Small minds, small ideas

CNN commentator Alex Castellanos pulls out an opinion piece either he or someone he admired wrote in 1979 when Reagan was running for president, changed the names to make it current, and thinks it tells the truth about the Obama campaign.

Barack Obama may believe "change doesn't come from the top down, it comes from the bottom up," but the leadership of his party doesn't. The national Democratic establishment, from the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org to Pelosi and Reid in Congress, still believe in top-down big-government from Washington, especially if they get to run the factory. Politically, they are industrial-age dinosaurs

Now, it's one thing to call Reid and Pelosi "dinosaurs" -- in fact, they are as much a part of the establishment as the Republicans and are in bed as much with Bush as they are with their own party -- but DailyKos and MoveOn? A website formed in 2002 in part to redefine the progressive movement? A non-profit formed in 1998 that was established to pressure Congress to "move on" from the impeachment of Clinton and get going with actual governance? Dinosaurs? Quite a stretch. These are not establishment organizations that believe in top-down change.

In fact, both of them believe in the change that can come from the grass-roots, people who may not be earning a paycheck for their opinions like Castellanos, or who may not walk the halls of the Senate the way McCain does, but who matter and who have voices and who are tired of the passivity of the American electorate. It's a battle that is taking years to wage, an uphill slog through fields of apathetic Wal-Mart shoppers who just want to keep on buying cheap chit from China. It is DailyKos and MoveOn that have done a great deal to make an Obama candidacy possible.

So Alex, next time you're on a deadline and you want to write something good? Send me an email -- I've got more than 350 recent posts you can rent from me.