This pains me, but Roger Simon at the Politico is on to something:
Who would have thought just a matter of months ago that the Republicans would be the party of enthusiasm? The Republicans were the party of tired old white men who had just been thrashed by the magnetic and mesmerizing Obama, whose words flowed like silver from his lips.
Then, a terrible thing happened: Obama began to do things. He saved the economy from disaster. He provided new medical coverage for children. He passed historic health care reform for the entire nation.
But who turned on him? Liberal Democrats. Eric Alterman, a liberal author and columnist for The Nation, wrote recently: “Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.”
I admit, I did not go on to read the remaining 17,000 words of the article — I am saving it for my next coma — and that is because I had trouble grappling with the phrase “significant accomplishments notwithstanding.” If you toss significant accomplishments out the window, how would FDR or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington do by that standard?
Aren’t significant accomplishments what presidents are supposed to accomplish? And isn’t it more than a little unfair to toss those accomplishments aside and then judge those presidents?
No. Not if you judge them by the loss of their mojo. Which is how some liberals are now judging Obama.
I’m not sure how much of rank and file democrats have turned on Obama, but quite clearly some of our elites and self-annointed elites surely have, and I do find it baffling. And before the concern trolls step in, I’m not demanding that everyone love Obama and that you tattoo hope and change on your chest. I just don’t understand why the most vocal folks on the left seem to just loathe the guy and dismiss what has been done.
TR
Dead on.
Cat Lady
In other words, why do “progressives” hate progress?
arguingwithsignposts
Even the Politico’s Roger Simon …
I would argue they are still the party of tired old white men. But now they’re the party of tired old *angry* white men. And the media keeps treating them like there’s some sort of new phenomenon going on (aka, the Tea Party, which is not a party, and has very low understanding of what the Tea part means).
steviez314
Conservatives and liberals have something in common.
Conservatives hate liberals.
So do liberals.
cleek
Obama has let some people down in ways that are very important to them. your list of accomplishments sound like “and we painted the schools!” to people who are waiting for X, Y, or Z. in other words: people have different priorities.
that doesn’t explain everyone (there are outrage addicts and perpetual victims everywhere), but it does explain some of them.
gnomedad
“Significant accomplishments notwithstanding” ranks up there with “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Observer
I assume this last sentence (I just don’t understand why the most vocal folks on the left seem to just loathe the guy and dismiss what has been done.) is just a rhetorical statement.
If it’s genuine, please say so.
That aside, yes it’s a stupid way to set up a long article by asking to set aside “significant accomplishments”.
But I don’t think letting the Politico pidgeon hole so-called “progressives” because of some idiotic phrasing by Eric Alterman is the best thing to hang your hat on.
It’s just the press wing of the Republican party trying to stir something up.
geg6
Because they are and have been the very definition of FAIL for their entire political lives. These are the same people who were PUMAs or John Edwards groupies and they have been pissed ever since the primaries and just waiting to have the opportunity to call Obama a failure ever since their dreams of a “progressive,” DFH, Overton window-shoving utopia with free health care and a 100% tax on everyone but them went down the drain with the end of Hillary2008 and John Edwards’ squeaky clean image.
They lost and they are perfectly happy to see everyone else lose just so they can say “I told you so.”
BrYan
You know, if you throw out the failure to comprehend the al Queda threat, the Iraq war based on faulty intelligence, the politicization of the Justice department, the response to Katrina, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the economic disaster, and a few other things, the Bush Presidency wasn’t that bad.
scav
Please do not confuse the furious writhing of maggots with the vigorous activity of a healthy body.
The prone object may not be dead yet, but there’s activity and there’s coherent sustained purposeful activity. Then again, flailing is a multi-party sport.
Kirk Spencer
ahem.
“We won, dammit. Why haven’t we completely reversed decades of the pendulum moving right?”
“Now, now, now, now. Whattaya mean it takes time I want my way NOW.”
“Compromise? When they were in power what compromise did they make? Why should WE have to compromise?”
Add to the generality of the above one minor pain – unemployment near 10%. That colors everything else, I think. But in general, many of these folk want their rainbows and ponies now.
kwAwk
To me it seems like Obama doesn’t want people on the left to feel like they’ve won anything or that they’ve achieved anything. Obama is so concerned about appearing centrist and being centrist that he’s kind of thrown the left wing of the party under the bus on more than one occasion. The public option being one of those.
Obama also seems at times more interested in making sure the ideas of Republicans are heard, recognized and incorporated into bills than those from his left.
Its hard to remain enthusiastic about this President simply because he doesn’t seem to be fighting for what people on the left want, rather he seems to be fighting as much for the views of the right as he is the left.
Keith G
This feeds into a bit of a surprising disappointment I feel.
I thought team Obama was going to be better at getting a message out to the common folk. It seems to me that they began on Jan 20 ’09 with the notion that “We are going to do a bunch of important stuff and many out there will approve.”
No, no, no. Fighting the message war is important and often its like hand to hand combat. They have ceded so much ground on the PR front. Maybe they will fully recover. Maybe not.
Bruuuuce
What cleek said. It’s about what hasn’t gotten done yet (DADT, DOMA), what is never getting done (civil liberties, investigating the Bush criminals), and how what has been done has been handled (health care – specifically, a mandate without either a public option or single-payor).
Also, too, the Administration’s attitude seems to be one of appeasing the right and punching the DFH’s when possible, so it’s no surprise at all that lefties are disaffected.
Dennis G.
Yep. He is spot on.
Most of the trouble that Democrats are having these days is due to the folks who wanted the pony of their dreams and are upset because none of the many ponies delivered so far match up to the one in their rich fantasy life. And so they bitch. moan and complain that President Obama isn’t doing enough for them.
The funny thing is that Alterman is far from the worst of the lot, but he is a good regurgitator of this idiotic POV.
Ron
@Kirk Spencer:
I think this is the key. There are a lot of people on the left who complain about compromises made. Well, if they have a magic solution to get at least 1 republican senator and all the democratic senators including Nelson, Bayh, Pryor, Landrieu, and Lincoln to vote for the pony, I’d love to hear it. As long as the Senate rules are the way they currently are, there is no way to avoid compromise like that.
r€nato
By and large, liberals seem to think that politics is about self-validation while conservatives understand that politics is about advancing your agenda. This explains why liberals have more or less gotten their asses kicked for the past 30 years, gaining power only when conservatism’s failures become too large for voters to ignore.
It’s pretty hard to imagine anything worse than 8 years of Bush/Cheney… and after only 18 months of being delivered from their authoritarian misrule, quite a few liberals are ready to hand the keys of power back to the wrong wing (which, if anything, has only become even MORE ideologically blinkered and programmed for failure) because Obama didn’t give them a stable full of ponies RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
Ash Can
I think the problem mainly is that the buildup to Obama’s presidency, at least in the eyes of the left, was huge. A monumentally awful administration was, after eight long, dreary years, finally giving way to an administration headed up by someone who, it seemed, was everything W was not — not dumb, not a warmonger, not privileged, not a C student, not pseudo-Southern, not white, etc. We were all falling over ourselves to give Bush the heave-ho and get someone sensible in the White House at long fucking last. As part of this whole big emotionally charged process, liberal pundits were indulging in plenty of projection. So when Obama turned out to be the centrist he always made it clear he was, wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. In a nation that needs miracles, he’s doing the merely possible. And he’s doing it in the manner he thinks is best. No different from any other competent and well-intentioned president, but in an atmosphere so thoroughly poisoned by his predecessor, nothing is ever enough.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Because for eight years they had something to scream about and it got them a lot of attention. Why the hell should they stop now?
And some people just like to whine.
Alex S.
So far, lack of enthusiasm has only been an issue in theory. With the exception of the Massachusetts special election, electoral results have been good for Democrats. And in November, we have to see if all those disappointed Democrats can find the motivation to go to the polls – or not.
edmund dantes
see, I always get confused when this comes up. I thought Obama didn’t have any power and couldn’t get anything done because of Congress.
All his failures are Congress’ fault, and all his successes are his own. It’s a neat trick.
Still, no denying he has accomplished a lot along with Congress, but he has also failed to accomplish a lot because he’s made some strange tactical choices. He negotiates by saying “here’s my compromised starting position” then further moves right. He’s a failure on the Unitary executive powers. His national security choices are a continuation of Bush’s with some enhancements in areas. The list is well known.
His moves in this area which he has made (which aren’t that big) all rely on the benevolent dictator premise. We just have to hope we aren’t stupid enough to elect another George W. Bush and cronies. Are you ready to take that bet?
2th&nayle
Equals, “But, but, but…. what about MY PONY?” Stomps feet; holds breath; falls down; does horizonal circle dance; takes nap.
MattF
My guess is that they’re ideologues and axe-grinders. “Where are my ponies and rainbows?” is one way of putting it– but that doesn’t quite capture it. You have to grasp the profound importance of ponies and rainbows.
And it should be said that this isn’t a big surprise. If you spend all your conscious hours thinking about political policy, it’s likely that there’s something unbalanced going on. And Obama, that elusive interloper, is the supremely balanced man– he’s the ideologue’s natural enemy.
Triassic Sands
@geg6:
Generalize much?
scav
@kwAwk: funny, I once thought governance, at least under most forms of non-authoritarian systems was eventually and inevitably about compromise with people you don’t agree with, and even authoritarian systems had to wrestle with compromise between antagonistic goals. Nope, it’s apparently all about grinding the faces of compatriots you don’t agree with into the dirt in order to maintain enthusiasm.
What’s even funnier is that I wasn’t an early obot adopter as I found him far too easily conciliatory. Now I’m just a plague on both your houses spectator — and that’s on my good days.
Keith G
@kwAwk:
Why would he? Seriously, on its surface, what is it for his policy aims and what made folks think he would specifically fight for the specific and exclusive goals of the Left?
So you think he may wake up each day and think to himself, “Self, how may I screw the Left today?”
Nick
@Alex S.: and even in Mass, more than one million people voted for Coakley. She got the largest number of voters statewide for a losing candidate since 1990
and that in a midwinter special election.
kay
I’m not disappointed in him. I think any honest assessment of his legislative accomplishments show he’s gotten more done than any President since LBJ.
It’s just fact.
I’m actually not surprised by that, either. I assumed his focus would be legislative, because most of his career has been spent in a legislative body, and he’s temperamentally suited to compromise and horse-trading. One of the things I liked about him was his respect for the different branches, the process, and his insistence that this is how it’s supposed to work.
I don’t want to try to persuade liberals, or convince them, not anymore, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and theirs are set in stone, but I think they’re making a huge and really regrettable error.
Benjamin
Dammit, John. Despite the significant accomplishments of this blog, it is clearly a failure.
Nick
@kwAwk:
Yes, why would we be excited about a guy who wants to be President of all Americans?
DJShay
@Observer: Have you read Daily Kos or Fire Dog Lake recently? It’s a regular Obama hatefest. The contempt is palpable from some on the Left and I, just like John Cole, don’t understand it. Clinton was never treated this way and he didn’t accomplish in 8 years what Obama has done in 18 months. Makes one wonder what the vitriol is really about.
Benjamin
I have to tell you, the first paragraph is the best. “Riding the tiger of looniness” is going to be my new favorite phrase.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I also often suspect these people slipped into an alternate universe during the election cycle and came back on Election Day. As a result they thought they were voting for Super Radical Obama.
Naturally they’re disappointed.
furioso ateo
I don’t go around ragging on Obama, but I was a big supporter in the campaign, and I’m pretty bitter about him now.
The thing is, I voted for him because he seemed like the most sincere when it came to the idea of shaking things up. And he has, sorta. But, I didn’t vote for him for HCR or FinReg or any of that other stuff. To my mind we won’t ever get those things right until we get the system and the way things are run right, which nobody has yet stepped up to do. Not in my lifetime anyway (since 1986).
The other, and more important reason I voted for him? Civil Rights. Civil Rights, Civil Rights. Civil Rights. And he couldn’t really be any more disappointing than he has been on this issue. I feel an acute shame whenever I read about rendition, and wiretapping, and military tribunals, and torture, and state secrets, and (now) assassinations, and it is acute because I wear the uniform, but I don’t wear it because I believe in those things. I’ll be discharged soon, and I’m afraid that over the last five years my country has left me nothing to show for it.
Nick
@edmund dantes:
spoken like a true firebagger.
No, all of his successes aren’t his own, they’re Congress’ too, but the reason he gets credit for them is going to a hostile Congress with realistic goals rather than fight for lost causes. He won’t get credit for fighting for anything that doesn’t get passed.
ronrab
I do think Obama brought a lot of this on himself. People keep talking about how it was clear he was a centrist, not a progressive – but that’s not what he was *selling* in the election. He deliberately sold himself as ‘exactly what you want, the guy who will change everything and give you all your dream ponies.’
This isn’t much different than how most politicians sell themselves. The thing is, Obama sold it *really well*. He’s a genius at selling that. If you look closer, ‘centrist’ may have been obvious; but he did an incredible job of making you not want to look closer, to just take the vague promises, the idea instead of the practicality.
After that campaign, it shouldn’t be surprising some people are upset they didn’t get everything they want, as that’s basically what they were promised. Thinking you’re going to get a pony for Christmas is unreasonable – but what if your parents TELL you they’re giving you a pony, then don’t? What if they don’t because your bratty brother whines and cries about it too much? Wouldn’t you be upset?
kay
@kwAwk:
He’s really given liberals a really solid base of legislation to work with.
It’s a huge advantage, and one that could be built on.
He’s handed you the foundation, and you want him to build the house. It’s weirdly passive to me, and honestly, I don’t respect it. You won’t jump in there. The public option was so important, I would think it’d be a no-brainer to keep trying to add it, some version of it, even starting small, at the one-state level. Use the victory there to persuade Americans to demand it. But there’s none of that. There’s just rage.
Nick
@ronrab:
’
no, no he didn’t
Translation: It’s Obama’s fault stupid liberals misinterpreted his campaign. If your parents tell you you’re getting a new sweater and you hear pony, you’re the one who needs to get their fucking hearing checked.
Quinn
Because they want payback for Bush. They want Obama to bludgeon the GOP just the same as Bush did the Dems. They want Obama to steamroll progressive policy, i.e. Medicare for all, the same as Bush Co. did with 50 votes on pretty much everything that was conservative insane, i.e. tax cuts for the uber rich.
ronrab
Also, I admit I get a little tired of seeing liberal sites readers disagree with get bashed more and called more names than the right-wingers lately. The scorn and anger heaped on Greenwald and Firedog (‘firebaggers?’ Really?) is amazing. Way to show these guys they’re being irrational extremists.
kwAwk
@scav:
That’s not really it. In negotiation and compromise, the objective is to push for your own benefit or your own ideas and compromise to the extent necessary.
Obama on the other hand pretty much telegraphs weakness by compromising before hes even asked to compromise, thus when the real negotiations start he loses even more ground.
There is nothing wrong with compromise, again, but when you compromise with Republicans and allow them modify a bill and incorporate their ideas into the bill, one would expect that the compromise would actually entail having Republicans vote for the measure that now contains their ideas.
I think this calls for modifying a good old saying: Obama can never fail, Obama can only be failed.
ronrab
This is exactly the kind of reasonable debate I’m always hoping for, thank you.
madmatt
different ideas of progress, some people think you can trust insurance companies and banks and thier powers should be unlimited and increased whichg is what barack has done…the rest of us believe they are scum that need to be destroyed and rebuilt or nothing will of changed except they now can legally take our money and give us nothing in return.
Violet
It’s good timing for this type of article to come out. Obama seems to have a record of having crappy summers (remember the health care town hall disasters last summer or the 2007 summer where his primary run limped along anemically?) but he bounces back in the fall.
If that trend continues, this sort of article is the canary in the coal mine of things beginning to shift for the better. Point out just how much he’s done and how his own side isn’t giving him credit and perhaps his own side will wake up.
edmund dantes
@Nick: Nope. Never have been. Never will be. I’m still voting for the guy, and I will still support him in the upcoming elections.
This is my problem with your type though. Automatically I’m a true firebagger. Fuck off!
He’s done a lot. He’s also failed to do a lot. My problem with Obama, and one of the places he’s failed miserably is his team believed their own hype and newspaper clippings. This also includes the Democrats as a whole actually, and I have yet to see a huge sea change in how they act.
It was like the past 30+ years of increasing Republican crazyness would just be washed away in the face of Obama’s greatness and Magical Unity Pony powers, but they were stupid to believe it. They should have been organizing and planning to counteract it from the outset. However, he has. along with the other leadership, failed in that regard. They still flail around way too much. Their counterattacks when they do come, usually weeks (or even months in the case of HCR), are ineffective, timid, and un-coordinated. The one thing that was supposed to be his greatest strength, his campaign organization and team, seems to have all disappeared.
They still aren’t in an offensive stance at all on any front, and they are constantly counterpunching, and seeing it blocked by a group that anticipates the counterpunch and has a coordinated response.
So, yes he’s a disappointment, and people do have a lot of legitimate reasons to be disillusioned with his policies, ways of compromising, inaction in important matters, etc and you don’t have to be a firebagger to believe that.
stuckinred
@ronrab: So don’t read them. Pretty fucking simple I’d say.
Chris
Speaking for myself, I supported the president until his hands-off take on HCR and the resulting product.
I’m assuming your post wasn’t entirely rhetorical. You asked why, so I told you.
madmatt
30% off the top of every $ for the insurance company scum who don’t heal a single person, as a matter of fact they kill more people through neglect and criminality than al Qaeda ever did and barack and the scum in congress enshrined them in a system that makes them rich and leaves them unregulated….state commissioners don’t do anything…and he did nothing about cost…now I have to pay for a policy I can’t afford to use…I and millions like me are deeper in the hole than when the scumbags got elected. Lynch a banker or two rather than give them unlimited access to taxpayer $’s which the new finreg bill does.
Alice Blue
To paraphrase Molly Ivins, Obama isn’t dancing with the people who brung him.
Ash Can
Oh, and reading through this thread reminds me of another huge factor in this Obama-bashing phenomenon: lack of understanding of how the American political and lawmaking processes work.
Nick
@ronrab: If you want debate, first you have to intellectually honest.
cleek
@edmund dantes:
this.
Nick
@kwAwk:
which is exactly what he does
No, you’re problem is that he doesn’t go in exactly where you think he should and then compromise.
How is this different from what he’s ACTUALLY done? He compromises vote by vote.
Murc
Lots of hippie punching today I see.
I’m not sure I’d say I loathe the guy and dismiss what he’s done, but I’m definitely disenchanted with Obama, and I feel it has to do with actual disconnects between what’s important to me and what’s important to him, coupled with seemingly baffling tactical choices and a refusal to pick fights he is going to lose in order to server the larger cause of pushing an agenda forward, rather than expecting magical ponies.
Example: Civil liberties. That’s my A-Number One priority. And Obama has been genuinely shitty in that regard. So, okay, I’m angry about that, really angry. That’s legitimate, yes?
The wars. Obama continues to be entangled in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the horrible half-life of ‘enough resources to get tons of people and property killed, not enough to achieve anything we’d recognize as a win.’ Moreover, he doesn’t appear to be a particularly reluctant warrior in either regard; it’s not like he’s desperately trying to figure out how to disengage while Congress keeps blocking him. I know he ran on escalating in Afghanistan. He was wrong then, and he continued to be wrong. Am I not allowed to point that out? Is my own position there so incredibly wrong that it’s beneath contempt?
Domestic agenda. Okay, this is a mixed bag. The man tends let Congress have its head during the crafting of important legislation. I approve of that; its Congresses job, their responsibility, Obama doesn’t have a vote in either chamber. But when he does injuect himself into the process, it often seems like he lacked the basic negotiating skills of an experienced used-car buyer; he STARTS from a compromised position and then when the public debate coalesces around that is inevitably forced to move right. Furthermore, I feel that his successes (and lets not kid ourselves, HCR and FinReg and the myriad little things just having a competent person heading up the executive branch fixes ARE successes) are not enough.
To boil that down; if someone goes to heroic efforts to build a house with four walls and no roof on a foundation of sand, you’re still going to get wet when it rains, and then the house is going to fall in. Worrying about that doesn’t make me crazy, I don’t think, though it very possibly makes me paranoid.
But, okay. He’s new to executive office and perhaps was overly naive as to the willingness of Republicans to work in good faith. You’re allowed to fuck up once or twice, and he DID get HCR and will probably get finance, and those ARE both better than the status quo. However… I am often told ‘we have to do this now, or it won’t get done at all’ by the same people who then turn around and say ‘we can fix it later.’ How does that work, exactly? If the next Congress is going to be inimical to all forms of reform, given the fact that the Republican caucus is going to be getting ideologically purer, won’t it be harder to do anything? Isn’t ‘if we don’t do this RIGHT, it WON’T be fixed later’ a valid counterpoint?
Finally, I haven’t seen any signs that the Democrats in general and Obama in particular have plans for the long game. I am constantly told that it is Congresses flaws that make sweeping changes impossible. Fair enough. The logical continuation of that thought is ‘What’s to be done to correct those flaws?’ Will Obama publicly call for the abolition of the filibuster? Will Harry Reid join him in this? Will the Democratic Caucus adopt rules to ensure tighter party discipline? Is he prepared to do what Republicans are very good at, which is go and die on a hill sometimes so that ten or twenty or thirty years later that hill finally gets taken? The people who everyone said were murdering the Republican Party for all time in 1964 and 1972 were running the whole table by 1984. Sometimes you lose to win.
I apologize for the long comment, especially from someone who lurks and posts maybe once a year, but this is one of those debates that’s near to my heart and I strive for clarity and completeness.
madmatt
@Ron:
Heres an idea, don’t campaign for scum like lincoln a candidate with no chance who spent the entire year voting with republicans.
Davis X. Machina
I don’t see solid evidence of a fall-off in his numbers among African Americans….
Not in a zero-sum game, you don’t.
scav
@kwAwk: this reply from someone who just said “Its hard to remain enthusiastic about this President simply because he doesn’t seem to be fighting for what people on the left want, rather he seems to be fighting as much for the views of the right as he is the left.”? You seem to be upset that he’s not a passive reflection of your desires aggressively going after them. So sorry your invisible friend isn’t living up to your high standards for activity in the real world and so sorry that politics isn’t as sexy and clean-cut and easily resolved as it is in the movies. “Bad situation, thrilling speeches from underdog, come from behind triumph, they lived happily ever after, fade to credits.” Sometimes I think a part of the problem is people are suddenly paying attention to politics when they ignored it for eons: they really think it works the way it does in the movies and what little they studied cut out all the dull, eternally long griding setbacks and dodgy back-handing negotiation that went into short one-liners of triumphant accomplishment. — Greetings from the really really dull and dispiriting bit that is at least somewhat less grim than recent history.
Nick
@edmund dantes: There’s really no pleasing you people, is there?
“He’s done a lot, but I’m still very disappointed and everyone has a right to be dissolutioned?”
No, you idiots thought that, not him. Stop placing your own personal failures of optics on him.
and there never will be…because the Democrats have no one to help them fight offense…the media is against them and their base doesn’t kick in until they feel like it.
tBoy
I agree with Chris – the HCR reform at its best is weak. A simple bill that would have allowed employers, groups, and individuals to buy into Medicare with no subsidies would have put us well on the road to creating a REAL system. But the very first thing he did was throw this only real solution under the bus.
Now there is the BP blow-out in the Gulf. I live in south Louisiana. The fed response is a failure. It is dismal. It is pure window dressing. Exactly what I would have expected with the Cheney/bush administration.
Perhaps failure is the best that the US govt. can accomplish. If that is the case then Obama deserves to get some slack.
Nick
@Murc:
You don’t push an agenda forward by losing? WTF is wrong with you people?
Clearly you forget the REPUBLICANS won the 1972 election…but I guess your point is for Obama to take a dive now so progressive policies can get passed…in 2030!?!?
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
61% of Obama voters were white.
Nick
@madmatt:
Voting with the Democrats 95% of the time = voting with the Republicans all year…it’s Jane Hamsher math.
cleek
@Nick:
just a question: is there anything that Obama has done that you aren’t 100% happy about ?
or, is he perfect ?
wilfred
For the umpteenth time, a variation on a theme:
In order to have the Great Society, I had to give them Vietnam
It was always a trade-off. Wait till October, and the inevitable attack on Lebanon/Iran.
geg6
@Triassic Sands:
Generalize about what? Isn’t that what this whole fucking discussion is all about? Generalizations about the assholes who whine and cry because they haven’t gotten their ponies yet?
I’m an old-line Democrat. I’m not out here whining and crying. I’m out here still fighting in the trenches. And I’m sick to death of assholes who do nothing but cry about their missing ponies and who want to take all their toys and go home because Obama can’t change everything that sucked from the last 40 years in less than 2 years in office.
arguingwithsignposts
@tBoy:
Which was not politically possible. But why let facts get in the way of purity?
Davis X. Machina
@cleek: We are not The Base. People who blog, and or post on blogs, aren’t anyone’s base. We’re not going to decide his political fate.
We’re just froth on the pot.
Ash Can
@Alice Blue:
Oh yes he is. The left didn’t bring him. The left was going to vote Dem (or Green or stay home) no matter what. Just like the dead-end 28%-ers were going to vote GOP no matter what. Elections aren’t won on the right or left, they’re won in the center. It’s the broad swath of voters in between who decide one guy is probably better — or couldn’t possibly be any worse — than the other guy. No candidate in this country wins with only the left or right.
Marc
@ronrab:
Yes, really.
I mean, like, really for real.
some other guy
While it’s tempting to blame the hippies for whatever electoral failures the Dems might be facing in the fall, the polls I’ve seen seem to paint a different story. Self-identified liberals and Democrats still strongly support the the President. It’s independents who have left Obama in large numbers.
Though the progressive haters are loud, their numbers are relatively few. Independents, on the other hand, make up a huge percentage of the electorate (30%-50%) and Obama’s approval ratings have dropped by 10-15 points among them.
I guess if you still want to punch a hippie you could blame their bitching for changing the minds of independents, but I think this is a stretch since, aside from a few blogs, the hippies don’t actually have any kind of platform to influence anyone.
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
sorry, i must have missed something. what do “bloggers” have to do with anything ?
you seemed to assert that black people were the people who “brung him to the dance”. i just wanted to point out that nearly 2/3s of the people who brung him were (and presumably still are) white.
but, i do agree that political bloggers are statistically irrelevant.
Taylor
You know what people on Wall Street say? If, right after being elected, Obama had gone to Wall Street and given FDR’s “I welcome your hate” speech, he could have done anything he wanted. Democrats and Republicans agree on that.
Unfortunately we’ve learned a few things about Obama that we didn’t know before the election. First, he’s scared of a fight. Axelrod’s memo, where he reminds Obama that he “flinched” when a nonentity like Keyes attacked him, was revelatory.
Second, Obama is at root a political fixer. He’s the guy you go to for constituency service. He’s certainly full of his own rhetorical flourish, which he provided in plenty during the election. But as someone said, he’s happy to take the ham sandwich instead of the whole hog. In fact, he’s opening bargaining position is, how about the ham sandwich? This is not how you implement historic change.
Third, the Obama administration is incompetent. They are incompetent at governing and they are incompetent at messaging. There is no-one there of the stature of Dick Cheney (yes, Cheney), who knew how to work the federal bureaucracy. And their recent stepping on the message of fiscal stimulus is inexplicable.
In 2008, there was a historic opportunity to implement generational policy change. Instead, time after time, this administration has chickened out of going after that change, opting for small fixes instead. Thus the undersized stimulus, further watered down by Presidents Nelson, Collins and Snowe, that now has us trapped in long term high unemployment, the absurd and arbitrary price tag on healthcare reform, the cynical and premature capitulation on e.g. drug import that convinced Dorgan to leave politics, the craven kow-towing to the banks that guarantees we will have another financial crisis, but worse next time, the capitulation of this constitutional scholar to the subversion of due process (apparently in the interests of bipartisanship!), etc etc etc.
I’ll be happy to see the Obama administration succeed in fixing the mistakes of the disastrous Bush administration, but I have no illusions that they are looking out for my interests. Their interests are strictly in making sure that this country keeps running for the benefit of the top 1%, though they are not quite the Masters of the Universe that they think they are. To many on Wall Street, they are no more than clerks, and they have done little to counter that perception.
kay
@kwAwk:
You wanted in on health care but you didn’t want to understand it or grapple with the details.
These meta-themes are what you-all specialize in. “Leadership”. “negotiation”. “message”. Blah, blah, blah.
Honestly, I was amazed liberals didn’t stick with the public option. I was ready. It went to rule-writing at HHS where we could have had a real impact and liberals went off chasing Blanche Lincoln, on some revenge mission.
Next it goes to the states for enabling legislation and conservatives will be out in force, and liberals will be chasing some other fucking thing, probably the primary challenge for Obama.
Know this: I may be one individual, and unlike you I don’t claim to speak for some crucial sector, but while you may be disenchanted with the Obama Admnistration and the Democratic Congress, I am disenchanted with online liberal groups. I think your tactics are counterproductive and ineffectual and donating is a waste of my money. I would have spent 90k gearing up to push a public option through as state legislature, during the state enabling legislative process. You went for revenge.
BIG disappointment. You suffered one relatively minor loss on the public option and you quit.
When activists were trying to push S-CHIP through, we got it all the way to Bush’s desk, where it stalled. We re-grouped and were back in 6 months, and we got it.
Had the online army been running that effort, it never would have happened.
edmund dantes
@Nick: LOL… This is all you’ve got?
I didn’t fail optics. Obama did lay claim to moving past partisanship. Moving past the tired politics of old.
And his actions show he believed it. There wasn’t a coordinated attack on creating HCR. It was allowed to be created into 4 (or 6) separate bills. There wasn’t an offensive on defending HCR once it came under the inevitable and predictable attacks. It was allowed to flounder throughout the August recess without a strong unified set of talking points said ad nauseum. There was a response that eventually came after it became pummeled to death during the legislative process and the August recess when they suddenly realized they were screwed.
I give him, and the Congressional democrats, for finally pulling it off after they nearly squandered it, but they were supposed to pull it off. You don’t get accolades and praise for doing what you are supposed to do. And I’ll still support him, and the Democrats within my state when it comes election time, but it won’t stop me from trying to get better Democrats elected.
What’s your explanation for the failures?
Oh that’s right, It’s not Obama’s fault. Obama is being failed by others. LOL
Davis X. Machina
In 2008, there was a historic opportunity to implement generational policy change.
This has happened three times in American history — 1787-89, 1861-65, and 1933-36 — in other words, after an earthquake.
Everything else is incremental. Wake me up after the earthquake.
Marc
@Murc:
The same way it did with Social Security and Medicare, which were much more modest when they were first passed into law (in the face of considerable controversy) and then got expanded as more Americans realized they liked the benefits and wanted in.
‘Later’ in both cases being years later, but that’s how sweeping social change works. Anybody who thought Obama was going to completely undo forty years of conservative policies less than eighteen months into his first term is a victim of their own unrealistic expectations.
cleek
@Marc:
can you name 3 people who actually, literally, thought this ? i can’t.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
John, you ‘don’t understand’ because you’re not looking at the evidence.
1. In the most recent ABC News-Washington Post poll, 58% of the respondents say they have “little or no confidence” in Obama’s ability to make the right decision. At the beginning of his presidency, more than 60% did.
You want to pick a different poll (this came out two days ago), fine. They all show the same trendline.
2. About a third of the people in that “little or no confidence” group identify themselves as Democrats. So it isn’t merely elite bloggers. (If I trusted that the independents really weren’t Tea Party, I’d include that data. I don’t.)
Why are they losing confidence? Probably because Obama does not appear to be making decisions. Since Ronald Reagan’s election, it has not been difficult to identify where a Republican president stood on things– they bluster and rage about their positions, demonizing opponents and making them cower. That’s what people look for.
There hasn’t been an issue where his supporters can reliably assume they know exactly where Obama stands and what he absolutely will not accept. Nothing he said prior to becoming president has proved to be a reliable guide to what he will do.
The bills have been sausage-making where everything seemed to be driven by the whims of a few people.
Why isn’t Obama getting credit for health care? Partly because very few of the provisions have had any impact and partly because the bill looks to be all about what Max Baucus and the Gang of Six, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and the Maine Ladies, Holy Joe Lieberman, Bart Stpuak and Ben Nelson decided– not the president.
The financial bill has been the Scott Brown show. Stimulus? That’s been run by Harry Reid and Pelosi. The oil spill looks to be what BP and the Coast Guard think best– not the EPA or FEMA or the Energy or the Interior.
The Iraq and AFhganistan wars– which seemed to be moving toward a close by the end of the Bush regime– now seem to be open-ended. One gets the impression we will need to look to leadership on this issue from Rolling Stone.
Obama’s supporters keep trying to lower expectations– “you really need to understand how the legislative process works”– not understanding that (a) people have clear memories (even if they’re inaccurate) of it not working this way with other people and (b) when you lower expectations, you limit the credit you get.
If Obama would come out and say “This is how I want something done; anything else is objectionable to me and I will not permit it”– and then have it done to the letter — he’d get more credit for his decision-making and the results.
Until he draws lines in the sand, people are going to credit the process the founders set up and some of the people at the controls for the policies the government produces.
Murc
@Nick
Ugh. I’m sorry, I meant to type 1974. I was attempting to make the following point; ‘Nixon and his cadre of criminals were hounded from office and some were jailed, but despite their failures they established positions and modus operandis that eventually carried the day vis-a-vis becoming viable an accepting governing tactics.’ That point is of course up for debate but its the one I was trying to make; my bad.
And, well… yes. You do sometimes push an agenda by losing. I’m not saying you set out with INTENT to lose, of course. But sometimes you should pick a fight that you EXPECT to lose, that you have a very high CHANCE of losing, because the fight itself is worth having and even though you lose you move forward. How many times did labor unions get knocked on their asses during the Gilded Age/Progressive Era before they finally prevailed (to a certain degree.) How many times did the same thing happen to Civil Rights crusaders in the courts and on the streets before the same?
And sometimes you win that fight you didn’t expect to.
@Marc
That’s a fair point, but what keeps lurking in the back of my mind is ‘back then you had plenty of Rockefeller Republicans and even the scumbag Dixiecrats were prepared to sign on to liberal economic legislation.’ So I worry that basically for the next very, very long time anything we want done is going to need to be done 100% by democrats, and if we let Republicans stop us NOW when we’re coming off an upswing, what hope do we have when we’re merely even or on the defensive?
I may simply be overly pessimisstic, or perhaps overestimating Republican crazy and/or smarts.
Davis X. Machina
30% of the 100% of Democrats are actually Republicans, at least in the Senate.
Which is why 42 > 57.
Never was a revolution carried out by a coalition.
scav
jus ‘member that, children head pat, head pat: a presidency with mid 40s approval is doomed and uniquely disfunctinal while a presidency in the low 30s is the good ‘ol days and a prototype for successful governance.
General Stuck
I love it when the dogs of irony are let loose. You do realize that at this stage of Reagan’s presidency, his approval hovered around 40 percent and dems made big gains in the 82 election.
Pixie
Sorry, but this thread and many of the comments are just bullshit. The fact is Obama made many promises; transparency in government, not having to make the choice between civil liberties and safety, his support for a ROBUST public option, his support for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a thorough repudiation of Bush administration’s handling of “enemy non-combatants”, etc and he has either simply failed to deliver or WORSE, validated and expanded upon Bush’s wartime powers (apparently it’s ok to assassinate american citizens now w/o court review if the pres says it’s ok!). He’s demonstrated that he has the ability to get things done except when he doesn’t want to. If people on teh left seem pissed, it’s because we were finally given a strong voice for our issues which was validated by a landslide election and once elected, with a ****ing majority in the house and senate to boot, he just can’t seem to find the time to get anything done. Unless it involves deriding lefties and trying to appease those on the right who will never vote for him no matter what. Liberal democrats didn’t turn on Obama, he simply failed to live up to even a fraction of his promises. Granted, there are still a couple of years left in his term and I won’t make my decision until the time comes…(a lot could happen in between now and then), but if the first couple of years are any indication of what I have to look forward to, I will sit the next election out. Not that it matters much since I’m in TN (super red state).
Kryptik
@some other guy:
This. Christ, this.
I don’t know where this ‘Disaffected Liberals are to blame for Obama’s problems’ stuff is coming from. The bullshit obstructionism and scorched earth policies of the GOP and Tea Party have made the political discourse toxic, and because of the fecklessness and/or complicity of the media in passing along their talking points verbatim, Independents are getting the image of Obama as the SUPER MUSLIN SOSHULIST TYRANNICAL WIMP WHO WANTS TO TAX YOU TO DEATH!
Yes, we have some Manic Progressives who really are off the end, but tell me, where do they make a significant dent in the public, the way that the GOP and the Tea Party have, thanks in part to the fellation given to them by our news whores?
Look, I’m frustrated, depressed, angry, and resigned here. I think Obama really should have gone more full throated on some things, and not ceded certain ground from the start for the sake of bipartisanship. I still think he goes too far in trying to cater to Republicans that he and we know he’ll never actually get to sign off on the bills he supports. But aside from certain things like certain defense policies and stuff coming out of explicitly Executive Branch departments (like the DOJ filing to defend the DOMA in the face of the recent MA court decision), I prefer to hang most of the problems on our worthless Congress. A nigh monolithic GOP, at least 2/5s to 1/2 of our Dems acting as Blue Dogs for any given bill and enabling said monolithic GOP, and just general gridlock that has successfully been painted as solely the Dems fault because ‘hey, they’re in charge!’
I think in discussions of policy and direction for the Dem party as a whole, it is a somewhat significant problem that there’s a sense of abandonment from the left of Obama. But outside of the party, out in the world of our public discourse and electoral chances, those problems amount to a hill of snot compared to the problem of the GOP-brand Tea Crazy and how they’ve been able to sell shined shit nuggets to Independents.
marge
@kwAwk: He is the president of the entire country. GWB did not consider the other side. It way “my way or the highway”. BHO campaigned on concensus building and is trying to govern the same way. The repugs just won’t play ball. But he is still trying. I am pretty much freaking out about how things are going. Gulf oil spill, high unemployment and housing foreclosures are horrible. If he got a little cooperation things would be much better. But the repugs care more about getting elected then the people they represent. The Dems need to put the blame where it belongs.
cleek
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
while i share many of your concerns re: Obama’s lack of visible leadership. it bears pointing out that previous presidents haven’t had to deal with an opposition like the current GOP, which has done a tremendous job of Senate obstruction. i wish Harry Reid was merely half as effective as minority leader at opposition as McConnell has been. in other words: the “legislative process” argument does explain a lot – not everything. but a lot.
and, the GOP has been aided by the fact that Dems have completely failed (of course) to use the GOP’s obstructionism against them.
Shalimar
I’m pretty depressed that the last 18 months were probably the best opportunity for progressive legislation in my lifetime (which is hopefully about half over). But that isn’t Obama’s fault, he is what he is and there are more positives than negatives.
General Stuck
It is becoming painfully clear that the puma firebag crowd are largely dimwitted personnel, and it is a waste of time and effort to attempt to engage them. I suppose we will just have to keep handy a broom and pooper scooper to clean up after them in threads like these and go on about our lives.
Murc
@Pixie
To be entirely fair Obama DID run on escalating in Afghanistan. He just… he did. I say that not to take apart your entire argument, but because I often see ‘Obama ran on ending the wars’ raised as an objection to his policies and while that’s true to SOME extent re: Iraq, it’s flat-out false re: Afghanistan. We’re getting PRECISELY what he promised us there.
You are better served, IMO, with taking the tack that he was wrong on that score right from the beginning.
Matt
First time commenting and really like this blog. The whole Obamabots vs. Hippies to be Punched debate is a little weird to me. As a guy who grew up in the 1970s, Obama is just another Democratic President. He has some real accomplishments out of the gate like Clinton (tax increase) and Carter (Camp David) but a combination of establishment disdain, republican hostility and back-stabbing from within his own party (here Ben Nelson can serve as proxy for “Scoop Jackson” and might Russ Feingold be his Ted Kennedy?) have made it impossible to move an agenda that he may not have the political capital to fight for. This “deja vu all over again” for me is depressing but it is also due to the very structure of the American system of government which is highly conservative (two senators from Wyoming!) and was designed precisely to preclude change (the old “cooling saucer of the Senate”). That works most of the time but the Constitution’s empowering intransigent minorities really is a “suicide pact” when the society really does need political change (think Civil War, the Great Depression and the era of Civil Rights). When real change comes to America it is driven by mass movements (abolitionism, populism, labor movement, civil rights movement) outside of the party structure, not within it. The personal bitterness of this sniping among centrists and liberals is depressing. I understand the frustration of the very real possibility of being ruled by those political arsonists, the Republicans but insulting anti-Republican activists as “naive” or “sell outs” is hardly productive. Don’t mourn brothers and sisters (and certainly don’t snipe) organize! Given the nature of the US political system Obama is just a typical democratic president and a reliance on electoral politics damns him to a one-term presidency or impeachment. Just my perspective…
Davis X. Machina
Never will that happen. A majority leader has a lot of competing objectives to accomplish, a minority leader only one, and that negative.
Presidents find themselves in a similar position, sketched today by Jonathan Bernstein.
Which piece, incidentally, in its closing section, provides a (rare) example of pony-free, justified criticism of an Obama failure for which he, and we, have no one to blame but himself.
arguingwithsignposts
Should be brought up every time this argument comes up: Politifact’s Obometer.
Scorecard: 119 kept so far, 19 broken, 37 compromises, 82 stalled, 245 in the works.
Singfoom
@the haters
I don’t know about anyone else, but I voted for Obama because I desperately wanted a return to the rule of law. He made all the right noises about closing Guantanamo and restoring honor to our nation by not engaging in the clearly illegal conduct that the Bush administration began with the War on Terror.
I don’t think that’s a fucking pony or a unicorn or that he has magical powers. What I did think is that as President of the United States and as a constitutional lawyer that Obama would roll back the most egregious violations of our Constitution and our liberties perpetrated on us by the previous administration.
He has not done that. He has shown zero interest in doing anything about that. And before people yell at me and say I’m just griping about Cheney and Bush et all not being prosecuted, that’s the least of it.
The fact of the matter is that POTUS can still point at an American citizen, claim they are a terrorist and disappear them into a black hole free of judicial oversight.
This is wrong and anathema to the very concept of the United States. It was wrong and anathema to the very concept of the United States when Bush was in office and it still is. I’m sorry that I can’t get very excited about half measures that seem compromised from the beginning when the civil liberties agenda that Obama talked about during his campaign went stealth once he got in office.
His flip flop on the FISA legislation before the campaign should have been a tell. So hate me and call me firebagger or whatever you will, but I will continue to be disappointed until the rule of law is restored to this country.
kwAwk
Marge – I agree and disagree really. It is okay to talk about concensus building and bi-partisanship, but as you’ve noted the Repubs haven’t been willing to cooperate, which then puts the ball back into the court of Obama to force them to come to the table. The office of the Presidency is very powerful with a whole stable of journalists from every major news source in the country following its every move and deed. Obama isn’t very good at using that power to frame the debate.
Obama campaigned on this notion of bi-partisanship true, but that only made it easy for Republicans to thwart him by not playing along.
As far as the disapproval goes, a lot of you guys are making the same arguements people made in defending Bush when his approval ratings were falling through the floor. Th 29% club who never abandoned Bush were just sure that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and it was everybody’s fault but Bush because they just didn’t understand.
I’ve been following politics closely for a number of years now. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and what I see is a President who doesn’t seem to have the courage of his convictions. He isn’t pushing for what he thinks is right and compromising when necessary, Obama holds compromise (process) in higher esteem than his own beliefs.
TJ
It’s a better question why are conservadems so whiny. Obama’s basically done everything their way. Romneycare, etc. Could it possibly be that they’re looking for scapegoats for the loss of the Independents? The fixation on PUMAs (do they still even exist?) seems to suggest that.
But as cleek says, people not getting things they desperately need (like jobs or healthcare) aren’t really going to be swayed by the argument “Why can’t you see how awesome we are?”
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@cleek: You’re correct about the volume and vehemence of the opposition. But, faced with that opposition, it becomes your job to fight it publicly and loudly. Not good-humoredly and aw-shucking– pointing fingers and naming names.
The problem is that the only promises Obama has worked hard to keep is the “end to partisan bickering” and “work with my political opponents”– and he’s willing to do that unilaterally, even if his opponents are not.
Which leads to precisely what we’re seeing int he polls. The people who are paying attention get angry with the side that doesn’t seem to be fighting. And the people who aren’t say “you guys all suck.”
Brien Jackson
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
This meme is never going to die is it?
Kryptik
@kwAwk:
I would have to argue that Bush never had to deal with a Congress as utterly geared to get as little done as a means of political strategy like Obama has. I cut him slack on certain things like Gitmo and the DADT repeal, because in many respects, the ball is in Congress’s court there. They’re the ones who are trying to pass laws denying any chance of Gitmo detainees being transferred stateside, and stonewalling attempts to fully repeal DADT. Yes, as far as the second, Obama COULD use an executive order, but executive orders can be overturned, and there’s a good chance that such an order will simply be used as further excuse by the GOP to not let anything on the matter get through Congress ever.
And they’re enabled enough by our sterling Blue Dogs that it’s either compromise or nothing.
Again, there are plenty of things Obama deserves criticism for. The whole Afghanistan situation is just becoming too drawn out, and seeing him waffle on the timetable is disheartening, amongst other things. But we’re seeing a perfect storm of bullshit in all honesty, and I prefer seeing most of the contempt and anger being aimed toward the two main perpetrators of this storm: The GOP/Tea Party crowd, and the media that consistently kowtows to them.
Nick
@cleek:
well…there’s you
CaffinatedOne
I’m one of those who are profoundly disappointed with the Democratic party. Obama is just a focal point since he’s really the single point of accountability given his status as head of the party.
My issue isn’t that “Obama promised us ponies!” or any sort of silliness, it’s that the party seems to be largely fine with the status quo and is more than happy to take advantage of structural roadblocks as excuses for not doing things. Given the historically huge margins that Democrats managed to get in congress over the past few cycles and the given present environment, the thin gruel that we’ve gotten is as good as it’s going to get.
Not abolishing or working around the filibuster as item 1) on the operational agenda set them up for failure, but more importantly it feels like they’re fine with that provided they can blame someone else.
Brien Jackson
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
No, it becomes your job to figure out a way to get shit done even in the face of that opposition.
This is basically the divide though; on the one hand you’ve got people who want to see Obama and Congressional Dems figure out how to get things done over Republicans and Blue Dogs, and on the other side you’ve got people who just want them to “fight.”
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
yeah, i messed up the majority/minority thing. doh.
Nick
@Singfoom:
Then you probably should’ve voted for Kucinich.
I’d imagine though you gave him a lot of credit and a lot of support when he decided, against popular opinion, to hold KSM’s trial in New York? I live in New York, that destroyed Obama’s reputation here.
cleek
@Nick:
wow. weak.
scav
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: Actually, I’m not 100% convinced the people answering polls are necessarily that tuned in — there’s no doubt a fair bit of bad economic times, instinctive kick the head-line incumbents mixed up in the stats. Low-information poll takers are even more plentiful on the ground than low-information voters, given that voting takes effort.
Brien Jackson
@cleek:
This is because:
1. No one gives a shit.
2. The media does an incredibly shitty job of explaining these things.
Up in Canada
Seems many of these comments are the choir telling each other don’t we all sing wonderfully. Well, this President has missed a few notes. We are getting deeper into Afghanistan and at the ten year mark no end in sight. I thought he at least would begin the process of ending these wars. Result of not ending our wars is a budget with no hope of addressing domestic problems.
One other missed note, appointing Simpson to review SS and Medicare with the purpose of balancing our war budget on the backs of these so-called entitlements. I would like to see someone explain how and why this guy was put on this commission.
Murc
@Brien Jackson
I would argue, as would, I think, others, that fighting the opposition is an integral PART of getting things done. If the forces opposing you are strong enough to stop you doing what you want to get done, doesn’t it logically follow that first you have to fight and defeat them before doing those things?
You can, of course, co-opt or buy off the opposition. That requires an opposition willing to go along with either to the extent you desire and/or the extent that it produces useful or better results than fighting them would, tho.
cleek
@Brien Jackson:
people give a shit about the consequences of the GOP’s obstruction. but, as usual, the Dems have agreed to collectively eat the blame for those consequences instead of making sure people understand what happened. it’s an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the GOP – “we want to extend UI benefits, but the GOP has stopped us!” they passed on the opportunity.
scav
o! et un joyeux 14 juilliet à tous et à bas les aristos! Aux barricades!
Singfoom
@Nick:
Kuchinich was my preferred candidate actually and I think he did great in the debates, but alas he is not “serious”. Since I was lambasted greatly for voting my actual beliefs and conscience in 2000 with Nader (my state went Democratic anyway), I went for the lesser of two evils.
I’m really sick of the hippie punching though, here and elsewhere (not you specifically, but in general). People have a right to be disappointed in Obama or the dems without being called firebaggers or non serious or shrill.
I don’t think the desire for the return of the rule of law to this country is non-serious or shrill. It’s the bedrock of our country’s values. With those compromised, I’m sorry, but the dems could pass a bill giving us free medical and a brick of gold and I’d still be disappointed because the foundation is cracked.
ErikaF
Didn’t have time to read all the comments, but here’s my opinion:
We’re in a age of rage in politics. The Right has perfected the art of using rage to get what they want. They image it, they sell it, they bathe in it. But the anger doesn’t stay on the right. It spreads throughout the society, and into the entire political process. When we see that the Right, raging against the Left, wins concessions, elections, and ratings, the only thing to assume is that we should be angry too. Then we’ll win concessions, elections and ratings. Besides, we’re mad at the idiots on both sides.
Obama ran on a platform of change and civility. But civility isn’t getting us ratings in the polls, and it makes us look weak. (Sorry, it’s a strong person that can resist anger in return, and there are very few strong people like that). Obama wants bipartisanship and compromise (probably in hopes of removing the evil partisan label of his actions), and we want stuff done. But the process of compromise and rage does tend to poison the fruit of the garden.
That, and a lot of the left thought that Obama was something that Obama never said he was, and now they’re sad.
Brien Jackson
@cleek:
The only major fight of Reid’s tenure as Minority Leader was the fight over privatizing Social Security, during which Reid kept every Democrat in the Senate in lockstep opposition to Bush.
Nick
@CaffinatedOne:
the is monumental bullshit that ignores everything from the amount of investment the Democratic Party put into stuff like high speed rail and alternative energy, to HCR, no matter how weak it was, to financial reform, to making it easier to pay for college, to winding down the war in Iraq to just this week more funding for PTSD for vets.
You can’t say, with a straight face, that they’re largely fine what the status quo and are not doing things. That’s a huge lie.
Brien Jackson
@cleek:
1. People might care about the consequences, but your average person doesn’t care enough about Congressional rules to understand the dynamic of the filibuster.
2. They can say that, but to make it stick you have to have it reinforced by the media narrative. But of course, the media never frames the story as “Republicans block UI extension,” they frame it as Democrats failing to pass it. I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong to say they should make the point more, it just won’t matter, because the media narrative is exponentially more influential in how people understand political debates and facts on the ground than “the bully pulpit” or whatever.
Nick
@Singfoom:
So you can’t honestly say you voted for Obama because you want “a return to the rule of law” if he was “the lesser of two evils”
You don’t have a right to be disappointed that you’re not getting something you were never promised. Hippies get punched because they are either purposely ignorant to politics or purposely try to recreate history so they don’t look stupid. You admitted you knew what you were voting for.
Then maybe you should be disappointed in the American people who either like or are indifferent, and (in the case of KSM trials) are openly hostile to the rule of law instead of an administration who gets raked every time they even attempt at even remotely restoring it.
Scott de B.
Coming in late here, but I think it’s partly due to the tail-end of interest-group politics. Lots of folks on the left have their pet issue and progress on other issues means nothing to them if they don’t get what they want on their #1 issue.
To that extent, accomplishing things can actually hurt Obama. For example, those for whom the public option was their #1 issue will hate him for the rest of the presidency no matter what he does, since health care is a done deal.
Brien Jackson
@Murc:
But what does that even mean? We’re not talking about a war here, we’re talking about getting votes in the Senate. Are Reid and McConnell going to play a game of checkers with the winner winning the rights to Scott Brown’s vote?
Singfoom
@Brien Jackson:
You’ve got a good point, the media might not cover it, but if the democrats made the GOP *ACTUALLY* filibuster everything and made them do it day after day, I think the message that the Democrats are trying to help normal people and the GOP is fucking that up would slowly filter out.
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
Godfuckingdamnitt not this bullshit again.
dms
Ah, yes, the ‘ole “if only everyone were as level-headed as I” lecture…again…and again…and again.
cat48
@madmatt:
Lincoln is NOT “scum”. A president always supports the incumbent who voted for the important things that were passed. Healthcare & the stimulus, etc. She may be too conservative, but SHE IS NOT scum. Halter would have been just like her as far as votes. He wouldn’t say he would vote for cardcheck or cap & trade the numerous times I saw him interviewed . I was born in that backward state they live in and unless you do; you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve visited there often. It’s very conservative and backward. It still baffles me that we have a Dem from there.
SIA
Some lefties wanted Obama to use his power, and by extension, “theirs”, to be the crap out of the GOP and other institutions that had wielded power corruptly and selfishly for 8 years. I recognize this desire in myself at times. This isn’t the whole explanation, but it’s part of it.
Obama is being gentlemanly; some on the left want a bloody knife fight.
“We” lost for 8 years, now we want some carnage.
Nick
@cleek:
sure, but I sure as hell ain’t gonna give you the satisfaction and even if I did, it wouldn’t change political reality by bitching here.
cleek
@Brien Jackson:
sometimes, narratives can be changed. but they surely can’t be changed if they’re not even challenged.
at the very least, fighting back could give the base something to cheer about.
Nick
@Singfoom:
They do make the GOP ACTUALLY filibuster everything. Unless, of course, you mean the dramatic Hollywood-type filibuster that isn’t really a filibuster and we’ve been over this a million times.
What was that Boston Globe article about last week about that study that showed facts don’t convince people they’re wrong, they just make them double-down on their wrongness?
Brien Jackson
@Nick:
But he saw the movie! Damnitt, he saw the movie!
Nick
@cleek:
Narratives change when those creating them decide it’s time to change. Once Obama is out of office, 10% unemployment will be a good thing.
No, the base wouldn’t cheer about it if they’re fighting and losing. They’d still bitch they were losing, otherwise they’d cheer everytime Obama takes down the GOP, which he does at least once a week…instead they ignore it, cause it isn’t enough, and as long as they aren’t winning, it doesn’t matter how hare he fights, it won’t be enough.
cleek
@Nick:
err…?
wow.
furioso ateo
@Nick:
And how many remote attempts have they made? The KSM trial and attempting to close Guantanamo are the only two that come to mind. You may have more but I doubt that list is longer than the list of acts this administration has taken to weaken the rule of law.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@Brien Jackson: Excuse me for speaking in terms too complex for you to comprehend. I’ll combine the two thoughts into one.
Once you’re established that you have intractable opposition after repeated attempts to negotiate, yes, you fight. Because the alternative is that you look weak and powerless.
When Lucy understands that you will kick something— that it will either be the football or her– she’s a lot less likely to pull it away.
@scav: I’m not convinced that polls are ‘all that’ either. But since John keeps saying that the only people who are unhappy with Obama are the lefty blogs, I wanted to begin with that point.
When you start losing support, the people who’ll erode first will be the heaviest partisans, because they follow the most closely and have the strongest convictions. You can conclude these people are not indicative of the electorate as a whole, but you do so at your peril.
Nick
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
This analogy does not work in the real world where Lucy wants you to kick her because it’s good for her reputation.
SIA
@kay:
(emphasis mine).
This is a very good point which gets at the crux of the matter. On the long Nelson-Wall St thread yesterday, Tom Hilton used the word “Immature” to describe a commenter’s “yes-but” position on Obama’s achievements.
__
I’m not going to write about the things I wish were different, though there are several. I just wish progressives could unite behind this president and work themselves instead of shrieking at Obama about everything. Christ.
Kerry Reid
@gnomedad: Or the emperor in “Amadeus” telling Mozart that his compositions have “too many notes.”
Tom
It’s part and parcel of the same “pox on both their houses”/”I want a pony” mentality that enabled Nader in 2000. I thought and hoped that after 8 years of W that that mentality was dead and buried. WRONG.
Redshirt
Nothing will ever be good enough for a large percentage of “liberals”, and thus we can rest assured in continuing Repuglican dominance.
But they’ll be pure, and their righteous protests will ring the sky with their furious purity.
scav
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: Well, Mr. Nuance, will you also admit there’s behavior in between eternal floor mat and def-com 1 face stamping 24/7 on all the channels? I don’t agree with the bulk of his choices, but I’ve seen a scarey face off the man once in while.
Allan
@ronrab:
That must be why his campaign posted the most incredibly detailed policy prescriptions of any presidential candidate in history on its website, including his secret plan to escalate in Afghanistan.
Allan
@ronrab:
Perhaps that is because we don’t expect better from right-wingers.
arguingwithsignposts
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
Analogy fail. The GOP as currently constituted will never be less likely to be intransigent assholes. That’s their entire modus operandi, their reason for existence, the thing that makes their tiny, shriveled excuses for souls continue.
What will you fight them with when you have at least five Dem senators who could give a rat’s ass about you getting your agenda passed as well? Will you threaten them with committee chairmanships? Sternly-worded letters? Primary opposition?
Good luck with all that.
Also, I’m getting really tired of the “Obama hasn’t fought back” line of argument. Study the president’s weekly addresses, his stump speeches, and how many times over the past 18 months he’s called the republicans out on being the party of no (recall, even, the time he took them to the woodshed at the Q&A session on C-SPAN).
You can say the WH isn’t staying on message, but it just isn’t true. The press doesn’t report it, but it’s not because Obama and his people haven’t been saying it.
cleek
@Redshirt:
what an odd thing to say, given the number of people here who say we have to STFU, stifle our complaints, and get behind Obama 100%.
that’s not a counter to the purity of your ironically-quoted “liberals”, it’s just a demand for a different kind of purity.
fuck that
Brien Jackson
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
Well hey, with deep, well thought out analogies like that, who could possibly disagree?
So how does this go, 30% of the Republican caucus votes for single-payer or Obama nukes Utah? Drops a carpetbomb on RNC headquarters? Outlaws indoor tanning? What?
Singfoom
@Nick:
Alright, I own up to being stupid about the filibuster. My modified comment about that would be that the Dems need to get the message out more. Anyway, more importantly,
You don’t have a right to be disappointed that you’re not getting something you were never promised. Hippies get punched because they are either purposely ignorant to politics or purposely try to recreate history so they don’t look stupid. You admitted you knew what you were voting for.
Bullshit, horseshit and shennanigans. How can you honestly tell me that Obama did not run on restoring the rule of law? That was the theme of almost every single one of his campaign speeches. I admit that I was nervous because of his FISA vote, but at the very least he stated he wanted to close Guantanamo and get rid of military commissions and such. Now a couple months ago he made a speech about a system of indefinite detention? I’m sorry, but maybe we parsed things differently and I understand that you’ll say that I’m making shit up.
Remember his five categories of terrorist prisioners?
1. Prisoners who will be tried in the federal courts;
2. Prisoners who will be tried through military commissions (though Obama said he intends to modify rules for military commissions set by the Bush administration);
3. Prisoners who have been ordered released by the federal courts (Obama will honor those orders, he said);
4. Prisoners who will be turned over to other countries;
5. Prisoners who cannot be tried in court or through commissions but who will not be released.
So how does restoring the rule of law sqaure with #5?
apostropher
Plenty of people have expounded on the civil liberties issue, where this administration has been at least as bad as the previous one. This can’t just be hand-waved away. Obama has left the Bush people in charge of both the Fed and the Department of Defense. The HCR package never confronted the real cost problems driven by the insurance companies, pharma companies, and hospitals/doctors. There’s your post above about declining salaries for the middle class while Wall Street is back to swimming in (what used to be our) money. No jobs programs aimed at rebuilding out infrastructure.
I know it’s tempting to say that the disillusioned are just a bunch of unrealistic whiners. But fixing what’s broken with this country–and so very, very much is broken in this country–is going to mean being willing to take on the industries and institutions that are thriving in the current arrangement. So far, Obama has shown practically no interest in doing this and, in fact, seems to have preserving those institutions as the cornerstone of every major legislative package they’ve pushed through. The stuff that benefits you and me is almost all peripheral.
I want to believe. I really do. But I’m not at all encouraged. I’ll vote for him in 2012 because there isn’t anything else realistic on the menu and I’ll vote Democratic in the midterms for the same reason. Just don’t ask me to pretend that the big packages that have passed are great legislation. They are largely exercises in missing the point and failing to address the root problems. I realize that given the opposition, getting anything at all passed is an accomplishment. But let’s appraise it all honestly in that light.
BrianM
I have a somewhat different point of view. Earlier, Davis X. Machina said that what Taylor called “a historic opportunity to implement generational policy change” has happened “three times in American history—1787-89,1861-65, and 1933-36—in other words, after an earthquake.” Since I grew up before it, I’d argue that the “Reagan revolution” was a fourth. Reagan managed to shepherd a big, big change in American’s default assumptions. I think Obama agreed with me: recall the campaign flap when he said nice things about Reagan? He wasn’t talking about Reagan’s policy; he was talking about changing tone and assumptions.
I thought Obama had a similar potential to become a “Great Communicator” and shepherd a similar change. A lot of people did as well — that’s why he hit the limelight with his 2004 convention speech. While he campaigned as fairly centrist on policy, I don’t think all those Change posters were interpreted as — or were meant to be interpreted as — about policy. They were about Obama reversing Reagan.
His policy record looks decent. He’s made no headway reversing Reagan. That’s my disappointment. He’s got it tougher than Reagan did – the media was not as liberal then as it’s conservative now, the Democrats then were not the opposition the Republicans are now, and there wasn’t 24-hour cable news. (Ironically, I bet Reagan benefited from the very Fairness Doctrine his FCC abolished.)
But while he’s got it tougher than Reagan, he doesn’t seem to be trying nearly as hard. Before the election, he gave thoughtful, potentially mind-changing speeches like the post-Wright speech on race. Since then, the ones I can think of have been directed at foreign audiences (Nobel prize speech, speech to Islamic nations).
To my mind, reversing Reagan is as important as the policy successes, so that’s why I’m somewhat disappointed in Obama. (I’m also not wild about his record on executive power.)
On the other hand, as General Stuck points out, Reagan lost power in the midterms and was not nearly so popular as he’s remembered. So maybe, just maybe, Obama is working on policy while he can. For the next two years, it looks like policy will be even more blocked than it is now. Maybe then we’ll get the Fireside Speeches and a concentration on Great Communication. Some might see that as weak sauce. I’m not so sure.
Nick
@cleek: wow, you completely missed his point
scav
@cleek: there’s a difference between reasoned complaints and frantic fact-free whining about unattainable goals. So yeah, à bas to purity pushers on all sides.
Murc
@Brien Jackson
You’re asking for specifics? Okay. IMO, you have two ways that you ‘fight,’ the short term and the long term.
In the short term, you often are forced to rely on the aforementioned co-opting and buying off. Leverage can be pretty limited, especially against people who are not vulnerable, not in your party, and whose earmarks and pork will be bundled into gigantic spending bills you either can’t strip out (if you’re, say, Majority Leader) or can’t veto (if you’re the President.)
Long term? You try to address the structural imbalances and specific people who are balking you. You need 60? Change things so you need 51. Members of your own party are fucking with you? Who are their biggest boosters in their home state? Can they be primaried successfully, or, if not, can powerful local interests who perhaps share your goals be brought to move on them?
And you know, maybe you’ll FAIL at all that. Sometimes you fail. You lose elections or enough people in office just won’t cooperate or you literally don’t have a scrap of leverage. And when that happens you have to resort to making your case all over again from the beginning. You get up and say ‘This is why we failed, and this is who is responsible.’ Then you name names.
Oh, and to shoehorn two topics into one reply… I see the filibuster thing has risen from its grave. Serendipitously enough, Sebastian Holsclaw over at ObWi has made a post that basically says ‘the Democrats COULD force a ‘real’ filibuster and/or maneuver around the Republicans, they’re just lazy.’ Anyone know if that’s true or if he’s just crazy? I sort of lean towards the latter just because everyone remotely knowledegable seems to agree that it just takes one Republican to hold the floor endlessly, but he’s been right before when others were wrong.
Redshirt
@cleek: I’m not going to put you in a box, but in general, when you are constantly under attack not only from a dedicated opposition, but also from your own side, your chances of success are slim.
Justify it to yourself anyway you like, but this is why Democrats are unable and will continue to be unable to set the agenda in this country – because they eat each other first chance they get.
Case in point, the many threads on this subject here.
CaffinatedOne
@Nick
I agree that we do indeed get small goodies that don’t offend the powers that be (VA funding, HSR improvements), but that’s hardly much of a challenge or change to the status quo. There aren’t really entrenched interests who seriously fight these things.
The war in Iraq was already winding down since we’d decided collectively that we’d “won” and our press effectively moved on. Now, in case you were worried that we might actually rein in the military industrial establishment, you needn’t since we can move those troops and cash to Afghanistan. I’m sure that we’ll settle on some acceptable definition for “win” there any time now.
The HCR and Financial reform bills are the ones that potentially challenge powerful interests, and in both cases, oddly, we ended up with toothless bills that nibble around the edges and fail to address the root problems with the systems in question.
The one item that you have me on is the college lending changes. That was an indefensible giveaway to the finance industry that they got rid of.
Kerry Reid
@r€nato: Exactly. The left and right in this country are united in one thing – privileging feeling over fact. “My fee-fees — c’est moi!”
So even though Obama and Congress pushed through the largest social-policy reform measure in decades, it’s not enough, dammit! Because “public option” was the secret word that was going to make the left FEEL better. It’s not about what can be done — it’s about how it makes you FEEL!
Just as the teabaggers FEEL that they’re being screwed out of taxes as “reparations” for those lazy unAmerican darkies. The facts don’t support that — but who cares? They FEEL like they’ve been screwed, therefore it must be true!
We live in a fucking kindergarten nation.
And again I say: It’s a goddamn good thing that the civil rights movement wasn’t left in the hands of the pissy-pants limp-dicked whiny white professional-victim progressive set. They clearly lack the stamina and intestinal fortitude to endure, oh, 150 years of “betrayal” and “setbacks” on the road to victory.
I say this as someone who has been very active in women’s issues for 30 years — and who has never really seen too many leftier-than-thou dudes around to do the grunt work. (But then again — movement shitwork equals women’s work.) Most of them were too busy whining about how this politician or that one had “sold out” and it was all a scam! So pardon me if I don’t feel any sympathy for people who got their fee-fees hurt and their panties in a twist because the world isn’t ALL BETTER for them less than two years into an administration.
I mean shit — can’t you go back to the original intent of the founders and at least give the black dude 3/5ths the amount of time the white presidents get before being declared failures?
Singfoom
@Nick:
That’s straight from Obama’s 08 campaign literature. So you can tell me how I can’t be disappointed and I call bullshit.
The executive branch of this country is still denying habeas rights to the people in class #5 he laid out in that speech. That is in direct contradiction to the above statement.
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/CounterterrorismFactSheet.pdf
So I can be disappointed and I was promised this as a part of his restoring the rule of law.
cat48
@cleek:
Nick
@Singfoom:
what campaign speeches were you listening to?
For the record, chew on this;
madmatt
Its not enough any more for the corporate scum to win, the whores in the senate and wh actually work to punish citizens with bills that force them to buy crappy products…whether from banks or ins co’s!
apostropher
@cat48: You’re mixing apples and oranges. “61% of Obama voters were white” is not the same as “61% of white voters voted for Obama”.
Davis X. Machina
@BrianM:
He appears not to be trying as hard largely because he’s not succeeding. We would know he tried hard enough only if he succeeds.
There is, for better or for worse, no ex-ante way in politics, especially so in campaigns — and we live in the age of the permanent campaigns — to determine a correct course of action. If something, it’s good, well done, brilliant, even if it’s bad, inept or stupid, because it works.
MBunge
“Plenty of people have expounded on the civil liberties issue, where this administration has been at least as bad as the previous one.”
1. Expecting ANY President to limit his power is silly. That stuff has to come from Congress.
2. When, exactly, was Obama supposed to engage in a death struggle over civil liberties? While the economy was collapsing and he could barely get any sort of stimulus through Congress? In the middle of the health care debate?
Mike
Mike
@Ash Can:
True. But since it’s the center that’s lost faith in Obama, that’s also the problem isn’t it?
Nick
@CaffinatedOne: Only someone who reads too much FDL or HuffingtonPost and lets them think for them thinks FinReg only “nibbles around the edges”
even Elizabeth Warren thinks its a good bill that does a lot.
madmatt
@Kerry Reid:
So I am wrong for feeling like I was raped by being forced to buy an ins policy I can’t afford, with a deductible I can’t afford, all while the scum at wellpoint get to take 30% off the top before they even get around to just denying my claims….gee thanks for explaining that sucking corporate cock is the most important thing dems in the senate can do.
apostropher
Expecting ANY President to limit his power is silly.
Expecting any president not to have lists of American citizens marked for assassination without trial is not silly. It doesn’t take any sort of death struggle not to do that.
cleek
@cat48:
it says 61% of Obama’s voters were white, not that Obama got 61% of all white voters.
arguingwithsignposts
@Singfoom:
How can you give habeas rights to prisoners who *cannot be tried* but *will not* be released?
I’m confused here, and just asking for clarification. Also, you seem to be saying that he has helped restore habeas rights to the first four classes of prisoners. is that right?
And, FWIW, not closing Guantanamo is not on Obama. The Congress voted almost unanimously not to allow those scary moooslims to be moved to a supermax facility in Illinois.
Allan
@madmatt:
Yes. You are wrong.
Nick
@apostropher:
actually it is since Obama isn’t the first to do this, and the American citizens “marked for assassination” are those who openly admit to fighting for enemies, not grandma going to the doctor. Have you never heard the joke that Presidents get “three-free assassinations?”
arguingwithsignposts
@madmatt:
It was explained in the thread yesterday that the new HCR regs require 85 percent of premium dollars be spent on care, not overhead. I may have heard that wrong. Anyone else is free to correct that.
chopper
@Taylor:
that’s about the dumbest thing i’ve ever read. democrats and republicans agree on that.
liberals, like most people in this country, suffer from two painful maladies – 1) i want it and i want it yesterday and 2) a lack of understanding of history.
this has led to liberals demanding ponies, ‘just like real democrats used to give out’. problem is, those ponies never actually existed. people think that the comprehensive safety net we now enjoy burst forth fully formed from the brow of roosevelt. truth is social security, medicare, you name it, originally covered a small minority of americans. it took decades of incremental change to create those systems of coverage that we have today.
yet pissed-off liberals wanted obama to overhaul the entire medical care system in this country in a far more comprehensive manner than FDR ever did, or could have done, “just like FDR would have done”.
we’re the richest, most powerful country on earth. so naturally if we really wanted to change something we could do it with the snap of our fingers. or so the belief goes.
Marc
Bah, someone else using my name here. Dibs!
It’s not that complicated. A lot of us are commited Democrats, and the endless whining and bitching and blaming Obama for all problems has pissed us off.
When something bad happens a lot of the online left automatically blames Obama instead of being willing to assign any blame at all to his opposition. This is stupid strategy, stupid tactics, and demoralizing as hell.
I’m now working to get local Dems elected – and they are far better than the people running against them. Hell, they’re actually very good on an objective level.
The online snipers are actively assisting the Republicans at this point, whatever their intentions. So…how about maybe spending some effort, say, talking about how Bush screwed things up or about how the Republican candidates are really crazy? As opposed to how Obama has disappointed you today?
Davis X. Machina
Don’t buy it, and take the extra hit on your taxes. It’s slated to be $695 or 2.5 percent of income. You’ll come out ahead, and have massive rebel/martyr cred.
Brien Jackson
@Nick:
This argument I really, really don’t get. The two most important aspects of FinReg survived.
But I guess they attached their fee-fees to Brown-Kaufman, so now the whole thing is shit.
Brien Jackson
@madmatt:
Yes. That’s depressingly stupid.
Nick
@madmatt:
If you got around to actually reading the bill, and not the boneheaded analysis of a bill by progressives whose fee-fees got hurt because their beloved public option didn’t get passed, you’d see that none of this would happen.
1.) if you can’t afford the policy, you get government subsidies
2.) HCR mandates a certain amount of premiums be used for payouts
3.) They can’t deny you.
Nick
@Brien Jackson:
Brown-Kaufman is the new public option.
It also was almost certainly headed for being overturned by the courts as unconstitutional
scav
@madmatt: no one said you can’t feel what you feel and no one said it’s wrong for you to use that to get out and fight for things. Or, at least, no one should have said that. But one (’cause I hope it’s not personal) should engage the brain too when evaluating the situation. Christmas after the wrapping paper is scattered about the room is always a bit of a letdown from Christmas Eve with all the neatly wrapped boxes under the sparkly tree. And some of the shit under the now rapidly dessicating and somewhat tawdry tree may actually be close to what one asked Santa for but it may be unassembled. And yes, Auntie Nasty did send shit brown socks for the zillionty-zillioth year.
ETA: Standing about protesting and vowing never to participate in Christmas ever again on the strength of Santa not living up to snuff may not be the preferred action to take.
colby
@Nick:
Or in the real world where the object isn’t to just kick ANYTHING, but to actually move the ball forward.
In other words, calling Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe and Ben Nelson useless liars will be cathartic, but it won’t get any new policies passed. And that, I thought, was the goal…
Davis X. Machina
Like the public option, Brown-Kaufman is already a compromise. The only legislation I could support — and we could have it, too, if Obama actually wanted it, or just worked hard enough — would nationalize the big banks.
That’s what happens when you negotiate.
No Surrender! Kill the Bill!
Marc
The civil liberties issue is another one where the progressive sniper squad has their priorities utterly wrong. We have the Cheney-like demagogues – successfully – lobbying for all torture all the time. Large majorities of the public support this. So Obama came in, announced that Gitmo would be closed, and ran into a buzzsaw. The response of the useless online left: blame Obama and claim he’s the same as Bush.
Executive power is a different matter: Obama is doing there what presidents do. But on the subject of torture the picture is pretty clear to me: he has the right intentions, is struggling with a hostile public and a fanatical opposition. And the so-called progressive snipers can only be bothered to see problems with him – not with, say, his torture-loving enemies.
Singfoom
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s my very point. You cannot. The very definition of that class #5 removes the idea of habeas. Which is my beef. I think that criminals that commit terrorism should pay for their crimes. But those need to be proved in a court of law. Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo is on Congress right now, I get that….
As for the first four classes, I’m not really arguing that he has restored their habeas rights. It’s just that the idea of the rule of law makes #5 just like something out of bizarro world…
Singfoom
@Marc:
I’ll continue to progressive snipe your dear leader. If he had actually decided to “look backward” instead of “looking forward” and tried to prosecute the criminals in our previous administration, maybe he would have gotten somewhere.
I want his torture supporting enemies out of power if they are in power. If they were part of the previous administration, I want them in jail. Obama has demurred against going after them.
And what does the fact that majorities of public opinion support torture have to do with anything? The majority is wrong wrong wrong.
So until he goes after those who committed crimes in *MY* name from the previous administration, he’s complicit in their crimes. Go ahead though, keep punching us progressive snipers, because we’re the problem.
We’re stopping the DOJ from investigating the previous administrations criminal torture. We’re the ones holding up Congress from closing Guantanamo. If only we’d stop sniping and get behind dear leader, everything would work….
Tom65
@madmatt:
Good god, go read the fucking bill.
Allan
@Singfoom:
So THAT’S why Bush/Cheney kept referring to indefinite detention and torture as the Singfoom Strategy.
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
Maybe, the much more likely scenario is that they would have failed to get a conviction (which would mean everyone gets off scot-free forever) and sucked all of the energy out of any attempt to get anything done with regards to domestic policy, more or less guaranteeing a return of power to Republicans in 4 years.
edmund dantes
@Singfoom: He’s actually committing his own crimes by not going after them, but oh no, what will his opposition say?
Ummm… pretty much the same thing they say even when he does what they want.
kay
@Nick:
Elizabeth Warren isn’t as credible as the brand new crop of cable -internet carnival barkers who are selling “populism” for big bucks.
She’s only been slogging along on consumer protection for 30 years, but she never delivers a “smack down”, so she’s a weakling.
Let’s face it. Most of them had never heard of Elizabeth Warren until 18 months ago.
Nick
@Marc: The whole argument over Gitmo reminds me of Bill Clinton and gays in the military. A new president runs into the fire to achieve a progressive goal, but gets criticized from the right for daring to mess with the beautiful fire, the center for being stupid enough to walk into it and the left for not putting it out.
arguingwithsignposts
@Singfoom:
a) “dear leader” is incredibly offensive, and smacks of the type of ad hominem attack that gets Glenn Greenwald kicked around a lot around these parts, and
b) I can’t believe you honestly think that if he’d gone after the Bush administration he “would have gotten somewhere.”
Singfoom
@Allan:
Lol. And in the name of every other citizen. I like the snark though…
Marc
@Murc:
True, but that’s one of those points that proves too much. Yes, Obama and the Democrats face an unprecedented level of obstruction from the minority party–but isn’t that more fairly laid at the feet of the Republicans, not used as evidence that Obama has failed? And, for that matter, I think it makes the successes he has had all the more remarkable. He passed the most sweeping health care reform (and the most sweeping expansion of entitlements) since Medicare without one damn vote from the Republicans, and he still got it done.
To be fair, the Democrats also enjoy a historically unusual level of ideological cohesion within their own caucus–even Ben Nelson, who I make no excuses for, has nothing on the Dixiecrats who killed the anti-lynching bill or opposed civil rights. But the all-out obstruction from Republicans and the anti-majority rules of the Senate more than make up for that.
The Senate is the problem, folks.
Kerry Reid
@madmatt:
Uh, you do realize that one of the Firebagger complaints is that the healthcare reform provisions don’t kick in soon enough, right? So what you’re paying now isn’t really applicable to what you’ll be paying once the major provisions kick in?
And under those provisions, your insurance company has to devote 85% of the premiums you pay to them in actual healthcare costs, or they have to kick the balance back to consumers?
You could shop around for a cheaper plan, I guess. But what if you have a pre-existing condition and they want to deny you coverage? That’s terrible that people get denied coverage for that. Why, there oughta be a law prohibiting that! And maybe some exchanges. Or government subsidies to help lower-income people purchase insurance.
Oh never mind — I see Nick already addressed all this. But if your mind is made up, why should anyone confuse you with the facts? Facts Never! Fee-Fees 4-Ever!
Snark aside — I agree that it would be helpful if some of these provisions kicked in sooner. But as someone pointed out in the Daou thread yesterday — it took South Korea over 15 years to move to single-payer government healthcare, and it took Canada over 30.
Nick
@Brien Jackson: Who would have pardon everyone he sought to have convicted and we’d be back to square one with no return to the rule of law.
But hey, Singfoom would be happy.
No, actually he wouldn’t be because Obama would have failed to effectively convince people of whatever.
Allison W.
Here we go again. Just a few things that really bother me about Liberals:
1. When anyone writes an article asking why Liberals aren’t happy with Obama, the first thing those Liberal cry is that they are being blamed for Obama’s problems.
2. Any attempt to criticize the Left on anything is painted as hippie punching. Even though the criticism is very constructive.
3. Any legislation that crosses Obama’s desk that isn’t approved by Liberal elites and their fans is seen (in their eyes) as a personal attack on Liberals and pandering to the Right.
4. Liberals assume that what they care about is what the rest of the country cares about. I see sprinkled in this thread that people are unhappy about his record on the rule of law – uhm, Americans don’t care. Civil liberties? hard to say he’s not doing anything when I could find numerous articles showing what he’s done for the gay community. No DADT and DOMA aren’t repealed yet and if you actually understood this country, its history, the opposition and the law, there is no way in hell you would think that these would be rectified in his first 1/2 of his term.
4. No partial credit. Liberals give him an F because the stimulus wasn’t enough. Others are glad that he was able to get that much money that went towards a lot of progressive issues. Liberals give him an F on HCR when no other Dem president got one passed. None. No one. Not even close. Liberals give him an F on everything just because he made comprises in order to get most of what he wanted. Know what happens to presidents who don’t compromise? they leave office with an approval rating in the 20’s, two wars, savaged international relations, a tanked economy and a public that still blames you for the country’s problems almost 2 years since you left office.
5. They are hypocrites. It’s okay for Obama to stomp on people to get Liberals policies passed, but it wasn’t okay when bush did it. Another: Feingold was given a pass for bragging that tea partiers support him. Obama gets slammed for supporting an incumbent Dem who voted with the party most of the time. Tea partier? okay A conservadem? he’s going to hell.
Liberals seem to think they are the center of Obama’s universe. That he wakes up with the intent to screw them over. That everything he does should be about them and for them. That his ratings are down because he has not made his agenda all about them. Sorry darlings, Obama promised to be president of all America. It isn’t all about you and it isn’t all about the Right. There are others living in this country who don’t want what you want and they must be respected also. You have every right to criticize him but you do not have the right to gloss over everything he has done. If you want to be taken seriously, you must acknowledge his successes as well as his failures.
And since my entire post is a complaint about Liberals I must include the following disclaimers:
No one is telling you to shut up and not criticize the president. No one is blaming you for his problems. This criticism does not apply to all Liberals – Last i heard, 86% of Liberal Dems still approve of the president.
ONE MORE: Not intending to channel Sharon Angle here, but you must learn to make lemons of lemonade. Like someone else mentioned here, Obama is building a foundation that Liberals should add to as the years go by. Not dismiss them. Make things better, don’t move on to the next best thing (only to make the same complaints later). Obama is your best chance at fulfilling your agenda, don’t be fools and let it pass you by.
Hugin & Munin
Then we are all agreed: the real problem in this country is Liberals. Of course, this also validates the idea that the country is center-right, but hey.
Marc
Oh, and @cleek:
Nobody literally, actually wishes for a magic pony either, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t just as unrealistic.
Singfoom
@arguingwithsignposts:
Being labelled a “progressive sniper” and told my priorities are completely messed up is pretty offensive to me. So I responded in like tone. My apologies.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m just naive but I think they would have gotten somewhere. Why does everyone in this country give up on our laws?
They broke the law. It’s pretty clear. They ordered people to be tortured. Using methods we called torture until we did it. Sure, they crafted legal bullshit to try to shield them.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. Just because justice is difficult to acheive and it would be hard politically and cause problems with other parts of his agenda, it’s the *RIGHT* thing to do.
Allison W.
@kay:
Since when is Elizabeth Warren weak? EVERY LEFTIE SITE HAS PUSHED HER AS A HERO OF THE PEOPLE FOR THE PAST 18 MONTHS – NOW that she’s not bashing the administration she’s weak?
It is not just the MSM that has pushed her. It is every single liberal blog.
cleek
@Marc:
no doubt.
but, are we allowed to criticize dickheads like Nelson, or Lieberman (who is not a Dem, but is required to play one for anything to pass), or the rest of the Blue Dogs ? wouldn’t that “sniping” embolden and embiggen the GOP ?
@Marc:
hyperbole/strawman noted.
kay
@SIA:
It’s true. I don’t respect it. I thought liberals overplayed the public option’s importance, but I saw it’s value, and I would have been absolutely happy to continue working on health care reform.
I would have gone to my statehouse, I would have petitioned HHS in the rule-writing process, I would have paid for a positive ad that went something like “we have reform, now we need a publicly run insurance option”. I think it would have been popular.
None of that happened. They ran off to start a fund to punish Senators.
I’ll donate and work for OFA because at least they have some positive goal and momentum. I’m not joining up with a group of people who bitch incessantly and can’t stick with anything longer than 2 weeks.
furioso ateo
@Marc: This is wrong. I don’t mean the Gitmo thing, I actually give the President credit for that, as well as the KSM trial.
Even the things he doesn’t need Congress for he either hasn’t done anything to change or has made actively worse. In federal court cases his DOJ still tries the State Secrets tactic in order to keep the accused from being able to build a defense. He is expanding the program of shipping “terrorists” to prisons outside of the country (notably Bagram) where they have no access at all to a court system. The most brazen thing is that the administration is now on the record in openly gunning for an American citizen. Who has not been accused or been tried for any crime. That’s called assassination. And there’s plenty of examples that I’m missing here as to his civil liberties record. So spare us the shit about how Obama is “doing his best” to strengthen civil liberties.
scav
@Allison W.: ahem, yes, with the caveat that even liberals come in odd lots (in all senses possible) and not all of them are threatening to boycott Christmas.
Nick
@Hugin & Munin: No, the real problem in this country is it’s people…but liberals are a problem because they can’t seem to recognize that
Brien Jackson
@Hugin & Munin:
This nonsense is just getting old, so let’s get something straight. America isn’t a center-right country, it isn’t a center-left country, it’s an infantile country. Americans want social insurance programs, social welfare programs that take care of them (and not those strapping young bucks abusing the system, doncha know), they want an incredibly large military with expensive toys, they want unlimited access to healthcare, but also low healthcare costs, they want good schools, good infrastructure, and good public services. They also want impossibly low taxes at every level of government. And no budget deficits.
Did I miss anything?
Kerry Reid
@Singfoom:
And no president does the right thing when it comes to those issues. See Executive Order 9066. See Lincoln suspending habeas corpus. See Clinton and extraordinary rendition.
Again: we’re an imperialist/capitalist nation built on genocide and slavery. If we’re “a country of laws” and “civil liberty,” it’s almost by accident, and by dint of lots of very hard work that took a lot of time and required a lot of very unpalatable compromises along the way. (The white suffragists requiring Ida B. Wells and other African-American women to walk at the back of their parade is one small example. FDR putting Japanese-Americans into internment camps, refusing to raise the quota for Jewish immigrants from Europe, and cutting deals with Dixiecrats to back-burner antilynching legislation in order to get New Deal economic programs passed are larger examples.)
I’m sorry, but I just don’t get where this whole American exceptionalism/shining-city-on-the-hill, we-are-a-nation-that-cares-about-individual-liberty crap comes from. Certainly not from the historical record.
Note that I’m not saying that abridgment of civil liberties is good. It’s not, duh. But it’s been something that large swaths of Americans have accepted for a long time without protest, and have in fact decided is necessary in order to keep their “freedom” intact.
Look at the polls supporting the Arizona immigration law. Gee, sure would be nice if Obama’s DoJ would take that one on. But of course, he’s too much of a pussy and a sell-out to do that, right?
scav
@Brien Jackson: well, only that they want it immediately. :)
arguingwithsignposts
@Singfoom:
Obviously, civil liberties and especially the torture debate are important. But this is one of those areas where the Right thing to do may not be the best thing to do at the time.
Sure, Obama could have prosecuted the Bush Administration officials responsible for torturing enemy combatants, spending untold amounts of US treasure and political capital doing so over the entire course of his presidency (with countless appeals from the torturers in question) and risked NO movement on health care reform, stimulus spending, financial regulation or any other item on his agenda.
Nevermind that those other items *directly* affect the lives of US citizens *right now.*
I know the Ben Franklin quote, and I’m not saying I don’t agree with your general sentiment, but sometimes you have to choose one of a number of shitty options, and I think Obama chose the best of the shitty options available wrt the torture question.
ETA: What I’m saying is, yes, he could have gambled on prosecutions and hoped it would have the effect you think it would have. But that’s a HUGE gamble in the face of the evil that is the GOP. A huge gamble with lives at stake.
Brien Jackson
@scav:
Well there’s also their opinions on regulatory matters, but that seemed a bit tedious. :)
Allison W.
Sorry one more:
Not one single Liberal hero in history, the present and the future would have brought charges on cheney or bush. Not a single one. but let’s pretend it happened, here’s how it would go:
Charges brought. MSM spends 24/7 analyzing what this will do for Obama’s numbers. FOX and other conservative outlets spend 24/7 crying foul. Not one media outlet that reaches the mainstream spends time on the meaningfulness and necessity of the charges. Trial starts and every person charged claims executive privilege, the 5th amendment or just plain lies to protect others. A dozen or Dems in congress would side with the GOP on this and will convince the larger public that this is a witch hunt thereby ruining any chances of Obama pushing his pagenda – think it won’t happen? you must have been sleeping for the past 2 years. No one is convicted or some lowly nobody is scapegoated and cheney and bush go back to their mansion. The Right will continue to denounce Obama calling for his impeachment over his mccarthy style witch hunt. The Left STILL remains disappointed in Obama because even though he went after the last administration he didn’t get a conviction – Remember, NO PARTIAL CREDIT.
Marc
Your dear leader comment is a sign of how lost you are SIngfoom. The opposition to Obama is nuts, full stop. You can’t be bothered to even mention this. It’s all Obama fail, all false equivalences. That’s my point, not “dear leader” worship. The fact that you can’t – apparently – even understand the argument I’m making indicates how you’ve lost the plot. There is a difference between “Gitmo is a mess to unwind” and “I love Gitmo”.
So your substantive argument appears to be that Obama is a failure because he didn’t indict Bush for war crimes. That’s not a small request or a simple thing to do, and that points to yet another major issue with the online left. You seem to assume that this is a point-and-click decision. How, precisely, would this work? How would you avoid dealing with the inevitable firestorm?
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
That’s fine, and I don’t really have a problem with people who want Obama to pursue prosecution of Bush administration abuses more vigorously. I do wish, however, that people like you would admit a few things.
1. This would basically be unprecedented. No American official has seriously been charged with war crimes or ever held responsible for abuses or atrocities. That doesn’t invalidate your argument in any way, it just needs to be acknowledged.
2. These aren’t easy cases. Bush stocked himself up with people who understood the beauracracy quite well, and they covered their tracks expertly. Uncovering malfeasance and proving it to a jury isn’t going to be a cake-walk.
3. Prosecutors decline to prosecute people they think are guilty because they don’t feel they can secure a conviction all the time. Jack McCoy is a fictional character, and real life doesn’t work like a scripted television show.
Marc
@cleek:
Of course we are, but that isn’t the important question here. The question is, when is it productive to criticize them (or Obama) and when is it just liberal wallowing, purity-trolling, or circular firing-squadding?
And what is the most productive strategy for advancing liberal issues? I don’t think it’s going to be bitching about the president who’s done more to advance them than anyone since LBJ or FDR.
Going after conservatives and conservadems (in races where a more loyal dem can hold the seat) and abolishing the filibuster would do a lot more to open up the chokepoints that are limiting Obama’s options.
Pixie
/agree w/Singfoom
Obama campaigned on restoring rule of law and now we have the “look forward, not backward” policy for crimes of war, torture, etc. (This doesn’t apply to whistleblowers of course)
I get so tired of hearing that we can never hold someone to account because 1. we have other, more IMPORTANT issues facing our country atm or 2. we can’t criminalize politics.
The hard truth to me seems to be that whether Democrat or Republican, the political elite are more concerned with covering up their own crimes by ensuring they are NEVER investigated under any circumstance. Until someone with some real political balls gets elected and makes this an issue, then I don’t think we’ll ever truly get back to the rule of law.
General Stuck
“No Liberal hero in history” Well, that’s it, I can’t take it no more. Just going to turn off my computer and have myself a good cry./internet progressive.
arguingwithsignposts
@Marc:
For the record, I maintain it is never unproductive to criticize that wanker Lieberman.
Allison W.
Promises Kept:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-kept/
Compromised:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/compromise/
Not kept:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-broken/
Notice promises not kept fills one page. Promises kept fills 6 pages and his compromises fill 2 pages. Why when presented with these facts do people do people claim he is not done anything? oh that’s right: cheney and bush aren’t in jail. good luck finding a primary candidate who will run against Obama using that.
Marc
Cleek – sorry, I’m had enough of arguments like yours. It isn’t a goddamn strawman – there is a major fraction of the online left which invests energy only in attacking Obama. That’s the issue – a complete lack of interest in actually looking at what his opposition is doing and their role in the problem.
We’re going to end up with a collection of fanatical knuckle-draggers getting elected in November if people can’t learn to recognize friend from foe. I’m not asking for Obama worship, just the ability to focus fire where it will be useful.
Singfoom
@arguingwithsignposts:
I hear you. It’s a difficult call. I understand that pursuing prosecutions would have removed all of the oxygen and affected those legislative areas that you’ve mentioned.
Here’s my problem with the strategy that has been adopted:
By not pursuing prosecutions (beyond those at the bottom that were just following orders), he’s continued to tacitly endorse the idea that the people at the top play by a different set of rules.
This applies to politicians, CEOs, the rich, what have you. I really think something is off track in this country and it is centered in the concentration of wealth that is then applied to political power.
I’m sure I’ll be hated all around, but I would have rather they had tried and failed for prosecutions and gotten none of what has been accomplished just for the example of someone doing right and pursuing justice over politics and providing an example of someone at the top doing the right thing.
Hugin & Munin
Quick, somebody tell me which party is the liberal party so I can vote against it.
Oh wait, I’m a Democrat. I already do!
arguingwithsignposts
@Pixie:
Under your definition, we’ve never been under the rule of law. I swear, it’s like there’s this alternative universe where U.S. politicians never broke a treaty, ordered the slaughter of innocents, manufactured a war, or did shit against the “rule of law” other than Richard fucking Nixon.
Davis X. Machina
…..starting with the ur-Democrat, Andrew Jackson.
cat48
@cleek:
Brien Jackson
@Pixie:
That makes sense. Of course, “restore” implies a return to some past norm, so perhaps you could give us an example of a major US policy maker being held accountable for war crimes or other such atrocities in the past?
Nick
@Brien Jackson:
Ironically enough, in 20 years, Jack McCoy often declines to prosecute people he knows is guilty for lack of evidence…in fact, most episodes consist of Jack and his ADAs trying to find that evidence while everyone outside screams “WHY AREN’T YOU PUTTING THAT MURDERED IN JAIL!”
Singfoom
@Marc:
My dear leader comment was borne out of frustration and if you noticed above thread, I apologized for that tone. It was made in return for being called a progressive sniper.
Obama has made great strides. I think he compromises too much, or rather, compromises before he needs to. But I recognize the difficulties of acheiving the legislative agenda given the math in the senate right now.
It’s not binary. It’s not love or hate. I was hopeful about Obama, now I’m disappointed. Is all this shit his fault?
I’ll be the first to say absolutely not. It’s mostly the Senate. However, I haven’t seen him use his bully pulpit to try to get the public behind him as much as I think he should.
I campaigned for the man. That was the first time I ever did *ANYTHING* for *ANY* campaign. So my disappointment about the civil liberties and for what I perceive as not pursuing justice is pretty deep. So yeah, HCR is great (I’m not so impressed because single payer is the way to go) and Financial Reg will pass probably (It still won’t stop another bubble), but I can’t get excited about him anymore or the agenda when the basic rule of law is at the same place as it was….
Marc
@arguingwithsignposts: Agreed.
By the way, that’s the “other Marc” at 215. (Though I don’t see any straw men either. I guess only Obama’s critics are allowed to use hyperbole?)
cleek
@Marc:
and who decides which category a particular criticism falls into ? the hardline party loyalists ?
oh, no doubt. but the filibuster isn’t going away, and the Senate makeup is not going to get any better any time soon. so, what’s plan B ?
fourlegsgood
You know what bugs me most about all the Obama bashing comments above? it’s the assumption of bad faith on Obama’s part.
You guys seem to think Obama wakes up everyday and thinks, “how can I piss off the hippies today?” I can assure you that he does not. You guys sound like a bunch of twigh-hards, mooning because Edward doesn’t love you.
this, on the other hand, is spot on:
I suggest everyone grow the fuck up and recognize that the upcoming election isn’t about your fee fees.
Nick
@Singfoom:
People at the top do play by a different set of rules, it’s always been that way, the people allow it.
Wait a minute, I thought you were talkng about torture, why are we getting into the rich and wealth now?
I just don’t believe you. First, you realize if he had tried an failed, no one would have ever paid attention to his gallant effort to “do what’s right” and instead would have forever be branded as that stupid naive dude who went on an unnecessary fools errand and got nothing for it. And I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have given him credit for trying, instead would have bashed him for failing.
You don’t get credit for trying in politics, you get credit for winning and when a politician fails at something, no one ever tries it again.
Wile E. Quixote
@Murc:
Dude, are you from a parallel universe, or just stupid and ignorant? Goldwater lost big time in 1964, you got that much right, and everyone said that the Republicans were dead. Then Nixon won in 1968 and in 1972 by one of the largest landslides ever. Ford almost won in 1976 despite the economy, his pardon of Richard Nixon and the perception that he was a bungling idiot. Reagan won in 1980 and again in 1984 by an incredibly huge landslide. Bush won in 1988 and his idiot, drunken fuckspawn son won in 2004. How exactly do you use this as an example of Republicans “losing to win”?
That being said I want to see the Obama administration start to go after people. Lyndon Johnson was a mean and vindictive son-of-a-bitch, and you know what, he got things done because people knew that he was mean and vindictive and knew that if they crossed him that he’d remember and wait until he could pay them back. Obama doesn’t seem to have this in him, which is too bad because that’s what politics is all about. LBJ never would have put up with the kind of shit from a useless non-entity like Joe Lieberman that Obama has. Not for a fucking second. Democrats like Lieberman, Nelson and Lincoln fuck with Obama because they can, they know that there will never be any payback for their bullshit, so they keep on engaging in it.
Nick
@Singfoom:
As an old political science professor once told me “Conservatives win because all they need is one little reason to get excited and turn out to vote, liberals only need one little reason not to”
Nick
@Wile E. Quixote:
and yet he failed to change one single vote, had to compromise with Republicans to get shit passed, and ended up having to leave office while many Senators who pissed him off survived him, some by decades (see Byrd, Robert)
Midnight Marauder
@Singfoom:
I don’t know if any other sentiment quite captures the mind-blowing fecklessness that personifies modern day “progressives.”
Way to go out there and fight to change public opinion, so that you can actually pass policies and legislation which will actively improve the real world.
“What does the majority of public opinion supporting this highly contentious issue have to do with passing legislation concerning this highly contentious issue?”
Un.fucking.believable.
Singfoom
@Nick:
I never said I wouldn’t vote, I just said I’m not excited. As this thread was mainly about lefties not appreciating everything that has been accomplished, I think that’s fair. I’ve laid out why I’m not excited.
As for not believing me, I can’t help you with that. I really would have preferred them to prosecute and fail than just do nothing. It just encourages all of those out there without any morals ethics or any compassion for their fellow man.
Singfoom
@Midnight Marauder:
Uh, context much? That comment was about Obama not trying to prosecute torture. Hence the public opinion not being a valid thing for him to base his decision on, but thanks for playing…
Nick
@Singfoom:
And you think prosecuting them and failing wouldn’t? That encourages them to keep having no moral ethics even more because even people who come to power with the intent to sacrificing everything to prosecute them can’t succeed. They’re untouchable.
Nick
@Singfoom: I’m sorry, do we not live in a democracy? When is it mandatory for us to follow public option (public option) vs. when we should ignore it (torture, immigration)
Progressives can’t have it both ways. They can’t complain Obama isn’t working for the people and then say on issues where he is, he should ignore them.
cat48
Notice no ones mentioned this except wingers since everyone keeps bringing up assasination lists, thought it enlightening:
Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki puts ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed’ cartoonist Molly Norris on execution hitlist.
She lives in Seattle & the FBI is on it.
Marc
Wile: you need the tools to actually make good on a threat. The Senate is broken in a way that makes individual Senators kingmakers. The response of individual people to those incentives is completely unsurprising, as is the lack of discipline.
We had some informal boundaries on the usage of Senate rules that have been tossed overboard, and the Republicans have what the the Democrats lack: a party base that will harshly punish any deviations from orthodoxy. The only solutions are reform of the rules or California-style paralysis. Obama is simply not the cause, for good or ill, of that particular problem.
SIA
@cat48: You misunderstand my comment I think. I was talking about the urge to kick the shit out of the GOP now that the Ds are in power, acknowledging that I had similar impulses, but not condoning or excusing them; in fact the slant of my comment was to repudiate my own impulse to kick some ass. In fact I think it’s counter productive. Perhaps my line “we want carnage” wasn’t clear enough in it’s tongue in cheekiness?
That being said, I did phone, write and email pertinent legislators and the administration because I really, really wanted the public option for personal reasons. Showing up and screaming at town halls would not be useful. When I didn’t get what I wanted, I still was grateful we had a health care reform bill, warts and all.
Hope that’s clearer.
Midnight Marauder
@Singfoom:
Well you sure as fuck aren’t doing anything to change Congress’ mind on the issue, are you?! The “progressive” gameplan for getting Guantanamo shut down is to continually call President Obama a failure on civil liberties, say he’s no better than Bush, and more attacks about being a failure. Really, you could just boil it down to “OBAMA IS A FAILURE! FAILURE! FAILURE! FAILURE! FAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUURRRREEEEEEEE!” That’s pretty much the entirety of the “progressive” argument on the issue. The don’t have an actual plan of attack to get the fucking prison closed and the prisoners relocated, because to do that, you would need to live in a world where the following was an actual thing that happened and was actively impeding your poutrage from being factual, logical, or rational:
Of course, that was in May 2009, so you would expect that in the interim, these numerous and mighty voices who are SO FUCKING OUTRAGED by President Obama’s failure on civil liberties would have organized and mounted some kind of grand campaign to bring the fucking fury to Congress and get them to realize just how critical it was for them to change their votes.
But if you were expecting that, you would be failing to realize that you’re talking about a group that views the world through a fundamentally immature and unserious lens.
Big mistake.
Singfoom
@Nick:
Call me naive, but the whole point of the rule of law is that no man is above the law. They are not untouchable. And yes, it would be a singular event in US history if they really went after them.
And yes, I recognize all the hardship it would cause. I’m sorry, despite my disappointment with the policies of the current administration and the specifics of the legislative victories, I am still optimistic about our country because of the idea of the rule of law.
That’s why prosecution is so more important to me than any of the other acheivements listed. I also don’t think they would have failed, and if they had failed, I wouldn’t have criticized them for going for it, because it was the right thing to do.
Marc
Singfoom: I understand and sympathize; it’s too easy to get caught in point-scoring here. I think that Obama is doing what he is doing because he’s fighting some powerful and really pathological cross-currents; those are the place to put energy. We also need something like a truth and reconciliation process -as well as long, hard work to move us away from a torture-loving culture.
That’s a different problem than a president who creates a torture regime.
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
It’s perfectly relevant. Given the levels of public support for the torture policies, what are the odds you can get a jury willing to convict?
Singfoom
@Midnight Marauder:
Calm down. I don’t get your hate, seriously. If you’ve bothered to read more than 1 of my comments in this thread, I know it’s Congress holding up the closing of Guantanamo. I called and wrote my Senators and urged my friends to do the same. I have explicitly stated that everything is *NOT* Obama’s fault.
But hey, yell at me more if you’d like.
Singfoom
@Brien Jackson:
I think you misunderstand. I wasn’t saying it wasn’t relevant to your question. It was irrelevant to Obama making the decision. It takes a person with courage to tell those he leads that they’re all wrong. That’s what I was getting at.
The fact that the populace at large has no problem with torture doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be prosecuted. If the jury decided against, I’d be fine with it.
I want the process followed though. That’s what’s key.
AuldBlackJack
How? By voting for Republicans? By NOT voting for DLC & Blue Dog Democrats? Senator Centerfold’s election is the fault of Progressives & Liberals?
Fuck that. Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love. But I’m not falling for this Dolchstoßlegende bullshit.
If Obama and the Democrats want my vote they’re going to work for it. In the meantime I’ll keep working to push that dreaded ‘Overton window’ to the left.
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
Well, at least where warmaking goes, that is extremely naive. No powerful state is likely to punish senior policy makers for war crimes committed by that state, and the US has certainly never done so. For all the platitudes about aggressive war at Nuremberg, no one ever suggested putting Curtis Lemay and Harry Truman in the docket.
Midnight Marauder
@Pixie:
I hope you realized that you should be prepared for a fucking lifetime of getting so tired.
Like this battle was ever going to be not disillusioning? What are you? 12?
Nick
@Singfoom: Of for crying out of loud.
There is no rule of law in this country and there never was. It was, is, and always has been a ruse to make us look good in the eyes of the world, but the truth is, from the Alien and Sedition Acts, Trail of Tears, through Jim Crow and Japanese Internment, selling WMD to Indonesia, the Chilean coup and Gitmo, there has NEVER been rule of law in this country.
You’re chasing after a fantasy, not a reality. You want us to return to something we never were.
Brien Jackson
@Singfoom:
Well there’s two things I have a problem with there.
1. However it may work in practice, the President shouldn’t make decisions about whether or not to pursue a prosecution.
2. Again, the likelihood of a conviction is always legitimate for prosecutors to consider when deciding how fully to pursue a case.
cat48
@Nick:
ruemara
This is actually kind of simple. It’s like heading out to a manga con with friends and fighting over which one is good. It’s loving chinese food, but hating to eat it with your friends who also love chinese food, but not what you like.
Obama is actually fairly progressive personally, but wiling to compromise to get a start on progressive causes. So he’s just not their sort of progressive. We could’ve spent all of ’08 with knives out, going after Bush/Cheney for civil rights violations. Vengeance would be nice, no? It’s friggin justified. However, Obama looked around and saw that there were high level democrats he needed and the actual needs of the people had to take precedence. I also fully admit, I have no clue what the inner workings of his mind were about, so this is an opinion. He wants to do something good, not whizz all over the landscape, making his mark. For that, he has to hold together a very fractious coalition, all the while maintaining an appropriate media appearance. The whole thing is like a satire of government with the most serious naysayers being supposedly, on Obama’s side. And if you bring it up, they have their valid reasons for not just constructive criticism, but destructive belittlement. He may be progressive, he’s just not their kind of progressive and he will atone.
NobodySpecial
Funny.
They tell us all the time that if we want more progressives, that we have to elect more progressives.
Then every time they go to primary someone with a progressive, they tell you that you shouldn’t do that, because it’s ‘counterproductive’.
They also tell us that we should make pushes for progressive stuff rather than making Obama push it for us.
Then when we do (see option, public), they tell us we shouldn’t bother because that’s wasted effort.
It’s almost like they aren’t progressives trying to be helpful, but Blue Dogs who don’t want things to change too much.
Oh, wait, that’s right. These are the same people who insist that the US is really a ‘center-right’ nation and that progressives will never have power because progressives will always always always be a minority and not worth anyone’s time. And anyone who disagrees even slightly with their warmed over Blue Dog philosophy must be a firebagger.
Brien Jackson
@NobodySpecial:
It would really help the level of discourse if firebaggers would pay more attention to what’s actually being said.
Marc
@Nick:
Unless you’re Obama, apparently.
Midnight Marauder
@Singfoom:
Ah, but that was my entire point. You are trying to claim that public opinion is not a “valid thing for him to base his decision on.” The entire disagreement here is that not only is public opinion a valid thing for him to base his decision on (because if his administration is making cold, hard political calculations about priorities, I can guarantee you that 11 times out of 10, saving the economy and passing the Affordable Care Act are going to be at the top of the list, and prosecuting the Bush Administration for war crimes won’t even be on the fucking list), but that people like you haven’t done anything to alter that public opinion and make the environment more amenable to President Obama involving his administration’s agenda (and, subsequently, the agenda for the entire United States of America).
But thanks for playing. Is that what the cool kids say?
kay
@NobodySpecial:
I didn’t object to you entering a primary in Arkansas. I objected to the whining when you lost.
Really. It was nuts. We had people writing “the less popular candidate won!” or, “Bill Clinton made them vote for Lincoln”, or “Obama made them vote for Lincoln”.
I mean, Jesus. If you’re going to enter a race…
I almost felt sorry for Halter, who seemed like a great local candidate. He was nothing but a prop. The objective was to show Barack Obama who is boss. The voters of Arkansas had little or nothing to do with The Objective.
It was some proxy battle.
Marc
@cleek:
The filibuster has been weakened in the past (and Republicans are probably going to nuke it anyway whenever they retake the Senate), so we do ourselves no favors by pretending it’s off the table. It would only take a majority vote on the rules at the start of the next Congress to water it down.
The Senate is looking a lot more salvageable than the House at this point; energy focused on those races could do a lot of good.
And whatever plan B is, I know bitching about Obama while dismissing his accomplishments won’t move the Senate or the country one degree to the left.
Pixie
@ midnight
First no need to be a dickhead.
I guess I should just get used to the fact that the government lies and protects it’s own and that the whole rule of law thing was just some idealistic crap and I should stfu and accept the fact that everything I was taught and hoped for in my country was complete bs.
No thanks. I guess that makes me a 12 year old in your book, but I DO believe we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard and I don’t give a damn if no one’s been prosecuted for war crimes in the past, it doesn’t mean it SHOULDN’T be done.
I can recall when there was at least SOME outrage when the gov. committed abuses…think back to the 1975 Church Committee reports which brought about FISA. This kind of oversight has happened before. Now it just seems as though people have come to ACCEPT that the gov. breaks the law and the powerful go free everytime and don’t bother even getting mildly upset about it anymore. I will never accept that this is the way that it should be. If you’re so disillusioned with everything, then I wonder that you take the time to even engage in anything political since you know you’re just going to be disappointed and lied to.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
When you’re running a primary against a conservative Dem in a conservative state, it’s counterproductive, when you’re doing it in, say, Connecticut or an uber-Democratic district in Maryland, no, we backed you up there.
But I wouldn’t expect someone who thinks we live in a liberal country to understand that.
kay
@NobodySpecial:
I looked, too, after the Halter race. I looked for some measure of a reasonable critique on the race, from the people who planned and ran it, and expect to raise money from donors to run another one.
“What did we do wrong? Why weren’t we able to pull African American support from Lincoln to Halter? What would we do different next time?”
There was none of that. It was ALL the fault of that dastardly Obama and his crony, Bill Clinton.
How you managed to set up Bill Clinton as the arch-enemy thwarting the will of Arkansas Democrats is beyond me, but you did.
Do you think rank and file Democratic voters in Arkansas see him that way? I don’t.
Marc
@kay:
FWIW, this Obama supporter didn’t view the Arkansas primary as a proxy battle. Halter was a great candidate, Lincoln is a terrible Democrat (and she’s probably going to get blown out of the water in November anyway), and the challenge pushed Lincoln to the left on Wall Street reform.
I would have much rather seen Halter win, but as far as I’m concerned that primary challenge was a good bet for progressives. Hell, it’s possible that the runoff and the prolonged campaign made the Wall Street bill better than an outright Halter win would have.
We need to keep more senators accountable like that. It wasn’t about showing Obama who’s boss. It was about showing Blanche Lincoln who’s boss, and even though we didn’t quite pull it off she seemed to get the message.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@arguingwithsignposts: It’s not an analogy– it’s a quip.
When an opponent knows you’ll keep compromising, repeatedly dropping the ante, there’s no incentive to compromise. When they know you will support them for re-election (Lincoln), and work the leadership to not pull their chairmanship (Lieberman), you pretty much hand them carte blanche to knife you.
Obama responded to the election of a nutcase like Scott Brown by saying “”People are angry and they are frustrated” and then saying “”Here’s one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table: The Senate certainly shouldn’t try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated. People in Massachusetts spoke. He’s got to be part of that process.”
Now he wants a pass because Brown is at the table. Well, he wanted him there. And if he hadn’t dragged his feet when Ted Kennedy was alive, he’d have had more stuff passed.
Another no-brainer: People are suffering immense pain because unemployment benefits haven’t passed, and the process is being held up because Joe Manchin is playing games trying to make sure his path to replacing Robert Byrd is as easy as possible. As is usual, Obama is waiting for the process to play out.
I’m not saying that they get off message. I’m saying their message is weak and ineffective and enables their opposition.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Eric Alterman: “the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.”
John Cole: “I just don’t understand why the most vocal folks on the left seem to just loathe the guy”
And I just don’t understand why the debate keeps getting framed in these terms. For me it’s not a matter of disappointment in an individual. I don’t know Barack Obama personally and really don’t give any more of a damn about him than I do Lindsey Lohan or LeBron James. The task at hand is get the best policies for our society, and all we can do as citizens is apply whatever miniscule pressure we have at our disposal on our public figures to make these things happen.
Then look at how Alterman’s words translate in John’s head. Alterman says Obama is a “disappointment.” John hears, “just loathe the guy.” It goes without saying that we can’t deconstruct Alterman’s position if we don’t accurately frame it in the first place.
To answer your other question, Obama’s approval among self-identified liberals has fallen from the 90s to the 70s, FWIW.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
It’s because there is no competent leadership among progressives. Not in politics, not in the participatory media (the blogs), not anywhere. There are just a lot of people running around and acting like spoiled children.
You look at the GOP coalition of insane, nasty, stupid, childish people … and how well it hangs together as a working unit, and then ask why a coalition supposedly made up of more intelligent, liberal minded, educated people can do nothing but fight with each other like a bunch of fucking rat morons.
It’s all about discipline, in making machine politics work. We outnumber them, and have the edge in almost every aspect of the game, but have no discipline and no common vision.
Simple as that.
ruemara
@Nick:
Boy, this. A million times, this.
Midnight Marauder
@Pixie:
Yes, you should get used to all those facts. No, you shouldn’t shut the fuck up. But you should be prepared to be told when you are talking nonsensically, naively, and illogically. The decision to STFU is up to you from there.
I think a lot of people here are waiting for the blueprint to successfully prosecute the war criminals from the Bush Administration, so long as it does not prevent us from continuing to rebuild this country in the mold of a 21st century nation. For a lot of people, that blueprint does not realistically exist, and will not for quite some time. You will have to excuse me for not indulging in naive, patently unrealistic fantasies.
You recall there was outrage. Now, where did that outrage come from? Did it all come from Congress? Or was there some kind of public uproar that led to those committee hearings? This is the part where we discuss once again that a healthy majority of people in this country actively support the torture of another human being. This is a pretty terrible thing, but it’s an unflinchingly rigid fact of life. It is a reality. What has the “progressive” moment as a large scale whole done to change this?
Not a whole fucking lot.
Because unlike some people, I understand that it’s all a part of the process. Literally, IT IS THE PROCESS. The sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll all be.
Nick
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
and yet, you’ve failed to prove this and the most recent polls have his support among self-identified liberals at about 88%.
kay
@Marc:
I wrote almost exactly those words the day after.
I love primaries. I’m a “democrat”, small “d”. What I don’t like, and won’t donate to, are people who lose and then start pointing fingers at everyone but the people who managed the race.
If Halter had won, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would have looked at the result and gotten behind Halter. I don’t think they’d spend 5 minutes punishing liberals, or pointing fingers. If we want to play with them, we’re going to have do that equal or better.
And, most importantly, can we please skip the day-after discussions on why African American voters won’t do what we want them to do? It’s patronizing, it’s horrible, it alienates and partitions crucial allies and members any liberal coalition needs, and we don’t do that.
Brien Jackson
@Nick:
I don’t even think that’s counter-productive. I thought it was a waste of resources for progressive institutions to support Halter heavily, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t run primary campaigns against Blanche Lincoln.
Nick
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
You’re just not getting it, are you? Lieberman WANTS the Dems to pull his chairmanship. Lincoln WANTS to be at odds with the President. It brushes up their “I’m my own (wo)man” cred and gets them invitations on Sunday talk shows to bash the partisanship of Democrats. Obama has no leverage over Senators in his own party who don’t care whether they have his support or not. LBJ once threatened a US Senator with a primary if he voted no on Civil Rights. Guess what? That Senator voted no anyway.
Aside from the rather odious fact you want him to ignore democracy, Ted Kennedy was barely present BEFORE Obama was even elected, he was virtually non-existent in the months before he died, and Obama didn’t drag his feet, he repeatedly said he wanted a healthcare bill by last August’s recess, the Senate did
No, Obama has repeatedly blasted Republicans for holding it up and it isn’t Manchin’s doing, it’s Ben Nelson who comes from a state with the third lowest unemployment rate in the country. Just today Biden called the Republicans out on it. Didn’t see it? Not surprised. Media doesn’t cover it.
and I’m saying that’s not their own fault, but the fault of the media that stifles the message and progressives who feel they don’t need to help parrot it. Even now as we scream and yell about how ineffective messaging is, there are fucking right wing banner ads al over liberal blogs and what do people like Chris Bowers and kos say? “Oh well, they pay for the site”
kay
@Marc:
Did you hear one negative word from the White House or any national Democrat when Sestak won? Although they backed the incumbent?
No. Nor will you. He’s the candidate. He won. When they lose, they cede, and move on.
madmatt
@arguingwithsignposts:
It has also been explained that the ins co’s can now count paperwork and advertising as medical costs.
madmatt
@Allan:
spoken like a douchebag with money to afford an ins payment…hope you get hit by a bus and get denied coverage!
madmatt
@Tom65:
I did, show me where I was wrong!
cat48
@Marc:
sparky
john: the next time you think all the Obama-haters here are just whining, consider these posts–
@
edmund dantes@
Taylor:
@Singfoom::
@Murc:
@CaffinatedOne:
@CaffinatedOne:
@apostropher:
i’d also point out that at the time of this posting (approx 270) a scroll through this thread shows that for the most part it is the Obama defenders who resort to ad hominems and arguments by authority (“real world” assertions). (this is not to say that the Obama defenders don’t make any actual arguments, just that it appears that more of their comments are of the “pony” “firebagger” nutcase dismissal rather than an actual response.) in other words, most (though admittedly not all) of the people who are critical of Obama here present a reasoned basis for their judgements. it’s the defenders here who usually resort to name-calling and appeals to “what can really be done”. if it wasn’t so sad how Ds become invested in their leader it would be amusing to watch how poorly people take criticism when there is a D in office. you know, the way people made fun of Bush supporters.
edits: apparently i deserve to be moderated. go me! also, i think i may have screwed up a couple of the comment links. sorry.
beatty
We are in two effing wars, and the Obama administration is stepping up kicking out the gays in the military. Felons and nutjobs welcomed. Gays, outta there.
He called himself a fierce advocate of teh gays. Am I not allowed to criticize this without getting the centrists all pantied up? Am I supposed to clap enthusiastically about everything and bite my nails on the issues you all at Balloon Juice deem to be secondary? Does my opinion on national leaders have to be all or nothing?
I think most liberals or progressives I know are 100% relieved that McCain was not elected. We are relieved that something called health care got passed, and are eager to see if congress will bulk it up some, as it did in the past with social security. We like that Obama saved the financial sector. We like that he’s a comic-book reading nerd who visited MIT. We also have some problems with the nerd’s policies and are using our John Adams/Benjamin Franklin/Thomas Jefferson-given right to say something about it.
madmatt
@Davis X. Machina: yes because I have an extra $700 just burning a hole thru my pocket which is the point you ignorant fuck…I get forced to give money I DONT HAVE in exchange for nothing.
FlipYrWhig
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
Your version is the version I always hear. So let’s say instead that Blanche Lincoln hates, hates, hates HCR. She doesn’t want the health care system changed radically and she doesn’t want to spend big money on fixing it and thinks it’s going to cost her any chance of getting reelected. She’s heard the pitch and doesn’t buy it. So Obama comes along and says, “Look, Blanche, I know you don’t like a lot of this bill. What’s your bottom line?” And she says, “None of this ‘public option’ stuff, because I refuse to vote for anything that puts the government in the insurance business.” Obama says, “You’re not the only one I’ve heard this from. I disagree with you, but you and I both know that we need to pass something we can run on. Can you vote for it without the public option?” “Yes, I think so, but it’s still going to be a tough sell.” “Well, the party will be there for you.”
In other words, why isn’t support — such as it was — for Lincoln _a reward for going as far as she did_? You and I don’t have the same objections Lincoln does. But half of the Senate Democrats are not liberals and don’t really want to do any of these things the way we want to see them happen. Everything gets watered down for that reason. Not because Obama wants to spite you.
Allan
@madmatt: How progressive of you.
Davis X. Machina
@madmatt: You pay your money, and take your choice, or not. I imagine you could save a lot more than that by simply not insuring your car.
madmatt
@Nick:
I am not POOR enough for subsidies, HCR now considers paperwork and ADVERTISING as medical expenses , and being denied is not an issue, not having the money is the issue.
madmatt
@scav: I have evaluated enough to know I lose and Wellpoint execs win and thats all the proof I need that corporate welfare is ALL that matters to the senate.
cleek
@Marc:
ok, i gotta know… who’s dismissing his accomplishments ? cause it ain’t me.
Allan
@sparky: And then there’s madmatt. Care to take credit for him?
My Truth Hurts
It’s simple. Because after 30 years of being run over by the conservative agenda and watching the GOP wipe their asses with the Constitution we want ours.
Basically John, some of us came of age during the Reagan Revolution, saw Clinton sell out the middle class and sent manufacturing overseas and then most recently suffered 8 years of Bush’s regressive era. This experience has radicalized a lot of progressives, including me. We are fucking done compromising with lunatics who wont negotiate in good faith or even acknowledge facts. During Obama’s tenure this dishonest conservative agenda continues to steamroll it’s way into policy and public discourse.
If you can’t understand that then you will never understand it, but that’s what it’s all about. Reasonable or not, there it is.
madmatt
@Kerry Reid:
NO I can’t afford ins now, and I won’t be able to afford it in a couple years…but I am going to be forced to create money out of thin air to give to wellpoint scum in exchange for a policy that I will not be able to USE. ins co wins, I die just like they want
SIA
@cat48: @SIA: In the interest of politeness, how about walking back the snarky comment you misdirected at me?
sparky
@Allan: um, didn’t i admit that some folks fit that bill on the criticize Obama side?* or am i now responsible for everything everyone everywhere says who finds fault with Obama?
incidentally, your comment rather nicely reinforced my observation about ad hominems, as you resorted to a personal comment rather than a substantive one. thanks!
*seriously, if anyone thinks i was asserting that Obama critics never say anything silly, then there’s either a mistake in what i wrote or in reading comprehension.
Midnight Marauder
@cleek:
@cleek:
Essentially, from the perspective you gave at the beginning, the accomplishments of the Obama Administration thus far that some people champion, can be compared as the equivalent of war cheerleaders saying “but we built them schools!” in the face of widespread warmongering and destruction.
Yeah, I would classify that as dismissive of his accomplishments.
kay
@madmatt:
You won’t be forced to buy insurance, madmatt. You’ll be taxed because you’ll be relying on someone else to pay your medical expenses.
It’s okay with me. There’s always free riders in any national system, but you are going to have to defray costs.
You can opt out. There’s none of the penalties associated with IRS enforcement as it relates to the health care bill.
This might interest you. In all 50 states, re: unmarried parents, there is a health insurance mandate currently in place. It operates through child support. It’s been effective since 2007. It came about through an HHS rule change, so wasn’t even voted on. It’s a federal mandate, enforced at the state level.
The parents don’t have to buy health insurance. If health insurance isn’t available at “reasonable” cost, they have to pay something called a “medical support order” to cover the costs of the medical care their children WILL receive.
I haven’t had s single complaint or challenge on it. It makes sense to people.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts: So, in other words, you want Mommy to see your mad face. You’re not “radicalized,” you’re full of shit.
Marc
@cleek:
See the article that started this thread. (Or many of the comments that have followed it.)
It’s not always about you, cleek.
shep
Maybe I’m not vocal enough for your critique but I neither loathe the guy nor dismiss what has been done. Perhaps it’s because I never assumed that he was anything other than a politician and a political choice – which is always a choice of the lesser of evils and don’t feel much sense of betrayal because I didn’t take his campaign rhetoric too seriously.
But if you really want to know, rather than drive traffic through partisan memes, I can tell you exactly why liberals are unsatisfied with Obama’s accomplishments – because, no matter how consequential they may appear from historical perspective, they may be completely inadequate to address the challenges we face today.
If you can tell me that the stimulus legislation is going to create positive economic growth that’s going to get us out of the ditch, do tell. If you can say that HCR is going to seriously address the out-of-control costs or the insurance industry stranglehold on federal and state policy choices, I’m all ears. If the financial reform bill is really going to address too-big-too-fail or toxic assets for taxpayers, please let me know how.
Though the failure to regulate carbon is going to kill us all in reasonably short order, so I guess none of the other crap matters all that much anyway.
And all of these policy shortcomings dovetail completely with Obama’s reversal on his promise to end business-as-usual government collusion with corporate betrayal of the greater public good. Should liberals be thrilled with Obama’s betrayal of his most important promises (see also: executive power and civil liberties), in the eyes of liberals, and with policies that may be completely ineffective at addressing critical problems, even if they are otherwise a big fucking deal? You tell me.
sparky
@cleek:
or me, for that matter. hell, yesterday i brought up one (nuclear missile reduction) that i didn’t even see the Obama supporters mentioning in his favor. and to me, that IS a good, significant accomplishment.
i just prefer to evaluate the administration on what it does, rather than what it says it does. consequently, some things that others may consider significant accomplishments are, in my opinion–after reviewing them–not significant.*
*relatedly, the resort to numbers/amounts is silly, as it says nothing about the quality of what is actually enacted. if the WH renamed every street in the District there’d be lots of new laws, but you’d have a hard time saying that mattered to anyone besides signmakers, real estate brokers and the DC PO.
edit: @Marc:if that’s so (that it’s not an undifferentiated attack on critics) then why are so many of the attacks here ad hominems directed at critics generally?
Allan
@sparky: You failed to provide any statistical analysis of the ratio of serious comment to silly put-down in this thread, and how that maps to the commenters’ pro- or anti-Obama positions. Cherry-picking a few that seem reasonable to you, many of which have been substantively refuted by other commenters, while disregarding the wishes of madmatt that people who disagree with him should be run over by buses, undermines your argument.
Substantive enough for you, sparky?
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
To understand the problem all you need to do is look at this thread.
This issue is not about Obama, or what he has done or not done, or whether anyone agrees or does not agree with some of his policies and decisions.
It’s about something much more basic. In two party politics, the entire basis for your ability to govern is grounded in party discipline, consistent message (whether a good message or not), and working behind the scenes to get your allies to cooperate and achieve, with you, what you want to get done.
Republicans are good at this. Democrats are not. Democrats argue endlessly and in public over real or imagine slights or deficits in some official, some law, some detai or another, while their inferior adversaries stay on message and manage to hang on even when in a profound minority.
Your capacity to prevail over a truly evil adversarial opponent is to stick together. Do we know how to stick together?
Just ask yourself, do people come to this blog to practice sticking together? Or to practice winning at the art of navelgazing, and favorite-issue argumentation?
Is BJ about winning anything? Yeah, send me an email when that starts.
Marc
@kay:
I must have missed any finger-pointing on Halter’s part. I’m not really sure what you’re replying to here.
If you’re talking about Greenwald, Hamsher, et al, well, I think they always tried to take more credit for Halter than they really deserved.
At any rate, they don’t represent this Halter donor and supporter. It was a good run, it didn’t pan out. “Cede and move on” is fine by me, although my money will be moving on out of the Arkansas senate race.
cleek
@Marc:
sadly. but it was, however, in response to me. which is why i asked.
@Midnight Marauder:
right. i just wanted to know if Marc’s comment was a shot at me in particular or not. i wasn’t trying to claim that nobody had dismissed Obama’s accomplishments.
madmatt
@kay:
so they don’t really give a damn if I can’t afford healthcare, they just care that everybody subsidizes the Ins industry that takes more out of the system than any free riders ever could!
Davis X. Machina
@madmatt: Principles are principles. Join this list of some of the people most admired on this and every other liberal board. We will applaud your principled stand.
Chris
It’s not hard to understand. For many people in 2008, the war, and the related issues of torture and civil liberties, were the most important issue — more so than health care or financial reform. Those people have every reason to be disappointed with Obama.
Midnight Marauder
@cleek:
/flamethrower off
Understood.
/flamethrower on
Chris
Aside from all the other problems people here have mentioned, there’s one big one no one seems to discuss: a number of the “elites and self-anointed elites” feel they must downplay Obama’s accomplishments, because the fact that he has so many—or even any at all—reflects poorly on them. (I am not saying that it does reflect poorly on them, but rather, that they feel that way. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not, but they feel it either way.)
In other words, “it’s not my fault nothing got done before; look, see, Obama has not accomplished anything either!”
madmatt
@Davis X. Machina:
hell a direct tax and I would have no problem, it would save BILLIONS a year after all…come on single payer, but since barack decided the scum at wellpoint and bcbs needed my money more than I did I call him and baucus and the rest corporate whores.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Nick:
I’m afraid some of my posts have flown off into the ether. I’ll try posting this one link, which is to a Chris Cillizza piece and links to other surveys, and hope it gets through. Looking at that and at some recent polls archived at Pollster, most of the approval among liberals or Dems (depending on the poll) seems to be clustering in the upper 70s to low 80s. A poll just released by PPP shows 87%, however. I don’t think it much matters, Presidents tend to bleed support across the board, I’m only mentioning it because John keeps wondering aloud about it.
kay
@madmatt:
Insurance (profit) really doesn’t take all that much out of the system, matt.
It was a convenient fall-guy for both the Left and the Obama Administration, but insurance isn’t what costs so much.
Health care costs too much. It’s a huge for-profit bloated, business. It’s one sixth of the economy, so no one has figured out how to fix it.
Single payer wouldn’t touch that. Nationalization would, but that’s economically and politically impossible.
Marc
Sparky: First, I’ll freely admit that a lot of my response is emotional. When your so-called friends spend all of their time ignoring outrageous behavior by republicans and blaming democrats for everything that goes wrong…
well, eventually the endless complaints get under your skin and piss you off.
My main point is that 100% unified Republican opposition and abuses of legislative process have made it incredibly hard to get anything done. A lot of supposed progressives spend all of their time and effort attacking Obama when things don’t work Instead of putting the main blame where it belongs.
There is also a relentless minimization of the importance of things he’s actually done (e.g. drawing down troops in Iraq), magical thinking (he obviously should have willed OutcomeX into being), and a thirst for a confrontational style which Obama has never even pretended to adopt.
Accentuate the negative, dismiss the positive, never have any actual concrete alternatives, and call anyone who disagrees with you a cultist. Wonder why it’s really made a lot of us fed up?
kay
@madmatt:
The next time we have a health care debate we’ll have the courage to talk about health care, and why Americans pay so much.
We weren’t ready to do that. No one on the Left had the courage either. They’d have to get into sticky issues like rationing and how much we pay people in the medical industry, and that’s too scary.
cat48
kay
@madmatt:
Too, if we started taking some of the profit out of health care, or making it more efficient, we’d have to find some other industry to employ all those people.
Around here, they were displaced from manufacturing jobs, and into the for-profit health industry.
I don’t know where they go next. No one else does either. That’s why we all focused on health insurance, and not health care, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, and his clinics.
Allan
@kay: It’s really admirable of you to try to introduce facts to his diet, but madmatt just wants to be mad. It’s in his screen-name and everything.
Marc
shep: you lost me at the “betrayal of his principles” line. I’ve always given people the benefit of the doubt, e.g. that they mean to do the right thing but it can be difficult to accomplish it in politics. I’m afraid that you gave the game away there, and the persistence of similar rhetoric explains a lot of my disgust with the online progressive community. A lot of them really do talk and act as if Obama is some sort of lying traitor. It’s as if a friend is always accusing you of selling them out or lying to them. Even if you’ve made a mistake in some case, it’s usually not malice. But you become an ex-friend pretty quickly with the hostile attitude regardless.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: The thing that eats away at me is the refusal to acknowledge that half the Democrats in the Senate and probably a third in the House just are not liberals, don’t want to be mistaken for liberals, may even actively resent liberals, and thus have to be dragged or cajoled leftwards every. single. time.
So the point at which the Democrats converge among themselves — before even taking into account anything that the Republicans say or do — is to the right of what people who post on liberal blogs want. And the only prescription offered for how to move that point to the left is to be more threatening and fight harder.
Mnemosyne
@Singfoom:
Watergate and Iran/Contra. We already know, from long experience, that political operatives will pay no price for breaking the law. Heck, they’ll become media celebrities like G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North and get to spend lots of time on the radio justifying their actions.
madmatt
@Allan:
blow me alan you douchebag, it comes down to two types of people…those like you who believe the ins co scum can be trusted, and people like me who have actually had to deal with said scum and realize that they are thieving, uncaring vampires (like your parents). NOTHING in the bill prevents them from taking your money and denying you care. Here in Michigan we have the HIGHEST ins rates in the country and our Ins Regulator is an ex BCBS exec…you can imagine how stringent he is about making them pay on time or keep their rates down.
madmatt
@kay:
and next time will be in a 100 years or so because the ins co vampires have their fangs locked into our wallets now and will never let go…this is what happens when you let the scum you are trying to regulate WRITE the law.
cat48
@SIA Consider it walked back. I apologize for the misunderstanding. I notice Jonathan Alter seriously says this a lot that no one showed up to fight for HC, Dems, or Obama at the summer Townhalls. It seems to really bother him. Me too some, but I don’t usually say anthing because I wouldn’t have gone to a townhall alone here in SC because Dems here weren’t interested in doing that. Lindsey & I know Deminted would have ejected me in all probability if a local didn’t kill me first. : )
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My Truth Hurts
@FlipYrWhig:
No, it’s conservatives who are the petulant children that need their parent’s approval and consolation. We just want to fix the damage done by conservatives faster than the current Democratic party will move. We want results based on facts, not the fantasies that have been the policy foundations of the last 30 years. We want reasonable and responsible government. Not the banana republic the GOP has turned our government into.
Republicans and conservatives are the scourge of this nation. They are traitors bent on destroying the American way of life. This is about saving America from it’s enemies within.
The enemy of America is the so called “Conservative”. It’s way past the time to put a stop to them.
Mnemosyne
@fourlegsgood:
Thank you. That drives me nuts, too. Apparently it’s not enough that Obama didn’t (in their opinion) push hard enough for a public option. Nope, the only possible explanation is that he secretly hated the public option from Day One and worked to deliberately sabotage it to prevent it from being part of the legislation.
It certainly couldn’t be that, as he said throughout the campaign, Obama really thought we could win in Afghanistan, or at least improve the situation. Nope, he was a secret warmonger who loves war who lied about thinking we could win and will never, ever pull troops out of Afghanistan because he loves war so much.
It couldn’t be that he looked at the whole history of unsuccessful prosecutions of government officials who broke the law and decided that it shouldn’t be his first priority. Nope, he’s deliberately covering up the crimes of the Bush administration because he totally agreed with everything they did and loves to torture people.
Allan
@madmatt: It fascinates me how you’ve created a whole back-story for me in your mind. Tell me more about me.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
I think you’re misunderstanding the difference between “you” and “politicians.”
It’s never a wasted effort for ordinary people to push for what they want. It wasn’t a wasted effort for people to push for the public option. The wasted effort is in whining about how you’re done with politics because you didn’t get a public option. If the Democrats in Congress decided after much debate that they wouldn’t be able to get a public option through, that doesn’t mean that your effort was wasted.
frankdawg
If you went to the doctor & had a cancer and the doctor offered to give you a couple of aspirins and talk about chemo would you be happy with that doctor? If the science showed that chemo was very likely to cure the cancer but the doctor didn’t really want to offer it to you because some people wouldn’t support it (particularly if they happened to be crackpots who support only wholeistic bullshit) – would you be glad you picked him as your doctor?
This nation has a cancer it has been growing for 30 years I was not expecting this doctor to propose aggressive treatments that would provide faster recover but I also didn’t expect he would not even discuss some treatments because the crackpot battalion wouldn’t approve. So he started negotiations with what he would settle for & the crackpots started at the extreme so all the compromises went in the crackpot direction and away from improvement.
The choice now seems to be do we allow the Ds to rearrange deck chairs while this Titanic sinks or do we let the Rs dynamite the hull & speed our destruction?
Sorry for the mixed metaphors.
Nick
@beatty:
which, of course, is why with his support, the House just passed and the Senate is on the verge of passing, a repeal of DADT.
Again, if you want people to take you seriously, stop being intellectually dishonest.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts:
Your whole statement is a bunch of “we want”s. Fine. Woo. How?
madmatt
@Allan:
so you DON’T trust the ins co’s then why do you trust a bill they wrote?
Brachiator
@r€nato:
Yep. You got it. Obviously, looking at the number of posts here, this is a passionate issue for a lot of people.
But I am amazed at some on the left who discount Obama’s audacity when he said time and time again that he wanted to be president of all the people, and who hoped that he secretly meant that he really only wanted to the the president of the left and everyone else could cram it.
I also continue to be surprised that some progressives ignore the fear and opposition that is being flamed by tea baggers and others and simply expect Obama to pursue a progressive agenda despite this opposition, wanting him to be more like Bush.
And lastly, it seems to me that if anyone really wants Obama to succeed, they need to get the message to other Democrats and also get more progressives elected.
Nick
@madmatt:
check again
kindly point out where in the bill it says this.
Why can’t you people stop being dishonest? You’re worse liars than teabaggers.
scarshapedstar
I don’t loathe him and I don’t dismiss what he’s done. I recognize that the Democratic Party has a bad case of syphilis, politely referred to as the Blue Dog Caucus.
But he COULD have rammed through an agenda that was better policy and better politics. If Bush had Obama’s legislative majorities he would have been declared President-for-Life.
It’s not Obama’s personality, I fully understand that, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to give him a free pass as a politician. Especially when he breaks some HUGE promises.
Speaking of: WHEN ARE THE USELESS FUCKING WARS GONNA END?
Mia
For me, the primary disappointment is limited to how the Obama administration has handled economic issues. They have basically protected heads of corporations and bankers (the fundraisers) and not done nearly enough to protect their constituents (the rest of us). They have not done a thing to end offshoring, which is part of why we have such a high unemployment rate.
The secondary disappointment for me was health care reform – yes, it is a step in the right direction, and there are parts of the legislation that may be helpful to certain groups, but it could have and should have done so much more than it does. But again, it failed to do enough, because the administration’s helped heads of corporations (gotta protect those million dollar insurance salaries, pharma profits, etc.) instead of actually ensuring that care is affordable.
I say this as the child of a doctor: when did going into the practice of medicine in this country become about getting rich, instead of about helping people? I grew up in a small town, and at times my dad would get “paid” with a bushel basket of vegetables because that’s all the farmer had. There was no gatekeeper in the front office turning you away if you didn’t have insurance or money to pay. Times have changed, and many who choose medicine seem to see it as a guaranteed 6 figure income instead (hence the flight to dermatology, opthalmology, and other “no overtime required” specialties, and away from family practice, geriatrics (because medicare pays less than you can get doing other types of medicine), etc.).
If they had done nothing else but properly regulated the financial industry, ended the tax breaks for offshoring jobs, and extended Medicare to the entire population, I would call this administration one of, if not the, greatest of all time. As it stands, they gave the general population a few stale cookies, and gave the rest of the grocery store away to the wealthy, corporatist special interests.
Observer in Quebec
@Matt:
Long time lurker, I felt the urge to make a first comment here just to say that I think you are spot on. I’ll add that the phenomenon may be more intense because the establishment and the republicans are particularly afraid of this President. Very charismatic leader who came into office after an historical campaign, with significant support from independants. And he seems to be more deternimed than others to confront big structural problems, even if it means a one term presidency. He is more a conciliator than a warrior, but make no mistake, the man has big ambitions and has an enormous sense of duty to the country.
And his victory in HCR, (despite the bill’s imperfections) has completely freaked out the opposition.
Other factors in the emotional roller coaster that we are witnessing may be the fact that America is in crisis on MULTIPLE fronts hence the sense of urgency, and people were already psychologically exhausted after 8 years of trauma, fear-mongering, etc. PBST = Post Bush Stress Disorder.
Allan
@frankdawg: Actually, the last doctor told me that the free markets were going to cure my cancer. So I went to this one for a second opinion.
This one told me that while there are other, more aggressive treatments available, he hesitates to prescribe them because he knows my insurance company won’t cover them, so he recommends the course of treatment he believes will do me the most good and also survive the process by which his recommendations will be reviewed and approved by the people who actually hold the purse-strings (that would be Congress).
FlipYrWhig
@frankdawg:
If you went to the doctor and had cancer and the doctor had to run every decision past a board that was likely to deny his well-considered medical judgment if it was outside certain bounds, whether or not it was correct, would you be glad you got the best treatment he could give you, or would you stew in your own pain and spite until that board had enough members who understood medicine differently?
scav
@madmatt: well, fine sweetheart. Because everything in the damn country revolves around your paycheck and healthcare is only fixed when you don’t experience any inconvenience. Go wild: you’re part of the majority of the country so you must be right.
Mnemosyne
@scarshapedstar:
The Iraq withdrawal is ongoing and on schedule. Withdrawal from Afghanistan begins at the end of 2011. You can mark your calendar, if you like, though I know it’s more emotionally satisfying to pretend nothing is happening if it’s not happening on your preferred schedule.
FlipYrWhig
@scarshapedstar:
Not when only half of the people who comprise that legislative majority support the better policy and better politics in the first place.
FlipYrWhig
@Allan: Heh, you told frankdawg the same thing I did, only faster and more pithy.
FlipYrWhig
[mean-spirited comment deleted]
Allan
@FlipYrWhig: I look forward to learning how we’re wrong.
Midnight Marauder
@Mia:
These kinds of statements always make me laugh. The first half is set up to convey such a great betrayal or disenchanting “reality”…only to be revealed in the second act of the statement as something most rational people would find to be actually beneficial on a substantial level.
“Yes, improving the quality of, and access to, medical care for millions of Americans and laying the foundation to move our health care system into the 21st century is a step in the right direction, but it didn’t include some cool things I wanted and didn’t help even more people, so it is a colossally disappointing failure.”
Most people who have been waging a battle for a century generally don’t call major victories “disappointments.”
My Truth Hurts
@FlipYrWhig:
You tell me since you are so smart.
FlipYrWhig
@Mia:
Sounds great. Where’s the support for this in Congress? How do you get it past the gauntlet of conservative Democrats, without whose votes it can’t pass, and who believe that The Government shouldn’t have that function on that scale? How many people would have to call their Blue Dog Rep or lame-ass ConservaDem Senator to make them change their minds away from their deeply-held view that what they stand for is “less spending” and “smaller government”? That view is stupid, as you and I both know, but the fact is, they hold it, they probably believe it, and they certainly believe that it’s important to their reelection prospects. How do we budge them? Frankly, I think the only way to do it is via concessions and carrots, which makes for worse policy but moves the whole thing in the right direction.
If you buy your house for $300K and give it $50K in improvements and then you have to move, continuing to hold out for $400K is pointless if the market crashed and comparable houses are only going for $250K.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts: You’re the one who claims to be “radicalized.” You may want to figure out how your radical solutions are supposed to, you know, happen.
Brachiator
@frankdawg:
False dilemma. You could also try to fight to get better politicians elected, and to make sure that the current crop of politicians to listen to you and represent your interests.
But what you cannot do is to assume that just because you think that you are right, the president and the Congress is just magically supposed to fall in line.
Kerry Reid
@Mnemosyne: And also interesting how well this framing from the left dovetails with the “we don’t know who he is” conspiracy-mongering on the right.
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne: Really? Tell that to the truth police here.
EDIT – and I love how much is imparted to my saying that I disagree with the ‘party line’ around here. Evidently I also threw firebombs at everyone associated with Obama, had a huge hissy fit when Halter lost, and generally acted like Godwin himself has descended upon my country. Take a look at the responses, then trawl through my comment history and try and make the two fit.
But it’s the imparted wisdom of the masses, eh?
shep
@Marc: That’s too bad, Marc, since I appear to have “lost you” over someone else’s words. Please re-read what I said, nothing about Obama betraying his “principles”. I have no idea whatsoever what those are.
Kerry Reid
I was in Grant Park on Election Night and distinctly remember Obama saying “We may not get there in one year, or even one term.” Yet somehow because not everything has happened on the Super-Sekrit Leftie Prog-Blogger Timetable, he’s a sellout and a failure? Seriously, why do we bother electing presidents to four-year terms if the “legacy” is set in less than two?
It would of course be nice if presidential candidates could be honest when running for office and say “A lot of this stuff I want to see happen depends upon the state of the economy, the kind of douchebags I have to deal with in my own party as well as the opposition, the lying feckless idiotic media whores, and how much you people who are so enthusiastic tonight will stay on point and realize that this is a long hard slog that won’t be fixed by one person in 100 days, and you’re probably going to be fighting a lot of these battles in some form or another — or worse ones — for the rest of your lives and your children’s lives, because that’s just the way life is.”
But then, anyone who said that would never get elected in Kindergarten Instant-Gratification Entitlement Nation.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
I think it’s wasted effort to continue to push for the public option _now_ after it’s clear that not enough people in Congress support it. It’s never wasted effort to _want_ the public option, and it wouldn’t be wasted effort to push for it _later_, because it’s an excellent policy idea. But there are a lot of excellent policy ideas that can’t grow (yet?) in the terrible soil of Washington.
beatty
@Nick: How does kicking up a storm for what you believe in constitute being intellectually dishonest?
I argue that the DADT repeal, if it passes, will come because enough pressure was put on lawmakers and the Obama administration. Which goes to my original point that there are numerous liberals who like stuff that Obama has done, but are not willing to sit by on stuff that he hasn’t done.
General Stuck
The Thread About Nothing rumbles on.
Elizabelle
@Kerry Reid:
very good comment.
“lying feckless idiotic media whores”
hard to argue with a syllable
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@FlipYrWhig: Since you tried to be reasonable, I’ll answer your point at length.
First of all, you chose a terrible issue to make an argument about. Wal-Mart would like nothing better than to a public option that people buy into and government subsidizes. Guess who doesn’t have to pay for employee health care if that happens?
Lincoln opposed the public option because she gets a substantial percentage of her money from HMOs. Like Bayh and Holy Joe, she’s been bought by out-of-state lobbyists,
Second, there are two types of votes– policy and procedural. It has always been acceptable for members of a caucus to split their votes along those lines on bills important to the leadership. You disagree with the policy, fine– vote against it. But you don’t cross your party on procedural votes. If the leadership needs your vote to get something to the floor, you give it to them.
Lincoln helped get the public option stripped by threatening to withhold her vote on procedure. That is normally punished by loss of committee spot, lack of support on bills vital to your interests, loss of pork or no support in a re-election bid.
Lincoln is going to lose her seat in November– there isn’t any doubt about it. During a series of votes, she jammed her party repeatedly.
Her reward is that Obama supported her in a primary (against someone who’d won a statewide election and polled better than she did in the general) and went nuclear on his supporters– a key interest group (Labor).
She’s still on Agriculture and she’s been promised a vote to permanently repeal the Estate Tax (issue number one for the Walton family) before the end of the session.
Meanwhile, the Republican caucus has been told that if they give the Democrats a vote on a leadership issue, they’ll pay for it. Oddly enough, they’re unanimous.
Anyone who has worked in a legislature knows that the saying “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar” is back-asswards. Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein (“If I could not inspire love, I would instead cause fear”) is the correct way to compel compliance.
It’s funny that his opponents keep calling Obama a “Chicago-Style politician”. He’s about as far as you could get from that. Comparisons to Kerensky or the Weimar Richstag would be more appropos.
Nick
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: Rewriting reality I see.
which is not why she’s losing since she not only WON her party’s primary, but is getting like 3 out of ever 4 Democratic voters, while the 1/4 is going to Boozman, Lincoln or Halter, which brings me to…
marginally in some polls, the same in most, and in some, he polled worse, especially toward the priamry
who have zero power or votes in the state of Arkansas
Except that Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have voted with the Democrats on the stimulus, jobs bill, and financial reform, Brown on the latter two (must to the dismay of his supporters) and Arlen Specter actually flat out left the damn party. In the meantime, the Democrats have scored historically high percentage of united votes.
Nick
@beatty:
you’re accusing Obama for being hostile to gay rights when he’s pushing a major gay rights issue, that’s being dishonest.
Kerry Reid
@madmatt:
By the way, I must quote our illustrious host here and say “You know what is equivalent to rape? RAPE, you stupid fuck.”
FlipYrWhig
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
But she may also be opposed to it on ideological grounds rather than purely venal ones.
I also have had moments of wishing that Democrats ran their operation more like a parliamentary system, where if you don’t support crucial Democratic agenda items you don’t get to call yourself a Democrat. But instead what happens is that there are essentially two blocs within the Democratic party, one that’s much more like the Eisenhower or Rockefeller Republicans. It’s pretty big; I did a back-of-the-envelope chart on an earlier thread and estimated that there are at least 20 of them, maybe even 30, including Lincoln.
What happens if you punish Lincoln? It feels good, certainly. But what does it accomplish? What if she says, “Fine, buddy, do your worst. I’m not voting for this bill, I’m not voting for the next bill, and I’ll run for reelection as the Democrat who told the liberals to fuck off. If I win I’ll be a pain in your ass, and if I lose you’ll get to deal with a raging Republican loon.”
In other words, she was so opposed to the whole Obama agenda that she had to be dragged into the low level of support she ultimately did provide. This was her price.
Which Republicans in the Senate represent constituencies that otherwise support liberal policies? Snowe, Collins, Brown… maybe Gregg, Voinovich, and Grassley… To an even lesser degree, maybe Burr or Ensign or LeMieux. They don’t have to fear losing a beachhead where a senator represents a state that isn’t ideologically simpatico the way Democrats do.
They’re close to unanimous because they’re such a small minority. If Castle and Kirk win, I’m not sure the same clampdown on dissent is going to be possible.
That’s Machiavelli.
The problem remains, how do you inspire fear in the mind of a squishy moderate Democrat who represents a conservative-to-moderate electorate? Bearing in mind that there are at least 20 of them. The fear runs all in the other direction. Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson, et al know that the alternative to them is unalloyed nutbaggery. That’s why they extort a price for their support every time.
FlipYrWhig
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: And I respected the Halter challenge, although if I’m right that Lincoln got institutional support in exchange for her becoming less uncooperative on the big-ticket policies, I also understand why it played out the way it did. And I find it aggravating that Lieberman has the ability to cause such havoc, because that’s a case where the electorate he represents should be able to sustain a much more liberal senator than he is.
But I really do believe that it’s vital to get as much done with this sizable and somewhat flukish Democratic majority as possible, and if coddling the ConservaDems makes it possible to get things passed, I swallow hard and coddle harder. I don’t think being harsh to them would make them vote better. I think it would mean a lot of votes that went 35-65 and even more talk of division and ineptitude. I’ll take instead a lot of votes that go 60-40 and talk of sell-outs and nefarious “corporatists.”
AxelFoley
@Allison W.:
I want to make hot, sweet love to this post.
kay
@madmatt:
No, it won’t. We’ll be talking about how much medical care costs by 2012.
Not insurance. Medical care. We’re going to have to. No country can spend so much on just physically surviving and last.
No one wanted to talk about it because it’s so uncomfortable. We’d have to discuss all kinds of things: why in the HELL we spend so much on the last year of life, why we test so much, why we have such poor general health but spend bazillions on “health care”.
Look around. Look at the medical facilities in your area. Good God, they’re like huge profit-spinning entities.
Think back to the fake “health care debate”. Two studies came out during that debate. One was on the overuse of mammograms, and the other was on the overuse of PAP testing. Scientific studies. Bland and value-neutral.
People went bonkers. There were all kinds of wild accusations of rationing and evil plans by insurance companies. No one even considered that we might test too much because it’s profitable. Because it is profitable.
We wouldn’t even talk about the findings. We ran away.
Insurance was the easy part. Wait until we discuss health care.
My Truth Hurts
@FlipYrWhig:
Why do you have such a problem with the term “radicalized”? Do you have anything relevant or intelligent to say to me or are you just filled with inexplicable invective?
gerry
362 comments worth of group think and cheap psychologizing. So sad for one of my favorite blogs.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts: That set me off because IMHO being a radical is _hard_. It’s a struggle. It’s risky. It requires action, or “praxis.” I’m not one. I’m just a liberal who vents on blogs. So are you really a radical? Or are you just frustrated and disgruntled?
Joel
Much ado about nothing; Obama has been floating around the 45-50% approval rating for pretty much the entire year, and the national congressional ballot has had the Democrats and Republicans floating at 44-45% for twice as long.
The problem for the Democrats is that they’re vulnerable in key areas.
SIA
@cat48: Many thanks cat48. I’ve read and appreciated your comments for some time and was pretty sure we were singing in the same choir! :) I can see how my comment was easy to misunderstand.
Hope you see this, it’s very late although I see the latest comment was in the last 30 minutes!
Karen
@DJShay:
Wanna know what the vitriol is really about?
And why they want Obama to jump through hoops they’d never expected Bill Clinton and would never expect Hilary Clinton to jump through?
And before anyone says I’m using the race card, think a moment. Really think.
What is the main difference between them? Hilary Clinton and President Obama were both Senators. Both are centrists and hawkish, in fact Hilary Clinton is to the right of Obama in that regard.
It’s because the FDL and Kosacks that hate Obama so much it’s palpable were only willing to tolerate a black man in the White House as long as he towed their line. Once it became clear he wasn’t going to (and if they’d read his history and actually listened to his speeches they’d have known that) that tolerance vanished.
If not, tell me why the PUMAs who were already a hate group suddenly increased in number tenfold or more as soon as Obama won the primary? Tell me why the first Birther was a PUMA?
I’m all ears.
My Truth Hurts
@FlipYrWhig:
I would prefer faster and more sweeping change via steamrolling progressive legislation through congress like Bush did with his agenda, who I considered a radical. I would like the Democrats to get the cocks of industry out of their mouths and stand up for the little guy with a New New Deal with public works programs that creates badly needed jobs, to break up the banks that are “too large to fail”, to re-institute real financial regulation that has been dismantled these last 30 years, to provide a single payer health insurance option to compete with the private companies, to re-regulate the airlines, to drastically raise the minimum wage, to re-address trade agreements and the resultant total loss of manufacturing jobs, to actually support unions and the right to organize, and to cut defense spending to a proportional level against realistic needs. These are just the items off the top of my head.
Don’t ask me how this is done. That’s not my job. I am not a politician. I just know it’s been done in the past. My job is to be aware, vote and apply pressure where I can. Whatever strategy is being applied now does not work. The GOP will oppose anything the Democrats put up. They achieve watered down legislation that they don’t even vote for. They are the minority and they are still winning.
I would think that what I describe above is radical to a lot of people, but maybe not. I used to be ok with gridlock and partisan bickering. I used to believe that debating a conservative or a Republican was debating someone in good faith who accepted all the same basic facts but simply disagreed with how to respond. I don’t believe any of that crap anymore. We have all wasted our time dealing politely with people like that. It’s time for real change, not watered down PR approved market tested crap. If Obama and the Democrats aren’t up to it then myself and many I know will spend whatever election cycles we have yet to live through looking elsewhere or dropping out of the process completely. In fact, I have already been doing that since Clinton’s first election. If that seems unreasonable or selfish then I can respond only by quoting the GOP, “tough shit”. I am angry and I am fucking done with the crazy, the greedy and the stupid.
Kerry Reid
@My Truth Hurts:
Shorter My Truth Hurts: I demand that reality not be real.
You’re about to choke on your own horseshit.
“Don’t ask me how this is done. That’s not my job.”
Oh, but I thought you were “radicalized.” Read your goddamn Alinsky, you lazy SOB. Hell, read Al Giordano, who has actually been DOING the motherfucking groundwork while you whine about how angry you are that somebody hasn’t wiped your ass for you and made your life all better while you play now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t with your fucking vote.
Real radicals do the work in good times and bad (again, good thing limp-dicked losers like you weren’t in on the fight for civil rights — the first sight of a firehose and you’d have shit yourself — “I feel so BETRAYED and DISENCHANTED!”). Poseurs sit on the sidelines with their snotty noses and expect to have their asses kissed because they are so special and sensitive and idealistic and shit. So you want to “drop out of the process completely?” Just. Fucking. Do. It. Flounce to your heart’s content. Must you stay? Can’t you go? I’ll write you a motherfucking one-way ticket to Whiny Disenchanted Emoville.
But if you want to build a real third party, as you vaguely imply, know that it actually takes a lot of work and won’t happen in 100 days, either. So maybe the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you, Radical Dreamer!
If I read you right, you dropped out of politics during the Clinton years, right? So why the fuck do you care what the Dems do? You only vote when it suits your dewicate fee-fees. You’re just another asshole who thinks his electoral caprices need special care-and-feeding — OR ELSE WE’LL ALL BE SORRY!
“I would like the Democrats to get the cocks of industry out of their mouths and stand up for the little guy with a New New Deal”
That New Deal you idolize? It fucked over a lot of people. READ the first Social Security Act — deliberately written to exclude domestic workers, farmhands, temporary workers — basically, anyone who had melanin or a vagina or a combination thereof. Oh, and government workers, too. But hey, maybe that doesn’t describe you, so who gives a fuck, right?
You think the corporate cock that the Dems suck is bad? FDR took it down to the short and curlies from racist Dixiecrats — he got his economic packages passed only by NOT pursuing anti-lynching legislation. Gee, I’d say that promising to ignore the “strange fruit hanging in the poplar trees” is a bit more problematic than backing off from a public option, but what do I know? I’m not a self-important “radicalized” idiot who votes when he feels like it and somehow thinks his maybe-I-will, maybe-I-won’t “activism,” combined with his self-professed and demonstrable ignorance of what should be done (hell, you’re utterly ignorant of history and basic civics for that matter), entitles him to customized slap-and-tickle from candidates — or else he’ll take his vote and go home!
Don’t like hearing this? Tough shit. I’ve been listening to loser wannabe lefties like you whine and kvetch for the past 30 fucking years. And that’s all you do. You haven’t earned the right to call yourself “radical.” And you sure as shit haven’t been involved long enough to be “disenchanted.” Get back to us when you’ve actually put some goddamn skin in the game.
Kerry Reid
Oh, and if My Truth Hurts is actually a woman: my bad. But in my experience, that level of ignorance and self-important lookit-me-Ma, I’m-so-transgressive-and-disgruntled BS almost always comes with twig-and-berries attached.
Nick
@My Truth Hurts:
yes just like those Constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and flag burning, privatizing social security and creating a guest worker status.
Oh wait.
Karen
@Kerry Reid:
I want to marry you and have your baby!
Socraticsilence
@Singfoom:
Yes, that makes sense- I mean a failed attempt to prosecute Bush would’ve been way better than say HCR- I mean one gives healthcare to poor people, but the other, it makes me feel superior.
My Truth Hurts
@Kerry Reid:
No, you don’t read me right, at all. The fact is you have no clue what my level of activism is or how hard I have worked for what I believe in.
I do know that the tone deaf arrogance such as you display is part of the problem with the Democratic Party, as well as the general national discourse.
@Nick:
Actually, more like the Patriot Act.
My Truth Hurts
@Nick:
Actually, more like the Patriot Act.
Socraticsilence
@My Truth Hurts:
Tell you what they day something comparable to 9-11 happens is the day Obama is able to ram that stuff through.
My Truth Hurts
By the way, @Kerry Reid: , you be sure to get back to me when you have your anger issues worked out. Whatever poor idealistic fool broke your heart all those many years ago sure has made an entitled asshole out of you.
My Truth Hurts
@Socraticsilence:
The deregulated oil industry polluting the Gulf and destroying the local economy wasn’t big enough for you? Wall Street betting against American prosperity doesn’t quite cross the threshold? It needs to be a big dramatic explosive mass murder before we can extend unemployment insurance a few more weeks?
Kerry Reid
@My Truth Hurts:
“If Obama and the Democrats aren’t up to it then myself and many I know will spend whatever election cycles we have yet to live through looking elsewhere or dropping out of the process completely. In fact, I have already been doing that since Clinton’s first election. If that seems unreasonable or selfish then I can respond only by quoting the GOP, “tough shit”. ”
WTF am I reading wrong about you, Corky? When you don’t get your way, you “drop out” of the process, yet somehow we’re supposed to take you seriously as a committed “radical” and kiss your ass, lest you deny us your pwecious-wecious vote? Just go home and bite your pillow, sonny.
As for my “anger issues” — who posted this in this thread?
So YOUR anger as a self-righteous half-assed sometime-voter (I’m guessing one of the white-boy variety) with low information (i.e., someone who thinks FDR was a righteous progressive, rather than a centrist who packed the Supreme Court and tossed African Americans and — especially — Japanese-Americans to the wolves) is somehow admirable and we should all be “hurting” at your “radical” version of the “truth.”
But when I call you out on your bullshit, I’m somehow a person with “issues.” Shall we add misogyny to your other faults?
BTW, I’m not angry at you. I just get a kick out of telling self-righteous low-information morons that they’re full of shit. When you’re prepared to make your arguments in Grown-Up Land, come on back. Or you can sit and sulk through another decade or so of election cycles. No one will miss you, I assure you.
Kerry Reid
@My Truth Hurts:
And of course you are perfectly free to dazzle us with your insights into what “radical” actions we should all be taking to make things move in the direction you’d like. Oh, but you’re not a “politician” You don’t know what to do! You’re just damn sure that whatever anybody else is doing is wrong!
Get off the fucking cross, asshole. We can use the wood.
Of course if you’d like to give us an outline of what actions you think would help move things leftward — other than sulking and pointing fingers — we’d love to hear it.
As for your “who broke your heart” comment — that one’s easy to answer. No one. Unlike you, apparently, I’m not stupid enough to believe in American idealism and that we’re Number One, Fuck Yeah! Therefore, I’m not disappointed when politicians act largely in their own best interests, and when a nation founded on genocide, slavery, and unfettered capitalism tends to act in not-so-savory ways, no matter which party is in charge. Life ain’t fair, things don’t always work out, and you can either do your part to make it a tiny bit better or go home and kill yourself. Since I don’t come into the game expecting it to be a level playing field, I save myself a lot of time being so disappointed and sad that America isn’t the Wonderful Great Land of Freedom. Rather, I spend my time doing what I can to make that a bit less of a myth.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts:
First, I should say that my gripe about the vocabulary of radicalism has been building over many years, and I’m not trying to single you out.
Not really. It’s a pretty standard list of things that would in fact be better than what we have, and I think you’d probably find that >95% of the people who post here would agree, right down the line. Every one of _us_ WANTS “faster and more sweeping change.”
But, here’s the thing. The Democratic party as it exists is crowded with people who are basically along the lines of what used to be Northeastern Republicans. In the Senate I think it’s half the caucus, and in the House I think it’s maybe a third. I’m talking ideology, not voting patterns, for now. It includes people like Bob Casey and Jon Tester and Jim Webb and Tom Carper as well as the irritants like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus and Mary Landrieu.
They might think what you and I both want would be great to have in an ideal world, but in the here and now they just cost too much, or create burdensome regulation that kills jobs, or overstep the bounds “government” should respect. And they represent states or districts that are more conservative than you and I are. And they want to get reelected.
Trying to persuade them to do what you and I want is _difficult_. Trying to threaten them into doing what you and I want is basically impossible, because they can easily say that if they lose or quit, their seat goes Republican. And it’s basically true.
So IMHO there are only two courses of action for dealing with them. You can either take good proposals and water them down ideologically (single-payer -> public option -> expanded Medicare -> private plans on OPM rules), or you can buy them off individually (more Medicare for Nebraska; help with Lincoln’s primary campaign).
Because these are the types of things that IMHO _have to happen_ to get something _resembling_ the original policy agenda in place, fulminating about corporate this and cock-sucking that is really just self-indulgent. What we have is either this ugly, slow-moving process of half-measures and compromises, or it’s defeat compounding defeat. The “steamroller” of our dreams isn’t going to happen, and wouldn’t work if it _did_ happen. If you’re selling a house and you have a target in mind that you think is fair, but nobody’s buying, you can either ride it out for as long as it takes for that dream offer to come along, or after you’re all pissed off and wrung out you take the best one, curse the world, and break open the cheap champagne. And that’s what _victory_ looks like on our side.
FlipYrWhig
@My Truth Hurts:
I think you’re misunderstanding the counterarguments here. You’re incredulous that these disasters weren’t big enough for “you.” _We_ think _all the same things suck_ about the world and the economy. But if Ben Nelson doesn’t, because he’s a grandstanding dimwit, what can we do about it? How can we change his mind, or his vote? Terrorists spooked Democrats into supporting all kinds of things they normally wouldn’t have, because they feared how biting the campaign ads would be against them. What does Ben Nelson fear? One thing I know he _doesn’t_ fear is a bunch of liberals who aren’t from Nebraska calling him a cocksucking corporatist on the Babbage’s Computational Engine.
Kerry Reid
Frankly, I think both the half-assed “radical” Firebaggers and the Teabaggers are acting out of the Stalker Boyfriend Handbook: If I Can’t Have the Country I Want, NO ONE Can Have It, and I’ll Toss Acid In Its Face to Punish It for Being Unfaithful To My Needs! But Only Because I Love It So Much Better Than Anyone Else!
FlipYrWhig
@Kerry Reid:
Ooh, nice, KR. _That’s_ a keeper, especially the last bit.
Kerry Reid
@FlipYrWhig:
Thank you. I’m sorry, but this whole “dropping out of the process in a fit of pique” equals “radical” just gets on my tits.
That said, I do know people who don’t vote as a matter of personal principle. But they don’t claim their non-voting status as a badge of holier-than-thou personal integrity. And in some cases, they are also the people who chain themselves to nuclear missile sites, serve lunches with Food Not Bombs, or do other proactive things that sometimes land them in jail — which is truly radical, and something I’ve yet to do.
Absence of participation in the process doesn’t mean somebody is apathetic. But it also doesn’t mean that someone has made a more “principled” or “idealistic” or “radical” stance than those who have decided that it’s better to work incrementally toward what is possible. It’s certainly possible to work outside the existing system. But to ONLY deny the existing system your support and suppose that that is sufficient to create the conditions for change is self-indulgent nonsense. Which is why I maintain that one only has to scratch a loud-mouthed “idealist” to find a nihilist.
Do I think that the expansion of public health clinics, thanks to Bernie Sanders’ amendment in the HCR bill, is a “big fucking deal?” Hell yeah — even though I’m not (at least currently) likely to need to use those clinics. (I’ll just keep paying about 1/4 of my freelance, post-tax dollars to keep my current health plan up — which means I forego things like nice vacations, clothes purchased at retail, the newest electronic gadgets, etc. Life is a series of unpalatable choices, no one promised me a rose garden, etc.) What I find gobsmacking (though of course I shouldn’t) is the notion from some lefties that “Well, this plan doesn’t help ME immediately, therefore it’s useless!” Whatever happened to “the rising tide lifts all boats” idea?
No one denies that things SHOULD move more swiftly and equitably. Hell, it shouldn’t have taken until 1919 for women to get the vote, and into the 1960s for African Americans to have actual meaningful suffrage. But again and again — I look at how long feminists, gay activists, and minority rights activists have had to work within the system, how many indignities (including being excluded from Social Security initially) they have suffered, and I think “would things have moved faster if they’d just dropped out in disgust?” Um, no. There is no credible historical evidence to support that supposition.
FlipYrWhig
@Kerry Reid: I hear you. I know people who have been tear-gassed, direct actions and street theater and whatnot. I’ve known some radical feminists and radical fairies, and that shit is hardcore. I know that’s not me, and sometimes I think it crosses the line from agitprop to just bothering people for the sake of feeling better about yourself. But that’s what it means to me to be “radicalized.” It’s a matter of risky physical action with a theory of conflict behind it.
If you’re talking about giving money or not giving money, voting or not voting, writing a letter or commenting on a blog, this is all within the realm of the bourgeois politics most of us exercise, and it’s not radical, and you don’t get to pull rank or claim the mantle of moral witness. But you can certainly still argue about what’s best and what comes next, and this is as good a place as any for that.
Brien Jackson
@madmatt:
So wait, your contention is that no one should EVER have a claim denied? Holy jeebus.
NottaDrone
To the OP, and all you drones: there must be a particularly good batch of crack circulating, and you have all helped yourselves generously to it.
Awww, we’re all kwyying over poooor Barry, all the loony lefties don’t wike him, waaaaahhhhh.
Are you all fucking insane?
Lets look at what happens when Obama ‘does things’:
-‘Historic’ healthcare legislation, (which BTW, is a giant shit sandwich, and is the destruction of the finest Healthcare system on the face of the earth) cuts Medicare and adds 30 million to the roles. How the fuck is that supposed to work, geniuses? MEDICARE IS ALREADY BROKE
-Bumbling, mumbling and stumbling, while tens of million gallons of oil ruin the Gulf, refusing help from other countries, foot dragging, posturing, blaming; what a take-charge guy! (In reality, a well executed rope-a-dope, to ensure the Gulf’s destruction)
-Quadrupling the deficit, now THERE’S an accomplishment to be proud of! YOU ASSHOLES LIKE DEFICITS??
-Blowing more than 800 billion on ‘stimulus’- and NOTHING HAPPENS! We would have had lots more stimulation buying VIAGRA with that money! Show us the jobs he saved! YOU CAN’T, BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ANY
-Oh yes, well I guess we should count 9.7% unemployment (17% + in actuality) as one of his grand accomplishments!
-Lets see…and so far, Obummer has hiked taxes by 680 BILLION dollars, way to go, Barry! YOU LIKE TAXES?
-Here’s a good one: we’re on track to top A MILLION HOUSE REPOSSESSIONS this year! How exciting! IS THIS STILL BUSH??
-Oh and the Bush tax cuts- which he is allowing to expire- will tip the economy into a double dip, and WORSE recession! So all you ‘freelancers’ (i.e. unemployed assholes) will have plenty more time to kvetch impotently on rags like this one!
-The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: QUOTE (the Obama administration has) “embarked on a course of rapid government expansion, major tax increases and suffocating regulations”. YA THAT’S A GOOD THING RIGHT, LOSERS?
Due to space and time constraints, I have barely scratched the SURFACE of the Obama wrecking ball agenda.
(Obama a ‘centrist’? LOOLROFL, you are high. Is the above the work of a centrist?)
HEY- MAYBE YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT! The left really SHOULD be giving Barry more ups and props! After all, he has executed his Marxist agenda FLAWLESSLY in the short time he has been in office!
Elizabelle
@NottaDrone:
Hello there Mr. Drone.
Lovely to see someone important enough to be on a nickname basis with our Commander in Chief, who combines a whacking anger management problem with such an interesting, selective and nuanced understanding of our social/political world.
Please give our best to your fellow Yosemite Sam types over at Free Republic or Red State or Hot Air or wherever you hail from.
Cordially yours,
Elizabelle
unemployed asshole drone loon who should be smarter and not engage with trolls
PS: we ladies love it when you arrive and make your points with such colorful and respectful language. It underscores the many fine and intelligent arguments you raise.
My Truth Hurts
@Kerry Reid:
You sure write a lot but you don’t really say anything. You still have no idea who I am, what my age is, where I am from and what I have done to further my political beliefs. You don’t know shit about me or what support I have lent to the Democratic party or any political cause I believe in. You don’t know my level of education or what my profession is. You just make idiotic assumptions and fire off insults.
I’ve done plenty of political heavy lifting, I’ve marched down plenty of streets in protest, I’ve been arrested for my political actions more than once. I’ve been physically assaulted for speaking out about what I believe in. I have participated in the political process since before I could vote.
Which one of us again is the low information moron?
When you are all grown up you will understand like I do that while not everyone shares your point of view you can still have intelligent and reasonable discussions about them. I commented here because I genuinely wanted to try to answer John’s question and maybe spark a discussion with some people and try to come to some sort of mutual understanding with them. Maybe I would learn something, maybe others would learn something and maybe we would all move forward with a larger picture of just what the hell is really going on. But then that’s just me being a dumb “idealist”, thinking there are open minded here who are more interested in discussion then anonymous internet pissing contests.
You would rather bully someone into shutting up or leaving and make what you think are clever insults in than actually have a discussion that educates and enlightens both of us. It is not because I have all the answers or that I think I am some precious gift from god, it is because I don’t know what else to do than what I have already done and I am smart enough and care enough about it to listen to others and get their points of view before trying something new or dropping my support for Democrats completely. Since you tell me they don’t need my vote, well then maybe I will just give it to Nader. But I will never not vote, you see, because voting is a right and a rare privilege and I consider it my civic duty to exercise it.
Whoops! There I go again with my silly idealism talking about “duty”.
Your attitude encapsulates perfectly what is wrong with the Democratic party today and why they will have difficulty in the next few elections bringing out the vote. Fuck you.
Ok, now it’s your turn to make fun of me, call me names and generally swagger around like the dumb fuck you are. Let me know how that works out for you and your political party. Let me know how big of a coalition you build with that.