Noah Litwer and Mollie Ruskin, fellows in a program run by a group that trains young people to campaign for progressive candidates. (Brian Lee for The New York Times)
The Democratic candidate has made a series of votes, hard-core liberals say, aimed at attracting moderates.
Now, however, after critics have accused Obama of shifting positions on issues such as the war in Iraq, the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, gun control and the death penalty — all in what some view as a shameless play to a general election audience — Shade said she planned to switch back to the Green Party.
“I’m disgusted with him,” said Shade, an artist. “I can’t even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this ‘audacity of hope’ stuff, it’s blah, blah, blah. For all the independents he’s going to gain, he’s going to lose a lot of progressives.”
Of course, that depends on how you define progressives.
As Shade herself noted, while alarm may be spreading among some Obama supporters, whether left-wing bloggers or purists holding Obama’s feet to the fire on one issue or another, the reaction among others has been less than outrage.
Yet rally draws 70,000
For all the idealism and talk of transformation that Obama has brought to the Democratic Party — he managed to draw a crowd of more than 70,000 in Portland in May — there is also a wide streak of pragmatism, even among many grass-roots activists, in a party long vexed by factionalism.
“We’re frustrated by it, but we understand,” said Mollie Ruskin, 22, who grew up in Baltimore and is spending the summer in Portland as a fellow with Politicorps, a program run by the Bus Project, a local nonprofit that trains young people to campaign for progressive candidates. “He’s doing it so he can get into office and do the things he believes in.”
Nate Gulley, 23, who grew up in Cleveland and is also a Politicorps fellow, said too much was being made of Obama’s every move.
“It’s important not to get swept up in ‘Is Obama posturing?'” Gulley said. “It’s self-evident that he’s a different kind of candidate.”
Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, a progressive website, started asking his readers last month to pledge money to an escrow fund for Obama, as opposed to contributing to him outright. The idea was to make Obama rethink his decision to support the Bush administration’s wiretapping measure.
Obama initially said he would try to filibuster a vote, but on Wednesday he was among 69 senators who voted for the measure, which to many liberals represents a flagrant abuse of privacy rights. The legislation grants legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the wiretapping
So far, 675 people have pledged $101,375 to Fertik’s escrow fund, money that theoretically would be donated to Obama once he showed a firm commitment to progressive values, Fertik said.
But Fertik also said that while Obama’s change on the spying issue upset some supporters, it was not necessarily emblematic of a troubling shift to the center. He said he continued to support the senator.
Still, others warned that Obama risked being viewed as someone who parses positions without taking a principled stand.
Joe McCraw, 27, a video engineer from San Carlos, Calif., who writes three liberal blogs, said Obama’s shift on the domestic spying measure was a watershed moment. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen him lie to us, and it makes me feel disappointed,” McCraw said.
Many Obama supporters said the most vocal complaining was largely relegated to bloggers and people who might otherwise support Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, or Dennis J. Kucinich, the liberal Ohio congressman who dropped out of the presidential race earlier this year.
“I think it’s accentuated by the fact that Obama’s appeal is an appeal to idealism,” said Kari Chisholm, who runs a blog, blueoregon.com, and advises on Internet strategy for Democratic candidates. “They believe their ideology is the only idealism and Obama’s is very mainstream. I’m not surprised they’re getting a little cranky. They’ve always been kind of cranky.”
Shade, the Green-turned-Democrat-returned-Green voter, doesn’t dispute that.
She spoke about Obama while leaning out her second-floor apartment window, where she has placed homemade signs urging the impeachment of President Bush. Others say “Free Gaza” and “Occupation is Terrorism.” She said twice that the American political system was “rotten.”
“You realize,” Shade said, her voice fading with resignation, “that you’re talking to somebody who’s pretty far out of the mainstream.”
“I thought he was going to stand up there, stand by his promises like he said he would, and it turns out he’s another politician”, stated McCraw.
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Ann
y folk so sensitive
its politics