Okay, as we know: some Democrats say he’s been talking the talk, but not walking the walk:
War Critics Question Obama's Fervor
Some Say Actions Don't Match TalkBy Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 15, 2007; A01...some antiwar Democrats have raised questions about the depth of Obama's opposition, taking aim at one of the signature arguments for his candidacy -- that he is the only leading Democratic candidate who opposed the war from the beginning. (continued)
They say that while Obama did argue against the war as a Senate candidate, he tempered his rhetoric and his opposition once he arrived in the Capitol, rejecting timetables for withdrawal and backing war funding bills. He returned to a sharper position, they say, when he started running for president...
"So many politicians were afraid" to oppose the war, "so he gets credit for that," said Jim Ginsburg, a Chicago Democratic activist. He backed Obama when he ran for the Senate in 2004 but says Al Gore is his preferred candidate for president.
"Some of his actions and speeches once he got in the Senate did not match his rhetoric," Ginsburg, the son of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said of Obama. "He started making very mealy-mouthed comments and voted to authorize funding for the war. Once he started seeing how angry Democrats were, his rhetoric has turned to where it was in the 2004 campaign."...
..."It's great [Obama] had good judgment," said Markos Moulitsas Z?niga, who runs the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, but he added: "There's no clarity of message." Moulitsas said that Obama should have firmly come out against any bill that offers funding for the war without a timetable for withdrawal, as Edwards has...
(Okay, sounds like a fair thing to ask an end-the-war candidate to do...)
In a speech Wednesday, Obama offered his most detailed plan yet for getting troops out of Iraq, calling for the withdrawal of at least one of the 20 brigades (each made up of about 3,500 soldiers) in Iraq every month starting now, with all combat troops out by the end of next year. And even among the most antiwar audiences, Obama still has many supporters.
(Personally, I don’t react very well to that plan. I don’t think it seems wise militarily or politically, but I won’t pass judgment until I hear all the details.)
"He's been there from the very beginning," said Tom Andrews, the national director of a group called Win Without War.
(In 2002 when Obama spoke at an anti-war rally) "Bush's ratings were at an all-time high," said Marilyn Katz, another organizer of the rally, who is now one of the top fundraisers for Obama's 2008 campaign. But Obama "was willing to stand up and stake out a leadership position."
(Very admirable--taking an unpopular and principled stand at a time when most of the country still believed in Bush shows vision, courage and character. Here's where we get into trouble:)
...But once he arrived in the Senate, after winning the primary and easily dispatching his Republican opponent, Obama did not emerge as a key voice on the war.
Days after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) gave a teary speech in November 2005 calling for the immediate pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, Obama called for a phased reduction in troops but emphasized that he was against a timetable for withdrawal...
In 2005 and 2006, Obama backed several bills that funded the Iraq war. In July 2006, when Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Russell Feingold (Wis.) pushed for a bill that would set a timetable to remove combat troops from Iraq by July 31, 2007, Obama, like Clinton, voted no.
Hmmm... I don't know. He does some war-funding stuff, then he does some I'm gonna end the war stuff... And there's all these Democrats who believe in him deeply. I don't know.
__________________________
Bill Prendergast is also a contributor to Dump Michele Bachmann.
In all fairness, the war is
In all fairness, the war is a very difficult issue. Some people (such as myself) who opposed it initially went through a period where they opposed withdrawl, because they felt we had an obligation to stay and "fix" Iraq.
While we can, and should, raise questions about Obama's stance on the war (as we should with Clinton, and even Edwards), I think we also need to keep in mind that people need room to grow, and learn, and come to the "right" conclusions on the issue.
No one has the benefit of being "right" 100% of the time, and, if we make that our standard, we'll quickly find that there's no one in the world that we can support for the presidency.
Yeah, that's true, that last
Yeah, that's true, that last paragraph. The reason I put this one up is that I'd been reading some of the back and forth about Obama on the Kos...
Some of his supporters strike me as being passionate to the point of being partisan--not acknowledging questions.
I understand to a lot of political activists, Hillary represents corporate "business as usual" Democrats, so I can understand why they'd insist on an alternative. But when you read this kind of account of Obama's record--you're not sure he *is* an alternative, at least on the subject of the war. Hillary certainly keeps an eye on the polls and measures the election consequences of her remarks and votes, throughout her career--that's a Clinton thing, a professional politician thing. We expect that of Hillary, but here it seems that Obama's doing the same thing.
Maybe some Obama supporter would write in and tell me what the WaPost "got wrong" or "left out" about his record on the war in the Senate.
__________________________Bill Prendergast is also a contributor to Dump Michele Bachmann.
Fair enough. Personally,
Fair enough.
Personally, I've always felt that Obama keeps more of an eye on the polls than most people are willing to give him credit for. Reading his books, he actually reminds me more of a "new" version of Bill Clinton than anything else, albiet, perhaps, a version that's slightly more liberal on some issues. A Clinton 2.0, if you will.
Edwards, at this point, seems like the least likely to be dictated by polls. But, even there, we can question whether or not he came to his conversion legitimately, or whether he just did it to run for president. I choose to beleive that he's legit, but I can understand why others might feel otherwise.
I don't think there are
I don't think there are significant differences between Hillary and Obama in their actions. There certainly aren't in their voting records. I think they try to draw distinctions through their rhetoric in order to get support from voters. I think they would both govern in much the same way. If you listen objectively they sound a lot alike. They both shade more to the center than Edwards or Kucinich.
__________________________Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change -- Andre Gide