Yeah, yeah, terrible title. I'm out of practice. The topic under discussion really is this: Obama is now "not ruling out" a run for the Presidency in 2008. My take? If he lucked out and won the nomination, he'd go for the gold -- and might not not be half bad, either as a candidate or even as President. But the scenario he's probably shooting for is less ambitious: to increase his visibility in the primaries as a way of landing a VP spot on the D ticket, setting himself up for a more serious Presidential run in 4 years (if his ticket loses) or 8 (if it wins).
The question is, whose wagon does he want to ride all the way to the Naval Observatory? What Presidential wannabe's coattails has he been tying himself to?
Hillary.
Damn.
I don't want to see a Hillary-Obama ticket, largely because I like Obama too much to see him screw himself that way. But that's my prediction. He certainly hasn't tried to curry any favor with Feingold or any of the other, more progressive potential POTUSes. No: he's a F.O.H.
I've written a lot about how Obama is a potentially great Dem who unfortunately keeps currying favor with the old-guard centrists who are responsible for the party's sorry state today, who aren't prepared to govern seriously on November 8, and who would either lose, or win only to reconvince voters that we Dems have nothing to offer, in the '08 Presidential campaign. If Obama sheds his allegiance to Hillary, Lieberman, the DSCC, et al., and instead stands tall as a real progressive, he could be great. But if he continues to triangulate, and especially if he doesn't stand up to Hillary as the most prominent representative of those pro-corporate interests, then he's likely to join Colin Powell as just another man who could have been the first African-American President if he hadn't blown it by picking the wrong team to side with.
If you're interested, feel free to punch "obama" into the search box above and cruise through some old posts. And I'll add to the mix this older, but pithy and salient, contribution to the pro/con/huh?-Obama discussion: DownWithTyranny.
As to the VichyDems site itself: I've been AWOL for personal reasons for quite a while, but I'll be back, in full fettle if possible, the day after the election -- the official First Day of the 2008 Presidential Campaign Season. This election, vote D no matter how Vichy the candidate is. The day after the election, start working to unseat the exact same Vichies in the '08 primaries. That's the plan.
See you after the election, if not sooner, and let's keep our fingers crossed that John Conyers soon has subpoena power...
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