Giving Obama a chance
Chris Bowers has a good post, with this conclusion (though the entire post is worth reading):
Really, this is all very simple. I bring this up because sometimes when I read “just give Obama a chance” articles in the blogosphere, I worry that they imply “don’t press Obama even when he does stuff you don’t like , and / or when he does not appear to be acting on the promises he made that you did like.” It is entirely possible that these diaries might not be saying any such thing, and that I am simply paranoid after months of accusations that I am not sufficiently supportive of Obama.
Whether I am being paranoid or accurately reading the implications of these diaries, I want to point out that the work we are doing on Open Left in regards to the Wall Street bailout currently fails into the third category listed above, with one slight modification. Obama, in conjunction with most Senate Democrats (Senate Democrats are the problem here, not their counterparts in the House), have promised improved oversight and transparency in the TARP program, and also a change of direction in how the second $350 billion will be spent. However, they have taken no action to codify these promised changes into law. In fact, they seem to be intentionally not codifying these promises into law, which is particularly worrying. If you are serious about these promised changes, then codifying these promises into law shouldn’t even be an issue.
If “giving Obama a chance” means taking a pass when neither he nor his colleagues in the Senate appear eager to codify their promised changes to TARP into law, then count me out. If, on the other hand, “giving Obama a chance” means something more like the first scenario I described above, then count me in.
I concur.
