A Call for Civility

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/30/102745/165

It's a post by Barack Obama on the daily kos, if you haven't read it yet (just read it myself, after reading other posts referencing it). It's essentially an argument that, regardless of what those on the right do, people on the left shouldn't attack each other just because we don't always agree or vote lock-step on things. To me, it's a strong call for civility, not weakness, and a request for an essential change in politics that can be used to attract moderates. Among other things, Obama argues that making every issue an us or them sort of thing alienates those who don't have a strong ideological bent. For example, most people agree that the war in Iraq is a bad thing, mismanaged and a mistake, but that doesn't (for some) mean that they hate the president. So when our case is "Bush=Hitler", they tune us out. But we can argue against the war and then explain to them what we'd do differently. And then if a democrat doesn't buy into a given plan, for one reason or another, we allow them the right to disagree without making them the enacter of evil. Another example he gave was on the Roberts vote, Russ Feingold is getting attacked bysome (especially in the blogopshere) as someone who doesn't support civil liberties. Feingold voted against the Patriot Act, and I think he was the only one. Obama argues that, while we might disagree with Feingold here, this one vote doesn't make him someone to hate, and that Democrats need to have a civil discourse about their disagreements.

I don't know where he'll go, or if a strategy like this just allows the corrupt sociopaths that call themselves republicans another way to attack us, but I really like reading what Obama writes. It's so much more articulate than what we're used to in politics, and it is a call for a different America, where (as he talked about in his Con speech) we don't focus on what divides us. I hope that message sells. I'm also glad that I get to live in a state that, until something changes, on election day I actually want to vote for my current Senators.