I will be contributing to the Kevin Drum festschrift organized by Mother Jones as Kevin undergoes treatment -- thankfully, going quite well so farm and endured with grit and good humor -- for multiple myeloma. Kevin has perhaps been surprising himself with pretty active blogging through his chemo rounds, while Mother Jones staff and outsiders pitch in. Work on my contribution (finished, and running next week) along with this project has left this blog pretty fallow this week.
I note in the Mother Jones piece that I've always appreciated that Kevin's commitment to economic justice is tempered by political realism. His perceptions and assessments of Obama these past six years have also tracked pretty closely with -- and no doubt helped shape -- my own. That is, he sees Obama as "a sober, cautious, analytic, mainstream Democrat" who's substantively advanced a lot of progressive priorities while necessarily also disappointing liberal hopes on other fronts.
Where I've parted company from Kevin (and this is not the focus of next week's piece) is in reaction to Obama's rhetoric. He sees Obama's 2008 speeches and catch-phrases as "nothing more than typical campaign windiness." I see his rhetoric as an expression of the pragmatism Drum admires, articulating a nuanced, incremental sense of how progressive change occurs. That argument played out here and here.
I note in the Mother Jones piece that I've always appreciated that Kevin's commitment to economic justice is tempered by political realism. His perceptions and assessments of Obama these past six years have also tracked pretty closely with -- and no doubt helped shape -- my own. That is, he sees Obama as "a sober, cautious, analytic, mainstream Democrat" who's substantively advanced a lot of progressive priorities while necessarily also disappointing liberal hopes on other fronts.
Where I've parted company from Kevin (and this is not the focus of next week's piece) is in reaction to Obama's rhetoric. He sees Obama's 2008 speeches and catch-phrases as "nothing more than typical campaign windiness." I see his rhetoric as an expression of the pragmatism Drum admires, articulating a nuanced, incremental sense of how progressive change occurs. That argument played out here and here.
