Black Box Report

It all started with Barack Obama's decision to forego public financing. Immediately, charges that he had "broken a promise" were thrown about; in the fall of 2007, in a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network, Obama said he would take part in the public financing system if his Republican opponent did the same. John McCain made Obama's decision to abandon public financing a whole lot easier by breaking the law in plain sight:

I mentioned earlier today that it was quite a thing to see John McCain denouncing Barack Obama for breaking his word on public financing when McCain himself is at this moment breaking the law in continuing to spend over the spending limits he promised to abide by through the primary season in exchange for public financing. (By the FEC's rules, we're still in the primary phase of the election and will be until the conventions.)

So while Obama certainly reversed course, it's hardly the flip-flopping betrayal of principle that the media and McCain's campaign (is there a difference?) portrayed it as. Obama is still an advocate of campaign finance reform, having passed legislation as both an IL state senator and U.S. senator. Even one of the original authors of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act approved:

Norm Ornstein, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and substantial contributor to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act -- also known as the "McCain-Feingold" campaign finance legislation -- said on Thursday that Obama's move was "pragmatically the right decision to make," and that, if the Senator had not chosen that path, "I would have sued him for political malpractice...

"When you have the ability to raise the kind of money that he could raise and do it without selling your soul to spend all the time between now and the election on fundraisers, your goal is to win an election and not turn your back on the people voting. There will be outraged editorials and McCain will be justifiably pi$$ed. But it was pragmatically the right decision for him to make."

But all that is complicated stuff, so "Obama flip-flops on public financing" was the take-away. And while liberals merely yawned, the seed was sown.

Next came a series of potential landmines in the campaign trail, courtesy of SCOTUS. First, in D.C. vs Heller, the Supreme Court struck down Washington D.C.'s ban on handguns, something Obama had previously contended was constitutional; now he supported the Court's decision. While conceding that "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne," Obama reiterated his support for the 2nd Amendment, and pointed to Justice Scalia's affirmation of the need for regulation. The left grumbled. Despite any evidence D.C.'s ban actually worked, many on the left don't consider any gun regulation open for negotiation.

Then came Obama's opposition to the Court's ban on the death penalty for child rapists. More grumbling from the base over a supposed betrayal of their principles, but the fact is Obama never changed his position, one he wrote about in his book, "The Audacity of Hope." But again, the perception was that Obama was moving away from the Democratic base.

This feeling was compounded when he announced his decision to expand faith-based charities as president. The base howled. This was one of George W. Bush's more blatant attempts at funneling money towards his supporters on the religious right, and Obama was going to expand that? Outrageous! Except that wasn't the case:

I don't actually have a problem with money going to church-linked organizations as long as they aren't exempt from oversight or anti-discrimination laws and don't proselytize. Early Associated Press reports incorrectly stated that Obama would allow such organizations to discriminate in hiring based on religion, but that apparently is not the case.

As with all of these things the devil is in the details, but there's nothing wrong with supporting good programs.

Again, not a flip-flop, but a perceived shift towards the center, or worse, the right, when in fact Obama hadn't moved at all. Some of Obama's supporters understood the nuances of each of these positions; others did not. But none of them took kindly to this:

“After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act.
......
“It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives — and the liberty — of the American people.”

The liberal blogosphere's response?

EPIC FAIL

One of the basic principles for organzing conservatives is, if it angers liberals, it must be a good thing. Was this the final piece of evidence that Obama - like just about every presidential candidate before him - was tacking to the center after securing his party's nomination? Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas thought so, and withheld donations because of it:

There is a line between "moving to the center" and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized. And, of late, he's been doing a lot of unnecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician. Not that I ever bought it, but Obama is now clearly not looking much different than every other Democratic politician who has ever turned his or her back on the base in order to prove centrist bona fides.

What's more, Obama's appeal to the "mushy middle" may be a recipe for disaster:

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.

Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another.

Of all the positions that anger liberals, Obama’s switch from promising to support a filibuster against the surveillance bill to eventually voting for a “compromise” that wasn’t will undoubtedly be the one that hurts him the most. It wasn’t a subtle “refining” of his position; it was a reversal, and one that didn’t have the benefit of any reasonable logic to back it up other than political expediency. Obama doesn’t want to waste any energy combating Republican attacks that “he doesn’t want us to spy on terrorists” (even thought they’ll attack him on that and other nat’l security issues anyway). With this one move, Obama has dampened supporters’ enthusiasm and taken some of the sheen off his political aura. While it may not cost him many votes in the long run, it will definitely cost him donations. Given his fundraising prowess, this may not be a problem, but it certainly doesn’t improve his standing with anyone. Informed independents and Democrats already opposed warrantless wiretapping and telecomm immunity; the only ones who supported it were National Security Authoritarians Republicans and some Blue Dog congressmen, none of whom who were going to vote for him anyway.

To minimize this, Obama directly addressed the claims that he’s moving to the center (if not the claims of his betrayal on FISA):

Barack Obama had heard quite enough of the complaints that he is pirouetting, leaping, lurching even, toward the political center.

He is at heart, he told a crowd in suburban Atlanta, a pretty progressive guy who just happens to pack along a complicated world view.

“Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he said. “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”

To this, he adds, parenthetically: “And I must say some of this is my friends on the left” and those in the media.

“I am someone who is no doubt progressive,” he said, adding that he believes in universal health care and that government has a strong to play in overseeing financial institutions and cracking down on abuses in bankruptcies and the like.

Bloggers are a passionate bunch. And to move the nation on a controversial issue, you need passionate people to drag the herd in the right direction. But sometimes that passion gets in the way of more pragmatic thinking, and it’s at times like these when it does well to stop, take a deep breath, and consider the alternatives:

Inevitably, in a national campaign, the smart Democratic candidate is going to do things that (tick) me off — I’m going to vote for them anyways! Whether the Barrow endorsement was an attempt to push the GOP into more spending in safe states (if an Obama endorsement can help an inveterate blue dog like that, the guy must be running towards the center) or whether it had some other justification, whether the FISA compromise reflects sound political calculation or a craven casting-aside of principles or something in-between, at this point I’m going to swallow hard and trust the Obama campaign to do what it has to do to win, because I’ll tell you one thing: with a Democrat — any Democrat — in the White House, things will be a whole (lot) better than they’ve been.

If I ever meet a politician who lines up with ever last one of my views on every single issue, I’ll simply jump on my magic carpet, fly over to Yankee Stadium to bat in the cleanup spot, and go home to my wife, Keira Knightley, because I’ll know I’m dreaming.

You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes, you get what you need.