Eric Alterman has a provocative and somewhat correct piece about what he perceives as Obama’s inevitable failure:
But the truth, dear reader, is that it does not much matter who is right about what Barack Obama dreams of in his political imagination. Nor is it all that important whether Obama’s team either did or didn’t make major strategic errors in its first year of governance: in choosing to do healthcare before financial reform; in not holding out for a larger, more people-focused stimulus bill, in eschewing a carbon tax; or in failing to nationalize banks and break up those that are “too big to fail.” Face it, the system is rigged, and it’s rigged against us. Sure, presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence. But what they cannot do, even with supermajorities in both houses of Congress behind them, is pass the kind of transformative progressive legislation that Barack Obama promised in his 2008 presidential campaign. Here’s why.
I don’t find his reasons all that convincing, and I think it’s more of a subtle numbers game than Alterman does — with, say, 63 Democratic Senators instead of 58-60, much more would be possible. When were the two great waves of progressive legislation? In the 30s and 60s, Democrats had even larger majorities than they have now.
But he’s right that the system is set up to encourage wars and tax cuts and to discourage certain types of progressive legislation. The reason for this is more obvious and simple than Alterman makes it out to be: the wealthy interests that dominate our national discourse like wars and tax cuts and are hostile to most progressive legislation. The means by which they dominate our national discourse is, of course, fairly complicated. In my view, the greatest shame of modern media is its failure to examine and explain this. This is nothing new. A reader just sent emailed me this:
In 1916, Herbert Croly, the founder and editor of The New Republic, wrote to Willard Straight, the owner of the magazine, about the Supreme Court nomination of Louis Brandeis. Croly enclosed a draft editorial called “The Motive of Class Consciousness,” and also a chart prepared by a lawyer in Brandeis’s office showing the overlapping financial interests, social and business connections, and directorships of fifty-two prominent Bostonians who had signed a petition opposing Brandeis’s nomination. There are five circles on the chart delineating the various hubs of the Brahmin oligarchy: the Somerset Club, banker, State Street, Back Bay resident, and large corporation connections. On one side, the chart connects each of the signers of the petition, led by Harvard President Abbot Lawrence Lowell, to each of the five hubs; on the other side, the signers are connected to each other. “I want you to understand right away that this chart and article will not be published without your consent,” Croly assured Straight.
Neither the chart nor the article ultimately appeared in TNR. Straight had worked for Brandeis’s nemesis J. P. Morgan as the Morgan Bank’s representative in China, and he refused to associate the magazine with “ideological recriminations against his friends and social acquaintances,” according to an explanation accompanying the chart, which is now displayed in the current editor’s office. But although Straight confirmed the power of what Brandeis called “our financial oligarchy” by killing the chart, the magazine continued to strongly supported his nomination.
Sometimes I think Raymond Chandler was too naive and trusting.
Hunter Gathers
And they use hatred of the ‘other’ to make sure that they get what they want.
Wars = killing non-white people, except for the Nazis.
Tax cuts = giving white people more money.
American history in a nutshell.
Tecumseh
Shorter Alterman– Obama did not pass a bill giving us all free Magic Ponies. He gave us health care reform, but…yawn.
Scott
I’m a big fan of Chandler and have read a number of his novels, but I’m embarrassed to admit I’m not sure which of his quotes you’re referring to. Little help?
Cat Lady
If Obama’s Jake Gittes, does that make Dick Cheney Noah Cross? That Cheney household is pretty fucking weird.
mr. whipple
Alterman can go blow goats.
Sly
@Hunter Gathers:
Conservatives were not really big on killing Nazis in the 30s. They boarded that train after liberals and social-ists made it cool.
Sly
@mr. whipple:
No True
ScotsmanProgressive likes Obama.DougJ
@Scott:
Well, it’s actually Chinatown which isn’t Raymond Chandler but has the same feel.
randiego
OT – Rachel Maddow was total California hottie in High School. I knew it!
huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/rachel-maddows-yearbook-p_n_640093.html
Pangloss
I think of Obama more as Mildred Pierce, with the Republicans as Veda.
Nick
I must be one of those few progressives.
Mnemosyne
@DougJ:
I think Chinatown has more of a James M. Cain feel, myself. The only thing it’s missing is a disparaging reference to Glendale.
ETA: I see Pangloss had the same idea.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t know about this. I guess the thinking is that financial reform would have been easier and built momentum, while health care was always going to be hard and sap momentum. But it’s not hard to see the Tea Party nonsense building over financial reform instead — hell, that was the whole Santelli kerfuffle in the first place, and you still see flare-ups of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Community Reinvestment Act blame-gaming. Which would make financial reform slow and difficult… leading to second-guessing about how health care should have come first because it’s more tangible to people and easier to couch in the language of moral imperatives.
Basically my view is that if you’re going to burn your goodwill and clout on anything, knowing that the hard feelings and recriminations are going to make further initiatives more difficult to complete, health care was the thing to do. (Energy/climate would have been even better, but I just don’t think it’s possible to woo enough Republicans and coal-state Dems to make it work, not if Lindsay Graham and John McCain are willing to piss all over their own ideas just to spite Obama.)
Pangloss
Either way, the Obama presidency should have a score by Max Steiner.
Scott
@DougJ:
Well, ya know, maybe you should credit Robert Towne instead of Chandler…?
EDIT: …he said, in as friendly a tone as possible…
stuckinred
@Mnemosyne: Robert Towne
Best line in the movie
“Where’d ya get the midget”! sliiiiiiicccceeee
youtube.com/watch?v=8SPakQ7hH6I
Tecumseh
@Tecumseh: I take back what I said– Alterman’s piece was probably one of the most dead on articles I’ve read about how screwed up the country is politically and how, in the end, all that Hopey Changey stuff can’t actually happen in today’s political environment.
JAHILL10
I am sick of these dickweeds trying to write the epitaph of the Obama presidency 18 months in. For Chrissake the man has done more in the time he’s been in office than Bubba did in his full eight years of (relative) peace and prosperity while trying to extricate us from two wars and battling the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The only thing more amazing to me is that Obama hasn’t told this nation — divided between obstructionist A–holes (who, by the way still want the government to solve all problems) and the-it’s-never-good-enough-liberals who seem to have forgotten that this nation and its Congress are not born-again progressives — to go f–k itself.
Bill Arnold
The reason tax cuts are easier to pass is that they can be passed with 50 votes + the VP using reconciliation (IIRC) rules. This was done with Dick Cheney passing the tie-breaking vote at least once, maybe twice in the early 2000s.
Hunter Gathers
@Nick:
Me too. Even if he’s a one-termer, the health care bill makes him a political god in my eyes.
DougJ
@Scott:
Well, that’s complicated. Towne isn’t known for always writing about dark conspiracies of rich people. He did Tequila Sunrise and Ask The Dust, too, for example.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig: I think the general point was that because FinReg would be easier, it would not have taken the wind out of the sails like HCR did.
I think the smarter idea would have been to save HCR until this year once the economy begins to recover and Wall Street has been dealt with because the biggest complaint I remember hearing about HCR wasn’t the bill, it was the fact that the Dems were “placating the base instead of fixinf the economy”
But then again the bloggers would have freaked if he hadn’t taken on healthcare in the fitst year, just like they do about immigration, DADT, and energy.
You Don't Say
@randiego: I’m always surprised when Rachel or anyone says she has a face for radio. I think Rachel is very pretty. And I’m always surprised how tall she is. She sort of towered over NBC’s Afghanistan reporter, whose name escapes me. (Richard Engel?)
The Truffle
From Alterman:
That seems kind of far-fetched. The GOP may gain seats, but control of one of the houses? It will be a struggle.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
When did Noam Chomsky become a front pager for Balloon Juice?
Professor
I see a majority (high percentage) of Americans are what Curtis Mayfield called: ‘educated fools from uneducated schools’. They can read, but they cannot understand or analyse text. They have been disinformed by misinformation by Fox. Most still believe the planet is flat and that the bible was written by ‘God’. So sad that a nation or a people can be so misinformed by disinformation. Do you think that the American is aware that President Obama cut his/her taxes since he became president?
kdaug
Ah, a pet issue of mine – the corporate control of the media. Except, well, guess which part they have very little control over now…
Anyone else see the brouhaha over at ScienceBlogs over the PepsiCo Blog?
When Cole starts hawking Tamarack art goods, I’ll admit defeat. Until then, the underground is alive and well.
Mark S.
@Nick:
Oh for heavens sake, there’s no way in fucking hell HCR could be passed right before the mid-terms. The advantage of FinReg is that it’s too complicated and most people have at least a general feeling some reform is needed in that area, even if they don’t know what. It’s not like there have been Million (using MalkinMath) Teabagger Marches protesting FinReg.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
What would The Jews have said if Obama hadn’t done HCR in the fitst year?
Texas Dem
The right may be dominant now, but rest assured there will eventually be a reckoning because the course we are following, with massive disparities in wealth and a growing (and permanent) underclass, is clearly unsustainable. Any fool can see that. Societies with huge gaps between rich and poor and corrupt political systems are not known for their stability. And to paraphrase Herb Stein, if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. It’s just a matter of time. The irony here is that the right, by filibustering incremental progressive change, is making an explosive upheaval that much more likely. Not a civil war or a revolution, of course, but political unrest that will make the Sixties look like Captain Kangeroo. Fortunately I’m relatively young, so there’s fair chance I’ll live to see it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@mr. whipple:
You know who else contemporary progressives thought was a corporate sellout and spineless compromiser, who never got anything accomplished, and was hopeless when it came to actually passing legislation?
Teddy Roosevelt.
Of course they love to very selectively quote the fire and brimstone speeches the ol’ Rough Rider gave. Especially the ones he gave after he left office.
I’m willing to bet Obama will have a thing or two to get off of his chest after he leaves office. Should be interesting.
Nick
@Professor:
A few weeks ago there was a poll that showed a plurality thought he raised them.
Nick
@Mark S.: Then maybe it should’ve waited until next year.
Professor
@Nick: Now whose fault was it that the American is ignorant of the tax cut? The USA will have intelligence problem going forward, now that you have Beck University! Jeebus, don’t they know that Beck is screwing them for their money? Can the law not do anything about this outrageous SCAM?
taylormattd
It’s a little frustrating the Alterman, who has written multiple books about right wing influence in the media over several decades now, places so little fault for our plight on media amplification of wingnut ideas.
The Truffle
@taylormattd: To be honest, I’ve never liked Alterman. Gee, he just now realized that circumstances make it difficult to implement a progressive agenda. Really?
frosty
@stuckinred: Still one of my all-time favorite scenes. Roman Polanski was truly nasty in it.
I also liked how Jack had to woo Faye Dunaway with a big bandage on his nose later in the movie.
Nick
@Professor: Lazy media and clueless constituents who don’t want to be educated, just wanted to be fed talking points.
frosty
@Hunter Gathers: For me it’s the temperament. He just keeps on keepin’ on, and the oppo gets more and more shrill and ends up just flailin’ at the air.
Also he likes Rays Hell Burgers in Arlington. That’s cool. If it was Maple Donuts in York it’d be perfect.
burnspbesq
Say what? What transformative progressive legislation did Obama promise to pass?
Jeez, Eric, stop projecting your moonbat fantasies onto Obama and get a reality check re the limits of executive power when the Executive thinks Congress is a co-equal branch of government.
Roger Moore
@kdaug:
You mean the one that was mentioned here on Balloon-Juice earlier today? Nope, we all completely missed it.
The Truffle
@burnspbesq: Excuse me? Moonbat? Where’d that come from?
cat48
@frosty:
People hate that “temperament” as well as resent it. It is one of my favorite things about him.
Chad N Freude
@Dougj (no link, just the addressee): I got curious about the New Republic thing and drilled down to this comment:
TNR is getting a bum rap on this one.
Chris
@Nick:
Nick this is off topic..but I noticed you often comment on our media and give us your view of some “inside baseball”..I may have missed some comments of yours regarding the cnn lady who was canned following the infamous Hamas tweet. I look at
CNN’s hiring of Erickson…then look at this. Does Liz Cheney actully RUN CNN or do they just have to check with her before they do anything? Whats your take?
Bob Loblaw
@The Truffle:
No offense, but when Obama’s approval ratings are below 40% with independents, anything’s possible. Speaker Boehner is all too realistic a possibility. We’re just lucky the dumbshits at the RNC insist on running national campaigns at the congressional level instead of playing more to local concerns.
Oscar Leroy
60 Democrats are all we need, if they were real Democrats. Instead we get the president campaigning for or standing behind fools like Lieberman or Lincoln.
Oscar Leroy
Nonsense. Clinton created over 22 million jobs. Million with an “m”.
That’s what is important: speeches. A few good speeches will make up for imprisoning people without trial and cutting Social Security.
Gosh, I wonder why he would do that.
At least only the media amplifies absurd, idiotic wingnut ideas.
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/25/obama-to-urge-congress-to-pass-small-business-jobs-package/…
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: Yes, I think people who don’t take the possibility that the Goopers may take the House seriously are just kidding themselves. I don’t think it’s a done deal, by any stretch, and the Goopers have stoked the crazy enough that the independents are not keen on them either, but anytime you have an economy that looks the way this one does the July before election, the party in power had better watch out.
Oscar Leroy
Is that serious?
jwb
@Chris: You’ll learn more about Nick’s rather peculiar views than you probably want on this tread.
Hunter Gathers
@Oscar Leroy:
Don’t truncate shit like that. Not posting the full quote is for assholes.
Nick
@Chris: Let’s just say there’s a rabid pro-Israel stance in almost every major media outlet because the owners want it the way.
Chris
@jwb:
wooooooooo damnnnnnnnnnn the motherlode..I KNEW he couldnt resist that topic…I shoulda looked there first myself. thanks for the link
Chris
@Nick: I thought about you when i saw that post last night. I figured you would have something interesting to say…You didnt disappoint! I dont know enough to speak well on the subject but I knew you would have an opinion.
NobodySpecial
I love the way people who insist this is a center right nation and Nothing Can Be Done also insist that they’re progressive.
In another note, if anyone seriously wants to call the Dixiecrats ‘progressives’, they’re off their meds.
Jay B.
@Hunter Gathers:
Of course, we’ve been arguing for months against the idea that “government can’t create jobs” because THEY, IN FACT, CAN.
This quote, even in full “context”, explicitly says they can’t. Stimulus money spent on infrastructure — money spent by the government DOES create jobs. Republicans were the ones who said they couldn’t.
Evidently Obama agrees with them to a larger extent than he believes in the entire fucking purpose of a stimulus package. Or he said something stupid at the beginning of his statement, because the rest of it is understandable.
Uloborus
@Hunter Gathers:
I also love with how they’ve already declared he’s cut social security.
Brachiator
Typical that this tiresome crap would be found in the navel gazing Nation. Progressives, like libertarians and fundamentalists, and old style Marxists, insist that they are the base of their party or that since they have been to the mountain top and seen the face of God, everyone else is duty bound to listen to them dammit and do exactly what they say because … well, just because.
But progressives can’t get elected to office in large numbers and have abandoned any attempt to try to explain exactly what their policies are or to demonstrate exactly how their pet theories might be turned into practical legislation. It’s not that they are pie-in-the-sky dreamers; it’s that Obama is a failure who just doesn’t understand that all he has to do is listen to them and shazzam, unicorns for everyone.
The worst progressives are becoming much like the insomnia conspiracy club, the people who call talk radio late at night and patiently explain how if only we all closed our eyes and clapped three times, the space aliens would come and make everything better.
The sad thing is that progressives used to be much better than this. Instead, they have been taken over by an infantile lunatic fringe that almost make Ralph Nader look like the voice of reason.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
What would you know about it?
Josh
Wait, taylormattd, did you read the Alterman article? Or was it tl;dr for you?
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
RE: The sad thing is that progressives used to be much better than this. Instead, they have been taken over by an infantile lunatic fringe that almost make Ralph Nader look like the voice of reason.
Probably more than you will ever know. Again, you come with the weak snark, but not much more. I am entirely willing to engage in conversation about almost any topic.
But you really make yourself look pathetic by assuming that you have some moral or ideological high ground, especially when you pop up and snort snide nonsense just because you imagine yourself to be some kind of blog thread enforcer for progressive values.
And let’s be clear for the benefit of other readers and lurkers. Your main beef is not any heated discussion, and certainly not any personal insult that I leveled at you, cause that’s not how I roll. You have your panties in a twist because I don’t follow what you perceive to be the Official Liberal line with respect to Israel and troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Or maybe you live in Cleveland and feel personally betrayed by LeBron James.
I said before and say again, you have got to bring more than your standard weak shit.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: You little bitch. You are the epitome of fail on the “left, center left” side of the aisle. Nothing could be clearer than the fact that you hate anyone who cares deeply about issues that are traditionally “left”.
You spout weak ass right wing rhetoric and then act like anyone who doesn’t like it is engaging in some snide attacks against you.
You’re a fucking punk who has no more sense of what the left side of the aisle is about or believes than Senor Norquist.
Don’t act like you’ve got something to say because you’re 100% center/center right, but act like you know anything about liberals or progressives.
Your posts are here for everyone to see. You castigate and criticize “peaceniks”, “liberals” and everyone else on the left of the spectrum.
Your faux-prog shit is weak and it’s not borne out by everything you’ve ever posted here.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
I’m not an enforcer for anything.
I’d prefer to not be killing people in the ME. Sorry if that’s a tough one for you to handle pasha.
FlipYrWhig
@Nick:
But that’s not true. There were polls about how many people thought health care reform was important too. And who would defend insurance companies? And everyone knows something has to be done! The Republicans have dicked around with financial reform. They’ve even defended BP after a humongous oil spill. They don’t care what people say or think about them; they just pick out some nonsense and flail it around and 40% of the country follows along.
Like I said, the original Santelli “tea party” rant was about financial issues — mortgage refinancing, as I recall — and I’m sure that a big push for FinReg would also have bumped up against crazy-ass ignorant mobs of shouty red-faced morons. Only instead of ranting about “death panels” and Ezekiel Emanuel they would be railing against the Community Reinvestment Act and Franklin Raines. And then when that slowly ground towards a conclusion, and after we had spent months fighting about the proper home for the Consumer Financial Product Safety Commission with wild-eyed diaries on Daily Kos and some kind of Jane Hamsher antics involving calling the whole thing a “bailout” benefiting “corporatists,” it would barely pass.
And then Eric Alterman would write about how sad it was that the Obama team didn’t do health care reform first, because that would have been easier, and wouldn’t have taken the wind out of the sails of other key initiatives.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Let’s see, now. I’m both “left, center left” and “right wing.”
Hmmm.
I’m not imagining your snide attacks. The last time you randomly popped up to throw smack was in a thread about iPads.
In other words, as I noted earlier, you desperately need to apply an ideological purity test to discussions. Can you say “hoist by your own petard?” I knew you could.
Yep. They certainly are. And I have been as often commended as criticized, which is a good thing, as far as I can tell.
No, I castigate certain ideas, and the lame insistence by some progressives that Obama owes them something just because they are progressive.
Which brings us to this thread once again. There are more Blue Dog Democrats in the Congress than hard left progressives. So exactly why is Obama supposed to ignore political reality and push an agenda that will satisfy the readers of The Nation? The funny thing is that we probably don’t disagree on this, but you seem upset by my refusal to pay proper respects to the left.
You haven’t read everything I’ve posted here, and clearly ignore posts where I crap all over libertarians and rightwing boneheads. But keep reading. There might be hope for you yet.
John Bird
Hmm.
Karen
@Oscar Leroy:
Clinton created all those jobs really?
Clinton also reduced welfare down to 2 years.
Clinton also passed NAFTA, which is a big problem with all those jobs leaving the US.
Anything else?
Oh btw, Hilary Clinton is just as or more of a centrist than Obama is, so thanks for playing but no ciga
Quiddity
That Alterman piece was 16,700 words long. Phew!
DougJ
@Chad N Freude:
Interesting.
Karen
What is really pissing me off with the “Obama is as bad as Jimmy George Carter Bush” group is that as much as they hate Blue Dogs (and although I’m in the pragmatic middle I don’t call myself a BD) in so many red states, it’s either a Blue Dog or a Red Pitbull. You’re not going to get a Kucinich in Indiana. Or Louisiana. Or Tennesee. You’re not going to get a Schumer or even a Biden in North Carolina. The Democratic party was only able to grow once we realized that there were people with some so called “conservative” values but who identified more with Democrats than Republicans.
I’m not hippie punching and I’m not an Obamabot but I will say this. You know why the Republicans win all the time in elections? It’s because they know how to be pragmatic and hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Or so they did. Now there are purity tests of what a Conservative is and that’s carrying over to the Republican party as a whole. That may be their downfall, we can always hope.
Don’t make that same mistake! If we start having purity tests of left wing values then you might as well say goodbye to the Democratic party because I can guarantee that in those red states, you’ll get red candidates.
This isn’t saying that when we’re not happy we shouldn’t speak up. But there’s speaking up and there’s trashing people who don’t meet the official left wing definition of a liberal Democrat.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
.
Why is this such a big deal, I don’t get it? I’m progressive, the country isn’t…that’s not a big stretch.
Uplift
with, say, 63 Democratic Senators instead of 58-60
As someone else said upthread, it strongly depends on what you mean by “Democratic”. Consider: every single Democratic Senator except Russ Feingold voted for PATRIOT. Democratic Senators voted with Bush FAR more than Republican Senators vote with Obama. And so on. It’s partly a numbers game, but partly a discipline game.