Category: The Dish

A Conservative For Obama

A reader says I left out some of the reasons I have cited before:

Along with all the loftiness, I thought there was some sort of down-to-earth pragmatism that drove your support.  That is to say, his candidacy is important not only because of what it represents symbolically.  Supporters believe in his ability to understand them, to be reasonable in his positions, to shirk the politically expedient course.

Even though you disagree with him, you believe he is being intellectually honest in his policy considerations.  And you trust his worldly, intelligent, reasoned decisions — ones that you might disagree with — more than you could trust decisions reached by someone parochial and emotional — even if they are consistent with your own. Obama’s broad-mindedness (and your own belief in the power of reason) has likely allowed you to overcome your disagreements with him.  He’s the clear alternative to political hackery and insular decision-making.  And we’ve all seen how dangerous these can be.

That is indeed how I feel. The remarkable thing about Obama – and it’s sad it’s become remarkable – is that when you ask him a question, he actually seems to be listening and mulling a reasonable response. Like a normal person. After canned, parsed newspeak slogans from our president – "we don’t torture", "freedom is on the march", "it’s hard work" – this comes as relief.

Nothing To Lose?

Mark Tushnet thinks out loud about the downfall of conservatism and the impact on the Supreme Court:

A common intuition, sometimes voiced, is that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court hasn’t overruled Roe because the Court’s conservatives knew that doing so would be a disaster for the Republican Party, splitting the party’s coalition and reducing its attractiveness to moderates and independents who agreed with Roe’s "core holding," as the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood put it…

But what if the coalition has already been split, and the Republican Party has already suffered a political disaster?

There’s nothing left to hold the Court’s conservatives back.  Indeed, the prospect of a long run of Democratic appointments to the Court — true, the initial appointments to the Court are likely to be replacements for some of the liberals on the Court today, but that can’t last forever — gives the conservatives reasons to take their best shot sooner rather than later.  Elsewhere I’ve called this the "shoot the moon" strategy — perhaps a high risk strategy, but with a better payoff if it succeeds than alternatives, and in the face of unattractive alternatives anyway.

A Feminist Against Webb

A guest-blogger at Matt’s, Kathy G., makes the case. I take all her points, but it seems to me that the meme that is strongest against Obama is the usual Fox-Rove culture war stuff, a way to make Obama seem un-American. Webb destroys that meme and remakes the landscape of the race in ways that hurt McCain. Webb is also as close to a Republican as any Democrat will get – viscerally, culturally, temperamentally. I do think that avoiding a female backlash after Clinton’s withdrawal makes sense. But I don’t think it rules Webb out. If Obama is partly about healing the culture war – and it’s a key element of his appeal to independents – then Webb is proof that he can bring cultural rivals into his team.