Steve Hildebrand unleashed a wave of criticism with his Huffington Post piece where he stated that "[t]his is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making" and "he was elected to be the president of all the people – not just those on the left."  Then in classic concern-troll fashion, he identified himself as "a liberal member of our Party."

On 1600, Norah O’Donnell read from my response and asked Hildebrand to address it:

And after the past eight years, it’s a bit much to stomach someone saying "just shut up and trust me, because I know better."

There is a lot of speculation right now about what will happen with the 13 million member email list the Obama campaign built, and there is some talk of Hildebrand running an organization that manages it.

I wonder how long those membership numbers will hold up when any criticism of Obama is greeted with patronizing lectures and sneering condescension for its liberals?

Hildebrand says "I didn’t tell anyone to shut up, it’s not the way my mother raised me."

Actually, he did — the point of his largely incoherent column, as far as I can tell, is that there are a lot of problems right now so it is "not the time" to be applying liberal critiques to Obama’s cabinet appointments. We need to be Americans right now, not liberals. He reiterates it in the MSNBC clip.

You want to grab your head and just tell him to put down the shovel.

The idea that being a "liberal" is somehow not being "American" is something we’ve heard from the wingnuts for years, and it’s disconcerting to be hearing it from an Obama surrogate like Hildebrand. I wish I thought this was some clever plot to Sistah Souljah liberals and make Obama appear a Solomonic centrist, but I think the meme has just been absorbed by people desperate to be liked by the bullies of the right and they simply can’t help repeating it.

For the record, although there are many voices on FDL who think otherwise, I’ve said in many places that I believe Obama has the right to appoint who he wants to his cabinet. It comes from a lifelong conviction that has more to do with management theory than ideological consideration, and I’ve defended Obama’s right to choose on these grounds. But the corollary is that when and if things go wrong, Obama — and only Obama — will be responsible.

If he appoints scumbags, and they do scumbaggy things, he has nobody to blame but himself.

My point was that the notion that Obama is appointing the most competent people, as Hildebrand is arguing, is absurd. They’re not. They may serve Obama’s purposes, and the mathematics of constructing an effective team is not something that can always be easily judged from the outside, but don’t pretend that some of these choices aren’t problematic. Or that by taking part in the political process and voicing their concerns, liberals are not being team players and are somehow not "American."

Hildebrand goes on to deny that he will be in charge of the organization that becomes a home for the 13 million name email list that the Obama campaign generated, though he says "I certainly want to be involved."

Well that’s good news. Sources say that it was Hildebrand, as deputy campaign manager, who personally called big donors and told them not to fund the 527 groups during the election. When the campaign later reversed itself, it was Hildebrand who was charged with putting the word out on that, too. While I have no idea the role that Hildebrand played in making the policy actual decision, which many Obama insiders call the "biggest mistake" the campaign made, he certainly was in charge of implementation.


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