Lee Stranahan, writing this evening for The Huffington Post, sums up the feelings and hopes of many progressive bloggers. Batting down the idea that we in the "liberal blogosphere" are somehow up in arms over President-elect Obama's decisions to show leniency to Joe Lieberman and to appoint Senator Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, Stranahan notes:
"Speaking for my tiny little chunk of the liberal blogosphere, I don't like Joe Lieberman. I was disgusted by Hillary's campaign. And I couldn't be happier with Obama's decisions." [emphasis mine]
Stranahan continues: "You see, I took all that talk about new politics seriously. In speech after speech, Obama said we had to move past 'the smallness of our politics' and he didn't single out Republicans. He didn't say the smallness of their politics. The smallness has been in both parties..." [emphasis in the original]
Mr. Stranahan concludes: "...Obama is showing confidence in the idea he ran on; that America was ready for not just new policies but for a whole new approach to governing. It's the biggest possible change I can imagine. It's not just good politics. It isn't some clever move. It's what those better angels that Obama kept mentioning look like. No wonder it's confusing to so many people of all ideological stripes.."
That is exactly why so many of us believe in, and voted for, Barack Obama. Over the past couple of decades, we all have been entangled in the smallness of our partisan politics. It will be hard - very hard - to break out of that habit, but it will be worth the effort to try. It is, at the very least, an uplifting experience to watch our new President-elect's attempts to take us there.
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