Even More

Sirota attacks Obama again with a great line:

I sincerely hope that Obama becomes a conviction politician, whether he stays in the Senate or runs for President. I mean that, because our side needs conviction politicians with his skills, and because I don’t want to see our movement be tricked by someone who is not part of the movement. If he becomes a conviction politician, then there is no quandary for progressives, and he would make a great president – one that I would loudly cheer on.

It’s true, Obama hasn’t taken on Sirota’s primary issues, but I’d hardly call the issues he has taken on trivial.

Darfur, Non-proliferation, AIDS in Africa, CAFE Standards tied to health care cost relief, Ethics, and transparency in government.

The best line from Sirota:

However, the admission that Barack Obama has to hustle now to create accomplishments as a WAY to run for President rather than him running for President as a way to nationalize accomplishments he’s already achieved or merely TRIED to achieve is really a sad commentary on the substance-free nature of American politics today.

I remember a time when nuclear weapons were actually a significant issue for the left. When did that stop being the case? Seriously, what the fuck is going on when someone takes on both human rights and security in terms of nuclear weapons and he’s called a lightweight?

Somehow Sirota has confused not introducing a bill pushing for public financing of campaigns as a sign that Obama isn’t really trying when any such bill would have been killed before it even got a hearing.

Is David Sirota’s idea of accomplishing things introducing bills that don’t go anywhere? If so, that should tell us a lot about his expectations.

But one of the more telling things about the criticisms of Obama aren’t that they are a fair criticism involving the lack of executive experience (also true of all the other Senators running other than Bayh), but that the criticisms ignore that many of the others have remarkably thin legislative records. John Kerry’s primary accomplishment as a Senator was the BCCI investigation, but his legislative record is weak. John Edwards has a weak legislative record and for decent reasons–he was only a one term Senator.

Dodd has a good record and I would have to go back to pull it up, but Dodd isn’t going anywhere. Biden has a record. We’ll leave it at that as does Bayh. Clinton? Her biggest failure legislatively was universal health care–see Brad DeLong for some great takes on that fiasco.

I think primaries are good so I have no problem with people disagreeing with me, but I’d love for the criticisms of Obama to deal with the whole guy and not some cherry picked quotes from poor news coverage. Usually there is a healthy level of skepticism on blogs about news stories.

Beyond that, while calling his experience to be thin is a legitimate point, attacking him for having few legislative accomplishments when the top candidates opposing him have thin records is a bit odd to say the least.