Soccer Dad

What part of bipartisan don't you understand?

Today's Washington Post features a front page political ad for article about Sen. Obama, In Obama's New Message, Some Foes See Old Liberalism. It starts:

Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated.

But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of Democratic White House hopefuls.

So in the first two paragraphs the article establishes its baseline: how Sen. Obama portrays himself. It's as if questioning if he really represesnts any sort of "post-partisan" reality is somehow dirty pool.

Later on there are two really remarkable paragraphs.

In most major areas, Obama has taken positions that would seem to conform to the Republican stereotype of a liberal. Like Clinton, he favors expanding the government's role in delivering health care, and would pay for that by ending President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He would go a step further than Clinton by lifting the limit on income taxed for Social Security, now $100,000, to set that program on firm footing.

He strongly supports abortion rights and spoke out against a Supreme Court ruling last year that upheld a ban on the procedure that some call "partial-birth" abortion. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses (after some hesitation, Clinton came out against that). He is outspoken on civil rights, and he has opposed Bush's judicial picks, staying out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees. While he supports the death penalty for the most "heinous" crimes, as a Senate candidate in 2004 he expressed support for strict gun control, decriminalizing marijuana and ending federal mandatory minimum prison sentences, issues he now rarely raises on the trail.

A "Republican stereotype of a liberal"? He stakes out liberal positions and holds to them. It's not a stereotype, it's his reality.

And his National Journal rating is no fluke. But how can the reporter wax eloquent about Sen. Obama's "post-partisan" appeal and then write that he stayed "...out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees." If he really is the "post-partisan" candidate of the first two paragraphs it would have been the gang of 15.

The problem isn't how Sen. Obama's foes portray him, it's his record. Whay would he fail to mention positions he espouses on the trail, except to avoid the fact that these are unpopular and he sees a disadvantage in promoting them. That's fine, but that doesn't make him not liberal. In fact it makes him extremely political.

If the reporter wanted to focus on a candidate with "post-partisan" appeal perhaps he could have looked at Sen. McCain. (via memeorandum)

A recent Gallup poll shows:

A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

So a significant portion of Democratic primary voters - though still a minority - would support Sen. McCain in the general election. That would seem to be a much better indication of "post-partisanship" than Sen. Obama's attempts to hide his record.

Unfortunately the Post's reporter seemed more interested in presenting a brief for Sen. Obama than in analyzing the dynamics of the presidential race.

Powerline is skeptical of the defection numbers. Don Surber observes:

This turns conventional wisdom on its ear. Even I fell for the line that if Obama is not nominated, blacks will bolt.

Just One Minute explains:

My guess? It is easier for elderly and working class whites to defect to the war hero than it is for blacks and hipsters to defect to the old white guy.

barack obama, john mccain, hillary clinton.