2008

As the Senate passes George Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, 2+ years after it was introduced, and with the new-found support of Senator Barack Obama--who had once claimed he fully intended to vote against it, rejecting the false dualities of the "strong on terror" discourse--we'd like to take a minute to reiterate something we've found that the ultra-left in America has failed repeatedly to understand. We do understand ("appreciate" is not the best word) that, in running a national campaign, Obama ought to be expected to hover somewhere around the center. Any policy statement that radically breaks from the mainstream would torpedo his candidacy months before the general election. And Obama does represent a yearning among the bulk of American voters for radical change. That he will inevitably disappoint those blindly expecting a radical transformation is also something that must be accepted. However, in supporting an unprecedented expansion in the Executive's spying capabilities, as in, for example, calling for East Jerusalem to remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel (to take examples from Obama's recent domestic and foreign policy stances), Obama seems to go above and beyond the call of a mediocre "centrist" politics. And his going out of his way yesterday to remind his supporters--who are increasingly uneasy with his recent moves--that he is "no doubt" a "progressive"--is simply no consolation whatsoever.