“The President’s big campaign donors got nice returns for their ‘investments’ in him to the tune of billions of your tax dollars in the form of ‘green energy’ stimulus funds. The technical term for this is ‘pay-to-play.’ Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and “green energy” giveaways, he took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again.”

“Some GOP candidates also raised mammoth amounts of cash, and we need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their ‘investments’? We need to know this because our country can’t afford more trillion-dollar “thank you” notes to campaign backers. It is an important question, and it cuts to the heart of our problem. And I speak from experience in confronting the corruption and the crony capitalism since starting out in public office 20 years ago. I’ve been out-spent in my campaigns two to one, three to one, five to one… But the reason is simple: It’s because like you, I’m not for sale.”

In point of fact, there really wasn’t a viable progressive choice in the 2008 primary in hindsight because of what a total piece of shit John Edwards turned out to be. So even though I currently have no intention of supporting Barack Obama’s re-election efforts and I may even vote for a 3rd party candidate, I think the idea of setting up a primary challenger for him is folly. If you’re a democrat, a well funded challenge just guarantees that he loses if the GOP manages to nominate anyone but the worst of the slavering mouth breathers. I’ll close with the final paragraph of Walsh’s piece. I think it is pretty much politics 101 for anyone who cares about the electoral world, but it’s something that damn few people in the mainstream media are willing to engage with. Only some progressive activists and bloggers had taken this on as gospel until pretty recently:

I think many on the left anointed Obama the only progressive in the race out of a rescue fantasy. But it’s possible people who want to see Obama face a primary — and I do not, as I’ve said too many times to count — have the same fantasy with a different, as yet unnamed savior. It gives progressives a sense of control: It’s not that Republicans are better organized than we are, or that they’ll fight Democrats by any means necessary; it’s our fault that we somehow chose the wrong candidate. At least we might have it in our power to make better choices. But I think it’s time to reckon with the fact that no matter whom we choose, Rush Limbaugh and his Republican Party will do whatever it takes to see them fail.

The federal debt and the federal deficit are not the same thing. How does someone without a basic understanding of our decades long political debate make it as a news anchor?

On the topic of the speech itself, I don’t have much to say. It was an okay speech. The novelty of having a president who is well spoken and knows what he’s talking about hasn’t worn off yet, but I’m sure it will. The news of the night should be that Bobby Jindal all but killed any chance he had of being president in 2012 last night. His speech sounded like he was reading a children’s story to a room full of kindergartners. Beyond the incredibly poor delivery, though, it was the same generic speech that every Republican has given for twenty years. Please let them continue to be just that politically tone deaf for the next four years. We just might increase our majorities in 2010 and 2012 enough to undo some of the damage that’s been done to this country since 1981.