Change We Can Believe In?

As Jim Hightower says: There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

Glenn Greenwald addresses the Warren pick controversy:

[Obama] supporters insist that by symbolically including and sometimes compromising with even those on the Right with whom he vigorously disagrees, Obama will be able to chip away at the partisan hostilities and resentments, and erode the cultural divisions, that have inflamed and paralyzed our politics. People on the Right may disagree with him, claim these supporters, but they won't be wallowing in rage, suspicions, and hatred towards him. Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated. They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies. As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda. A New Politics will emerge: one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.

The one question I always return to when I hear this -- and we've been hearing it a lot to explain the Warren selection -- is this: in what conceivable sense is this approach "new"?

[...]

Clinton spent the entire decade extending cultural fig leafs to the Right, from V-chips to school uniforms.

[...]

Courting evangelicals was a particular priority of Bill Clinton from the start.

[...]

In 1996, Clinton signed into law the single most pernicious piece of anti-gay federal legislation ever passed -- the Defense of Marriage Act -- with overwhelming Democratic support in the Congress. Scorning the "Far Left," especially on social issues, was a Clinton favorite.

[...]

What did all of those post-partisan, cultural outreach efforts generate? Hatred so undiluted that it led to endless investigations, accusations whose ugliness was boundless, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and ultimate impeachment over a sex scandal. Bill Clinton was anything but a cultural or partisan warrior. He was the opposite. And that was what he had to show for it.

Then there were the Democrats of the Bush era. From 9/11 onward, they were probably the single most cooperative, compliant, and accommodating "opposition party" ever to exist. There wasn't a partisan or ideological bone in their body.

[...]

Did any of that dilute the Right's anger and resentments towards Democrats?

[...]

When have Democrats not been eager to accommodate the Right, to sacrifice their ideological beliefs and partisan goals in pursuit of post-partisan harmony, to jettison the "Left" in order to attract the Mythical, Glorious Center?

[...]

Someone is going to be angered and feel alienated by [any decisions Obama] makes, by the outcome, and symbolic paeans to inclusion are unlikely to soothe that. Those who are eager to escape confrontation, divisions, and angry disputes can probably do so only by renouncing any actual political principles, and are probably best advised to avoid politics altogether. Because of the very nature of politics -- to say nothing of the nature of the contemporary American Right -- politics is highly unlikely to exist without angry, often ugly, conflicts of that sort.

[...]

Obama's "inclusiveness" mantra always seems to head only in one direction -- an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right.

  Salon

What he said.

The "Right" is not amenable to compromise, nor does it react favorably to kindnesses and consideration. Or, in the vernacular in which I grew up: "People take kindness for weakness." And..."If they smell blood...."

Insulting your supporters to win the support of your opponents is no way to build unity.

  Religion Dispatches

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.