David Sirota writes a report of a conversation with Barack Obama…

From the Nation…

Obama carefully answered the question about how he wants to define himself: “The amount of publicity I have received…means that I’ve got to be more sensitive in some ways to not step on my colleagues.” For those who see him as a bold challenger of the system, this may be disappointing. After all, it oozes deference to the Senate clubbiness that has killed many a populist cause. And Obama has defended that club from outside pressure not only in his rhetoric but in his actions. For instance, last year he posted a long article on the blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts–even though Obama himself voted against Roberts. And in January Obama publicly criticized a fledgling effort to filibuster nominee Samuel Alito. Obama actually voted for the filibuster, but his statements helped take the steam out of that effort.

True, Obama did show a rare flash of defiance when he unsuccessfully pushed legislation this year to create an Office of Public Integrity, which would have enforced anti-corruption laws. But that kind of power-challenging move, which was met with strong resistance from both parties, was an exception. At the same time that he was ruffling feathers with that bill, he was one of the many Democratic senators who fled from Russell Feingold’s motion to censure Bush over the White House’s refusal to seek court orders for domestic wiretapping. Though polls showed that roughly half of Americans supported censure, it was shunned by the Senate club as too confrontational, and Obama seemed to agree.

UPDATE: I didn’t have time to add this last night, but this part was particularly apt, I thought, and represents the deep disconnect Obama has with the netroots (my emphasis)…

Obama is telling the truth–he’s not opposed to structural changes at all. However, he appears to be interested in fighting only for those changes that fit within the existing boundaries of what’s considered mainstream in Washington, instead of using his platform to redefine those boundaries. This posture comes even as polls consistently show that Washington’s definition of mainstream is divorced from the rest of the country’s (for example, politicians’ refusal to debate the war even as polls show that Americans want the troops home).

This exactly what I took away from Obama’s exchange on Daily Kos (Also, referred to in this Daou essay)…

Barack Obama seems content to allow the conventional wisdom to define what is acceptable to discuss, instead of using his stature to try to change the conventional wisdom.

Democrats need to start admitting to themselves that the Republicans do a much better job about creating their own storylines and working the Refs. And to continue with this losing strategy will be… um… to continue using a losing strategy.