Just when I thought there might be a campaign in this country based on directness rather than diversion, us instead of them, facts instead of fiction, I am once again finding myself screaming at the TV. Here we go ahead again... facts being interrupted by talking points which don't address the question being asked, and most of the time, the host is allowing it to happen!

After the 2004 election, after working so hard making phone calls and canvassing and being energized by what I thought was perhaps a real change and chance at taking our country back I came to the conclusion that the electronic media, primarily television, and this includes the "elitist" channels such as CNN and MSNBC, Swift-boated John Kerry. Sure, CNN and MSNBC didn't have anything to do with the production of these ads, but they sure had everything to do with the reckless and unbalanced dissemination of them. What is the job of the media?

I can fully appreciate covering a story which generates so much electricity as Barack Obama and Sarah Palin that for a while other stories that should be receiving attention get ignored, but when two sides are invited on a show presumably to give equal time, and one side repeatedly interrupts with talking points/slogans with no facts or specifics to back it up, then it is propaganda or free advertising.These media outlets already have that covered in between these sound-bite battles. Media hosts! Do your job! Redirect, follow-up, and interrupt if need be.

If the media hosts won't do their job, then I strongly urge the progressive pundits or surrogates to get some catchy slogans as well, just so you can get your facts in edgewise. When the right starts in on their righteous "we're pro-life because we believe life begins at conception," how about countering with "and I believe life continues after birth" and start in on the grocery lists of pro-life issues (backed up with facts) that Bush and his cronies have ignored such as education, healthcare and the economy... and keep doing it. and meet your facts with passion. Let's call it passion facts just for fun. Get angry that unemployment is up for the eighth straight month in a row, the highest in five years, angry that McCain claims to care about the "small-town" folks and kitchen-table issues when it finally took the Democrats to finally raise the minimum wage, angry when this man, who seems to base his whole campaign on his life-altering experience as a POW, won't alter the lives of the disabled vets from IRAQ and Afghanistan by giving them adequate care when they return... and continue doing so. This can be done in a way that doesn't disparage his deserving reputation as a war hero.

I don't understand why the progressives seem to hold back. What are you waiting for? You have the facts on your side, the right-track wrong-track polling on your side, the world on your side. Show your passion for this country now! Forcefully and firmly and passionately push your facts through the media and Republican shield. You are not losing anything by getting passionate. You may lose the election if you don't.

Cassandra Hogan

State College , PA

As to the question of a running mate, no option could be more deeply entrenched in a disgraced special interest than Joe Biden, darling and doyen of the debt industry (credit cards, that is). Biden, in the looming shadow of the debt crisis that everyone with at least one good eye and one functioning hemisphere of the brain could see coming, responded by championing changes in the laws governing personal bankruptcy that put the squeeze on the very souls the debt industry he has represented in Delaware have suckered into a debt sink-hole.

The only possible advantage I can see to his becoming the VP candidate is in potentially taking him out of his Delaware seat in the Senate, where he represents big debt, and bumping him up to the gavel-wielding position, leaving him the tie-breaker vote. But that is only a hypothetical good.

He made some all-but-racist comments in his run. I cannot imagine who would be attracted to the ticket by his presence on it, once his connections to my credit card interest rate, and yours, and yours, become a talking point.

Christopher Sweet

Chicago, IL

Your points are well taken. You fail, however, to address the internal weaknesses of the progressive movement. Until we learn how to deal with our fragmentation, ego trips, lack of joy and limited mutual support, achieving the goals you define will be next to impossible.

Wade Hudson

Progressive Resource Catalog
San Francisco, CA

The only progressives running in this election are Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney. If you were a truly progressive paper, you would include them on your cover. I always thought The Nation was an objective, fact-based paper until this election cycle. Obama supported the coal industry in Illinois, the nuclear industry through campaign money from Exelon and has a top ecomomic adviser (Jeffrey Liebman) who wants to privatize Social Security. He voted for the Cheney energy bill, his military plan includes keeping the Green Zone and 20,000-80,000 troops in place indefinitely. He is not staunch in any of his positions (FISA, public campain financing, gun control or the death penalty) so who knows where he really stands or which way he will bend under pressure or what favors he owes? His campaign also asked two Muslim women to move out of camera range during one of his campaign appearances, which does not exactly ring "Unity" to me. If you want to vote for the least worst, that's fine, but please don't use the word "progressive" to label Obama. It just doesn't add up.

Barbara Corless

Brooklyn, NY

Nowhere in your article have you mentioned the choice of a Vice President. This will be an important signal about Obama's direction. If it is Evan Bayh, we are in trouble as Senator Bayh will be the ultimate deflector of progressive thoughts and pressures and will make our job even more difficult. Add to this, the divisiveness of the liberal left as evidenced by the tone of letters coming in will require us to unite even more strongly for progressive programs.

I have never understood the liberal reverence for JFK, which is mentioned in your article. Except for surrounding himself by adoring, well-educated personnel, his presidency was mostly smoke and mirrors, especially in regard to Vietnam. He made many serious errors of judgment during his time in office, and other than speaking well with well-written speeches, he did not have any depth politically or personally.

I think we must not softpedal the Clintons' poisonous effect on an Obama presidency. Obama may think he will be required to reward them with important posts, resulting in another deflection of real progress and real change which will be unfortunate. Let us get him into office and let our concerns be heard as a guideline for the majority of Americans, regardless of political persuasion. who are looking for answers.

Although I have found John Edwards's personal behavior extremely disappointing, I hope Obama has the foresight to allow him to redeem himself by appointing him to a post where he can use his expertise and deep concerns about the abysmal problems of poverty in our country to good effect.

Pearl Volkov

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Would-be President Barack Obama has spent the equivalent of one whole presidential term not impeaching Bush-Cheney in order to end the war at the earliest possible date, and not seeking to replace Bush-Cheney with a Democrat (who would, at worst, be someone other than Obama himself), and he has been in this way (effectively idle), despite the crimes that The Nation's own writers have been examining for years.

The war and its cost--so far, 4,700 of our soldiers' lives--represents less of a threat to Obama than does his picture of himself doing anything to spare the remaining soldiers' lives but which might also detour or even derail his chance of gaining for himself the presidency: being those soldiers' Commander in Chief.

The soldiers who have been dying while Obama has been a member of the US Senate, and whose deaths Borosage and vanden Huevel would have a jury believe represent a condition of criminal negligence on the part of antiwar groups, have, in fact, been dying only as a result of Barack Obama's choices. That statement is the truth at least for Barack Obama, if he has a conscience. If the war is a crime (and I believe it is), then allowing it to continue is a crime at least as serious as the original; it's one against the charge of which Obama--not I, not Bush-Cheney, not John McCain--must defend himself. And he must defend himself to me.

The authors of this Nation hack piece, which is directed against Middle America--the home of the very folks who are serving in the war--can charge us Middle American farmers, rustbelters, owners of small businesses, laborers at small businesses, professionals and soldiers with anything they want (including the one that has us being racists), but the facts of the case against Obama (and, now, against Borosage and vanden Huevel, too) won't change. We hold all who are enabling the war to be part of the crime or its coverup, not only Barack Obama.

Congress existed for Barack Obama, the same as it existed for any of us and not excluding a delusional Bush himself (if he is that way), for no reason other or better than to be the first place from which we citizens would see officially ended the Bush Administration and, so, such parts of it as its war (which is killing us).

J.E. Bernecky

Westover, PA

Ha! Utterly delusional. Every four years I hear the same escape from reality, it's crazy, really. I am not divorced from my senses to think some of you ever will lift out of that morass of crumbling remote possibilities. The lesser of two evils every four years? Why? We can actually win and advance progressive issues by stopping this Coke and Pepsi puppet game a few of the cognoscenti hustle to foist on the public repeatedly to ensure their own marginalized seats at the end of the table. Gross.

Juan Lopez

Boston, MA

"The antiwar movement should be challenging McCain's saber-rattling on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, helping to strengthen US support for a change in course." Exactly which member of the antiwar movement is running for the presidency and/or has a bigger voice than Obama?

I still don't know one soldier who signed up for the military, maybe even to die, in order to defeat Republicans.

FUBAR. That's what vanden Huevel is. Thank god this isn't pre-WWII and that her readers aren't Jews.

Cameron Jones

Indiana, PA

Methinks, oh bold progressives, that thou doth protest too much.

The excuse-making for Obama's backpedaling clearly is designed to dissuade left-leaning progressives from going with a third-party candidate or protest vote. Are you that afraid of this happening and costing Obama the election? It would seem so, and that's fascinatingly revealing of how much confidence you have even in a "community organizer" and far-left radical like Obama to do your will.

If your prescription worked, well, Joe Lieberman wouldn't be senator now. If your prescription worked, you'd be backing Cindy Sheehan against Nancy Pelosi... but you aren't really, are you? If your prescription worked, you'd have mentioned in your comparison to the "energy" created by JFK's election that he cut taxes and launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, actions which you'd now call, if done by Bush or a Republican, "imperialist" and counter-progressive in the extreme.

You guys are pretending to celebrate a great dawning of a new progressive era with the election of Obama, but what your desperation reveals is your fear and that of the union bosses who run you that Obama is going to blow it both by rightfully scaring middle-of-the-road voters and right wingers and by turning off lefties as he tries in futility to win over those he scares.

I think you're right about that, at least. Say goodnight, folks... and be honest enough to accept your true role as a fringe, minority "party" whose biggest loss has been the deterioration of the influence of newspapers and major networks in the age of Talk Radio, the Blogosphere and Fox.

Again, methinks thou doth protest too much--and too impotently and desperately--when the world is clearly going the other way because, as others here have written, of the real world experience with socialism and progressivism in Europe, Asia, and everywhere else where it has been tried, found wanting and caused enough misery to be overthrown.

James Madison

Los Angeles, CA

It appears The Nation is preparing to wage a binary (Us vs Them) debate simalar to European Labor parties in the early- to-mid-twentieth century. I believe you are going to find that people will reject Euro social democrat policy presciptions because they have failed in Europe to deliver on their promises. It is notable that this governing philosophy is ebbing on the Continent and is showing signs of weakness in the UK. A large number of thinking Europeans would love to off-load the welfare state and centralized industrial policy if they could find the political will to take on beneficiary public.

B. Marks

Richardson, TX

The authors ignore two indisputable facts.

The first is that laws under our Constitution are created by Congress. Which by all accounts will be controlled by moderate Democrats, not progressives. These moderates will write the new laws, witness the backpedaling on offshore drilling and the FISA laws.

Second, presidential elections are determined by winner-take-all swing states. Like Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. These are indisputable facts of presidential politics. The Democratic nomination process puts the least value on these critical states and the most importance on electroral small states dominated by the extreme left of the party like the Iowa caucases. What this means is that candidates with the least likely chance of winning a national election are brought to the top of the pack. As a result, the current winner, Senator Omaba, is running 10 points behind the generic "moderate" Congressional poll. So Senator MCain will likely win the national election, where voters vote moderate Democrat at the Congressional level and switch to McCain at the top of the ticket.

Keep dreaming. This reminds me of 1988 all over again: Alexrod as Susan Estrich and Obamba as Micheal Dukakis.

Peter Paicopolis

Towson , MD

Your article says, in effect, support Obama in order to defeat McCain, the same argument raised in the cases of Gore and Kerry. That, we have seen, does not work. Clearly, it is not working now, when Obama is not leading McCain by the large margin expected from the unpopularity of President Bush.

You should be supporting Ralph Nader. That support would pull Obama back to the left. Instead, you ask us to support a candidate who takes advice from Robert Rubin! How flimsy your hopes are!

Alvin D. Hofer

St. Petersburg, FL

I can hardly believe anyone subscribes to this trash published in The Nation. After reading this article, my suspicion that Obama is the chosen one for the progressives has been affirmed. Your calls for wealth redistribution, socialized medicine and a dove foreign policy all sound appealing. But let me inform you (because you must have missed this through all the public education that brainwashed you to believe socialism is the way), a utopia cannot be achieved on earth. Human nature makes us selfish. So, even though you at The Nation want to promote this progressive agenda, I see it for what it truly is: oligarchial collectivism. The whole point of creating a proletarian middle class is to make more and more Americans dependent on the government, and thus give you idiots more power. The rest of America may be blind to this, due to the idiots running McCain's campaign who are focused on trivial issues as opposed to the real ideological issues at stake (admittedly, McCain's campaign sucks... but that shows how weak Obama is, if he's only ahead a few points), but don't get too comfortable with the idea that true conservatives who understand the basic economic principles that drive the tax cuts, private health care and Social Security etc. won't explain ourselves--we will. Thanks for providing an article to wake me up this morning.

Doug Knickrehm

Omaha, NE