I dunno, I feel he could’ve played this fairer, i.e NOT give this guy a headline role in the inaugaration. The way he touted the gay vote was for want of a better word, deeply deceitful.

Anyway, it’s an eye opener and lets see how this plays out. The gays are peeved, as well as the progressives. And I feel as a black president in a very racist world, me not think tis right to bite the hand that feeds…OR elected..!

None of this is surprising, just disappointing.

Also: I was trying to say “hyped up for the comedown” in my last comment, but I hope that was obvious from the context…

Perils of commenting from work, I guess.

Far from it – the ‘two kinds of heartbreak’ line is one I wish I’d thought of myself…

Seems to me that a sense of possibility is what’s key here.

“Someone is only unelectable if you don’t vote for them!” — that’s a simple truth that comes hard to some people (myself included!), because the story around British/American politics seems so pre-defined most of the time.

So, with Obama’s election, you’ve got a fair jolt of very valid excitement, because — hey! — it is now officially possible for a black man to be president of the United states, and — hey! — the slide into neo-con madness isn’t quite as inevitable as it might have seemed. None of this means he’s going to be an amazing president, but I have hopes that he’ll at least be competent, based on how he comes off and how he ran his campaign.

Not that this makes some of the more messianic rhetoric that’s surrounded Obama more defensible – you’re just setting yourself up for a fall when you get into that kind’ve talk, but…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that an over-reliance on your heart can lead to two kinds of heartbreak*. You can get hyped up from the come down, sure, but it’s also way to easy to convince yourself that what you want in politics is “unrealistic”.

For example, I’m not 100% convinced by the SNP myself, but I still felt kinda charged when they took the last election from Labour in Scotland. And not because it means that Labour can’t take this turf quite so much for granted anymore, but rather because I hoped it would give people a sense that this shit is slightly less inevitable than it sometimes seems.

I’m probably just stating the obvious here, but sometimes you’ve got to think through these things.

Thanks for nudging my brain in this direction…

*And the more I think about this the more I think I’m just mucking up what you’ve already said, rather than adding anything to it, but so be it.

I reject the majority of Warren’s preachings outright, but then – the fact is, he’s an immensely popular figure in the USA, and doing so, not discussing these things with opposing perspectives, well, maybe it achieves a bit but maybe there’s a smoother road with everyone, most people around the table involved and articulating their positions.

* goes to do some nagging *