Scorn

Dave Sirota with a fantastic post about his "gut" reasons to vote for Obama. I'm glad I didn't see the event he was talking about, because it would have made me feel sick to my stomach too.

There is one niggling detail, though. Sirota lauds Obama by saying that he "does fundamentally reject the conservative world view that is destroying our country." I just wish there were a little more evidence of that. While at heart, of course, Obama is left of center on policy, he shows a disturbing lack of willingness to really lash out at conservatism as a pernicious, morally bankrupt ideology. This isn't about him not being aggressive enough per se; indeed, he has a very disciplined message against McCain, specifically the "more of the same" meme. And he hammers that home often enough, along with his surrogates. But in the broader picture, for every rhetorical foray into populism or progressivism that Obama makes, he gives two more mindless platitudes about bipartisanship. He just isn't willing to make the leap from advocating liberal positions to pointing out that most conservative ones are terrible, or from praising liberal thinkers to noting that most conservative ones are dishonest and destructive. Deep inside, Obama hasn't yet convinced himself that conservatives are in the end deserving of no more than scorn and pity. I really wish we had somebody outside of the blogosphere who both realized this and was willing to say it.