"Kumbaya" as raw political power

Sometimes I think even our best progressive bloggers are just as dense as the message-challenged, plan-mongering Democratic consultants. Besides whatever real-world value there is in it – and it certainly seems like Obama sincerely believes in his ability to pull it off -- can nobody see the valuable meta-messages in Obama’s “can’t we all just get along” campaign? The more this takes hold, the more the hyper-partisan Limbaughs and Coulters are marginalized, and the more the organized right-wing slime machine is paralyzed.

Underneath it all, what Obama is doing is laying the blame for the current state of polarization right where it deserves to rest, on the Atwater-Gingrich-Norquist-Rove takeover of the Republican Party financed by Mellon Scaife-Coors-Bradley axis. Consider the roster of participants (including Coulter and Limbaugh) the Republican Axis-of-Nastiness.

What Obama is finding out is that a lot of people, not just Democrats, but also independents and historically moderate Republicans, don’t like that nastiness. The 20% who do have held together the balance of power, but now it’s falling apart. Obama is putting his sails into that wind, and also is saying, “Yes, we can all just get along -- if we elect Democrats, repudiate the super-partisan win-at-all-costs Republicans, and adopt the Democratic solutions that are really non-partisan anyway because most Americans actually want them.”