Epic Fail

My 3 big issues in the 2008 election cycle are Health Care, Constitutional Accountability and enforcement and the Supreme Court.

I have never bought into Obama as Teh Awesome Magical Unity Pony. I voted for Hillary in the primary and it didn't bother me that she didn't quit until the last primaries were held. I was very turned off by the tone of her campaign, in which she sent out her surrogates to make increasingly Rove-style attacks against Obama.

Obama's Health Care plan is very similar to Hillary's except the mandate portion; the problem is that the mandate portion is critical. The economists who look at the plan agree that it would be worse than the current system. The ones that support Obama do so under the assumption that his plan will tack "left" after the general. IOW, they are betting that he is lying and is pandering to the right.

I see no evidence of that; the analysis of his record in both the Federal and State government shows his political core is only slightly left of center. If anything,I suspect he will tack right.

Now with his support of the FISA "compromise" I will only be voting for him because of the damage a McCain presidency would do to the Supreme Court. I've lost any hope that the lawlessness that has characterized the Neo-Cons (going back to Nixon... it's the same crowd) will not be punished. A lot of Dems are playing this up as an unfortunate but understandable political move by Obama to shore up votes on the right. I might buy that except there is no real support for the FISA bill outside of the dead-ender 24% that won't vote for Obama if it turned out he was a clone of Reagan. If Obama votes no, is the fear that the Right will try to portray him as a terrost lover who hates America. They already tried that on the previous 2 attempts to pass this bill (and it really is the same bill) and it failed miserably. That dog isn't hunting. In fact, Congress' approval rating went up when they killed it the forst 2 times. That's what is infuriating. The only constituency for this bill is a) the telecoms and b) the people who might be implicated during the discovery process. Coupled with his support of conservative democrats over more progressive challengers I suspect Obama will be a popular but easily manipulated president who sees leadership as compromise; split the difference between the 2 sides.

I hope I am wrong, and Obama could still impress me if this turns out to be a set-up for a fillubuster or some show of defiance when the FISA bill comes up in the senate.

But again, given the lack of any real support outside the beltway for this bill and his repitition of the completely bullshit spin that the bill is needed to restore FISA and make some critical changes that just have to happen (debunked in various places) gives me little hope. And don't get me started on the logically retarded argument that we need to pass a law to re-establish the illegality of an act that was already illegal. It's a bit like someone robbing a bank and instead of prosecuting them, passing another law against robbing banks so they know we really meant it the first time we made it illegal.

The unfortunate reality is that Obama has me over a barrel. As much as I'd love to vote against him in protest, the alternative is much worse and the lasting damage of a McCain appointee on the Supreme Court is intolerable.

But Obama won't be getting any of my money; instead I'll be giving it to Glennzila's new PAC.

As an aside, I notice there is a lot of whinging about Glennzila and Krugman indulging in massive I told you so to the Obama community. Well you know what, they did tell you so.