Already At It...

Okay, so it's been what, five days?

We got Foreign Policy wonk Steve Clemons already complaining:

I'm not satisfied with the roster of economic personalities and thinkers we see Barack Obama mixing with.

Harvey Fierstein (yes, that Harvey Fierstein) justifiably upset about the results of the Gay Marriage Propositions in California, Arizona and Florida:

While we dance in the streets and pat ourselves on the back for being a nation great enough to reach beyond racial divides to elect our first African-American president let us not forget that we remain a nation still proudly practicing prejudice.

And one of my least favorite progressives David Sirota blathers on about what Obama's election means to him:

So, while the president-elect talks of forming a bipartisan Cabinet, his victory wasn't the public's cry for milquetoast government by blue-ribbon commission. As Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change says, Obama's win was an ideological mandate presenting "an opening for transformational, progressive change."

Oh God.

Steve...ummm...yeah...uh....Obama won. I think he gets to pick who he wants.

Harvey, not that the defeat of California's Prop 8 isn't important (it is), but we are kinda facing the implosion of the global economy, and we just won a major, major victory. Let us enjoy it.

...and David Sirota isn't a total idiot, but he's a bit of a tool.

David, you did notice the rather impressive list of Republicans voting for Obama, didn't you? Charles Fried, William Weld, Arne Carlson, Colin Powell?? These people didn't surrender their Republican values at the voting booth. They simply wanted them back, and found that our candidate had a better grip on things than Bush or McCain.

What truly concerns me about tools like Sirota is that the President-Elect is going to out into the world, and satisfy 80-90% of the Progressive-Left's wish list (in the case of Economic justice maybe even 90-100%) and it still won't be good enough for people like Sirota.

I'm sorry (and now, this message is for tools on the right), President-Elect Obama has a mandate for change. He got 6 million more votes than your guy. He won way more electoral votes than anyone in a long time. He won in states where Democrats hadn't been competitive in decades. This was a clear repudiation of the Bush way of doing things.

But, tools on the left, it wasn't a clear enough signal for everything to start going our way. It was a signal to put aside our bull@#$% differences, get to work and get something done.

It was a mandate for: HEY YOU!!! FIX THIS!!!

Of course, incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel put it way better than I just did (in the Wall Street Journal of all places):

Both Barack and Bill Clinton have an incredible connection to the public. Both ran on a message of hope. Both ran against failed policies that let the country down prior to them being elected. I don't think the country is yearning for an ideological answer. If anything it's the opposite. They want real solutions to real problems. And if we do an ideological test, we will fail. Our challenge is to work to solve the actual problems that the country is facing, not work to satisfy any constituency or ideological wing of the party."