Gripers and groaners
by digby
Here's Ta-Nehisi Coates in the NY Times at his best, speaking with authority on a subject he knows well:
In sum, it’s true that the Proclamation was a compromise. But hailing it merely as such is akin to hailing “Moby-Dick” for being a book — technically correct, if painfully thickwitted.
Likewise, a pedantic focus on the document itself conveniently omits the work of abolitionists and radicals whose tactics, encompassing jailbreaks, treason and shootouts, far outstripped anything ever concocted by MoveOn.org. But Lincoln understood their relationship to the larger cause. “They are nearer to me than the other side, in thought and sentiment, though bitterly hostile personally,” he once said of the Radicals. “They are utterly lawless — the unhandiest devils in the world to deal with — but after all their faces are set Zionward.”
Obama, too, stands atop the work of a coalition of unhandy devils. In the fall of 2002, Chicago’s own professional left organized a rally to oppose the Iraq War and invited Mr. Obama to join them. He accepted, and the first unwitting steps to the White House were taken. It is considerably harder to imagine Mr. Obama’s path through the Democratic primary had he been just another pro-war Democrat insisting that the base activists stop whining.
[...]
Obama has been much praised for the magnanimity he shows his opposition. But such empathy, unburdened by actual expectations, comes easy. More challenging is the work of coping with those who have the disagreeable habit of taking the president, and his talk of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” seriously. In that business, Obama would do well to understand that while democracy depends on intelligent compromise, it also depends on the ill-tempered gripers and groaners out in the street.
The Party of Lincoln, whatever its present designs, has not forgotten this.
He also points out that contrary to the president's arch comment that the Huffington Post would condemn Lincoln for "compromising" on the Emancipation Proclamation, the progressive leaders of the day, such as Frederick Douglass, were hugely supportive.
And his larger point is exactly right. It's intrinsic to democracy --- and progress --- that there be people out there holding fast to the first principles that bring us together as a political faction in the first place.
The President's public irritation with the left and conscious triangulation (recall that the campaign sent that video of Obama putting down the Huffington Post to their email list)gives the impression that he believes only his face is set Zionward and the rest of us are simpletons who don't understand the way the world works. But gripers and groaners are part of the system. Without them, progress doesn't get made and the other side's radicals completely overwhelm the system. We're getting an inkling of how that works out.
Update: This from Michael Tomasky, formerly a strong adherent of Obama's style, is also good.
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