Real progressive government

This is absolutely hilarious.

Republicans are keeping a close eye on whom Obama picks — and doesn’t pick.

"Leader Boehner obviously hopes and expects that the president-elect will keep his promise to include Republicans in his Cabinet,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. “Obama has pledged to govern in a bipartisan way, and we have pledged to work with him when he does."

Moving on...

Back in the Reality-based world, Jane Hamsher hears the chorus of "the Netroots" and asks, What were you expecting?

His isn't the administration I'd pick, but the proof will be in what he actually does. If for instance he sets up a panel to take on torture, opens up intelligence files and lets the public know how this horrible, malignant policy came to pass, it will go a long way towards assuring people that a choice like Brennan for CIA chief isn't just "business as usual."

Look, for people who convinced themselves that Obama was the second coming of Saul Alinsky -- wake up. He never was. He may, however, be the most progressive person we could have possibly hoped to elect as President of the United States.

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to help keep the obstructionists off his back and push him to fulfill his campaign promises to end the war, pass health care legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, clean up the environment, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, repair our infrastructure, create good jobs and restore the middle class.

That's what he promised us, and while I'm obviously not wild about the dearth of progressives in his administration (while anti-choicers like Hagel and Lugar are evidently a-okay), I'm less concerned with who he chooses to implement his policies than with his ability to ultimately do so.

Glenn Greenwald, who links to Jane's post, agrees, noting that a government that actually works may be the very definition of a "Progressive" administration. Any disappointment, according to Greenwald, is due to the Rorschak Test that was Obama for many people, on the Left and the Right.

So many progressives were misled about what Obama is and what he believes. But it wasn't Obama who misled them. It was their own desires, their eagerness to see what they wanted to see rather than what reality offered.

That, for me, explained the almost inexplicable complaint from the Right that after 21 months of campaigning, we still didn't "know" who (or, by implication, what) Obama "is." So many people held Obama up as a mirror to their own wishes and desires. It wasn't surprising that his attackers, too, looked at those mirrors, not the candidate himself.