“Always Be Closing” as Mamet tells us. I’ve voiced my support for Obama for some time, both for strategic reasons – I’d like to get the Democrats engaged in our foreign policy problems, rather than making them a one-party issues (“the GOP war, etc.) – and for personal ones – I believe my values are fundamentally progressive (i.e. I believe that government exists in no small part to counterbalance the powerful and wealthy) and I think Obama better represents those values.<\/p>\n
But I’m tetchy. I keep digging into his biography, and finding places where what he says doesn’t line up with what he did<\/a>. That’s not striking – welcome to politics – but since he’s selling us in no small part his own beliefs rather than his accomplishments, it would be nice to see those beliefs more deeply in the context of his biography.<\/p>\n I’ve suggested – and will keep suggesting – things he could do to make me more comfortable. Now I guess that makes me a “concern troll”, and means that no one on the Democratic side of the house should give a rip what I say.<\/p>\n Then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n Last weekend, we went to the Bay Area, and spent Friday night with college friends and others. The conversation, shockingly, turned to politics.<\/p>\n My friends – graduates of UC Santa Cruz, and residents of Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley – are reliable Democrats (except for one or two!!), people who volunteer for campaigns put bumper stickers on their cars, sometimes hand out leaflets in front of the local grocery store.<\/p>\n Their temperature on this election – tepid. For the women, the animosity over Hillary is not at the top, but simmers somewhere underneath. For the men, a feeling that Obama is a brilliant man, but a distrust – of what, no one could completely say.<\/p>\n Anecdote is not data, to be sure, but I was shocked enough to make it my project for the next week to talk to anyone handy about the election and see what they say.<\/p>\n I was shocked.<\/p>\n Among the strongest Obama supporters, the feeling was best summed up by a liberal retired high school teacher I sat with at lunch today – a woman wearing peace symbol earrings who grimly said “I really don’t think he’s going to win.”<\/p>\n A large number of mainstream Democrats simply confess a disquiet. The Howard Wolfson story – that Hillary would have won Iowa and hence the election if Edwards’ affair had come out – has been repeated enough that it got my attention. I can only call it buyer’s remorse.<\/p>\n I’m feeling it as well. I’m still a solid vote for Obama, but when I sit down and write checks, somehow I just never bring myself to write one for him. <\/p>\n Why? Why aren’t I solidly on his side? If I’m a doubter, why aren’t I alone in doubting him?<\/p>\n I’ve spent a little time online today, going through the comments at TalkLeft<\/a>, Firedoglake<\/a>, MyDD<\/a> – the bastions of the Netroots and of support for him. Or not.<\/i><\/p>\n What’s the deal? And what should the Democrats do?<\/p>\n What should Obama do?<\/p>\n I’ll have to do my own campaign memo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why is there so much shakiness among Democrats right now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1844"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}