Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer reports that New England liberals in the Phoenix chain of "alternative" newspapers are launching a "Take Back Barack" campaign (complete with ahem, a white hand holding a little black Obama doll. Where’s the PC police?) Boston-based Maloney adds: "Considering how vehemently these publications supported the former Illinois senator, this represents an abrupt turn of events coming rather soon after November's election." Will the media notice liberal disaffection, or try to keep it quiet? One blog complained about the Rick Warren prayer minute at the Inauguration:
So Rick Warren's been chosen to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. Anybody else super-excited to see a rabidly pro-life, anti-choice, anti-gay evangelical cleric blessing Obama and the nation? Fine, so he cares about poverty and children in Africa. You don't have to turn over too many steeples to uncover exciting, progressive clergymen and -women who feel the same way about those issues, and who recognize that legislating things like pregnancy and partnership are never good.
The blogger suggests (among many names linked) the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church of State. But wouldn’t he decline praying on the steps of the Capitol, just on principle? The irony would be too, too rich if he accepted.
Appalled at the sound of a Republican strategist (probably making mischief) saying he likes this new centrist Obama, these Phoenix liberals didn’t want any typical lily-livered whining among Democrats:
We need to play the game of politics, but play it with our goals in mind, and with tools like relentlessness and courage. Right now, Obama has chosen a team who have proven they can play politics with old centrist goals in mind and with the old Democratic tools - lassitude, lily livers, and whining. This is precisely why I am worried, and I believe that the fact that a Republican strategist thinks this way is confirmation that we progressives need to act now.