Monday, May 10, 2010

Worth a read (edited w/addition)

Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values


Excerpts to whet the appetite:

For more than 15 months, evidence has mounted that President Obama routinely combines progressive rhetoric with contrary actions.


The corporate-military centrism of the Obama administration has demoralized and demobilized the Democratic Party's largely progressive base - the same base that swept Nancy Pelosi into the House speaker's office and then Barack Obama into the White House.


And, now, if the president's nomination of Kagan is successful, the result will move the Supreme Court to the right.


Progressives should fight the Kagan nomination.


I don't know if I agree with every word of this from beginning to end, but it's definitely worth a read.

ETA: Another look at Obama's choice of Kagan, by Glenn Greenwald. Excerpt:

...Our politics is nothing if not tribal, and the duty of Every Good Democrat is now to favor Kagan's confirmation. Conservatives refused to succumb to those rules and ended up with Sam Alito instead of Harriet Miers, but they had a much different relationship to George Bush than progressives have to Obama (i.e., conservatives -- as they proved several times late in Bush's second term [Miers, immigration, Dubai Ports] -- were willing to oppose their leader whey they disagreed). The White House knows that progressives will never try to oppose any important Obama initiative, and even if they were inclined, they lack the power to do so (largely because unconditional support guarantees impotence).

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