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Anyway, it seems Obama is facing a split in his support on this issue. A lot of his core supporters are for releasing the photos, and a lot are against it. I find it interesting that this same split is mirrored in his own behavior, referencing the seeming flip flop.
I hate to characterize the issue in terms of locations on a theoretical political scale as it should be circling around issues like justice and closure, but judging by who is saying what on the issue, the more liberal you are the more likely you are to want the photos released. I doubt very much that it's a coincidence. Liberals—honest to goodness leftists—have been screaming over the past 8 years for our day in the sun, and now that we have more Democrats than we know what to do with, we (the liberal liberals) were kinda hoping it was time to bring justice to the guilty. Now, though, we're seeing that Obama can't for some reason be quite as optimistic and progressive as he was on the campaign trail. I understand that to a point, some of the promises he made will take a lot of time and a lot of work, but if these photographs aren't released soon, we may lose our window to get the public behind the idea of prosecutions.
Back when Clinton was in power, it always seemed like he was in turmoil between his true liberal feelings on the one side and his moderate feelings stemming from classic Democrat low self-assuredness on the other. I was only 10 when he was elected, so I wasn't really paying much attention, but by my understanding Clinton started out relatively liberal and then slowly slid right, especially after the sex scandal and Republican domination of congress. I don't want to see that happen again, because I'm worried we'll just end up going in circles between a far-right conservative the causes a mess and a gradually less liberal Democrat that has to clean it up. We'll never get anything done.
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