You people sure know how to stay mad at each other. You're like a cockney family of ten only with fewer jellied eels.*
Let's do a quick sit rep:
McCain and Obama are in roughly a dead heat, with a slight edge to Obama. The political climate is overwhelmingly favoring Democrats but McCain has a cash advantage. Republicans can't win on the issues but they have proved in the past that they can win using smears.
So what do do next? I know, let's beat the crap out of each other! That'll be productive.
FISA is over. It's gone. We've missed that bus, except we're so busy running after it that we're in danger of being run down by the next one. Obama has made up his mind, and will look stupid if he changes it again. Everyone here is quite rightly bummed about the whole affair, and right to keep insisting how bad a piece of legislation it is, but we have to park it for now.
Kos made a perfectly legitimate criticism and decided that after a poor couple of days from the Obama campaign on both FISA and Wesley Clark, it was time to warm up their feet a little by the threat of withholding funds, in order to remind them that they need to be aggressive and unafraid.
Obama's campaign dealt with the whole FISA situation quickly, fairly and maturely in their release. Kos' objection was made in the same spirit. That could have been the end of it, except we all decided to throw our toys out of the pram in one direction or another. Those who rebuke Kos for bringing this disagreement to the attention of the Right are missing a very big point indeed: namely that by keeping this issue hot, they are the ones doing the damage. The best thing everyone can do for Obama, for the party, for the issue and for themselves is to move on to the next fight.
That's basically all I wanted to say, except...
The whole point of Obama's New Politics is that this shit shouldn't matter any more. The whole point is that people should be able to speak their minds, be themselves and raise their objections on issues without getting fingered as a traitor or painted as an extremist.
You can be against the war in Iraq without being weak. You can be a patriot without wearing a flag pin. You can drink orange juice without being elitist. You can be in favor of universal health care without being a communist. And you can be the change candidate without burning your bridges to the center.
You can all be right, even when your positions are different, as long as your principles are aligned. Never stop believing in strength through diversity.
That is the whole fucking point.
*note to self: maybe tailor jokes to US audience next time.