Large Eyed Obama Anime at my Door Today

Actually, he was more like a tall, elderly, Obama wood sprite. Very sweet couple of local guys, both pushing fifty or even sixty, out canvassing for Obama. Couldn't have been nicer. Alas, treated to a half hour rant (clocked by the elven year old [sic] lurking behind my shoulder getting cold while Mommy gave the world a piece of her mind) on how we will never get "post partisan" and how the politics of nice isn't going to cut it. But credit where credit is due--this guy is a serious democrat and progressive and he actually knew enough to admit that HRC's policies, on paper, are probably more progressive than Obama's. But what was most interesting was listening to him explain to me that he was most upset because the Democrats had let partisanship block their agenda after the 2006 election. "We're in the Majority!" he exclaimed, "what's stopping the Democrats from simply defunding the war?" Well, I explained to him, we aren't really in the majority given the blue dog democrats--but I also had to explain to him very, very, very, slowly that if you think that *majority rules* you actually should *want more partisanship* because its the only way you can run roughshod over your very evil opponents. At any rate, using my Eschaton derived hypnotic spell I introduced him to the novel notion that politics is inherently contentious because people have different stuff they want to accomplish and the middle ground doesn't exist between shall we torture or shan't we?

I'm afraid I constantly remind myself of Dick Cheney explaining his moment au boue with Patrick Leahy: "I expressed myself fully, and I felt better for it." I think I'm still voting for Obama, but I see a huge crack up of the unity express when the half of it that's actually progressive discovers that the half of it that Obama really cares about are low information voters who just want to return to an era of guns, butter, free lunches and all the torture they can watch on you tube.