Commenter ‘e’ from TRex’s site:
At the risk of sparking my own controversy, I do think we ought to cut Obama some slack on this FISA mess, at least until it gets to the Senate. I don’t think there was really a damn thing he could have done to stop it passing the House.
And let’s keep in mind that the first order of business is to win this election, or telecom immunity is gonna be the least of our worries. IMO Obama has shown more courage than any of these fuckers in choosing principle over political expediency, but can we be a little realistic here, please? The average moron whose vote we desperately need knows nothing about FISA, wiretap or telecom immunity issues, nor will s/he be troubled to learn.
If Obama walks right into a “compromising our security” bullshit attack ad, however, Joe Q. WhiteWorkingClass is gonna pay plenty of attention to THAT.
It’s a fine line he has to walk, and I for one am not gonna jump on the bleating blogger bandwagon to make it more difficult for him.
The context of Obama/FISA ought to be very separate from House Democrats/FISA. Which is why I objected to dragging Senator Obama into the epicenter of this. Attacking him from the left isn’t such a great idea right now. Every attack on Senator Obama is a win for Senator McBush. Not good, regardless of what Senator Obama said.
Let’s be clear… Senator Obama doesn’t need to simply win in November. He needs to win with an overwhelming mandate. 300-plus electoral votes big. If he just barely wins, important allies on the Hill and elsewhere will wonder why he didn’t defeat a severely weakened GOP by a larger margin and, thus, he won’t have the political capital to roll back many of the Bush administration travesties.
He won’t achieve an overwhelming November mandate while being attacked from the right, center and — especially — the liberal blogs. Once he has his mandate (I’m being hopeful now) then we can exercise our patriotic duty to hold him accountable for his mistakes.
So while the FISA Amendment Bill is an terrible thing, our anger about it ought to be aimed at the people who made it happen. The President, the Republicans and the weakling House Democrats. Meanwhile, I want to make sure the appropriate senators know that they have my support in stopping this bill from passing in its present form.
