allowed.”

Although his lead in the polls seems to be holding steady, he’s been caught out there in the long days of summer. A lot of it is of his own making, as he moves his campaign to the right for the general election after a long primary season that was about motivating his base on the left.

Obama has riled them by refusing public financing after promising he would, reversing his position to back a law that allows the government to use telecom companies in warrantless wiretapping, and throwing Wesley Clark under a bus over his comments on McCain’s time in the military.

By yesterday, folks were scratching their heads.

To recap: Obama likes campaign finance reform but refuses spending limits. He opposes government spying and media consolidation, but if the two issues come together, he’ll reconsider. He says McCain’s war experience does not automatically make him the best presidential candidate, but if another military man voices the same thing, it’s wrong. What happened?

And on top of all that, Obama is also under fire for receiving campaign support from Chicago slumlord developers, who took advantage of weakened federal oversight and enforcement to secure federal funds to gentrify Chicago and leave affordable housing in shambles. Plus a quarter of Americans still think he’s unpatriotic, and a tenth believe he’s Muslim.

It’s getting hot in here.

No wonder he’s now begun making a point of his opposition to initiatives that would ban gay marriage. (It was the headline in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.)

One initative will be on the ballot in California-where Governor Schwarzenegger holds the same position and Obama is expected to win easily. The other is in Arizona, McCain’s home state, where the Republican candidate declared his support for the ban. The last will play out in Florida, and we all know about Florida.

Here’s the question many Obama supporters are raising now: is he simply doing the same thing the Republicans have been doing for their conservative base for years–playing up cultural issues while backsliding on some of the most important economic and political ones? Will issues like gay marriage, affirmative action, and green jobs simply become triangulation for the same old politics of big money and bad government?

That wouldn’t be change now, would it?

posted by Jeff Chang @ 9:00 am | 1 Comment

One Response to “The Long Days Of Obama’s Summer”

Marcus Reeves says:

July 3, 2008 at 8:06 am

Damn, you’re proving Adolf Reed’s criticism of Barack in The Progressive to be right: dude’s gonna get caught out their like a con artist. But, hey, it’s the game of politics, and Barack’s trying to play this motherfucker like he’s one of the Williams sisters…LOL. Keep up the probing.

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