While there are substantial, important differences between Republicans and Democrats, critical political debates are at least as often driven not by the GOP/Democrat dichotomy, but by the split between the Beltway political establishment and the rest of the country. As the above-chronicled events demonstrate, all of these assaults on our core civil liberties and the rule of law are not Republican attacks with Democrats fighting against them. They are attacks launched by the political establishment against the citizenry, and they ought to be responded to as such.
Tangential to Greenwald's post, I believe that any presidential candidate currently has the tough job of satisfying the desires of both the citizenry and the American political establishment if they want to get elected. Sure, I'd like a president to represent the people exclusively the way a democratically elected leader is supposed to do, but I don't think that the current American political climate makes that possible.
This is what I mean when I say that Obama hasn't been pivoting towards "the centre", he's been pivoting towards the American political establishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment