I haven’t had a political post, or any post at all for that matter, in a while. I’ve been busy moving, but I found a bit of an update on the whole Obama voting for the FISA bill thing. He did actually respond to the members of the Get FISA Right group, the by far largest group on his social networking site. He actually did this almost 2 months ago, I just missed it. The summary is what you would expect to hear from someone in his position. It espouses the idea that it is a good compromise, that he wouldn’t have drafted the legislation, and that it is important for us to remain activists despite that he’s not listening to us this time. Its basically a lot of pandering, don’t be mad at me and not vote bullshit, but it’s at least somewhat of an improvement over the Bush administration, in that he does actually respond as though he did actually hear us.
Of course, up until he jumped the FISA ship I was hopeful that things would improve by much more than that episode reveals Obama is willing to go. I have since been in a bit of a political funk. It’s been a good time to be in a political funk since not much has been going on anyways. Suffice it to say I have not been watching the convention. I have only one thought on the matter of party unity that is so central to goals of the convention. That idea is to have Hillary Clinton be the one to lay out a good bit of the party platform. Mind you, this is not her platform, but the party platform – over which Obama has much control. I think that all the Hillary-ites, who are so mad, will likely be appeased if it appears that she still has a large say in the party platform (which may well be true). It seems the best way to make it appear that way is to have her say it. Essentially, Obama’s words, filtered through the party, coming out of her mouth. I think that would work much better than repeated calls for unity, which can ring empty.
Finally, I suppose I’ll say a bit about Joe Biden for Vice-President. Of the field of however many candidates there were last fall my three favorites (based on debate coverage alone) were Biden, Dodd, and Obama. I apparently didn’t blog about this, but many of you may have heard me say I liked them. I still like Biden, whose signature campaign idea was the breakup of Iraq into three countries; I still think that may prove to be the best plan. I have since learned that he is not on the right side of the Net Neutrality Debate. I think, however, that he may actually have less power over the way that debate goes as Vice-President than he would as an actual senator. Obama, and the FCC appear to be on the good side, so there is not as much to worry about there as there was in the recent past. Biden did vote to get FISA Right, which is a very large plus for me. I don’t know how/if he helps the electoral votes number game, but I’m happy to have him on the ticket.