Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

While I understand why kos/atrios/open left are disappointed with Obama’s postpartisan rhetoric and how he isn’t an aggressive populist like Edwards, I fail to understand why there’s so much antipathy towards Obama because of how much independent voters like him.  It seems like the Open Left gang has become overly obsessed with rhetoric, to the point of not recognizing how Obama is in many ways the fulfillment of the netroots dream.  The tension at the heart of the netroots has always been their desire for the Democratic party to move to the left and their desire to win elections.  This tension has resolved itself oddly sometimes — we all remember when Kos and Jerome Armstrong jumped on the bandwagon of Mark Warner, who was very much the type of corporate-oriented, centrist DLC type that the netroots are supposed to despise.

As we all know, the netroots have largely abandoned Obama for Edwards because they feel that Obama has been running as “David Broder’s Love Child” or that he is “a conservative candidate for President.”  But while its true he hasn’t been as aggressive populist as Edwards, it’s impossible to deny that, as a matter of policies, he is basically the best possible scenario the netroots could have imagined in 2005.  Universal(ish) health care, against the war, large scale global warming plan, commitment to opening up broadband and media access etc etc.  What makes him a better candidate that Edwards for making progressivism a greater force in American politics is the fact that he’s able to draw independents and even some Republicans with his life story, charisma and rhetoric, while still giving us lefties the red meat on policy.  This is how you expand the base.  Reagan pulled this same trick: he was the most conservative post-war national Republican politician ever, and yet was able to draw formerly Democratic voters.  With huge numbers of Republicans, Republican leaning independents and pure-independents disgusted with Bush and the GOP, progressives have something of a once in a lifetime chance.  It’s this election where we can expand the base, expose voters to progressive arguments on health care, foreign policy and taxes because of the displeasure with Bush and the GOP. If after the 2004 election, you told Stoller, Atrios et al that we could have a candidate running on national health care, against the war, raising taxes on the rich, expanding broadband access etc and had independents gaga over him and the mainstream media (including conservative columnists) eating out of his hands, they would have told you that you were crazy.  And now they’re turning on him.