<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[The Dish]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Andrew Sullivan]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://dish.andrewsullivan.com/author/sullydish/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[The Pivotal Presidency,&nbsp;Ctd]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>A reader writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<div>This <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/the-pivotal-presidency.html">sentence</a> stood out to me especially:      </p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;What Obama is doing is trying to cement this new liberal era in the conservative institutional structure of American government.&#8217;</p></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The key words here in that sentence for me is &#8220;conservative institutional structure.&#8221;&nbsp; This essential nature of American government is something that I don&#8217;t believe that the whiny, purist left understand, or don&#8217;t want to understand or accept.&nbsp; </p>
<p>This is one of the main reasons I stopped calling myself a liberal and started calling myself a liberaltarian (that and because the demonization of the free market from the increasingly nutty far-lefties turned me off).&nbsp;</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>When Obama became president I welcomed a resurgence of the reality-based community.&nbsp; Too bad the leftie whiners haven&#8217;t decided to join the reality-based community with this fact: American govenrment is conservative in it&#8217;s structure.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I am so tired of hearing the whining from the left about this basic fact of American life, because&nbsp;in my mind, you can work with that reality to the best of one&#8217;s ability to more or less achieve liberal goals like Obama, or spin in anger and talk like joining the Tea Baggers&nbsp;is a good idea (again, Jane Hamsher and her histrionics).&nbsp; </p>
<p>Enough already.&nbsp; </p></blockquote>
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