Reply #43: Thanks for your kind remarks.

[Unvanguard]

In response:

1. As far as the first point, I think there's some danger of circularity here: if people take harsh criticism of Obama's harsh critics to be "threads bashing the left", then of course it will seem like this argument is an issue of "lefter/righter." Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention, but I haven't noticed that many threads attacking actual left-wing stances: during the health care reform wars, for instance, there were not many people saying "single payer is a terrible idea and its advocates are crazy radicals." There are undoubtedly people--I am probably among them sometimes--who bash what we see as particularly unrealistic political stances taken by some people on the left, but I think this fits better into my framework of disputes over tactics rather than disputes over ideology. I think a great many things that are good social policy are nonetheless not politically achievable; this hardly makes me any less left-wing.

There are issues, of course, where there are substantive left/right disputes on DU--for instance, immigration reform--but for the most part I think these are different divisions than the ones that erupt over Obama.

Edit: I don't deny that, in the light of the heatedness of this debate and the broad-brush character of a lot of it, there is probably plenty of reason for left-wing people who do not share my view of Obama to feel bashed, and to feel bashed particularly because their views are strongly on the left. What I'm trying to say is that the core issue is not that, and we on both sides would do better to make an effort to understand each other than to leap to conclusions and mischaracterize.

2. As far as the second point, I'm not disputing that those of us who are on the "pro-Obama" side (to put things a bit simplistically) put, as a general matter, a higher premium on party loyalty than those who do not. My point is that this is a matter of means, not ends: we think party loyalty is important in light of the political circumstances to advance the left-wing ends we support.