At the Moment

Politics is not the art of the possible. Politics is the art of making people think the impossible is not just possible, but likely. When it doesn't come true, you blame someone else.

Otherwise intelligent people are upset that Barack Obama has not promised to do things that it was always blindingly obvious that Barack Obama was not going to promise to do.  The kumbaya strategy precludes "strong progressive positions", all of which have to get through Congress anyway.

There is little correlation between what a politician promises to do while campaigning and what he or she does while in office.

There are two principal benefits to having a Democratic President:

1. Appointments, including the Supreme Court, probably will not be idiots or ideologues or idiotic ideologues.
2. Probably won't veto good legislation.

While few, these are good and sufficient reasons to vote for the Democrat, whoever it is.

The media narrative is like a balloon. They have to keep it filled to preventing it from collapsing and crashing to earth. They currently are filling it with Rev. Wright. It's not even Memorial Day; no one will care about Rev. Wright once the general election campaign is underway. Meanwhile, the only politicians they show on teevee are Democrats. This is good for Democrats.

The only people who really care what political bloggers think are other political bloggers. This is a good thing.

Comments

[zenpundit]

"Meanwhile, the only politicians they show on teevee are Democrats. This is good for Democrats."

No it isn't. Negative perceptions stick in the public mind to all associated except for the indvidual or group that "flips" the story to a positive narrative. You can be a hero of a bad story but so long as the story is bad, the primary collective impression of you will also be bad.

If you can't change a narrative then you walk away from it fast.

[Mithras]

Politics is teevee with the sound off.

You can only be right to the extent that the pictures are of Rev. Wright and Obama - i.e., scary black men alert! Otherwise, if they just show Clinton and Obama, then it's all positive.

When school lets out and summer arrives, it'll be "Wright who?"

[Charles D]

Don't be too quick to count the Wright story out. We haven't yet seen the old videos of Obama embracing Wright and praising him to the skies alongside his cowardly and phony repudiation of his friend yesterday. If Obama is the nominee, the media will constantly remind us that he is, after all, black.

Given the adverse publicity that the Wright "controversy", and the obvious lying in Obama's response yesterday, the Clinton campaign will probably be able to keep this contest going into the convention and sway more super-delegates to her side. I predict the Democratic Party will not unite behind the nominee, the Bush regime will launch an attack on Iran, and unless McCain is a 30-point favorite, they will cancel the election.

[Mithras]

Optimist.