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The other Ned’s Obama endorsement
By Ned | January 11, 2008
I still, to some extent, have mixed feelings about Obama (though I plan to vote for him now), and Ned Lamont’s endorsement doesn’t do a lot to allay those fears. If anything, it just reminds me of what it felt like working on Ned’s Senate campaign when I found out that Obama wasn’t willing to show up in CT and actively support the campaign.
Matt’s been very critical of Matt Stoller’s, shall we say, intemperate criticism of Obama, and Stoller’s not entirely wrong about this endorsement. Let’s have a little context here. The Lamont campaign was an emotional campaign for everyone who worked or volunteered in the offices, because everyone believed in it with a passion. It was arguably the most significant campaign of the 2006 election cycle. Obama was a rising star of the progressive movement, but he hadn’t really proven his willingness as a senator to show the courage of his convictions and break from DLC talking points. Coming to Connecticut to support Ned was an opportunity to do that. And when we lost, it was in large part because people like Obama, Chuck Schumer and the Clintons had left the campaign out to dry.
That was the beginning of my serious issues with Obama, and I think Stoller’s too. A lot of Ned Lamont supporters, to be frank, felt stabbed in the back.
So what does this endorsement mean? Well, first and foremost I think it means that the Democratic field has been whittled down to two viable candidates, and Ned sees that Obama is the more palatable of those two. But hopefully this is also a signal regarding the kind of president that Obama is going to be - and if we’re very lucky, it’s also a signal that perhaps Obama will start showing leadership in the Senate for the remainder of the campaign as Dodd did.
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