Not Changing Washington

I finally have a comment on the deal about the Obama Administration’s supposed job offer to Sestak in return for his agreement to abstain from challenging Specter in the primary election. It seems that a similar event occurred in Colorado with respect to filling the seat vacated by Salazar.

Assuming that the Sestak one happened, I’m glad he didn’t take the job, because now the people in Pennsylvania get to vote for an actual Democrat in the Senate race.

The one thing that I dislike about this issue, and to date I have not seen it mentioned anywhere, is the extent to which it reflects Obama’s willingness to play “business as usual” party machinery politics. This was the candidate who campaigned on changing the way things are done in Washington, and as the elected president he is making deals to preserve the incumbency of a Senator, and to reduce the choices which are made available to voters in an election.

That is not the kind of change I voted for.

Update: Thursday, 11:45am
Digby at Hullabaloo has a rather odd take on the criticism that I am voicing here, at least insofar as it comes from Republicans. Digby says that critics have never been critical of this kind of thing before this,

Obama's "grassroots" image --- or the idea that people get offered jobs in Washington --- is hardly something anyone has ever shown the slightest concern about before.

So there is some sort of deadline on this concern? Having not voiced this criticism prior to this point, not that this particular subject has ever arisen before now of course, it is no longer valid to do so at this point? What was the deadline for voicing this particular criticism?

I'm thinking that Obamabots have a tendency to reject criticism merely because the "right wing" spoke it. That is the pitfall of all of the bogus criticisms that the right keeps coming up with, of course; that when they come up with one which contains some validity it simply gets lumped in with all of the garbage. That is amplified though, it seems to me, by the apparent unwillingnesss of Obama supporters to listen to any critical words regarding his performance.