Obama interview on Fox

By Libby

The transcript is up. I managed to catch about a half an hour of the show myself. My first reaction is -- Meh. If you wanted fireworks, there weren't any. Not unexpectedly, he played it to the center and for all practical purposes disowned progressives. That doesn't make me happy, but I've never thought of him as advancing a progressive agenda, so I'm not disappointed either. IMO, he's still holding hewing a little more left than Hillary and that's the best we can hope for from either candidate.

As far as his delivery, he was pretty good, no major flubs, but he's not projecting the level of confidence I'd like to see. He immediately walked back from the single time I heard him say, "when I'm president." But I can see his dilemma. As a black man, if he projects too much confidence, it will be spun as arrogance and he risks stirring up the latent fear of angry black men that hides deep in the psyche of white America, whether we want to admit it or not. On the other hand, if he's too mild, he risks looking weak. He's walking a tightrope in this race and while he didn't dazzle with any impressive tricks, he didn't fall off either.

What effect this will have on his numbers remains to be seen. I'm anticipating it won't impact them much either way.

Comments

[littlehorn]

All you say is very true and deep. Good work.

I'm intrigued when people say he doesn't go far enough to the left. After all, there were other candidates who were further to the left before, yet they gave up. That's too bad.

[Libby]

Thanks for the encouragement littlehorn. I think people sometimes forget, myself included, that progressives are still not a big enough block to force an agenda.

It reminds sometimes of living in lovely downtown Noho. That is the HQ of progressives and when you're surrounded by those who agree with you, it's easy to forget how small a town it is. I think Leftopia gets a little myopic that way too. Our strength is growing but not enough to really intimidate them yet. I think we need another cycle of electing downticket progressives before the entrenched Villagers start to really take us seriously.