John Scalzi

I’ll freely admit that I’m not terribly happy about Obama’s announcement that he’s planning on continuing and expanding Bush’s ‘Faith Based’ programs. However, I think that John Scalzi has a very interesting take on what this might mean for the Presidential race.

Now, I’m a firm believer in never discounting the Democratic party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; I’m still appalled at the incompetence of the Kerry campaign in 2004 and for that matter, the bad strategy of the Gore campaign in 2000, which involved separating their man from the most popular president in recent history. In this case I think the people involved in the presidential campaign are doing pretty smart things, and it might be the other folks who blow it.

To them I would suggest that they consider that the Obama campaign is paying them a compliment, in that they are making the (not necessarily self-evident) assumption that they’re all smart enough to realize that tacking toward the center in the campaign is going to pay huge dividends for the left when at the end of the 2008 election it finds itself in charge of the executive and legislative branches, and finds itself in a position to fill two or possibly even three seats on the Supreme Court in the next four years, and possibly in the bargain create a sturdy new left-leaning political base that lasts as long as the GOP base that Reagan used as a foundation three decades ago. I guess we’ll see if that compliment pays off.

It’s definitely worth reading his whole post for the leadup to those two paragraphs, as well.

I’m still uncomfortable with just how much Obama’s pandering to the ultra-religious. I just hope Scalzi’s got the right idea on where this is going.