Kabuki Alert

by digby

Considering his strong support of Obama during the primaries, many people wondered what John Kerry's role was going to be since he was passed over for a cabinet position. I think today we saw that he's going to be lead liberal kabuki dancer in the revival the Democratic musical comedy called "How To Succeed In the Village Without Really Trying."

And this actually may be good news. It seems very unlikely to me that Kerry is acting out of school, but is rather playing the role of the liberal stimulus spending obsessive who will (hopefully) balance out the tax cut fetishists in the senate negotiations, giving Obama some space to compromise at least somewhere to the left of The Club For Growth. (Unfortunately, that still leaves us with the Blue Dog deficit hawks, but maybe Rahm has pictures or something.)

It's all just a guess, of course, but I simply don't believe that Kerry and Conrad are out there running at Obama from the left on their own. They just don't have it in them. They are staking out this position for negotiating purposes on his behalf. Obviously, we don't know how far any of them will go to fight for it, but at least the liberal economic argument looks like it will be made.


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