David Atkins’ take on Obama’s increasing popularity:
People were willing for a long time to forgive the Bush Administration its multiple failures and corruptions because at least until Katrina they never seemed to lack for certainty and resolution. You may not have liked what Bush stood for–in fact, you might have felt it was downright evil–but you never doubted that he had the courage to act on his beliefs.
Too often the Obama Administration has seemed listless, adrift and reactive. The President’s stands on immigration and Cuba, and even minor things like calling on only women at a press conference, show a President newly energized, engaged and empowered. He seems like a new man who has stopped caring about trying to be the most nuanced adult in the room. This is a common trap for liberals, culturally speaking, and it’s part of why liberals have a hard time becoming and remaining popular with the broader American public.
The new Obama is a more likable Obama. There’s a lesson to be learned there.
I’m skeptical. Presidential approval polls are fickle instruments that measure a whole bunch of things, including how the public feels about the President. The latest polls could be reacting to low gas prices or the economic recovery as much as they’re reacting to Obama’s supposed new toughness.
I always find it odd when progressive pundits long for their own version of an empty suit table pounder like GWB, because it shows a lack of appreciation for Obama’s real toughness. Obama’s signature achievement is the ACA, and it took steely determination and discipline to marshal the jelly-spined Democrats in Congress to get it passed. That’s when Obama was tough, not when he called on only women at a press conference.
Frankensteinbeck
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Everything you said, yes.
Kathleen
I’m so sick of this “listless, adrift and reactive” talking point. But then again, researching or paying attention is not in the job description of a Washington “reporter” or “pundit”, whether he/she is of the “left”, “right” or “The Village”.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Seconded.
EconWatcher
Obama is a better man than I ever expected to have in the White House, and that’s the bottom line. Unfortunately, I doubt we’ll have as good a President again in my lifetime.
Marc McKenzie
@EconWatcher: Well said.
rikyrah
I have always been a supporter of the President. Only thing I have disagreed with him about is Afghanistan, but I was of the belief that we should have never been there. I do not understand those writing bullshyt like this. Barack Obama is one of the most CONSISTENT human beings that I have ever witnessed.
Baud
@EconWatcher:
I’m not going to predict the future, because I believe that presidents are a reflection of the state of society at the time. But Obama easily has been the best president we’ve had in my lifetime.
rikyrah
@EconWatcher:
True that.
Violet
The economy is improving so the president’s poll numbers are going up. Pretty predictable.
I do think there is an air of “fuck it, I’m going to do what I want” to the president at the moment. Calling on women only at the press conference–he had to know that would tweak the male press corps members and sure enough it did. Hilarious. I bet he enjoyed that. Springing the Cuba deal on everyone–and being able to keep it under wraps for so long!–was a big deal. Watching the Republicans throw fits was a bonus. Sure–go ahead Republicans, have your anti-Cuba demonstrations with your 70 year old (and older) protestors. Everyone else thinks it’s great and you look like out of touch whiners.
I’m enjoying this side of the president, even if it has nothing to do with his poll numbers.
Marc McKenzie
“I always find it odd when progressive pundits long for their own version of an empty suit table pounder like GWB, because it shows a lack of appreciation for Obama’s real toughness.”
And that right there is the biggest mistake progressives have made when it comes to President Obama. They wanted spectacle and sizzle, forgetting that GWB was an empty suit to begin with, with nothing solid underneath.
What Obama has accomplished over the past six years has been nothing short of amazing, and yet all of his achievements–not just the ACA, but getting rid of DOMA, moving to reform the drug laws, signing Dodd-Frank, the push for alternate energy sources, restoring relations with Cuba and continuing negotiations with Iran and getting combat troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan–nah, let’s ignore all of that because he didn’t pound the pulpit hard enough.
Patricia Kayden
President Obama will never lose his swagger. So much for being a lame duck. I hope he keeps taking big steps forward.
Violet
@EconWatcher: @Baud: Agreed. I think President Obama is the best president of my lifetime and will probably always hold that position for me. I wish he could run for a third term.
Caprice
The repubs frame the narrative, it is echoed and amplified, picked up and repeated, rinse and repeat.
The repubs paint a picture. It doesn’t reflect reality. But it is a picture nonetheless, and it is pointed to again and again and called reality. Obama gives a speech, thousands of young people cheer. The next day the talking heads tell us how unpopular he is with young people.
Repubs paint themselves as the only moral people. I am reminded of my neighbor, the widower. He’s in a nursing home now, paid for with his social security and medicare. He is mostly paralyzed now from a stroke. I remember him from when I was a little girl. He would stare at us from his yard. My mom would bake stuff for him and make me bring them over to him. He’d lecture me on how bad Clinton was. How the liberals were ruining everything. I was only twelve, so I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Years later, after my first year of college, my mother was still baking for him. I brought him his bread, and he’d lecture me on Obama. The socialist president. Meanwhile, he’s collecting social security. He’d lecture me about the liberals, their immorality. Meanwhile, I can see him peeking up my skirt the whole time. Finally, one morning I decided to pull my panties to one side, and give him a nice long look.
Kathleen
@Marc McKenzie: I totally agree. And I think he’s one of the best Presidents in my lifetime if not the best (I’m old).
mattH
“Red Meat”. Don’t dis it.
And, after the last few weeks, I am really looking forward to the next two years. There’s nothing like a leader backed into a corner, who knows this is just a stop on the way to something better.
MattF
The odd thing is lefty pundits who are pining for a liberal GWB, as if Bush’s problem was only that he was on the wrong side of the aisle. They need to think a little harder. They should consider the possibility– it is just possible, after all– that the bad things that happened 2000 to 2008 were due to systemic failures, rather than just being wrong on an issue-by-issue basis.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
I have a very serious question, and I put it to you because racial issues are so much your focus. Does the continued low AA turnout have anything to do with seeing the disrespect leveled at the first black president? As the whitest of whites living in Whitey Whiteville, I can only guess at what goes on in an ethnic community targeted for so much shit lately (even more than usual, it seems like).
schrodinger's cat
It would be difficult to find a group of professionals more influenced by groupthink who think they are original thinkers, than our punditubbies. My bosscat who has a pretty high opinion of himself and thinks that is he is the best cat ever, is more self aware than most denizens of the Beltway media.
Baud
@Violet:
I wouldn’t wish a third term on Obama.
gwangung
@Frankensteinbeck: Disrepesct for Obama coupled with the lack of respect for issues that affect the black community. Progressives do themselves no favors for favoring privacy issues over civil rights and policing issues (which were readily apparent before this summer).
Violet
@Baud: If he wanted it, I’d be all for it. He chose to run for the job–twice–so he had to want to do it at some point. I wish he could run, but he can’t so it’s not even a possibility. Would be awesome to see wingnut heads truly explode if he did.
Mike in NC
Did anybody notice that Chuck Todd has a new book out called “The Stranger”, in which he tries to outline what a crappy job Obama has done in failing to reach out to those nice Republicans?
Baud
I also wonder how many people are waking up too late to the fact that Obama is all that’s left in Washington to stop the GOP agenda.
ruemara
It’s more bullshit progressive punditry. They didn’t like him in ’08 and will only like him once he leaves. Pundit classes are the eternally jaded hipsters of politics. Someone cooler, better and sexier is out there, but once the masses take notice, the luster is off.
Violet
@Mike in NC: Yeah, he was pimping it around on various outlets. That’s the one that Malia Obama said about Chuckles that “He’s so sad.” Heh.
gogol's wife
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yesyesyesyesyes
Frankensteinbeck
@gwangung:
I can see that. Nobody’s getting shot because the NSA is supposedly reading our emails, but plenty of blacks are getting shot because of the color of their skin. Until Ferguson the former got vastly more attention and outrage than the latter. When you’re on the business end of the gun, that difference in priorities must be offensive and dispiriting as Hell. Rather like the depressing effect of watching the country spaz out over an issue as inane and stupid as Ebola right before the election.
Emma
As much as I despise right-wing pundits, it doesn’t come close to how I feel about “lefty” ones. This President is incredibly focused and amazingly productive against great odds. He also manages to catch Republicans with their trousers down on a regular basis; and no, that much luck nobody has. And yet, these mouth breathers can’t seem to see it. All they want is a narrative that fits their image of their world. Reality? not so much.
Wankers.
Amir Khalid
Shrug. This is about what you’d expect from those who see politics only as the equivalent of a bodybuilding competition’s free posing portion. Was anyone who understood George Walker Bush’s wrongheadedness impressed by his determination to carry it through? I thought the Washington Monthly knew better than this.
MattF
@Mike in NC: The Village just doesn’t like Obama. It’s not his policies, though– it’s something they can’t quite express… It must be that he hurts people’s feelings by not reaching out to them…
gogol's wife
@Violet:
I have to correct this — she was talking about the picture of Obama on the cover of the book. She was making a snarky remark about her own father, not about Chuck Todd, of whom I think she probably has only a very vague notion. I also think she has better manners than that.
ETA: And I don’t mean to sound hostile to you — I just wanted to make sure we get that straight — she’s actually a very well-brought-up young woman.
Baud
Or maybe it’s lame punditry by people like Atkins, who think W. was courageous, which hold us back.
Aimai
@Violet: the cuba deal, as well, was months in the making. There is no difference between the prseident who coursgeously and discreetly pushed that through over months and the zippy fellow who is tweaking the opposition lightky with small insults and jokes. He was never “reactive” or lost or whatever. But he was constrained to include more difficult, capricious, or powerful stakeholders in most other decisions during his presidency.
gogol's wife
I keep hoping (praying) that Obama has some super-seekrit deal going on that will result in Putin pulling out of Ukraine, Crimea, and maybe even the presidency. I hate even to say it for fear that I’ll сглазить.
Aimai
@Amir Khalid: also bushs populsrity was abysmal towards the end. Its not because he had a personality transplant.
ruemara
@Frankensteinbeck: not to stomp on the esteemed Riykah’s answer, but AA turnout is affected by separate but equal voting situations. There’s also a level of disinterest, along with a benign neglect of minority issues from Democrats, liberals and progressives alike. Toss in the issue of voting rights losses due to incarceration, which is the fallout from the war on drugs and you can see many factors causing an affect. When they do vote, with all access being equal, AAs are reliable Democratic Party voters.
@gogol’s wife: no, I saw that vid too. She wasn’t knocking her dad. She said it was sad for Chuck Todd to write a book about the Obama administration when he’s not there. Well raised doesn’t mean doormat.
Violet
@gogol’s wife: Yes, I know. But it was still funny and Chuck Todd took a hit so I’m all for it. I know the girls are lovely young women and very well mannered.
Suzanne
I do think that there was something appealing about W’s image. I don’t know if I’d call it courage, per se, but I do think that he came off much less shifty than, say, Tricky Dick or Darth Cheney. Plz remember, I’m talking about image, not reality. I can see why people like that. Even if I disagree with someone, I can appreciate someone who is honest and forthright and upstanding about it. I think W was good at cultivating that image.
I love Obama and I always have, so I am not impartial, but I can imagine that those people who are not as observant and politically engaged as the average BJ reader would indeed be drawn to that sort of “Fuck it, gonna do what I think is right, whaddya gonna do, FIRE ME?!” response. Yes, I know that this is not reality, and that Obama has been working for results his entire presidency, but I can see that it doesn’t always look like reality.
I can even see how it looks in retrospect. For example, I know that many LGBT Americans feel less than positive feelings toward Bill Clinton for passing DADT, because it was so obviously a half-measure, and he appeared to really think that it was the best thing to do. In reality, I’m sure he thought it was stupid and half-assed, but it was the best he could achieve, given where the Overton window was at the time. But he so heartily endorsed this shitty middle ground so strongly that it’s easy to imagine that he really felt that it was better than full equality and integration. FWIW, Clinton definitely had that slippery quality, and HRC does as well. I honestly think that she, if given her druthers, would probably be as progressive as we all want her to be, but her style, similar to many other pols, is to try to be a consensus-builder to the point that it starts to look like you don’t stand for anything. This is also why some people like Christie. He may come off as wrong, but he doesn’t come off as dishonest, even though he certainly is.
Ruckus
@Kathleen:
My sentiment exactly. Except, old white dude. Best in my lifetime, by a damn good margin. And if my FB feed is worth anything, which I doubt, there are more of us old white farts who think the same way than might be believed by some here. Sure a lot of old white farts are rabid RW but it isn’t everyone.
But let’s be real, what causes most people to come around to a president is how the economy is doing (much, much better than when he started), are we in a war and if so are we winning (and we at least don’t seem to be losing any more and the press isn’t screaming about it). So we are back to the liberal media supporting the president to give him some of that much needed backing (hard to type that given the way I’m laughing at the very thought of the words liberal media and backing)
Schlemazel
Well, he gets one thing right. I would love to have an empty-suit table pounding idiot like W IF he/she could do as much good for the country as Boy Blunder and His Super Friends did damage in their 8 years. But then, thats not going to happen is it?
Anya
Thank you!
President Obama’s address to the House Democratic Caucus to urge them to vote for the health care reform is one of my favorite Obama speeches. It was from the heart and he was very passionate. He fought for this and prioritized it despite the constant attack from all sides.
Watch POTUS pep rally urging his fellow Democrats to pass the healthcare bill. This is what a resolute president sounds like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiYUVdwoHu4
MattF
@ruemara: I like that analogy. I’ve always said that the hipster coat-of-arms has the motto “Your Favorite Band Sucks.” So, we also have hipster pundits, I guess.
srv
Messianic revisionism. It was a woman that made ACA happen, and she’s going to increasingly want you to remember it that way.
different-church-lady
Gas prices. It is actually that simple.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
It seems to me some African-Americans expected Obama to fulfill each and every one of their dreams immediately (I’m looking at you, Cornell West) and when he didn’t, they took every opportunity to bad-mouth and disparage the president.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Nice summation.
Felonius Monk
@Mike in NC: Chuck who?
debbie
@Suzanne:
Yeah, it’s the bullshit macho every man pines for and every woman wishes were her soulmate/notebook. Blech.
Baud
@debbie:
I had always heard that West’s problem with Obama was personal rather than based on policy.
Randy P
I hate it when pundits write in the second person. Because when they tell me what I’m thinking, they’re not even in the same universe.
No, I did not think Bush had the courage of… anything. I think he did what his lords and masters told him to do, to think, and to say. I have no evidence that he had any beliefs.
Being a curmudgeon and having that curmudgeonly trait of remembering old grudges, I am still grumpy about the pundits who informed me that “you had to like Reagan personally”. That whole Great Communicator thing. On the contrary, the idea of somebody just pretending to be president gave me the willies and reminded me of that old Hollywood joke, “The most important thing is sincerity; once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
What do you mean low AA turnout?
Do you mean in the midterms?
I can only take two candidates that lost and what they didn’t do.
Pat Quinn only won last time because of the Black vote. So, what does he go out and do? He goes out and finds a running mate with an absolutely horrid track record in the Black community. It was hard to go and find someone with the bad reputation that Paul Vallas had, but he did it. There were a number of young Black female politicians with solid records that he could have chosen for his running mate to work those margins in the Black community. But, he chose Vallas. Even with all that, the Black community was quite pragmatic, and Quinn’s loss of votes, overall, in the Black community, was far smaller than I thought it would be between this election and last election. Quinn never ran on what he did. He expanded Medicaid and brought Obamacare fully to Illinois. Nearly a half-million people got healthcare because of his actions and Rauner had said, straight up that he would have NEVER done that. Not once did I see a commercial with Quinn standing beside someone who had gotten healthcare because of what he had done. And, of course, because the Black community was the highest uninsured, we benefited disproportionately from the change.
And then there is Brown in Maryland. Like I said last night…I still can barely talk about that election without going into a rage. One out of every THREE voters in Maryland is BLACK.
HOW THE PHUCK do you not make every other campaign appearance NOT be in the Black community, shoring up the base? HOW THE PHUCK do let some asshole spook you away from talking about Maryland’s full implementation of Obamacare because of some glitches with a WEBSITE?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
The response to that was obvious:
My opponent wants to talk about a problem with the website. I want to talk about the _______________thousands of Marylanders who now have access to healthcare. Access they would not have had if my opponent had been in office. We here in Maryland have cut the uninsured by _______ percent. And yet, my opponent wants to talk about a Website.
Then, there was the ‘tax’ that he made a big stink about, which was to help the environment , and would have cost under $100. With the spills in West Virginia as well as other places, he couldn’t find a way to link the tax with keeping things healthy for our CHILDREN?
SERIOUSLY?
Like I said, don’t go there with me about that.
Yet, in 2013, the person who ran towards the Obama coalition and what he would do -Terry McAuliffe won – because Black folk voted at their same levels as 2012.
But, you can’t run away from the President and expect folks to support you.
Anya
@Mike in NC: Chuck Todd’s Obama book says more about the author than it does about the president
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
Let’s not flatter ourselves — what we do here is not “engagement” any more than the audience of a porn movie is engaged in a relationship with the actors.
debbie
@Baud:
I heard West often on Tavis Smiley while driving home from work. Nothing but allusions to Uncle Tom from him. Personal or not, it was an excuse to badmouth Obama at every opportunity. A few times, even Smiley had to reel him in a bit.
Joey Giraud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, there’s not that much difference between right wing MSM pundits and left wing MSM pundits.
Maybe that’s why so many MSM pundits feel that “both sides do it.”
Ruckus
@debbie:
I’d call it the same thing but I’m not sure everyman (but I also don’t think you are off by anything approaching a noticeable minority) is right.
different-church-lady
@ruemara:
And will only express that like when needing something to contrast Hillary with — “She’s so much worse than Obama was”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Marc McKenzie: Someone on-line a few weeks ago (maybe even here?) said that Obama was going to restore diplomatic relations with Iran in the spring. Few things will make the Teabaggers and reactionary cold-warriors’ heads explode with more sparkles and flourishes than that. It will be a sight to behold…
If oil prices stay low that long (and it’s hard to see them going up much before then), then Iran will be under even more pressure than they are now to make a deal. Few things would make more sense in the region for US foreign policy than that (e.g. tilting away from the crazies in Saudia Arabia, showing that Israel can rail against Iran all it wants – we’re not going there, getting Iran to play nice in helping to find solutions in Iraq, Syria, etc., etc.).
The stars do seem to be aligning for him now. Let’s hope they continue to do so.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: They are representative of the demographic among whom Obama has never done as well as he has with the population at large, even at the height of his popularity. Most Beltway pundits are upper income, white and male and their opinions align quite well with the rest of that cohort. Not surprising really, except may be to the self styled Punditubbies who think they represent the man on the street like Tweety and the late Tim Russert. They are not the special snowflakes they think they are.
Randy P
Oh I just love it when FYWP eats my comment but then won’t let me post it again because “you already said that”.
Shorter me: Sorry, Mr. Atkins, I can and do doubt that Bush had anything like “courage” or “beliefs”.
rikyrah
@gwangung:
True that.
One of the things that stands out to me in the trailer for the movie Selma is that MLK is talking with one of his compadres and they are joking that their jail cell is probably bugged.
MLK, his father and his grandfather ALL had FBI files.
So, for Black folks like me, y’all can go somewhere with the handwringing about the NSA. Where the phuck were you when they came up with COINTELPRO?
I’m far more afraid of Officer Friendly than I am of the NSA listening in on phone calls.
And the dismissal of the harassment, by the police, of the average, law-abiding Black citizen just rubs the wrong way.
Pookey and Ray Ray aren’t supposed to trust the police.
The fact that I don’t have any more faith in the police than Pookey and Ray Ray is a problem.
If you don’t understand why that’s a problem…oh well.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I wondered at the time if he was actually throwing it with that pick, if they all had jobs lined up or something and they literally did not care who won because they (top people) were all planning on back-up “private sector opportunities” anyway. It is inexplicable to me, barring blackmail or something. WTF? I’m not a conspiracy theorist and of course I don’t know, but didn’t it SO look like a deal they made?
Keith G
Just like in Hollywood, it seems that in Washington DC there are only two basic scripts. Either the president is battered and adrift, or the president is confident and aggressive.
What is most unfortunate is that nowadays there doesn’t seem to be enough intellectual prowess in our reporting precincts to write articles any more complicated than that.
Cervantes
That’s where I stopped reading.
JPL
We’ll always have Benghazi, though.
Baud
@JPL:
I miss Solyndra.
Ruckus
@Randy P:
Look at @debbie: comment. Bullshit macho was all that GW was trying to project. Way too many take that as reality because that’s how they think. He didn’t have to have courage or beliefs, he only had to project that in a manner that many took for him having them and he was golden. What I would call an empty bullshit suit. President Obama is the exact opposite of that, no bullshit, full suit. Which one you appreciate depends on if you are stuck at HS maturity levels or have actually grown a bit since then.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Of course, the other option is Democrats thought Vallas was a PLUS, which is even worse, because that means they don’t know
What was the possible selling point? They thought they’d talk about his awesome work in Philadelphia? The same Philadelphia schools that are imploding? Maybe Connecticut? The man is the definition of the politically connected person who keeps getting promoted despite failing at everything he tries, everywhere he lands, and doesn’t really live or commit to anywhere at all.
Gene108
I guess I am not sufficiently Obot enough. I think getting Obamacare passed was huge, but Team Obama made a big mistake in grossly underestimating the size of the Great Recession.
And I fault the Democrats in Congress for being tone deaf to business in 2009 (most of us work for some variation of Small, Medium or Big “Evil” Corp, so it is not like our interests are 100% mutually exclusive to business interests). Instead of trying to figure out how bad things were with businesses, the House was passing huge sweeping regulatory changes for businesses, such cap-and-trade for CO2 emissions.
Businesses, which had shifted support from Republicans to Democrats in 2008, were facing large scale changes to their livelihoods, at the worst possible time; when their proverbial house was on fire from the financial meltdown.
Businesses worked extra hard to defeat Democrats in 2010, 2012 and 2014 and will continue to do so in 2016.
Also, I think in bucking the Party structure and building his own campaign operation helped Obama get elected and re-elected, but he has not been able to translate that success to the rest of the Democratic Party, which has gotten killed in elections in 2010 and 2014.
The DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, whatever Democrats use to find local races and Team Obama never really synced up. Whatever Team Obama brought to bear to get elected and re-elected will go with him.
Basically Republicans figured out that they could use CU money to devistating effect to get control of Congress, state and local governments. The only effective counter to CU money has been in 2012 with (a) Obama’s God-like fundraising prowess and (b) whatever Team Obama did in 2012 to win re-election, with regards to getting out the vote.
I think one thing Obama does not get enough credit for is bailing put the U.S. auto industry. The decision to use federal money for GM and Chrysler was all his decision and it saved a lot of jobs.
I think he’s done a good job overall, but I think his terms in office have been far from perfect and started out with costly missteps on the economy that were used as a cudgel against Democrats in 2010.
slag
I’m definitely not ready to replace Obama. Few Democrats–if any–could have gotten as much done over the last six years, given our political landscape and government structure. And Obama represented us well internationally. I’m going to miss not being embarrassed by my president.
Joey Giraud
@Suzanne:
something appealing about W’s image. I don’t know if I’d call it courage, per se, but I do think that he came off much less shifty than, say, Tricky Dick or Darth Cheney.
Too stupid to lie.
Hey, it works. Dubya may not have ever been that bright, but he definitely intentionally dumbed down for show.
People like dumb people better then they like smart ones. Less threatening, more sympathetic.
JPL
@Gene108: The 2010 local elections were pivotal in redistricting. The only way to fix that is to have democrats run on a local platform, encouraging the states to pass bipartisan districts lines.
rikyrah
Let me say this…
Barack and Michelle Obama are the very best that Black people could offer this country.
The very best.
It is the fundamental lack of respect towards this President, and his entire family, that rankles.
The opposition could never just say, ‘ I disagree with the President on policy, but I know that he’s a good family man, and a strong American.’
Instead, we get mofos talking about how Black people need a ‘better example’ in the White House.
I don’t know a better example or role models of everything we tell our children to do than Barack and Michelle Obama.
They did what we tell our children to do. They behave how we tell our children they should present themselves.
And, watching the fundamental lack of respect towards Barack and Michelle Obama tells Black folk all they need to know.
Because, if you can’t show a baseline of respect towards them, then WE KNOW what you think about the rest of us.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay I should have known that you’d know why Vallas was a poison pill to the Black community.
srv
@Gene108: Win a battle, lose a war.
Many of the people on this blog will never see a Democratic House again in their lifetime.
JPL
@rikyrah: Coburn actually said that but also added how bright the President is.
What the police union is doing, is horrific. As a union supporter, let me say, I hope their union is dissolved.
ruemara
If you think Cornell West and Tavis Smiley’s issues with the president are policies affecting brown people, I have a bridge to sell you.
I think the situation with Vallas is a response to the near constant criticism that Democrats have lost “Joe Lunchbox”, the default standard of the white blue collar male. You bring in one of those not rare enough types, the racist democrat, and it shores up white votes because blacks won’t massively defect to another party. Big fucking mistake, because as things get worse, we have either less to lose or we’re already disenfranchised.
Joey Giraud
@rikyrah:
Everything you’re saying is correct, but it’s impossible to imagine that not happening to America’s first black president in 2014.
Still too many hard-core racists in this country.
Mary G
I just want the President to pull out the veto hammer and kick back every piece of crazy legislation the new Congress vomits up in the next two years, with explanations that pull no punches.
Cervantes
@Suzanne:
I can’t tell if you’re saying you found him honest and forthright or that you think others did.
In any event, did he ever say things you felt were blatantly false? If so, was he tricked into doing it?
the Conster
@rikyrah:
This is the great unspoken truth of this racist country and every single white pundit at some level knows it, but they use the hatred shown Bill Clinton as the reality deflector shield. I heard a political roundtable of 4 white pundits this morning discussing whether race is a factor in the criticism of this president, and the consensus was perhaps, but… Bill Clinton.
rikyrah
@ruemara:
Tell it.
Mandalay
@different-church-lady:
This.
Obama can carefully craft policies on Cuba and immigration and Afghanistan all he wants. The public will still give his admininstration far more credit for lower gas prices, even though it is nothing to do with them.
mai naem mobile
@Gene108: I think the Obama folks did kind of miscalculate the shape of economy but you forget President Olympia Snowe who wouldn’t go over the 700 billion o whatever magic number she had for the stimulus bill and the Obama people were rightfully trying to shove stuff out in a hurry. As far as regulation, the Dems saved their asses from themselves and as soon as the Dems passed regs to save big biz’s asses from themselves in the future, they got all their fee fees hurt and socialism! Also its easy to see stuff 20/20 in hindsight. How about we look at McConnell and Cantor meeting during the 1st inauguration and talking about opposing eveything that Obama proposed? Who guessed that? I didn’t’..Not every little thing including the appointment to the head of the printing office? WTF?
Yatsuno
@Mary G: And the best part: no veto-proof majority to overturn.
Just Some Fuckhead
The problem with that scenario is it never happened. You are thinking of Nancy Pelosi. ORahmba was already throwing in the towel, talking about passing health reform in smaller chunks.
The reason Obama’s approval ratings are up is because he cured ebola in America and took on the oil cartels, beat them, and got us cheaper gas.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Rahm wanted that. Obama agreed with Pelosi to pass the whole thing. Obama and Pelosi both deserve credit.
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108: Can you be specific? In what way was the Democratic Congress hostile to business? It seems to me that you have bought into the right wing meme of Democrats being hostile to business.
Debbie
@ruemara:
Then what were their issues?
the Conster
@different-church-lady:
lowest gas in years and an 18,000 Dow – it’s a bumper sticker one-two punch that even tea party fucktards can’t dismiss.
mai naem mobile
I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama goes down like Truman. Appreciated much much later. I was not an Obot to begin with and,early on in the presidency, I thought Hillary may have gotten done with congress. But seeing the ACA passed and then seeing the complete crazy in 2010, I quickly became an Obot. I have.no idea what you do with the racism in this country. My old white neighbor made an off the cuff off the wall joke about his two white kids being the rare precious ones. I have no idea what was going on in his brain(upper middle class educated white couple in their 30s.)
rikyrah
@mai naem mobile:
THIS THIS THIS
IF I could fault the President on one thing…..
It would be his inability to see…
that, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression…
that one political party would CHOOSE to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country.
Because, THAT is what the GOP decided to do on JANUARY 20, 2009.
They didn’t wait for any POLICY DECISIONS to oppose the President.
They chose THE NIGHT OF HIS INAUGURATION to choose to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country.
As good as the economic news has been, IMAGINE what it would be if one political party had chosen not to COMMIT ECONOMIC TREASON against this country?
ps- of course, I’m being tongue in cheek…because, if you are a true patriotic American – and the President is – it’s inconceivable to you that one political party would WILLFULLY AND CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE ECONOMIC TREASON AGAINST THIS COUNTRY.
JPL
@the Conster: The repubs will take credit. Count on it!
Davis X. Machina
@rikyrah: If you don’t go into the job assuming there are two parties, each with differing notions of how to promote the common welfare, you’re immediately in the place where Lincoln was in the spring of 1865.
No one wants to go there…. or to take the measures that derive logically therefrom.
rikyrah
@Davis X. Machina:
But, they didn’t promote the common welfare.
They abandoned this country during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and chose to do whatever they could to worsen it.
They chose ECONOMIC TREASON.
Baud
@mai naem mobile:
Same here. Although it was the crazy from the left on daily kos that pushed me over.
JPL
@rikyrah: Both sides and all that.
Emma
@Baud: Nah. The uber-liberals will never admit Obama has done any good. Actually, everything he does is actually done by someone else. Preferably a white someone else.
And then they wonder why people of color look at them funny.
Frankensteinbeck
@the Conster:
This one tires me so much. No, sorry, doesn’t wash. Sure, Clinton got disrespect. The whole impeachment was a political insult to show him that the Village thought he was white trash. Like the difference between being spit on and being shot, the difference between how Clinton and Obama have been treated is a difference of scale so great it becomes a difference in kind. Conspiracy theories about Clinton killing someone were mutterings of known lunatics, not the subject of repeated political marches and discussed everywhere on national television like the equally batshit Birther theories. Clinton did not face the record levels of obstruction to every damn thing that Obama faces – and I mean *record*, an explosion above previous levels. I don’t recall a lot of town hall screaming about death panels in Clinton’s time. The Republicans didn’t torpedo their favorite programs, agree to hefty defense cuts, just to spite Clinton. The difference there, that insanity and mouth-frothing, talking-to-an-empty-chair zeal, that is racism.
CarolDuhart2
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I can completely see it happen. Iran realizes that Obama is the most reasonable President they are likely to have in decades, and a formal diplomatic relationship, combined with a nuclear treaty/agreement is the best way to avoid a devastating war. Obama has nothing to lose by making such an agreement either-his opponents have only the same tired and stale rhetoric they dragged out after Cuba this month. “Human Rights” means little if we are also dealing with super-Reactionary Saudi Arabia.
LAC
@debbie: more like some self appointed black “leaders” like cornel west and Smiley. I vote every election year and I am an African American. That said, the negativity by some of our allies in the left and the quick to run away from obama’s record crap by some democrats is always in the back of mind. It does put enthusiasm on the back burner.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: And FDR-Obama?
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
I don’t remember FDR and can’t compare them well.
Marc
@debbie:
FTFY. Most black voters were and remain Obama’s strongest supporters. Cornel West has a different set of incentives… the same ones as Jane Hamsher, Ralph Nader, and all the other self-promoting hucksters who like to pass themselves off as the true voice of the left without doing a damn thing for left causes.
CarolDuhart2
@rikyrah: Two words come to my mind with that: Status Envy. Between King and Obama, any black pundit/politician/whatever could see himself as the “Voice of Black America” and a potential big cheese.Not only that, but they could pose and profit off of fooling people as a constituency leader of sorts. Now West and Travis can no longer profit and pretend to speak for Black America anymore. Nobody voted for them, no organization of any significant size have they founded or lead, and they certainly haven’t run for any elected office.
Obama, as long as he lives, (and maybe even in legacy-until some other person is Black President) is the top of the mountain in terms of fame and power. While real activists don’t care-and many hope that Obama will lend what he has to give to help-poseurs do.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: Gee it’s too bad there aren’t things like books and film that document the way he was treated. Oh well, continue with your point.
Tyro
The thing is that while liberals didn’t really like W’s shtick of, “I am going to pursue this idiotic idea because gosh durn it that’s what I think,” the pundits ATE IT UP. So that’s the perspective that Atkins is coming from.
Suzanne
@Cervantes: Then I apologize for my lack if clarity. I think W was ridiculously untruthful, but I don’t know if he was maliciously lying or really, honestly did not know that he was wrong. The guy was not a towering intellect, so he could easily be swayed by the Cheney/Rumsfeld types he had around him.
But I think he was really good at looking like he believed what he was saying. That’s really appealing to people, in general.
Marc
@EconWatcher: Seconded. Best president of my lifetime by a long shot, and probably in the top 10 or 11 historically.
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
Sigh. I’m sure there are, but A) they would not give me the immediacy of having been there, and B) the difference between twenty years ago and seventy years ago is kind of big. The United States was an utterly different place then, with different pressures. Assuming FDR got just as much disrespect, racism is not exactly the only reason people go nuts. It’s just the only reason on the board to explain the Clinton-Obama difference.
johnnybuck
David Atkins is a tool.
And OPEC won’t stop pumping oil which puts even greater pressure on Iran to make the deal.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: “he difference between twenty years ago and seventy years ago is kind of big.”
really? I’d say this shit is always the same.
Hungry Joe
But … but just a few weeks ago MoDo was churning out columns explaining that Obama was tired of the job and just going through the motions. Could she have been, oh, I don’t know … just making shit up, typing it to read as her standard self-involved twaddle, and pushing SEND? Our MoDo?
JPL
@Suzanne: I always thought of Bush as amoral.
slag
@Frankensteinbeck: I’d also like to point out that the Clinton and Obama are, themselves, very different. The reality of who Clinton is actually lends itself to thoughts of conspiracy and subterfuge much more readily than the reality of who Obama is.
I mean, I like Clinton, but it’s hard to escape the fact that he’s still a bit of a sleezeball in many indisputable ways. Definitely in many more indisputable ways than Obama is.
So, even comparing the treatment of the two is still a bit of a copout, given their significant differences.
FlipYrWhig
As I said at WaMo on the original Atkins piece, it seems to me that Obama has been working to do what Democrats in the House and Senate say they want, and most of what they want is for him not to make waves, because they’d mostly like to run low-profile campaigns on how it’s not about ideology, it’s about competence, and they’re uninspiringly, ploddingly competent. That’s not a particularly exciting way to run, but it’s what a lot of them have wanted to do. So they’ve been trying to backstop the losses they feared would happen after 2006. And they basically failed at it. So now there’s no one to protect and no one counseling him to go slow and risk nothing. Which makes for an entirely different dynamic.
I don’t know if any of this has anything to do with approval ratings. I kind of doubt that cause and effect are that easy to sort out. But I really dislike the “listless”/”reactive”/”aloof” stuff, because it’s not like the politics of the past 5-6 years have been driven by attitude and mood–they’ve been driven by conflicts among the Democratic coalition in the face of unified Republican total war-style opposition.
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
I wouldn’t, because like I just pointed out, Clinton didn’t get the same level of bullshit. Hell, neither did Carter. No, you can’t compare Depression Era, pre-and-during World War Two America to modern America. It’s ridiculous. Racism is almost the only consistent thread, and that’s not very consistent since proportions of minorities, who is considered a minority, and what is acceptable in terms of dealing with minorities has changed so radically. Social attitudes on everything else have certainly changed. Religious issues, vastly different. The fundie freakout was post-WW2. Gender issues were not only different in level, but followed an entirely different map pre-WW2. America was more isolationist than hawkish. The Great Recession was bad, but it doesn’t touch the actual Great Depression for economic black holes. No, you can’t make a fair comparison between then and now.
sparrow
@rikyrah: As a resident of Maryland, your analysis of Brown is spot-on. Sadly, he ran a terrible campaign. I voted for him and was incredibly frustrated when he lost.
kindness
Obama….yea, well I expect every one of us voted for him. Sucked that Republicans decided giving the holy fuck you to everything he did was good policy. Sucks worse that most voting Americans believed it to from what November tells me. The balanced nuance, the tight rope Obama had to walk because he was the first black president has held him back.
Would it have mattered if it had been a white politician that had won back in 2008? Yes and no. Republicans would have still followed through with the giant fuck you to every decent proposal from that President. The hidden/not so hidden subtext of racism would have been less. Wouldn’t have mattered any though. I mean, come November of 2016 the right will be proclaiming the Democrat ‘The Most Liberal Candidate Ever!’ and the MSM will buy that and run with it.
Good times. Sucky times. We build an insulated world for ourselves every day and deal with the idiots out there as we have to.
For myself, I will say it was Obama that got Sony to do a limited release of The Interview and thank him for it as that was fun.
FlipYrWhig
@Tyro: Atkins is mostly a liberal idealist, one who seems very, very young. He’s not a made-man among pundits or anything. He just likes the notion that Battling Liberals are better liked than Cowardly Calculators because it reaffirms his sense of how being bold AND liberal is a way to win popularity and thus elections everywhere. This theory has a lot of problems, but it’s immensely popular around the blogosphere.
satby
@rikyrah: The Obamas are the wish fulfilment of every time some white asshole said “I got nothing against blacks if they would just {whatever middle class thing}”. The fact that the Obamas are all that x10 just shows what BS the racist whites were spouting all along.
And shows black folks that no matter how hard they work or how well they do, it will never be enough for some whites. Not that that hasn’t been obvious forever anyway, but how fucking discouraging is that?
Davis X. Machina
None of them seem to wonder much whether the facts that there are essentially no social democrats out there, and that we don’t have a Scandanavian-style social democracy, are somehow related.
The political nation just isn’t that liberal. Never was.
Amir Khalid
Sorry for going very off-topic, but can anyone here recommend a book on Spanish grammar? I’m leaning towards Routledge’s Modern Spanish Grammar. (I like the German and French grammars from the series.)
srv
And so it is written.
KG
@Tyro: but if it was a liberal politician who took that approach with a liberal idea that ended up not working in practice?
different-church-lady
@Joey Giraud:
The bigger problem is that there are also too many soft-core racists in this country. Coming right out and revealing you’re just plain old racist in an era where it’s no longer tolerated by the majority of society is one thing. Being a nice person on average, but also turning a blind eye to systemic racism (or worse, explaining it away) is where the genuine dysfunction now lies.
gwangung
@rikyrah: I’m just going to say that I came to my understanding by listening to black people and what they’re talking about.
That kinda helps.
Amir Khalid
@srv:
The size of stimulus Krugman wanted and the US economy needed, about twice what was passed, was never going to get through Congress. That was plain even then.
Hill Dweller
Krugman seems to be Obama’s biggest cheerleader these days. Nevertheless, Republicans filibustered the stimulus, and Dems didn’t have 60 votes. Consequently, the “centrist” brigade(Snowe, Collins, Lincoln, Nelson, etc) had all the power, which all but guaranteed the stimulus would be too small.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay:
It’s actually more abstract than that: Obama is never going to get actual “credit” for gas prices being low. What happens is Joe Public feels less pressure at that point, and thus doesn’t lash out in generalized frustration at President X around the water cooler as much.
If you want to misunderstand the American Public, just get hung up on direct cause-and-effect relationships. “Politician X suffered fate Y because of event Z.” Nope, it’s just a big fuzz in the American head. “Why do politicians suck? Because I’m in a bad mood, that’s why.”
dmbeaster
@Caprice:
Which, of course, confirmed for him the immorality of liberals.
I love the conservative meme that morals are declining in America. I just say “yes” and then start listing examples. Such as we now live in an age when torture is practiced and championed. Or that people point guns at and openly threaten police, with impunity and without consequence, such as the Bundy protests. There is no shortage of examples of declining morality of the right wing.
srv
@Amir Khalid: always plain to the apologists, no citation ever required.
Just like at the loose change site
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: Agreed. I think it’s a nice consoling story to say “there are all us liberals out here and we’d win tons of elections if candidates appealed to us–but they don’t because corruption and neoliberalism, that’s why.” If only! What if the reality is that candidates don’t knock themselves out appealing to liberals because you can’t win very many elections appealing to liberals? Then the task isn’t “messaging” to frustrated and discouraged liberals who already exist even if they don’t recognize it in themselves yet; instead the task is making a hell of a lot more liberals. That’s much more daunting. It may not even be possible. Sucks, don’t it?
Kathleen
@Mike in NC: I just saw it at the library; it’s 528 pages. One of the Amazon blurbs said it was well researched and well sourced with interviews from Washington insiders. It takes 528 pages to say “Obama sucks”?
gwangung
@rikyrah: It strikes me…Tamir Price, Ferguson, Eric Garner and the NYPD are a direct result (correlation?) of all of that.
different-church-lady
@Kathleen: If you’re a “Washington Insider™” it takes 900 words just to say “I put my socks on.”
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: Ok, you win.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know either. I don’t know how you protect and extend social provision in a country where half the political nation doesn’t think that the word ‘society’ even has any actually-existing referent.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, though, liberals would say you’re definitely not going to make more liberals if no one even tries because the country is not liberal.
Conservatives never let that stop them. They’ve swallowed up huge ground at the state level while moving steadily Right.
ruemara
Krugman is a fantastic economist and writer. I’d love for him to take a little look at his disappointment articles of 09 and maybe even acknowledge what was good economics and what was possible policy. For once. Unfortunately, perpetual disappointment is what sells as serious liberal policy discussion. Cynicism and dismissal do not encourage participation.
And Debbie, I don’t how many people have said on this blog that Smiley & West have personal grudge issues, but that’s what it is. If you wondered how visible they were on community issues prior to Obama, I’d have to tell you they were as visible as a dust speck. Black intelligentsia loved them and white intellectuals fawned over them, but they certainly didn’t come down from the ivory towers they lived in amongst us hoi polloi black rabble. There are things they do speak to from where they are and it’s a lot like how Tim Wise is a voice that mainstream America can tolerate speaking about cultural racism. A strangle kind of “yes, this is a good thing” and with a tinge of “why can’t you hear this from us” or “do this from within the community, we’re not petri dishes”
Kathleen
@Ruckus: Really. Term “Liberal Media” is a joke.
A bit OT but you may appreciate this, Ruckus. I also admire JFK and see some parallels between him and Obama. Well read, grounded in world history, iconoclastic (for US Presidents) opinions on world issues – JFK expressed his opposition to colonialism in African countries and Indochina in the early 1950’s. JFK also faced tremendous opposition from the military establishment during the Cuban Missile because he held the line against launching nuclear weapons against USSR. I get the impression the younger Democrat/”Progressive” writers/pundits write him off too easily. And, again, his intellectual prowess and curiosity remind me a lot of President Obama.
beejeez
Before we pile on all those “jelly-spined” Democrats, I’d just like to point out that their votes for the ACA probably cost them control of the House and certainly a lot of Dems fell on their electoral swords to get it passed. If you want to salute the steel spines of the Republicans, go ahead, but just name me one who’d risk his seat for a legislative achievement.
Kathleen
@MattF: Love that! Kudos to you and ruemara for her earlier comment about hipster pundits!
schrodinger's cat
@sparrow: So Brown is Maryland’s Coakley?
ruemara
@Kay: Because they never stopped voting or banging the drum with propaganda. And, liberals focus on large elections. Liberalism seems to come with a hefty dose of naïveté, that things just make sense, or the liberal methods is clearly the best. And that it resounds with all people. Conservatives, if they see you may not be 100% for their message, they will cut you out in a heartbeat. It’s ruthless herd culling and it gets you a smaller herd, purer focus. It’s not just about the message.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: Whenever I see Tavis Smiley on his PBS show, he seems fake, even his accent seems like a put on. What do you think?
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I think the difference between advocacy and what liberals actually believe is possible can get confusing. One of the things that advocates do is claim a lot of people agree with them. That doesn’t mean they actually believe it’s simply a matter of claiming their majority. They’re pushing politicians, not reciting facts. Trumpeting a poll on the popularity of the public option is as much intended to influence politicians and the debate as it is to claim some kind of presumptive majority. I think some of the disappointment from “rank and file” liberal voters has to do with them confusing advocacy with a recitation of fact. From the other side, I think it’s really frustrating for liberal advocates to be told “don’t push- you won’t get it”. Advocates push. That’s what they do. Telling them not to means you don’t understand what they’re doing.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@ruemara:
I occasionally pushed back on his blog that he was putting far too much blame on Obama and not enough on the various Presidents in the Senate and the intransigent Republicans. He did kinda acknowledge some of that in his recent RS piece:
Is our Krugman learning? I think so. ;-)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Advocates push. Successful advocates push without alienating the people they’re trying to convince.
Today’s modern on-line “advocates” don’t care about such things, because their rubber never meets the road.
scuffletuffle
@rikyrah: Amen. Righteous rant.
henqiguai
@Cervantes (#80):
Did you not notice the last line “I think W was good at cultivating that image.”? The “…cultivating that image.”? The “…image.”? Just wondering; didn’t see it or being argumentative.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
That’s true. Effective advocacy is really difficult. I just think it’s a really important distinction and ethics comes in too. Once you get going that line between “advocacy” and “making shit up” or “not mentioning half the facts” can be hard to find. The hope is everyone knows advocates take sides- it’s adversarial. The hope is everyone gets that and people put it in that context. When Kos posts a poll about how “America” wants immigration reform one has to consider that Kos is an immigration reform enthusiast. That’s what he wants. That’s okay, too. It’s fine as long as everyone involved puts it in context. Do “Americans” want immigration reform and Democrats are just stubbornly or stupidly ignoring Americans or does he want Democrats to feel safe enough to push immigration reform? That can look like the same thing.
J R in WV
I have to agree with all those who have remarked about the almost unbelievable level of racism show by the republican party leaders on Capitol Hill ! Their obvious degree of hatred for President Obama based upon nothing but his race is incredible.
I can’t believe that they would have been anything like as hostile towards any other (white) Democrat.
One good thing about McConnell et al hatred and obvious racism is that it makes it impossible for any serious thinker to make the claim that America is a post-racist nation. The very idea in the face of naked police lynching of random black people and 8 years of obscene hatred for our elected President is absurd.
We still see increasing signs of extremist racism all around us. I fear for the nation in the face of such hatred. And of course if our nation fails in a flagrent manner, we have the ability to easily bring every other nation down with us.
Scary.
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: I think he knows what got him where he is.
Debbie
@ruemara:
Thanks for your response. I don’t remember hearing much about either before Obama’s election, but I usually assume that means I haven’t been listening carefully enough.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
True. You should try. And it’s going to be a slog. My objection is to the notion that it’s an obvious electoral winner because people like boldness (of all sorts) and dislike nuance (of all sorts). If that were true, there wouldn’t be so many people actively, affirmatively calling themselves “moderates.” And that’s why I appreciated the original Kos “More and better Democrats” rationale, because it works both on the existing middle-of-the-road “moderates” AND on the ones who aren’t satisfied by that. But of course movement-building and electoral politics don’t have to be the same thing or involve the same strategies. I’m no expert at either.
Mandalay
@ruemara:
I’m certain that Tavis Smiley’s number one priority at all times is Tavis Smiley, but it is factually incorrect to state that he was not involved in community issues prior to Obama.
For example, he founded the Tavis Smiley Foundation in 1999. Now you can certainly argue that he created that purely as a vehicle to promote himself, but he still got off his ass and did it, and it is still there 15 years later. And while I can’t forgive him for the manner in which he repeatedly and gratuitously stuck his boot in to President Obama, he does keep hammering a couple of points which have some merit:
– Democrats take the black vote for granted.
– Democrats have not done much for blacks or the poor while Obama has been president.
So Smiley is an asshole, but not a complete asshole.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: Playing to the caricature of a what a black man should sound like?
ETA: Deepak Chopra too, gets the same alarm bells ringing for me that say charlatan.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Frankensteinbeck:
One of the reasons that FDR was able to keep Southern Democrars on his side was by squashing any attempts to lighten the burden on African-Americans. He refused to support federal anti-lynching legislation and made sure that white people benefited more for the New Deal than black people did.
Today, there is no minority constituency that Obama can throw under the bus to get concessions from conservative Democrats the way FDR did. That’s just post-Civil Rights reality.
debbie
@ruemara:
Thanks for your response. I hadn’t heard much from either until Obama’s election, but I’d assumed that was because I hadn’t been listening closely enough.
Carolinus
@ruemara:
Yup. It dates back to the the 2008 campaign when Obama chose to “campaign elsewhere” instead of attending Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union. Michelle was willing to come on his behalf, but Smiley refused. Afterward Smiley was furious and tried to make it into a slight on the entire Black community.
That’s where the grudge began, but I imagine what’s kept it going was Smiley and West, as pundits, losing their audience over their constant railing at Obama. In time Smiley left the Tom Joyner show and canceled his State of the Black Union event, and he likely sees it all as an injustice, that “speaking truth to power” diminished his prominence, when in reality it’s just that there wasn’t much of an audience for what he was selling.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
To some extent, I think the focus on “liberal activists” criticizing Obama lets traditional Democratic powers that be off the hook. Liberals aren’t that powerful in the Democratic Party. The people who didn’t “have his back” were the much more powerful and media-savvy “centrists”. They could have helped when it really got tough. They didn’t.
I think PART of the reason they didn’t is because they put a lot of stock in “relationships” and they didn’t “know” him.
I think Clinton would have had a whole group of Democrats defending her on tv, because the Clinton’s trade on relationships and they have 30 years worth to trade on. I think it really hurt him.
Mandalay
@different-church-lady:
That is why Smiley and West are such worthless advocates for promoting worthy causes.
drkrick
@Caprice:
Was that what gave him the stroke?
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
Me too, until it became clear that the push for better Democrats would always take precedence over getting more Democrats.
gwangung
@Mandalay: It’s harder than it looks….
Baud
@Kay:
Except for getting him elected, which I don’t think he could have done as an insider.
drkrick
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Or that BClinton did with DOMA and welfare reform.
gwangung
@Baud: People complained about blue dog Dems like Nelson et al…..
But I wonder if folks really prefer the current situation. (Maybe it’s because you get more Democrats, you can GET better Democrats….).
Baud
@gwangung:
Yep. I’ve been saying this forever. More produces better.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
The risk that Democrats run by limiting or marginalizing liberals is they become technocrats, which honestly is pretty grim and won’t sustain a “base”. If you’re going to be a coalition party you have to recognize the value of each piece. Slicing off “liberals” or “labor” or what have you leaves an empty space. Maybe Democrats don’t “need” those people but I wouldn’t assume something stays the same when the composition changes. It probably doesn’t.
Emerald
@srv: Yeah, Krugman, even though he’s a recent convert to Obotism, has never and will never admit that it was impossible to get a larger stimulus than the one Obama got, not only because he needed three Republican votes, but because far too many Democrats were unwilling to vote for anything larger.
I think Krugman knows that, but he was so loud about it at the time that now he can’t admit that he left the politics part out of his recommendations for passing the stimulus.
And that stimulus actually was enough. Without it we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gwangung:
That seems to be something that too many people on the left don’t get. If you’ve got a big enough majority, then policy can move left because you don’t depend on every single old koot who is afraid of looking a tiny bit liberal. You don’t depend on those who can’t vote for something a tiny bit liberal because of the backwardness of their electorate. You don’t depend on grandstanding Liebermanns and McCains and Helmses and Calhouns and … whose power depends on showing how important they are even if it means thwarting what is good for the country.
More Democrats leads to Better Democrats, not the other way around.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Carolinus:
I wonder if part of it is, again, that East Coast media focus. East Coasters find it hard to believe that their issues aren’t the rest of the country’s issues and that a politician from the Second City (which is second to New York, of course) might not be interested in kissing their feet. Part of what drives the Villagers bonkers about Obama is that he realizes there’s an entire country outside of the East Coast that also has issues that need to be dealt with.
Kay
@Baud:
I loved how it was portrayed as “Democrats weigh in on Obama”. Okay! Obama-who-is-not-a-Democrat, unlike that Democratic standard-bearer, Ed Rendell.
I’ve said this before but our then-county chair supported Clinton for that reason. He said “it will get bad, because it always does, and they won’t defend him because they don’t know him”.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@drkrick:
Exactly. I know a lot of GLBT people were afraid that Obama was going to make them the sacrificial lambs, but obviously he’s proven otherwise. There really isn’t a minority group who can be safely disregarded and oppressed these days, which in a weird way has hurt Democrats compared to the past with people like FDR or even Clinton.
Baud
@Kay:
I thought the Democratic standard-bearer was “senior Democratic consultant.” That’s who the media always seems to go to when looking for a quote critical of Obama.
gwangung
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Hm. Suppose Obama had 65 Democratic votes instead of 60. I would posit that the most serious compromises in the ACCA would never have occurred. And having more Democrats would have led to making ALL Democrats better.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Outside of machine or old line politics, what is really different in the needs of the east, west or middle? I’m not talking about the different sides of the political spectrum but what people really need.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): How are your kittehs? Is its kissy purry or hissy bitey?
Mandalay
@gwangung:
I’m sure it is, even if you are doing everything right. But if you truly care about your cause, and you want help from Democrats in power, then the last thing you should do is to publicly attack President Obama. I don’t care how much West and Smiley think he deserves it, that is only going to harm their cause.
Their approach is rock solid evidence that they care far more about promoting their causes (and themselves) than actually getting them implemented.
Smiley and West behave like buffoons. They are not serious people. They should not be allowed to mix with the adults. etc, etc…
Kay
@Baud:
I’m sympathetic to the idea that there was some race-based “othering” going on there, with the “Democratic pundits critique Obama” theme. I don’t really understand the partitioning that went on. He’s the Democratic President. At what point does he gain entry into this club, and who named Ed Rendel a lifetime ruling member, anyway?
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Tell it over and over and over.
He refused to stand up for FEDERAL anti-lynching legislation as Black people were being terrorized all over the Jim Crow South.
And for all the crowing about Social Security vs. the ACA, never forget..
IN Social Security’s DESIGN, it did NOT include the professions which contained the overwhelming majority of Black workers in this country.
So, people were cheated FOR DECADES, with Social Security contributions.
THIS has an effect on Black Elderly TO THIS VERY DAY. They get, on the whole, smaller SS checks than their White counterparts, EVEN THOUGH BLACK FOLKS HAVE BEEN WORKING IN THIS COUNTRY SINCE WE CAME OVER AS SLAVES.
For Black Elderly women, it’s especially pronounced. They, unlike their White female counterparts of the same age group, WERE ACTUALLY WORKING way back then.
But, FDR’s agreement to exclude these professions IN ITS DESIGN, has been detrimental to these elderly Blacks.
The age for Medicare was chosen because Black folk didn’t have that kind of life expectancy.
The ACA is the first expansion of the American social safety net that did NOT have in its DESIGN, the elimination of huge swaths of Americans.
It took the Roberts Court to create that.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Ruckus:
I don’t think the needs are different, really, but the wants are different. I think East Coasters genuinely didn’t get how devastating it would be to the overall economy of the whole country for General Motors to go bust, so they pooh-poohed the need for the bailout. They didn’t get that it was virtually impossible to get health insurance in many states, because most of the people they knew already had it. Etc.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@schrodinger’s cat:
Still a lot of hissy-bitey, unfortunately. We’re starting to suspect that the relationship between Annie and Charlotte may be a big part of the problem — Charlotte has always bossed Annie around and Annie may just be sick of her shit, so we have to negotiate that as well.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m gonna go with Ed Rendell.
I think the racial aspect is valid. But related to that is that high-level Democrats tend to feel like they are the lords of their own little fiefdoms, and they didn’t like Obama because he was “disruptive,” to use one of your favorite words.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Ruckus:
Also, I realize that I’m pretty much using “East Coasters” as an abbreviation for “East Coast media figures,” of which Smiley and West are two examples. I’m not quite sure they’re official “Villagers,” but they’re definitely past of the East Coast media establishment. (So is Al Sharpton, for that matter, though I think Sharpton is more aware of nationwide issues.)
Regarding West in particular, I think part of his animosity is that Obama is friends with Henry Louis Gates Jr. when West and Gates have always been professional and academic rivals, so that doesn’t help, either.
cckids
@MattF:
I think, in addition to some pretty entrenched white privilege amongst them, they can feel that he really, really doesn’t like them, doesn’t respect the way they do their jobs, doesn’t care what they think about him. They adored Bush, with his nicknames & crappy jokes, because obviously they MATTERED to him; else why all the attention.
I’m pretty sure they realize that Obama doesn’t give them a second’s thought unless they are in the room with him. And, like petty junior-high girls, they’re going to backstab him for it.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
……………….
Chuck Todd Defends Not Challenging Republican Lies On Meet The Press
By: Jason Easley
Sunday, December, 28th, 2014, 12:28 pm
Chuck Todd explained that the mainstream media has sold out facts for access. Todd said that he allows guests to lie on Meet The Press, because if he didn’t, politicians (Republicans) would refuse to be on his show
……………
Lewis Black asked Todd how he put up with guests who babble on with their talking points without barking at them, and Todd’s answer revealed why people don’t trust the media. The Meet The Press host said, “We all sit there, because we all know, the first time we bark is the last time that they do the show. You say something, and sometimes it is last time they will ever come on your show. There is that balance.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/12/28/chuck-todd-defends-challenging-republican-lies-meet-press.html
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I was distilling it down further and still looking at the majority of citizens. Jobs. Anyone not born on third needs one. Reasonable expectation of personal safety, both from the unlawful and the powers that be. Infrastructure, can I reasonably not worry that the bridge that my grandfather drove over will stay standing and carry the enlarged population from his day? – Is the water that comes out of my faucet drinkable? – Is the plant that I have that job in going to blow up or poison me or kill me? – Can my kids get a decent education? ETC.
For the sake of this discussion I’m leaving out money, which one really can’t effectively do, and the media, who talk about the problems they perceive we have, not the ones we really do have.
Kay
@Baud:
I went to the ’08 Democratic convention and I sat with the Pennsylvania delegates on their bus one evening because I’d rather do that than do whatever we were supposed to be doing.
Anyway! I was talking to AA delegates and they said Rendell wanted Clinton because he wanted his wife to be appointed to the SCOTUS. They split up in 2011 so maybe that’s not true but it sounded true at the time :)
David Koch
but, but…. telephone metadata!
DRONZ3!
rikyrah
@cckids:
THIS!
Barack Obama doesn’t give two shyts about them.
I’ve said it before and will repeat it:
Barack and Michelle Obama practice Black Professional Sensibilities.
Their jobs are their jobs, and they will do them to the best of their abilities.
But, when it comes to their PERSONAL LIVES, they have actual ‘friends’ for socialization.
The Obamas have shown absolutely no interest in socializing with ‘The Village’.
They could care less, and have proceeded to do so since he was elected to the Senate.
They said ‘ No New Friends’ after his election to the Senate, and pretty much have kept to that. The people they have included since then have tight lips and no leaks. It’s part of the reason that they can’t stand Valerie Jarrett – she is the gatekeeper. They want the First Couple to socialize with them, so that they can tell all their business, and the Obamas are like, ‘No, I don’t think so.’
I will also add that it chafes them that Barack Obama is so secure in his personhood. He doesn’t need to have people fawning over him the way that Clinton does. He knows who he is, and he will have near him only those that he wants around him. And that does NOT include them.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
THAT’S balance?
Let’s start a fund to send chuckles a new dictionary because his current one is all fucked up. Among other things going on in his world.
Brucds
The long-term approval ratings of a President – short of episodic ups and downs that are often driven by media optics or random events outside of the President’s control – are linked more to economic performance than any other single thing. Given the objective fact of a slow recovery from a disastrous deep recession, Obama’s approval ratings are probably better than he might have expected from a fickle public that doesn’t much understand policy complexities but wants the satisfaction of a late-nineties style boom, even if it’s an economic sugar high. Not a fan of Geithner’s New York financial circles baggage and the periodic genuflections to crank deficit-hysterics from the White House, but overall this administration has done a credible job with the economy from a policy perspective – especially compared to the Europeans. But it couldn’t yield the kind of quick fix that Americans felt entitled to. Probably nothing – short of a Krugman dictatorship – could have even come close.
Also, what appeared as Bush’s “sticking to his guns” to some, was more an indicator of a genuinely limited man. Obama is about as steady as they come, which is difficult if you are also able to grasp complexity because nothing appears either “black and white” nor a “sure thing” to a guy with his intellectual chops.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Ruckus:
I think the vast majority of the media establishment is completely out of touch with what actual people want, which is the stuff you’re talking about.
And I think that’s another reason the media establishment hates Obama — for all of their complaints about how he’s “aloof” or “detached,” it’s very clear that he’s only aloof or detached with them. He seems to really enjoy the parts of his job that put him in contact with ordinary Americans and let him talk to people one-on-one, like when he does stealth White House tour greetings or takes walks in the park to chat with whoever’s hanging around. So it’s not that Obama doesn’t like talking to people. It’s that he doesn’t like talking to the media. And they can’t forgive that, because most of them still have this delusional self-image of being “regular folks.”
rikyrah
@Ruckus:
Never forget that Chuckles said on national tv, that it wasn’t his responsibility to tell the truth about Obamacare, and that’s why he never corrected GOP lies on it.
Caprice
@drkrick:
I think it was his excessive drinking. I think he saw a healthy diet and lifestyle as a liberal plot. He blamed everybody but himself for his problems. The morning I gave him his look, he’d had half a bottle of wine for breakfast. Bloodshot eyes, and his lecture was more slurred than usual.
He’d just bought a cheap walmart computer, and was spending his days on Drudge, The Blaze, etc. They reinforced his opinions. He asked me to help him set up his email, and I couldn’t help but notice his browsing history. After lecturing me on morals, he offered me his mouth. I left quickly. It was my last visit.
At least he’s getting round-the-clock care now, rather than wasting away in his filthy house.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Yeah they are regular folks like I’m a Nobel Prize winner and major movie star.
They can’t understand how someone who is a Nobel Prize winner is regular folk. Maybe that’s because they don’t understand that money has nothing to do with it. Other than to usually erase it.
President Obama is genuine. GWB was anything but. The media rarely understands genuine but they do understand bullshit.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: The fact that Chuck Todd was recruited by Tim Russert tells us everything we need to know about what a spineless weasel he is.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I remember when I was assured that Obama meets with Brooks and Friedman and the rest of those dumbasses every week and makes sure they approve of everything he says.
Dumbass pundits are worse than high school cliques. First they wanted you to know that Obama was totally into them, and they totally went out Friday night. Now that they can’t sell that load of bullshit anymore, that mean old Obama is cold and he’ll be sorry because they’re dating his worst enemy again.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
I do think that there was something appealing about W’s image.
I find some of your perceptions and opinions simply incomprehensible. This is the best example so far.
The “compassionate conservative” mask didn’t even survive the 2000
electioncoup. Within days his coronation, it was clear that W thought he had a mandate to turn the country hard right, and to do so in the most “in your face, liberal scum” methods possible.Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Oh I know, it’s just that listening to the absolutely crappy justification for him to be such an asshole is beyond any rationalization that has even a gnats ass sized connection to reality. Shorter, it’s bullshit. As I said above, genuine they don’t understand, bullshit is always the first card in the Rolodex, the one that’s completely dog eared and worn out.
cckids
@rikyrah:
Love this comment & it’s sentiments with the heat of 1000 suns. Speaking truth.
And, can’t fault Obama too much about it, Christ knows he had more on his plate than any president since Roosevelt (plus PIRATES lol), and was handling it extremely well. And, once he knew, what could he do at that early point but try to get them to work with him? ANYTHING he said about it would have been mocked like HRC’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” was & still is mocked. And FSM knows that was true as well.
Ruckus
@joel hanes:
She didn’t say she agreed, only that she understood why some might find it appealing.
And later she even explained it further.
See a couple of my posts just above this one. Some appreciate bullshit, some recognize it for what it is. She is saying that some like to be bullshitted and therefore can say they like GWB. YMMV
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Ruckus:
The balance he was talking about was “If I’m not nice to Republicans, they won’t come on my show, so on balance it’s better to be nice to them rather than not having them on.” See, if Republicans don’t come on, then he’d have to have Democrats on. And that’s bad, because reasons.
If he could think more than one step ahead he might see that the press should be hard but fair on everyone in power. Steven Sackur doesn’t seem to have trouble finding guests willing to appear on “Hard Talk”. And if Republicans and Democrats were to be too chicken/angry to appear on his show, well, maybe Todd could interview actual experts on policy rather than politicians and millionaire political consultants who view every contest as a game to be spun to increase their power. You know, actually do something to help inform the public for a change, rather than continuing to just be a puke funnel into American living rooms…
Ah, but that’s too hard. It’s much easier to refer to the Rolodex of political and economic operatives who are willing to appear on TV at a moment’s notice rather than to learn enough about a topic to ask sensible questions…
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
(sigh)
That says a lot.
And explains why I don’t watch TV news or political “interview” shows. Keeps my BP in a range that meds can deal with.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat:
I haven’t watched much Tavis Smiley but he was on the most recent season of Dancing with the Stars. I guess he had a book to sell? He came across as someone who takes himself far too seriously. He didn’t come across as a likeable person. Seemed like he had a chip on his shoulder or something like that. He was voted off first and that wasn’t surprising. If you aren’t a great dancer or paired with an extremely popular pro dancer, you’d better be funny, likeable or otherwise entertaining. He came across was none of the above. Little wonder he was first to go.
Joey Giraud
@different-church-lady:
Can’t argue with that.
I never thought Obama would have an easy time. In fact, as much as I was cheered by the fact that a black man was elected, it always seemed that the choice of a black man or a woman meant the power behind the throne wanted to ensure if a Democrat were elected then he/she would be politically weak, as any controversial President must be.
That’s why I’m never mad at BO for not being perfect, it’s tough enough just being good.
And that’s why I’m pretty sure that Hillary will be the candidate, and if she wins she will be as politically constrained ( hence weak ) as BO has had to be.
The last thing America will see in the White House will be another rich, establishment white man with a pragmatic progressive streak, like that traitor-to-his-class from 1932.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@rikyrah: Or, what Driftglass said, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Joey Giraud
@Ruckus:
My local liberal radio station just re-played the audio from today’s “Meet The Press,” and I feel the same way.
I had no idea the discourse had gotten so extremely stupid. It’s like the National Enquirer.
Cervantes
@henqiguai:
Had one line been the only line, that would have been one thing.
Know what I mean?
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: I didn’t see him in DWTS, even on PBS if I encounter him while channel surfing, I promptly change the channel after 5 minutes or less.
PhoenixRising
@rikyrah:
That is very insightful. I wonder how much that has to do with WJC’s background being something he had to rise above, vs. Obama always knowing that he had every reason to be confident. He’s smart, his mama loved him, and he went to the best schools that turn out Senators and etc.
Alongside the #notalloldladies I was getting ready to offer you*, there’s something very interesting and important about how this President symbolically broke the race/class overlap, culminating in a nation expressing more open racial bias than the one I grew up in. Something about a Black couple that does everything that ‘if only’ Pookie & Ray Ray would’ triggers mental chaos for many white Americans. And of course possibly Bill Cosby, post-Poundcake.
*per your accurate comment above, that SS was designed to exclude the laborers who today are very old ladies in poverty: my living grandmother is 94 and started working at 13; her SSI wouldn’t come near to supporting her, but since my (white) parents and uncle have GI Bill-created income, she’s not eating cat food. As they say, It’s easy being white! Even when it’s not easy.
Chris
@Emma:
I think what infuriates me is that they’re considered “lefty.”
As noted a few posts above yours: they’re the perpetually jaded hipsters of politics. On a personal level, they skew egregiously straight, white, male, and… not entirely without wealth; on a political level, they seem to be summed up by “both sides do it, maaan.” How the fuck that demographic ever came to be seen as the voice of the “left,” I don’t know.
Chris
@the Conster:
Even if you accept all the stuff they say about Clinton, I’ve never understood how that’s supposed to prove that racism isn’t a huge deal.
Yes, Clinton faced a shocking degree of obstruction and opposition (though vastly less than Obama). And that, too, was about racism to quite an extent. To the racists, Obama is a nig[CLANG], but Clinton was a nig[CLANG]-lover. So were his immediate predecessors. Democrats are the party of These People, regardless of which skin color their public face happens to be at the moment, so obstruction of a Democratic president will always be popular as a way of sticking it to These People.
Cervantes
@PhoenixRising:
Remember that iconic photograph of Bill Clinton as a teenager in JFK’s White House? He went from there to Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale Law.
Gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
One thing that came to mind five years ago is passing CO2 emission laws in the House.
Health care reform would be a big thing for businesses to digest and the House wanted to pass more rules.
The timing was awful, because in the spring of 2009 businesses were really trying to figure out how to stay afloat; things really were bad and the Pelosi House stuck to their agenda of furiously passing legislation despite the mounting bad economic data.
@mai naem mobile:
I have no problem with Obama and Senate Democrats reaching out to Republicans to shape legislation, because that is how our government should work. Also, the Democrats did not have 60 votes in the Senate until a brief period in the summer of 2009, when Al Franken was seated, Specter flipped parties, and Ted Kennedy’s interim replacement was sworn in.
The mistake Team Obama made was stating the ARRA was going to keep unemployment from reaching 8%. The fact it crossed 10% was used against Obama.
As far as saving business from themselves that was done by his predecessor via TARP, which rankled some of the recipients because note everyone needed government funds to to stay solvent, unlike AIG, for example.
The business Obama did save, which I do not think he gets enough credit for is the U.S. auto industry.
As far as Cantor, McConnell, et al planning unprecedented opposition to Obama, part of me tips my hat to them. They picked a strategy, I thought was going to blow up in their face, as they were coming off two consecutive elections where they were drubbed, Obama won Virginia and North Carolina, which had not voted for a Democratic candidate since 1964 and 1976, respectively, and had a core philosophy that seemed to be loathed by most of the country.
Thanks to billionaire money funding the Tea Party protests, Fox News giving those small protests 24/7 coverage like they were all another March on Washington, and people’s despair over the economy, the GOP,tapped into a level of anger I was just not aware of successfully.
And Roberts gave them the cherry on top with the CU decision.
Do I think what Cantor, McConnell et al did was good for the country? No.
But it was a tactic that has paid off well for them and the general political fortunes of the Republicans, which is all they were aiming for.
Chris
@rikyrah:
The impression I’ve always gotten of Obama in re the media is that Obama will deal with anybody that he has to – be it Republicans, Blue Dogs, or Iran – but he doesn’t really have to deal with the MSM except in the most superficial sense, so he doesn’t bother nearly as much to hide the fact that he thinks they’re court jesters and completely useless.
NCSteve
@gogol’s wife: You think an intelligent young woman who is the daughter of the President of the United States, who’s grown up in the political hothouse of Washington, D.C., going to a school packed with the children of other politicians, has only a vague idea who Chuck Todd is?
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108: Republicans are the party of the 1% and nothing Democrats do is going to endear them to the 1%. They can turn the Federal deficit to a surplus or stave off a Great Depression, it doesn’t matter. Even if there were no new emission laws or health care reform, nothing would have changed. Republican party has been the party of business interests ever since its formation.
Cervantes
@gogol’s wife:
She knows well enough who Todd is, hence her question: “How is he already writing a book?”
Yes, and part of that is not being a door-mat.
PhoenixRising
@Cervantes: No, he went from a trailer near a drainage ditch to those places. My point was that he always knew that his family was broke and broken, and that the feeling of being from another, lesser class of people chased him all the way to Yale and then to DC…and he DID want to be accepted and liked and respected, and it matters to him. Whereas Obama doesn’t give a damn what the Villagers think of him, his lovely well-educated wife, his delightful children or his dogs. Just doesn’t care, except to the extent that he wants to accomplish things.
Cervantes
@PhoenixRising:
I agree there are differences between them. I just don’t think those differences are captured in this line about Obama’s background:
These things are true about Clinton as well.
Mnemosyne
@PhoenixRising:
I might put it even more simply: Clinton wanted/wants to Belong, while Obama knew from the beginning that he would never Belong, so he never tried to chase it.
Also, though I’m sure some people are sick of me pointing this out, Obama deliberately chose to be Black in a way that most politicians (or people) don’t. He moved to Chicago because the city had a strong Black political establishment, married a Black woman, and even joined a Black church. He made a deliberate decision to do that when he could easily have gone the Clarence Thomas or Harold Ford route and done his best to fit in with the white establishment. He built his political base without needing the white Democratic establishment or media, and they can’t forgive him for it.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Also decided to go by Barack Obama and not Barry Dunham. As someone who has a name that doesn’t really roll off most American tongues I appreciate that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gene108:
I’m with you for a lot of this, but not that part. They were aiming to unseat Obama and put the black boy back in his place. Obama won reelection. Whatever else they got, and you’re right that they deliberately tapped into a massive well of racism beyond anything I had imagined existed, they did not get the prize they were aiming for. Obama won, and they could only hope for runner-up.
Their tactic got them the 2010 elections and enough gerrymandering to fight a scorched earth policy for years, and those are huge prizes, but it’s not the thing they wanted most of all. They lost what really mattered to them the most. And they are pissed.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Frankensteinbeck:
Not only did they lose what they wanted most, they lost it TWICE. To the same guy. No wonder they’re incoherent with rage.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have a 100 percent Italian name that gets mangled every damn day, including by one entire side of my family. So, yes, I also appreciate public figures who stick with their own uncommon names.
another Holocene human
@rikyrah: preach it. And Black men in the South don’t live to get ssi because of heart disease and other mortality (stress due to racism, occupational, diet). And tmotu have been destroying pensions which a black man might have lived to collect.
sherifffruitfly
naturally those same big-talking progressives wanted to kill Obamacare.
teabaggers are more useless than progressives, but not by much.
zoot
obama’s approval is up because the price of gas is way down – end of story. Most Americans are idiots.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
And add to it, look how the President has responded to the 2014 elections. They thought that he would be all curled up in a ball somewhere, which did not happen. He has been poking them in the eye and wearing his club N.F.T.G. pin proudly.
Suzanne
@joel hanes: I didn’t say that I was fooled by GWB’s bullshit. But plenty of people I know most assuredly were. My cousin, who is pretty glibertarian, voted for W over Gore because he said he thought W was “more honest”, even though he disagreed with many of his positions. He distrusted Gore, and even though I think he made a boneheaded decision, I can see how people who are not that smart or informed look for someone who is good at projecting an image of forthrightness and unswerving integrity, even if that may come off as slightly combative. Bush had more personal appeal to a lot of people because he really tried to create an image that he was a down-to-earth straight-shooter. Of course, it was total propaganda bullshit. But public image sways so many more people than a debate performance or a specific metric or a position on a particular issue.
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
Thanks to you and Suzanne for explaining.
I should have read the entire thread with greater attention before commenting.
Ruckus
@joel hanes:
Read before commenting?
Blasphemy!
If we all did that how could there be anyone wrong on the internet?
No worries, it has taken me some time (and doing this myself more than once) to sort of figure it out.
AxelFoley
@beejeez:
No, them running away from their vote on the ACA cost them control of the House. Those same spineless Dems wouldn’t defend their vote and wouldn’t explain to their constituents how the ACA would benefit them.
Thus, the reason for their loss.
Cervantes
@AxelFoley:
So they were “brave” enough to vote for the thing but too “spineless” to explain their vote?
low-tech cyclist
Goddamnit, I hate this sort of nonsense. If progressives want a Democratic Party that is the least bit more resolute than the pack of scared rabbits we’re used to, we want “an empty suit table pounder like GWB.”
Fuck that excluded-middle shit, to be specific about the logical fallacy being employed here.
Cervantes
@low-tech cyclist:
Well, it was noticeable that when “progressive pundits [who] long for their own version of an empty suit table pounder like GWB” were mentioned, no examples were given.
Kerry Reid
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are not-small numbers of people on the left who want the same easy, lazy, feel-good bromides that the right has fed off of for years, as well as the same lack of interest in actual policy. I like Elizabeth Warren, but the idea that she would be “tougher” than Obama with the same fucking Congress is just laughable. I mean, if tough talk is all it took, then wouldn’t we ALL have been supporting Dubya’s wars?
Kerry Reid
@PhoenixRising: THIS. And the fact that he clearly DOESN’T think that the estimation of the White House press corps and the whole ass-licking DC establishment so beloved of the Sally Quinns of the world is worth a bucket of warm spit sticks in their craws. Better to give them belittling nicknames like George W. Bush than to treat them with hands-off coolness in their views. Because they MATTER, dammit! They ARE important! (Even as Chuck Todd administers a tongue bath to Cheney and admits that he can’t ask tough questions because then nobody would play with him, darn it!)
low-tech cyclist
@Kerry Reid: I think the point is, you’ve got to say what you’re fighting for. In the long run, you win at politics by changing minds. That takes awhile. So you’ve got to make clear to people what it is that you’re about, what you’re for and what you’re against, and be reasonably consistent about that over time.
By ‘what you’re for and what you’re against,’ I don’t mean a detailed list of policies, but the underlying ideas that would drive those policies. For instance, being for an economy where everyone has the opportunity to work, and everyone who works should be able to get at least a decent life out of the deal, should be something that even a ‘big tent’ Democratic Party can agree on, and be fucking ‘loud and proud’ about.
Can we agree that the Dems totally suck at this?
Kerry Reid
@low-tech cyclist: Well, I think the problem is that Obama is for doing what works for the most people in the long term, given the built-in obstructions and difficulties of the legislative process. Which doesn’t translate well into bumper-sticker soundbites. He has made MANY speeches saying pretty much what you want to hear. The problem is that SAYING it doesn’t make it so. Policy and legislating is a lot harder than saying “What oughta happen is…”
As the party that actually believes that government has a salutary role to play, the Dems will ALWAYS have a tougher row to hoe than the GOP. I am tired of people who whine that Dubya
“got everything he wanted.” First — not true. He didn’t get the signature goal of his second term — i.e., privatizing Social Security. Second: the big things he got — war after a terrorist attack that caused too many Americans to shit their pants and scream for vengeance and tax cuts — weren’t exactly hard sells.
To me, what is remarkable — nay, revolutionary — about Obama is that he actually HAS embraced the notion that government should take on big things (no “the era of big government is over” talk from him) and should try to do them well without regard to red-meat pandering, Foam Rubber Finger Number One Fuck Yeah Sports Fan Mentality bullshit as to whether or not it’s a “win” in the news cycle or whatever-the-fuck. But policy and legislating by their very nature require compromise, recalibration — and yes, occasional failure. Grown-ups understand that, but I’m pretty sure Puling-Instant-Gratification-Adolescent is the default setting for most Americans.
Cervantes
@Kerry Reid:
No, because his goals were illegitimate.
Kerry Reid
@Cervantes: But that’s a distinction that isn’t made often enough, IMO, by people who want more “red meat” from Obama. They also forget that a lot of people don’t like hearing the “bickering” and just want “stuff to get done.” Which is why Bush was given a pass for so long after 9/11 — “he brought us together! He fought back!”
At least, people say they just want politicians to stop fighting and get things done in theory — because when big things DO get done like ACA, then it becomes scary because CHANGE!
I too think that the Obama administration could have done a better job selling their accomplishments. But if they underestimated the degree of GOP opposition, I think they also had a a seemingly reasonable (but ultimately wrong) expectation that moderate-to-left activists would be more celebratory over a signature accomplishment like ACA, rather than fixating on the lack of the public option and sighing over “shit sandwiches.” I will say this for the GOP: no victory is too small to be triumphalist about. Where was the left version of the Tea Party at the townhalls? Where were the huge rallies touting the passage of the ACA? I can’t fault Obama for not doing all the heavy lifting on that score.
And while I appreciate the need to be vigilant and pro-active, I have to say that I cleaned out my email list a few years back from the constant “he’s about to sell us out!!!” panic-mongerers. That too adds to the narrative that he hasn’t done anything, won’t fight, yadda yadda yadda.