I went out to Toledo yesterday to see the people who came out to see the President.
TOLEDO, Ohio — If the 2012 election is about the economy, as most people think, then President Obama’s visit on Friday to this struggling manufacturing city on the Ohio-Michigan border captured as well as any day could the complicated campaign he is likely to face — playing both offense and defense, taking credit and deflecting blame.“Thanks for saving my job,” one young man told him at shift change. On the assembly line a woman spun around, to show the words “Thank you” on her T-shirt’s back.
I intended to wander around near the plant and see what I could see there, but I met up with the nice people pictured and instead took part in a “visibility event”. This gathering involved standing with members of the UAW at an intersection near the action and holding signs and smiling a lot. I met members of this group during the SB 5 protests. I’ve been meaning to pal around with these loathed and feared community organizers anyway and a street corner welcoming of Obama sounded like a good idea. The objective of gatherings like this one is to be seen and garner local press attention, and we were successful in both.
The New York Times piece on the President’s visit is good. Just straight reporting of events, with Friday’s poor job numbers as context, which absolutely belongs in there. Unfortunately, I listened to CNN’s intro to the facts of the visit in the car on the way in and immediately went into fight mode. The President was visiting Toledo to “brag”; US car companies can’t “stand on their own two feet”. I had to turn it off, or I was going to go into adrenalin shock
I’m an advocate. I recognize the language of advocacy. Word choice as a tool is not new or mysterious or subtle to me. That tool is not new, I would assume, to a news channel. It sticks out. Can they not hear themselves? I heard these words CNN chose and immediately felt that the CNN newsreader was on the other side. If the speaker is choosing to use words in the intro to a piece that impart a view before we get to facts, I am inevitably going to conclude that the speaker, too, is an advocate, but, unlike me, they’ve chosen not to reveal that to listeners or readers.
One final thing. I was asked to take pictures and video at Netroots Nation. I am not the person in any group who takes pictures, because I’m impatient with the whole process. I’m the whiner who sighs and won’t stand still and asks if you’re through taking my picture yet, 5 seconds in. I used this event as sort of a test run to determine if people dislike having their picture taken as much as I dislike having my picture taken. The answer is “no, they don’t”. I asked first, and they were more than happy to have their pictures taken. We had a lot of fun with it.
bob h
What is especially good about all this is that the automakers are making good money on smaller, eco-friendly cars, not 4000 lb. gas guzzlers.
Linda Featheringill
Yes, indeed. Thank you Mr. President.
Unfortunately, we still have a ton of other problems to deal with.
Villago Delenda Est
CNN has been in freefall decline ever since Turner sold it off to the vile Time-Warner collective.
It’s garbage now, much like Faux, which was never more than garbage.
cat48
Hi Kay and Thanks for supporting the prez.
All Cable is basically attacking the jobs report & Obama & the Economy. It seems strange since he didn’t cause the crash. Polls show that over 50% still blame Bush for the Economy for now.
I’m truly worried about the unemployed and don’t know quite what to do. I harass the GOP House members & the Press about no Jobs Bill, as promised in 11/10 Elections. They ran on Jobs & Cuts only Fire people, not create jobs. About all I can do. No way the GOP will assist the Dems with the Economy, but they ran on JOBS, Jobs, Jobs, and they should be reminded frequently if they won’t release the Bills the House Dems have prepared, one of them with no cost.
WereBear
Cheers to you, kay. Never too late to learn a new skill, huh?
The pendulum always swings. It’s rough to be at the end of it. Always has been, always will be.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t watch anymore because I’m just completely disgusted at what I perceive as sneering fake-sophisticates opining, cynically. I regretted turning it on in the car because it was a beautiful day and the last thing I need is to go into rabid fight mode on my time away from work. It’s hard to turn it off, once you’re in it.
OzoneR
Heavens to Betsy, who would’ve thought the President touting his achievements using the, what is it called again? oh yeah, the bully pulpit, would be spun by our news media as “bragging”
Kay
@OzoneR:
You’d have to listen to get the full effect. She was godamnned outraged. Personally offended. Or maybe that’s just the way they are trained to speak, and now they can’t talk like regular human beings, with ordinary emphasis.
Anyway, the mood there was celebratory, as expected, what with the local industry and all.
OzoneR
@Kay:
Because now you know its out there and now you know people less educated about politics are listening to it and believing it and being led astray.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@WereBear:
So when does the pendulum swing our way again? I mean, aside from perhaps the ACA, it seems like any time it’s supposed to swing our way, it stops just right of center and then gets flung back hard right again.
Kay
@OzoneR:
We have a local bidnessman who went from Chamber of Commerce Republican to Woody Guthrie. I don’t really know what the hell happened, I don’t know him that well and he’s sort of savvy and reticent and dodges my prosecutorial interrogations but it’s great. Welcome aboard!
He was talking about FOX and how once you finally hear spin you can’t UNhear it.
It’s just loud, and clear as day.
dr. bloor
Wait. I never, ever watch cable “news,” but is there really a sentiment out there that the auto industry bailout was some sort of welfare-state bad idea that didn’t work out spectacularly well?
Jesus.
Pangloss
I bought a high gas mileage compact car in 2007, and now it gets as much on the highway as some SUVs. In the past five years the number of available cars on the market that get 40+ MPG has more or less quadrupled, and there are a number of electric cars available. This is what happens when you have leadership at the top that urges automotive efficiency.
Carol from CO
Is that picture representative of the crowd size there? I hope not.
Kay
@dr. bloor:
I don’t even object to that question. “Could the car companies have survived without the bail out?”
I suppose that’s a question someone might like answered, oh, …Mitt Romney or somebody who needs that option explored.
I object to the opinion inherent in framing the question that way.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
poor old neocon trades in a cadillac.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Kay:
I think the problem isn’t that ‘could they have survived without it?’, rather than ‘SHOULD they have survived WITH it?’. Most of the GOP seems to think it was an expensive soshuliztic mistake abetting Union ‘thugs’, so obviously they wish all of them had went belly up. Because better to fuck over an industry than dare think Unions might help us.
opal
Great post. You’ll do fine.
Keep in mind that the overall focus of CNN is increasing dollars per minute advertising rates.
Yutsano
@Kay: Most Republicans and conservatives like to point out that Ford survived just fine without any sort of “handouts” from the government. They of course blissfully ignore the fact that many of the parts and down chain suppliers for all of the Big Three were also essentially bailed out right along with GM and Chrysler, so saving them both had a huge echo effect down the economic chain. Not to mention Ford uses those same suppliers and would have been greatly adversely affected if they had folded along with GM/Chrysler. But then again that takes little things like thought and paying attention to the details. It sucks to be the adult ones sometimes.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@dr. bloor:
on the plus side, all the rhetoric about “government motors” has coincided with a steep decline in nascar attendance, ratings, and their once vaunted relationships between fans and sponsors.
kay
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
It’s hard for me, because (whether the media personalities believe it or not) these people are genuinely proud of what they accomplished. Genuinely grateful. They knew they were on the ropes. They knew it better than anyone.
So if you see them, face to face, and then listen to the sneering douchebags, you’re ready to rip someone’s head off, if you’re me, anyway.
Particularly as they’re all convinced they know all about “real Americans”, and who is one, and who isn’t one.
I won’t accept that lecture from them, even as a liberal who is not an auto worker, and was never in jeopardy of losing my job (although the practice here would have suffered, so there’s that). I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.
kay
@Yutsano:
Ford was actually really up-front about that, to their credit. They were factual. Presumably they understand their business.
So anyone who says that hasn’t read anything Ford put out. I was pleased to see it.
Davis X. Machina
There’s no evidence that people — beyond those directly affected — are giving the White House, and the Democrats in Congress, any credit for the survival of the domestic auto industry even if it was obvious then that the GOP adamantly opposed it it.
There’s every reason to believe that the White House, and the Democrats in Congress, will catch hell for taking any credit.
Looking ahead, there’s no guarantee that the GOP would be punished for a general economic catastrophe even if it was entirely manifest that GOP intransigence deliberately caused it.
Look at the last UK general election. The Tories went to the country and said “Labour fucked up. Here in our manifesto are policies A, B, C, policies we know, and you know, are guaranteed to make things generally, and your life specifically, worse rather than better, thing that may have actually caused the problems in the first place — and we promise to do those very things, more often, and harder. Vote for us.”
Running on a platform of “Yes We Can — Make Things Worse, That Is!”, they came within a Nick-Clegg’s-ego-length of an outright majority in Commons.
I see no evidence the GOP can’t ride the same platform to the White House, and control of the Senate, to go with control of the House.
People aren’t very bright.
Yutsano
@kay: I meant to actually include that in my point, because there was a reason why while Ford didn’t have their hands out themselves they also weren’t about to publicly shame the other two for taking the assistance. They knew they were getting just as much help, it just wasn’t direct assistance. But you’re right, to their credit they never sugar coated that fact. :)
WereBear
I was thinking of one of my favorite Bertrand Russell quotes: All social movements go too far.
Because you are exactly right; every time the country’s natural inclinations against being a sociopathic Mammon worshipper struggles against their bonds, the sociopathic Mammon worshippers step up their game, and they do yank it back; much further than it normally would be.
This drives their side crazier and crazier; heck, in 1964 they hid the Birchers, now they get them front row seats. But this also drives away those who don’t lean crazy.
2008 was the pendulum being grabbed back. There’s so much momentum just stopping it took incredible effort and strength; but we did it.
The increased hysteria on the other side is proof that they feel it. It’s hard to tell because they are always on the flying spittle side of things; but there’s no smugness any more.
That’s my “tell.”
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Davis X. Machina:
The one that came after after eleventy billion years of Blairite rule, with charismatic wunderkind Gordon Brown the last one left leading the charge. The one where the British left pretty much split itself in two between the old and busted Labour and Clegg’s new hotness. The same thing has been going down in Canadia and we saw where that went last month.
I don’t see the similiarities to our situation at all.
Davis X. Machina
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Look at the Democrats in the Senate, one by one, starting with everyone named ‘Nelson’, and the professional-media Democratic party — the talking heads, the party’s visible face beyond Obama — and tell me you don’t see the similarities to our situation at all. Every bit as ossified, and out of touch, as the Millbank Tendency.
There’s a massive ‘Fuck You!’ vote out there ready to be tapped — even if the actual results are more ‘Fuck Me!’ — and Democrats don’t do ‘Fuck You’.
2006 was an anomaly, 2008 a freakin’ miracle.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@WereBear:
Except 2010 seemed to yank it back further than ever. They fucking own this country at the state-level and just cleaning up is going to take decades we won’t get, because, if the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that this country abhors giving Democrats/Liberals any time to do. It much prefers Republicans fucking things up than having to suffer a LIBERAL in charge for any longer than to remind people why those goddamn hippies suck so much.
Yeah, I’m sure the pendulum will swing back eventually. But my fear is that we’ll be so utterly damaged as a country that it won’t fucking matter anymore. AND, as backward as it fucking is, the more damaged we are, the less people seem willing to change the status quo. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the GOP managed to win 2010 by being a fucking monolith and then successfully convincing the American People that the DEMOCRATS were the psycho-partisan hyper-monolith evil that had to be stopped OR ELSE. And they won beyond all fucking recognition.
grandpajohn
@Yutsano:
MY daughter here in SC was one of them, Yeah, saving car makers in Michigan also saved jobs in redstates.
These fucking idiots have no clue as to how the auto industry component and supply line works. there are hundreds of companies scatter across the country, many of them in the south that feeds the big 3 auto makers and without them the industry would not exist and without the industry they would not be able to exist. the bailout saved thousands of jobs from coast to coast, something that even your basic moron ought to understand.
WereBear
@Davis X. Machina: Are you factoring in the fact that Republicans LIVE for the cultural resentments of the ’60’s, and this is aging out, faster and faster and faster?
Heck, I’m too young for that crap… and I’m not that young.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Davis X. Machina:
Nope. I don’t see any Lib-Dems to break the party bloc in two. I see a lot of Blue Dogs that were left looking for work after the last election. I see the party figurehead who beat the old guard’s chosen candidate in the 2008 primaries pulling 50% approval ratings and continually coming across as the smartest fucker in the room. And I see a lot of GOP going for broke in their policies and having their own approval ratings head for the floor in the process. This is America, we’re not Britain.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@WereBear:
It doesn’t matter when they’ve managed to successfully legally and legislatively entrench every single inch of bullshit they’ve shoveled except perhaps the Social Security Privatization they had a hard on for a couple years ago, and it seems like they’re about to succeed on that front now in any case.
WereBear
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Yes, but the buyer’s remorse is setting in with incredible speed; and we didn’t get midterm turnout like they did. I could be wrong about the change; though of course, I hope not.
You are right; there isn’t enough time to do it sensibly and easily, intelligently; gosh, I know that. But if we have an emergency, things do change fast then.
jwb
@Kay: That’s one reason I tell everyone I can that they should go two weeks without watching television news or listening to talk radio and see if they don’t feel better about themselves and the world. It really acts like an addiction. That’s one reason I’m absolutely convinced that the uninformed are in much better shape today than those who are “informed” all day by our dominant media.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@jwb:
^ So very much this.
Dollared
Kay that picture is so –weird!
How did you manage to get a picture of people that are invisible to all news reporters and cable celebrities?
It’s like taking a picture of a vampire, except the effect is even more powerful on cable – the children and parents of these people are invisible, too.
Dan
Great post, Kay, and thanks for going out there and snapping off some pictures. More like this, please!
HRA
Very nice job, Kay. Thanks for sharing.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Thank you Mr. President and thank you kay for reporting on Toledo for us.
shortstop
@Davis X. Machina: Don’t disagree with any of your dire prognostications, sadly, but I’ve come to believe it’s less about intelligence than about emotional health. The events of recent years have led me to conclude that there is no self-damage in which people of various intellectual capacities won’t enthusiastically participate if it presents them from doing the hard work of examining their core beliefs and adjusting them to fit new (even if only new to them) factual information.
It might be oversimplification to call it a pathological inability to admit error and adjust course, but not by much.
cat48
A guy from WSJ on msnbc yesterday called the car bailouts; Union Bailouts, he’s usually on Fox. That’s the most obnoxious thing I’ve heard them called.
slag
@Dollared: It’s true. Hardworking white people who are apparent patriots coming out in support of the president who helped save their jobs? Does not fit narrative. Does. Not. Compute.
The irony here is how flexible the narrative can be–Obama can be an appeasing thug, a soshulist fascist, a Black Liberation Muslim Athelst, and a bleeding heart elitist–and yet the narrative simply cannot make room for Obama being a “hardworking white people” sympathizer. Because everybody knows that’s just crazy talk!
ppcli
@slag:
Yeah, sure, the people holding those signs are doing a good job of looking like middle-aged Midwest autoworkers, but that’s just more evil ACORN trickery. They’re really armed Black Panther thugs in disguise.(And not armed in a good, second-amendment patriot way either! Armed in an urban looter way.)
shortstop
@slag: Right, except that the line from the right is that no union member is a hard-working white person; they’re all slacking overpaid leeches whose dental coverage nullified the noble and highly strategic efforts of management.
slag
@shortstop: Yeah. But that’s why pictures like the one that Kay took are so rarely seen [these days]. Because you can’t look at that picture and have disdain for those people.
To get that disdain you have to repeatedly show grainy video of the Black Panther thugs that ppcli mentioned. That’s where the real drama is. These people are just your average white people doing their best in a difficult time. And that’s just exactly what they look like. Not at all worthy of our
reality televisionnews programs.Brian R.
@cat48:
Republicans have done a great job in the last forty years of convincing the white working class that their own interests align with the interests of the GOP’s real business base.
Comments like this one need to be replayed far and wide to remind union members that these assholes hate them.
Mogden
Bailing out the auto giants and unionists was a disgraceful and despicable act. Crony capitalism all the way.
Valdivia
thanks Kay. Great post, I always appreciate both your analysis and the work you do on the ground.
maye
Obama, et. al. had no choice but to bailout the banks and the auto industry. We were on the precipice of Great Depression II, and we averted that.
However, if this president wants to get reelected and save us from god-knows-who(R), his future photo ops should be of meetings with industry/technology/manufacturing/energy movers & shakers who can place specific jobs in specific regions.
“What have you done for me lately?” will be the catch phrase for 2012. He’s got to show he’s TRYING to bring new industry to the U.S. (from outer space if necessarY . . .you know, the new alien-based economy).
Spaghetti Lee
@Mogden:
Did you read any of this thread before opening your yap?
xian
@Kay: or as Jay Rosen calls it, “the Church of the Savvy.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzoneR:
Now that Paul Ryan has snivelled about his program being accurately described as a voucher program, look for Jake Tapper and Ruth Marcus and all the other VSPs to describe Obama’s use of “voucher” as ‘unhelpful partisan sniping’ and ‘unfair attacks’
rossindetroit
@Mogden:
Fuck you, asshole.
My wife is a talented and experienced auto parts CAD designer. She’s been working a part time temp job as a janitor. She quit yesterday to go back to the high paying job that she loves, thanks to the bailout.
So you can kiss my tax paying ass.
Alex S.
@Mogden:
Mitt will go down over this! Down, down, down, harharhar!
PeakVT
Obvious troll is obvious.
Yutsano
@PeakVT: Am I wrong for wanting an ISP check? I smell sock puppetry. Smells like…rodent fornication.
opal
@rossindetroit:
Mogden is a sewage treatment plant on the Thames.
I don’t think he was serious.
AAA Bonds
Kickass posting, Kay, no lie
Villago Delenda Est
Or, the obvious troll is actually snarking.
Poe’s Law is tested on a daily basis around here.
AAA Bonds
@Mogden:
lol
Andy
I was born and raised in Toledo. When I was in college and grad school (and when I took a year off from school), I would come home and work for a small air freight company. They would do a lot of subcontracted work from other delivery companies. I delivered small packages to the Toledo GM Powertrain factory many times (as well as the Jeep assembly plant, Chrysler machining plant, and the Ford stamping plant). If auto manufacturing had cratered, it wouldn’t just have been the big three and their suppliers affected, but other businesses as well. The air freight company I worked for was a small business with 20-30 employees (they might have more now, it’s been a few years since I worked there). They might not have gone out of business, but they would have really taken a hit if the car companies went down.
Thanks for reporting on this kay.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, how can you tell anymore? The day the bailout was announced, a poster at Eschaton described it as “Obama’s devastating attack on the Mid-West and the working class”, and he wasn’t kidding
nancydarling
Kay, this is off topic but a lovely rant from a NW Arkansas denizen who has been going up to Joplin to help out. I copied and sent it to Cantor’s congressional email. I can only hope he reads it:
“
nancydarling
Block quote fail—again. The last three paragraphs should also have been block quoted.
WaterGirl
@ppcli: Your comment reminded me of the day of the Iowa caucuses in January 2008. I was in Iowa volunteering for the Obama campaign for a couple of weeks before the caucuses. The temp was near zero on the day of the caucuses, but we all stood out on the corners yelling with our signs for a couple of hours as people were driving to work.
At lunchtime, we were in a diner, and the TV was on, covering us (!) jumping and holding our signs from earlier that morning. A woman at one of the tables pointed to the TV and said that those were just kids and that they are paid to do that.
Luckily, the TV was showing me at that very moment, in the same down jacket, hat, scarf, boots, etc so I jumped in and pointed at the TV and said that most of us weren’t kids and we certainly weren’t paid! (I am in my early 50s.) It helped change the narrative in that little diner, anyway, and maybe for anyone they came into contact with that day.
The thing is, how often are we actually there to challenge the (false) narrative?
ppcli
@rossindetroit: Hey, that’s great news! Congrats to your wife.
WaterGirl
@nancydarling: Nancy, if you put “…” (3 periods in a row, no quotation marks) in each blank line between paragraphs, the periods will not be displayed but everything will end up in the text box.
WyldPirate
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
It’s not going to swing back “our way” as long as the Rethuglican base keeps creeping deeper into InsaneClownVille.
The Dem’s problem now is that it keeps inching further rightward to capture voters in the middle that are appalled by the crazification of the Rethug base. The “moderate”/Blue Dog Dems that move into the middle ground to get elected (or re-elected) is causing the friction and inability to maintain ideological cohesiveness–which is possibly the “natural state of the Democratic party”– the Rethugs exhibit.
I don’t think there will be any “cure” for this problem until the Rethugs implode and become so ideologically unforgiving that they cease to exist. That will leave an unoccupied niche for another party to form.
either a new party will form (doubtful the way the system is rigged now by legislatures at the state level) or we will be held as a country under the “tyranny of the minority” of the crazies on the far right. My bet is on the later being the case. Release from this hostage situation is dependent upon the “browning” of America, IMO.
OzoneR
@WaterGirl:
We? lol. I thought Obama was supposed to do that.
WereBear
I, too, have come to see it as far more of a mental illness than anything else.
For instance, there was the two men in my family who became more and more enamored of FOX… and then were diagnosed with end stage dementia…
Coincidence? I think not!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano:
“ford motor government loan” are too general terms for a good search, but they do turn up a 10 billion dollar low-interest loan in Dec 2008, a 5.6 B lo-int loan in 2011, and there have been several more over the last five to ten years. Ford didn’t do a full bail-out/bankruptcy like GM or Chrysler, and I don’t know much about the industry or corporate finance, but I’m confident in saying they’d have gone under w/out gov’t assistance
kc
heard these words CNN chose and immediately felt that the CNN newsreader was on the other side
I assure you, she IS on the other side.
opal
@WyldPirate:
Every time you use the term “Rethug base” it’s less convincing than the last time.
Marc McKenzie
@Spaghetti Lee:
I guess “no” would be the answer.
But then again, it would have been hard for him to read anything, since it appears that his head must have been jammed up his @$$.
OzoneR
I think the left underestimates just how many people believe Republican economic bullshit of tax cuts, spending cuts (especially this) and lower regulation.
I mean this weekend alone, I’ve heard “we need more private sector jobs so taxes can fund public sector jobs, and we can’t have that with too much regulation, spending and taxes” and “we need to give Wall Street billionaires bonuses so the taxes on them can pay for welfare and stuff”
and these didn’t come from Republicans.
People honestly believe if you cut spending, businesses will create jobs, they believe this bullshit, and the left doesn’t understand this
WyldPirate
@opal: @opal:
Get over yourself. My use of this term is no different than the derisive terms that are used here to describe the Tea Party movement (teatards or variations), Evangelical Christians (talibangelicals), or individuals like Palin (dozens of derogatory nicknames).
I use “Rethugs” to describe the Republican Party because I have no respect for them and because they act like a bunch of goddamned thugs who arte like a maurading army run amok that is bent on destroying the country for the economic gain of a few.
The Republican Party needs to be crushed and swept into the dust bin of history. If they aren’t, America as we know it will probably be what gets swept into the dustbin of history.
WyldPirate
@OzoneR:
Ah hell, OzoneR, have you not been paying attention to the Obots.
Obama can’t change the narrative because the Republicans are mean and the media is against him and he doesn’t–unlike other Presidents who seemed to have been able to use it–have a “bully pulpit”.
Wash, rinse, repeat any of these or other stinking excuses the Obot cult-of-personality apologists make.
shortstop
@WereBear: Sorry about the dementia, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but that made me laugh.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That bastard Obama again!
ruemara
@WyldPirate:
Dude, go fuck yourself. At least someone should have the pleasure of your company.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: See, man, I don’t get you. I agree with virtually everything you say here. But then you somehow transform it into an indictment of Obama. For all the reasons you just provided, Obama genuinely can’t do some of the things you, and most all of us, would like him to do. There isn’t enough support in the public or among elected politicians, and being quixotic about confronting all of what you just laid out wouldn’t serve him well: it would make a thin wedge of liberal Democrats very happy indeed, but, to paraphrase what Adlai Stevenson said about “thinking Americans,” we need a majority.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: When was the last time a Democrat was able to “set the narrative” via the “bully pulpit”? Or, more to the point, to set the narrative in a liberal direction?
opal
@WyldPirate:
I don’t have to get over anything.
You’re either a political naif or a fucking loon.
I honestly can’t tell.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Hey, Flip! How’s your Saturday going?
I don’t think that I turned anything in the post you reference above into an “indictment of Obama”. I thought it more of my take on why the Democratic Party in general is slipping rightward.
Now do I make posts that are “an indictment” of Obama? Damn skippy I do. He is our President and expect him to lead, not to triangulate. I expect him to work on the values of the Democratic Party and to uphold the liberal traditions of the New Deal that allowed the middle class to emerge from the ash heap of destruction that the rotten bastards of the Gilded Age made of America.
What I don’t expect is for a Democratic President to meekly kowtow to the middle and act like a weakling by meeting his opponents in the middle at the start of negotiations (ACA is what really chaps my ass here). I expect him to have the common sense not to escalate an unwinnable war in a region of the world that examples of history literally SCREAMS can’t be tamed (Afghanistan). I don’t expect him to be the enabler of criminals (Wall St). I expect him to respect the basic human and civil rights of his own country’s citizens (see Patriot Act, detention, etc.) I expect him to attempt to work towards fulfilling promises of getting rid of programs/government activities that clearly don’t work and are an utter, wasteful failure (the War on Drugs comes to mind) rather than escalating them.
I know Obama isn’t going to accomplish everything that I want. If that were to happen, we would be a much more soshulist nation along the lines of Canada or one of the Scandinavian countries. That isn’t going to happen in my lifetime.
I really have very few issues with Obama that I get steamed up about. The ones that I do have are pretty major for me. Most are named above but the one that really chaps my ass is his willingness to continue to attempt to play nice with a bunch of psychopaths and his seemingly continual attempt to “compromise” our country to the right of Nixon to the point that he makes Nixon look like a com_munist.
WyldPirate
ah, hell. I answered you Flip, but I got stuck in moderation hell. I’ll copy, fix and repost.
@FlipYrWhig:
Hey, Flip! How’s your Saturday going?
I don’t think that I turned anything in the post you reference above into an “indictment of Obama”. I thought it more of my take on why the Democratic Party in general is slipping rightward.
Now do I make posts that are “an indictment” of Obama? Damn skippy I do. He is our President and expect him to lead, not to triangulate. I expect him to work on the values of the Democratic Party and to uphold the liberal traditions of the New Deal that allowed the middle class to emerge from the ash heap of destruction that the rotten bastards of the Gilded Age made of America.
What I don’t expect is for a Democratic President to meekly kowtow to the middle and act like a weakling by meeting his opponents in the middle at the start of negotiations (ACA is what really chaps my ass here). I expect him to have the common sense not to escalate an unwinnable war in a region of the world that examples of history literally SCREAMS can’t be tamed (Afghanistan). I don’t expect him to be the enabler of criminals (Wall St). I expect him to respect the basic human and civil rights of his own country’s citizens (see Patriot Act, detention, etc.) I expect him to attempt to work towards fulfilling promises of getting rid of programs/government activities that clearly don’t work and are an utter, wasteful failure (the War on Drugs comes to mind) rather than escalating them.
I know Obama isn’t going to accomplish everything that I want. If that were to happen, we would be a much more soshulist nation along the lines of Canada or one of the Scandinavian countries. That isn’t going to happen in my lifetime.
I really have very few issues with Obama that I get steamed up about. The ones that I do have are pretty major for me. Most are named above but the one that really chaps my ass is his willingness to continue to attempt to play nice with a bunch of psychopaths and his seemingly continual attempt to “compromise” our country to the right of Nixon to the point that he makes Nixon look like a com_munist.
WyldPirate
@opal:
fuck off, Opal. The thing that you were bitching about that I said is something that nearly every person here does.
YOU are the fucking, naif. Politics is nasty business, not high tea with Queen Elizabeth II.
opal
@WyldPirate:
You seemed to have found a lot of joy in writing unions off, remember?
Fuck you.
WyldPirate
@opal:
You are out of you goddamned skull and have me confused with someone else.
I was furious that Obama shat all over the UAW in the bailout and wiped his ass with their contract while they let the Wall St. thieves “contracts” for mega-bonuses stand at the taxpayer’s expense.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: Hey, been awhile… I had to concentrate on, pfft, “my job” and “life” and slowed down my participation here for a few months.
I know your feelings on these matters. My own view is that “playing nice” and “compromising” are Obama’s putting a brave face on intractable structural issues. To be blunt about it, elected _Democrats_ will cut off at the knees any attempt to be more liberal (let alone “left”) than Obama has been, for precisely the reason you described: between Republicans going plum loco and Democrats swallowing what used to be mainstream Republican views, there’s no room for bold activist liberalism… except in a symbolic sense, knowing that it will be defeated… which IMHO doesn’t really move the “Overton Window” at all; it actually hardens conventional wisdom against liberalism by showing how it tends to lose. There are people who think if Obama had his druthers he’d be more liberal than he’s been, and there are people who think that Obama is doing precisely what he wants.
IMHO to get more liberal policy out of elected Democrats is going to take making more liberals in the electorate. And that’s a years, decades, generations kind of project. It’s going to take unclogging from the professional Democratic system both the people who remember 1968 and the people who learned in the 1980s and ’90s that the way to overcome the legacy of 1968 was to be free-trade, low-tax, and business-friendly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig:
Also, there are a number of Democrats, whether for electoral calculation or simply because they’ve completely internalized the Broderist ethos (Dianne Feinstein, for example), won’t vote for the name of a post office branch unless its “bipartisan”. As someone pointed out during the HCR debate, in any rational world, a bill that had the support of Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer on the one hand, and Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor on the other, would be seen as representative of the vast majority of the electorate.
OzoneR
@WyldPirate:
There has never been a Democratic President who had a “bully pulpit” except for maybe LBJ, and there was a different media back then
urbanmeemaw
Sort of OT, but Robert Parry’s article provides context that explains the concerns and frustrations discussed. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Making-the-US-Economy-Scr-by-Robert-Parry-110604-730.html
shortstop
@OzoneR: LBJ didn’t have one either. He spent a great deal of time making deals with Congresspeople. People wrongly remember, or have wrongly learned, that he was always a loud and blustery figure who demanded his way and got it. He was–some of the time–but he also compromised, cajoled, pleaded, bribed, appealed to better natures and even cried, depending on the situation. I don’t know that I would recommend all of those techniques, but the fact is that he used them. Regularly.
kay
@WyldPirate:
You repeat this constantly, yet it isn’t true. I’ve pointed you to information that contradicts this, over and over, yet you continue to repeat it.
Read this.
What is the date on this news story about union concessions on wages, Wyld Pirate?
2007. That FACT gets in the way of your fantasy.
Further. In addition. I would submit that you do not understand the interplay between unions and the Democratic Party. You see this (like you see everything) as victim/oppressor.
In my experience (and I’m not claiming any special expertise, I’m claiming “watching and listening”) yours is a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It’s also patronizing and arrogant as hell, you, the liberal from on high is here to tell union members that Obama sold them out. Do you really think you know more about their issues than them? Why do you think that? What is that based on? Why do you think they can’t speak for themselves? They are the activist members within a labor union. I think they goddamned well KNOW how to lobby and negotiate and leverage.