Jonathan Bernstein has a post up that examines the major themes in the four speeches given by President Obama after the new HIR Law was passed. Bernstein teases out the major themes in these speeches. His analysis struck me as spot on, especially when he focused on President Obama’s overarching theme and the role of politics in American life:
And, from there, to the biggest point of all, only suggested once in these texts, but powerful if it is what Obama really believes. From the bill-signing:
We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities. We are a nation that does what is hard. What is necessary. What is right. Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny. That is what we do. That is who we are. That is what makes us the United States of America.
This is, really, a very strong claim. What Obama is saying here is that politics, rightly understood, is the very core of what makes this nation a nation. Not individualism, not religiosity, and certainly not ethnicity or the land itself, but politics.
The entire post is worth a read and it helps to explain why the cynical Right-wing is fighting him hammer and tong–Obama seeks to change the rules of the game. If he succeeds the modern conservative movement will join their precursors–the Whigs and the Know-Nothings–on the dustbin of failed political movements in America.
Barack Obama’s long game is an existential threat to the Wing-nuts. No wonder they are pulling out all the stops to fight him on anything and everything.
Cheers
dengre
Joe Buck
I wish I could believe that this is correct, but Obama is accepting way too many of the precedents set by Bush. I guess it’s a lot to expect anyone who has enough ambition to become president to voluntarily give up power.
Lurker
@Dennis G – You typed “roll of politics” when I think you meant to write “role of politics.” It’s a cool typo, though. :-)
As for the content, I sincerely hope you’re right. I have some friends who I think will be helped by the new health-reform law, but they do not trust politicians or government. I’d love to see their trust restored.
TenguPhule
Does this mean we can hope to see one day a Norquist small enough to drown in a bathtub?
rob!
Can you smell what Barack is cooking?
(sorry)
Mike in NC
You mean to say that Glenn Beck shitting his pants every night over at FOX can’t be a counterweight? Dissapointing.
Bill E Pilgrim
But, did he talk about the major themes in the speeches?
Chuck Butcher
To be replaced by … what? You are talking about a mind set, something well beyond a political philosophy or ideology or label (ie GOP). I’m scarcely going to try to flesh that out on your dime, but the idea that 20% of the voting population is going to find a new way to think seems an over-reach.
rob!
I was born during the Nixon administration, my Dad was born during the last few months of Hoover. I’ve joked with him that during his lifetime he has had his share of Great Presidents–FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and some Very Good ones, but what have I gotten?
I’ve been waiting to be able to claim one Great President in my lifetime. I hope I’m finally getting my chance.
MikeTheZ
@Chuck Butcher: The thing is if the ReThugs were to become a permanent minority with no presence in the White House and too few votes to even maintain a filibuster (which would happen if that number is indeed 20%), it would cause a power vacuum that would rip the remnants of the ReThug Party apart. The Tea Party movement can already be seen doing some of that.
Cat Lady
Are we back to 11 dimensional chess again? I thought Krugman told us Obama was not the one we’ve been waiting for. I’ve got whiplash.
Ash Can
Bernstein’s point about politics is interesting. After all, what does make us Americans? Our accents? Our history?
I’m not so sure, however, that the conservative movement’s rendezvous with the dustbin of history is dependent upon anything Obama does. He can hasten their undoing, to be sure, but they’re primarily sinking themselves. They’ve been gradually marginalizing themselves over the last 30 years, and now they’re starting to go supernova. Nothing can stop their erosion, because they refuse to stop it themselves.
auntieeminaz
No matter how you try to define Obama his words are easier to listen to than the ones I have been hearing all day from the Quittah from Wasilla as she campaigns for McCain in Arizona. Joe the Plumber is up next.
geg6
Bernstein’s piece is very good analysis and one that doesn’t draw many sweeping conclusions, though the excerpts here may make it seem that way. In my undergrad days as an idealistic poli sci student, I took several classes on political and presidential rhetoric with one of the top experts of the time. Great prof, great classes, and really fascinating stuff to me. I hope Berstein keeps following these threads he seems to have picked up in Obama’s rhetoric. I, too, have noticed some of them (but only superficially and Bernstein found more and weaves them together), but never analyzed what I thought they meant, what underlying argument he is making, if he is consciously arguing a view of America that is fundamentally harkening back to enlightenment philosophies of man as a political actor. This is why I love the toobz. I can’t remember the last time I read or saw something that made me excited to think about stuff like this and wanting to pay attention and analyze it for myself. Political rhetoric has been just tactics to me, even though my undergrad days had taught me better. Or perhaps I just haven’t seen a political speaker like Obama since then. I know I’m a geek about this but I find it compelling stuff.
kdaug
My .02? This President is smarter that any that I’ve witnessed in my observant political life (circa Reagan – AND GORBACHEV ENDED THE COLD WAR!)
He thinks the long game, he executes, he ignores the rabble and the commotion.
However, history is also a long game…. but if he quit today, I think he’s got enough under his belt already for a “Great President” seal of approval.
(Maybe not Rushmore yet, but he’s less than halfway through his first term.)
Mike in NC
@rob!:
I was born in ’54 and Ike was the last decent president we had, being a non-politician. Don’t blast me with bullshit about McCarthy and segregation. He did as best he could under the circumstances and had to deal with fucking Nixon.
Bobzim
@Ash Can: The more desperate they get, the more they look like this.
They’ve convinced themselves that they’re Nathan Hale, but they’re really Dylan Klebold.
Losers with guns.
sfinny
For me it has been a good week. Healthcare reform passed, START treaty done, and while there are still many foreign policy concerns I don’t have the dread that I had during the Bush admin. It’s amazing how much that over-hanging dread weighed on my mind. So today, I passed my every 3 year continuing education requirement and felt absolutely happy. Giddy in fact. It is a good feeling.
But it did, in fact, give me some insight into the ‘this is the end of all we hold good’ faction that I find increasingly worrying. They seem to be feeling what I did during the Bush years, plus one hundred. Not sure how to deal with that.
SGEW
From Bernstein’s post, what he describes as Obama’s vision of history-as-politics-as-national identity:
This is known as “progressivism,” or, maybe, “living constitutionalism” (w/ a l’il legal realism thrown in, natch).
I think Obama’s just better at putting it into good rhetoric than previous politicians; maybe a better synthesis, in total. But I don’t think it’s really anything very new.
Davis X. Machina
The quiet ones are the ones you have to watch.
MikeTheZ
Here’s a good laugh for everyone:
Link Redacted Because It Contains The Evil S-Word
M. Carey
“He is, I’m starting to think, a most promising politician. ”
Yes, it does seem to be that way
Rhoda
I don’t think so. I think the tea party movement started as an AstroTurf affair that collected the racists in the country. A lot of folks are out there that don’t like the fact that the president is black and that’s what they’re reacting to here; not political philosophy or political parties. Some of them voted for Clinton, some of them for Bush, if Kerry for example was the President they’d likely be quite and disgusted with the Republican party.
But Obama’s race short circuits every single thing in their brain.
That’s my opinion.
The crazy has a name: racism.
You can see that most clearly in the new poll that I just read; these people hate the government but want the government to create jobs. What’s the difference? In the first instance, they think Obama and in the second they think normal government FDR type of stuff.
Mike Kay
but, but, but
Obama is worse than Bush!
tom.a
> What Obama is saying here is that politics, rightly understood, is the very core of what makes this nation a nation
Correct. More specifically, the involvement of each individual working to shape politics. Obama’s entire campaign was basically telling people to get off their butt and do something, anything, to make change happen. Unfortunately too many of us sat back in our chairs once he was elected content to let him do the rest of the work.
Frank
Billmon’s post has fed into thoughts I’ve been having about the Republicans today. Maybe this is a little too 11 dimensional chess, but I think there might be something to it.
It seems to me that each time Obama moves right and offers the Republicans a compromise, they spit on him and get more vitriolic and move further right. Aren’t they alienating more and more people every time they do that? Additionally while the press never calls them on it, or in anyway point out their unreasonable nature, after a while it gets too much for the general public to ignore and leaves folks increasingly doubting the press.
Maybe Obama is even smarter than he seems. If he can reduce the Republican party to its 27% crazy base, or even close, it would be a major political re-alignment.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
That’s the one point my wife and I have driven home to our kids. While there is a right way and a wrong way about many things in life, there are times that the right way is the most difficult way to go. This makes the wrong way more attractive to those who are weak willed. Many people who choose the wrong way will justify their decision by claiming that it was they who were strong, made the right decision and went the right way. If you were the one who indeed chose the right but difficult way then they will deride you as the rube who screwed up.
IOW, nothing good or great comes easily. The weak willed will do their damnedest to discourage you because they want you to join them, which in turn reinforces their position on being the one who made the right decision and you the wrong one.
Republicans have always played the ‘immediate gratification’ game and the Dems were following them. Obama seems to be looking ahead and planning for the long term. IMO Obama sat back and let the sausage-making process happen. People on the left and right, for different reasons, sought to drag him into the fray but Obama pretty much stayed above it. The Repubs tried to hang “Obamacare” on him in an attempt to make this all about him but it only took root among their shrunken base, teabaggers and firebaggers.
Obama did not delegate HCR to his wife, he let the bodies responsible legislating do what they are there for, legislate. If Obama had jumped into the fray from the start then the “Obamacare” label probably would have stuck better. We all knew that this would lead to a clusterfuck of epic proportions and I am sure that Obama and his team knew the exact same thing. After the loss in MA to Brown the Democrats had a ‘come to Jeebus’ moment. Just when things look dim for HCR in comes Obama at the tail end of things to push for it.
As far as I am concerned Obama played them like a fiddle. Granted that the mixing was painful for all to listen to and the song that came out isn’t the best, but at least we have a starting point for future change. This wasn’t all about Obama and I think he was wise not to make it so.
We won when every time in the past we lost. That says it all for me.
mr. whipple
dengre: Thanks for the intro to that blog. Lots of good reading there.
Mike Kay
@Mike in NC: what about JFK?
LBJ is a mixed bag. Undeniably great on domestic policy, but a fuck-up on vietnam.
Mike Kay
@Frank: where is Billmon posting?
Mike Kay
Dengre, you deserve a big round of applause.
You fought the good fight on HCR, even when you were surrounded by myopic narcissists on GOS.
In the end, you won and they’ve been discredited.
Short Bus Bully
It’s absolutely fantastic to see the stark difference between rico suave Obama and the running clusterfuck that is the modern GOP. Even the part-tards are picking up on what is happening and the Repubs are looking more and more clueless and viciously impotent as this administration marches on.
They can’t be the cool kids at the party so they just drop a deuce in the communal punch bowl and pout. It does make for an interesting news cycle though.
I am looking forward to the 2012 elections with equal parts fascination and abject fear. Shoot me now.
Frank
He’s at daily Kos here is the post I was talking about: here
PTirebiter
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Now there’s an understatement, but maybe the pain makes the win just a little sweeter. McCain looked like he was passing a pound of coral while he was introducing the grifter today. I know I should be a better person than this, but damn it feels good.
Zuzu's Petals
@PTirebiter:
Who’s the likely Dem candidate there, do you know?
Edit: Hmmm, interesting: http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2010/03/interesting-new-developments-in-the-arizona-senate-race.html
Chuck Butcher
@MikeTheZ:
Changing the name of something doesn’t change that there is a niche that is going to be filled. What the Republican Party of the 1860s was to what it is today is a reflection of that. You can certainly make the argument that a “new” party wouldn’t neccesarily make the alliance with the 20% that the GOP did, but that 20% block is real attractive as a voting block.
Small government/business friendly ideology isn’t likely to go away and it has an attraction for that 20% – stating the somewhat obvious. I suppose you could look for a new party that strips off the more center (right?) elements of the Ds that could afford to ignore that 20% but then you start to talk about coalition building to get percentages and then what?
ah well, time will tell…
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Exactly. His long game is to make it ok for the citizenship of this country to embrace the core of the document which is the Contstitution, that shapes, or should shape all of our politics.
And that core is justice for all. The wingers hate that, and the threat to their furry dreams of Oligarchy and a bifurcated society based on economic and social class, that drives them whether they see it or not. They are no match for Obama, and know it, and will get even crazier in trying to destroy him, or his efforts.
But I also think, some wingers, over time, will see the light and futility of right wing intransigence and bring some real conservative ideas to the table for adding to justice based progress. These ideas do exist, and can be useful, if honestly promoted to improve the general welfare.
Stroszek
@Mike Kay:
… which would be all the time.
MikeTheZ
@Chuck Butcher: True, but small govt/business friendly is not what the GOP of today is about. Odds are that 20% would become temporarily irrelevant, and the ConservaDems would fill the void with a new party. This would go on until someone hits upon the idea of a way to exploit the 20% for a prolonged period (see the ReThugs use of religion and guns).
Also, while +0, it being 1 AM is limiting my ability to state this better :-P
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@PTirebiter:
I agree with Rachel Maddow that McCain having to invite Palin to
save his assspeak up for him served to only diminish him more.Passing a pound of coral probably would have been preferable to his having to bring her there.
Elie
@Bobzim:
One of the best comments about the tea partiers and other right wing nut jobs
Chuck Butcher
@MikeTheZ:
What that comes down to is numbers, you are not a political party of meaning if you don’t win elections. You have a mid-30% independent electorate that is up for grabs – partially so – move on from there.
Chuck Butcher
@Elie:
How cool, so that makes a bunch of us “winners with guns?”
Or would that be pointlessly perjorative?
Elie
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
.
Its the only way he knows that he is alive — pain. I think McCain is a man in constant pain — existential, physical, psychic, spiritual, moral and every other stop in between. He is not big enough to deserve an Opera, as Nixon would. He is just a failed – uhmm – failed person, failed leader, failed human.. but in small letters, no caps. His highpoint was surviving his confinement in Hanoi. BTW, the Hanoi Hilton in Hanoi is a great tourist attraction of empty rooms and vacant significance — kinda mirrors him
Elie
@Chuck Butcher:
I hope that we are not the polar opposite to losers with guns —
You can only stretch something so far, Chuck, but I get your drift — kinda
Mike Kay
@Chuck Butcher: I don’t think hippies have guns. More like “winners with organic arugula”.
Chuck Butcher
@Mike Kay:
Um, lotsa guns. Lefty. Hmm. I do admit to liking various lettuce varieties.
Calliope Jane
Thank you for this link. It puts his comments about Reagan being more of a transformative president than Clinton in a different light, I think. We won’t here this president say “government is the problem” or “the era of big government is over.” I agree that Obama is trying to change the political trajectory of the country. I’ve been thinking about it in a fairly simple (and probably overly simplified) manner — shifting the country away from the Reagan-era “selfishness” and back to Kennedy’s “Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” and “we go to the moon . . . and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” language/ideals. I was reminded of the latter quote, actually, when hearing his statement on the signing of the HCR bill.
It’s late for me, and I’m rambling, but the article was great because it puts a perspective on his statements that I think highlight what his ultimate goal is — not just healthcare, or education, or energy, or financial regulation, or immigration, or, or or — but transforming how people view, and interact with, the government. He certainly does play long ball — luckily for us he wants to win.
@kdaug: THANK YOU. I know it was just a side comment to your broader point, but yes, Gorbachev ended the Cold War. Not Reagan. Gorbachev got the Nobel Prize, alone, for a reason. What the hell happened to have all these people change history like this? Ridiculous Reagan worship.
Not that this touched a sore spot or anything. *g* Thanks for making me feel like I’m not going completely crazy (at least, not on this).
PeakVT
Barack Obama’s long game is an existential threat to the Wing-nuts.
Teddy Roosevelt’s long game is an existential threat to the wingers.
Chuck Butcher
@Elie:
Democratic Party of Oregon – second largest caucus – Gun Owners Caucus right behind LGBT. Hippie commie OR…
MagicPanda
I don’t know if I would place the GOP in the dustbin just yet. I think the reason obama’s words strike such a chord is that it has been far too long since someone has tried to make the sweeping case for
progressivism. That we need to band together and try to make things better instead of throwing up our hands and saying that it can’t be done.
I am proud to have voted for this man.
Sho
mclaren
@Dennis G.:
Actually, wouldn’t you say that the modern conservative movement has already joined the Whigs and Know-Nothings on the dustbin of failed political movements in America?
Palin remains their runaway front-runner. The Republicans have no ideas, no policies, no credible people, nothing at all to run on in 2012. “Repeal,” I suppose. And then what? …Nothing. They have nothing at all to replace the Democratic HCR bill with even in the wildly unlikely event the Repubs ever succeeded in repealing it. It all seems reminiscent of Xerxes ordering his slaves to flagellate the ocean for frustrating him. How many voters can that appeal to?
Truth be told, the Republicans have not had any ideas or policies or credible people since the senile sociopath Reagan. For 30 years they’ve been touting snake oil — the Laffer Curve, deregulation, endless failed foreign military adventures, all manner of bunkum and hokum, and it didn’t work back in 1982 when the economy tanked and interest rates skyrocketed and unemployment shot up to a new postwar record, and it hasn’t worked in the 30 years since then. The American people just finally realized it, that’s all.
So this really leaves the Democrats entirely on their own. The Republican party is effectively dead as a political force in America. Even if they win the House this November, what policies have they got to offer? Nothing. Frantic investigations of Obama’s birth certificate. Efforts to repeal HCR legislation that is a done deal and is not going away. That’s not policy, that’s red-faced hysteria and bitter tears of futility.
This means it’s now up to Democrats alone to decide the future of America. Republicans have made themselves irrelevant. The serious debates now will take place between the Blue Dogs and the Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic party. There’s nothing but echoing emptiness coming from the other side of the aisle.
Also, seems to me that Obama is not saying that politics is the essential nature of America, he’s saying that morality is essential to America. That’s a drastic reversal from the realpolitik outlook of the Eisenhower and JFK and Nixon and Ford and Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, and a return ot the belief that morality is fundamental to U.S. policy, and that’s more characteristics of FDR and Jimmy Carter. (We leave aside the previous maladministration because there is no evidence that that group of sociopaths believed in anything or advocated anything other than the extension of their own personal power, and smash-and-grab looting to enrich their cronies).
The obvious and drastic clash between proclaiming that “America does what is right” and murdering hundreds of innocent Afghan bystanders in daily unmanned drone attacks represents the first test of Obama’s new statement of principles. Time will tell how he deals with it.
annamissed
So, if it’s politics that’s the singular highest definition of the nation, what he apparently has in mind is a sort of corporatism, because the hallmark principal that informs all of his sponsored legislation, is in fact corporatism. Whats next, corporatism as the national identity?
mclaren
And what’s all this stuff about you guys haven’t had any good presidents in your lifetime?
Bush 41 was a fine president. He did a great job with Desert Storm and most important of all, he knew when to stop. The guy pulled out and left and didn’t make the big blunder of, you know, invading Baghdad and getting our troops stuck there.
Clinton was a terrific president. Put aside your personal feelings about the guy’s sleaze factor and look at the metrics. How many members of the Clinton administration got indicted for corruption? Not one. Not a single one. Bill Clinton ran the cleanest administration in the last 75 years. Clinton was the best administrator we’ve had in the White House since Eisenhower. How many casualties did Clinton incur when he ended the war in Kosovo? …Zero. Think about that. Zero American lives lost. And then he pulled out.
Yes, Bill Clinton failed on health care, but the times just weren’t right. Americans hadn’t yet gotten a sense of how drastically the American health care system was failing. Also, Clinton had lost congress — if Obama had lost the House to the Republicans in the 2008 elections, do you honestly think he’d have been able to push HCR through?
Clinton was by any measure the best president we’ve had in 40 years.
Jimmy Carter told Americans what they didn’t want to hear (his malaise speech) and they punished him at the polls for it. If congress had passed Carter’s energy program, we wouldn’t be in the middle east with troops today.
The only really bad presidents in the last 50 years have been JFK (inspiring speaker but an awful president who nearly blew up the planet with the Cuban Missile crisis and gave us that wonderful sideshow Viet Nam), Nixon, Reagan and the drunk-driving coke-snorting C student who infested the White House for the last 8 years. The rest of the guys were either not bad (Carter, Ford) or pretty darn good (Bush 41, Clinton).
If Barack Obama leaves office with a surplus instead of a deficit, a booming economy, no U.S. troops mired in endless foreign wars, and no members of his administration indicted for corruption, then I’ll agree Obama was as good as Clinton. Otherwise…time will tell.
Uriel
@Chuck Butcher:
Good point, and something that I’ve been considering very carefully as all the “death of the republican party” hype spent itself out in the media. What ever may come from the realignment in the GOP, it seems clearer every day that a move toward moderation is not something that’s in the cards- quite the opposite, in fact.
Even before the Obama presidency, it was pretty clear that the main mission of the modern right is to undo every pretense towards moderation that was forced on it, and national politics in general, since the sixties and the fall of Nixon. It’s become a revenge/validation by proxy thing.
Thus we have the rollback of all the reforms since cointelpro under the patriot act, the reintegration, elevation- and hell, even the sainting- of the John Bircher types in the party, the calls for privatization of any-god-damned-thing imaginable, the happy embrace of every bad thing we supposedly walked away from in Viet Nam, and the rejection of “rino”s in favor elevating the lunatic fringe, nothing-but-faith based firebrands of southern choir.
These people came into power in 2000 with an agenda, and its falling in place like Swiss clockwork.
Liberals and progressives make a big mistake in thinking that the weakening of the conventional republican party means its members, or the nation as a whole, means a move closer towards some sort of moderation, or that the fabled Overton window gets shifted leftwards. There’s a whole world of other possibilities that can come into play here, and every indication that the worst ones are actually coming to fruition.
Or, at least, that’s my take on the thing.
Uriel
@mclaren: That said, I have to I agree with much of what you’ve said here- apart from the JFK part. It’s very clear that none of us have seen the ideal canidate of the modern right wing- not even in Goldwater or (god help us) Regan.
The modern republican party is as much a push back against Bush the elder as it is anything else. Hell, they would have eviscerated Nixon, had they the chance. Their only objection to the man is that he set their agenda back by a few decades. They are now appealing to a very animal, base instinct in national politics that I really think hasn’t found a voice in the American land-scape in the twentieth century.
Sure they want to rehabilitate all the odious figureheads of the past- but that’s just the beginning. The current paradigm encompasses so much more. And that’s what we should fear.
Calouste
Thing is, that 20% is there and it is not going to go away. It’s not just in the US, it’s everywhere. Le Pen got 18% of the vote in the French presidential elections in 2002 for example.
Not all that 20% are really extreme right-wing, only about 1-3% are actual in the neo-nazi/white supremacy corner, the rest are hangers-on and protest voters, who can be pursuaded to vote for other parties by making voting for the extreme right socially unacceptable. It doesn’t always work perfectly, see the success of Le Pen and Wilders in the Netherlands, but it often does. In general having a small extreme right party that demonized by the mainstream parties keeps them from getting a hold over the protest voters, i.e. the people who are just against the government in general. Also having a far-left party splits the anti-government vote.
In the US however, with no third parties to speak of, there is no such outlet, and with the way the GOP has cultivated its anti-government image over the years, they have that 20% locked in. Only if they are replaced with a conservative party that is willing to actually govern and cut out the 1-3% extremist elements, can that party return to normality, They will lose the 1-3%, and the other 17-19% will start floating between the parties, and most likely vote for however is out of power, but on the other hand they will win back a large number of what are now Conservadems.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@mclaren:
While Clinton was a fair president I have two reservations about his greatness.
1: Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
2: Signing NAFTA.
Those two items are black marks in my book. Clinton was good but he was not exactly great. Just IMO though. :)
Linda Featheringill
Good morning.
Some of you guys are early birds. Must be working today, like me. :)
Thank you for introducing to the Plain Blog About Politics. Very nice. I plan to follow it and see what else the professor can tell me.
On financial regulatory reform:
I emailed my one representative and two senators and feel rather noble and superior. Nice feeling. Plan to move up to phoning them next week. What I said was:
***
The points of contention seem to be
1. The effectiveness of steps taken to avoid having to bail out businesses that are “too big to fail”
2. The Federal Reserve emergency lending authority which is perhaps vulnerable to abuse
3. Efforts to regulate executive pay and whether they would be successful or just too intrusive
4. Authority and efficacy of the consumer protection agency, with attention to its independence from the people it is supposed to be regulating
Of these contentious points, (1) and (4) seem to be the most important to me.
In the recent past we were all held up for ransom by companies that were so big they threatened to take us all down with them. Maybe we can avoid that in the future.
The consumer protection agency needs to be fair, independent, and effective. Otherwise, why bother setting it up?
I would appreciate your help in regulating our financial institutions in a way that makes for more prosperity for all of us.
***
I don’t have my “script” ready yet for an actual phone conversation. Any suggestions?
superdestroyer
The long term plan of the Democratic Party and David AXelrod is to make as large a portion of the population of the U.S. totally dependent on the government. The dependency creates core blocs that will automatically vote for the Democratic Party and will support policies that will concentrate power with the government.
In the long run, the U.S. will be a single party state where the long term problem of the U.S. will be how to fund a massive welfare state while maintaining open borders, unlimited immigration, and how to grow the economy when the population is dominated by poor blacks and Hispanics.
aimai
Chuck Butcher,
I agree with you on the “don’t bet on it” part but I think you take up the “losers with guns” comments a little too personally.I think the “losers with guns” thing doesn’t have anything to do with gun ownership, per se, but rather with the important role of violence and intimidation in the teaparty movement. The tea partiers see themselves not as a “moral majority” (though they insist that they *are* a majority) but as an embattled remnant, a lost, true, tribe of real americans. And in that context the insistence on carrying guns and on violence and intimidation of non gun carrying voters and citizens takes on a different meaning. They *themselves* represent themselves as losers/lost/reactionary and they themselves represent the gun, the protest, the attack, hate mail, and aggressive encroachment on public spaces as the only thing left to them to recapture power.
This has nothing to do with a pro-gun or anti gun ownership stand. Its just an observation about the kind of people who find themselves attracted to guns at the same time that they are repulsed and angered by democracy.
aimai
mai naem
@mclaren: Clinton was an above average president who only looks good because the ones around him have been so awful in comparison. On the left to right meter, he moved it very slightly to the left but then it’s been 80 degrees to the right so it still remained to the right. Also too, a lot of stuff he did do was easily turned back by the thug who took over from him. LBJ and FDR did stuff that couldn’t very easily be turned back, if at all. And sorry to bring it up but I still get mad at him for Lewinsky affair, not because of the affair but because he in effect threw away the last 2-3 yrs of his presidency and cost Gore the presidency.
Annie
OT, but just love this headline….
mai naem
@superdestroyer: I am impressed that you said Democratic party not Democrat party. Did you choose not to listen to your Frank Luntz talking point about DemocRATs or did you forget it?
Bobzim
@aimai:
Yes. I see them closer to spree shooters than patriots because they reek of desperation, frustration, and marginalization even though they have all of the avenues of recourse given to us by the Founding Fathers, yet their first impulse is to choose what should be the last resort.
kay
@superdestroyer:
Nah. Read some history. We heard the same things from conservatives about European immigrants. You were dead wrong about them, and you’re dead wrong about newer immigrants.
Nothing vibrant about a country that stands still. Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed the last time you guys went on a tear, or none of you would be here.
Bobzim
Also, anyone who has ever had professional firearms training – and that includes me – knows that an ironclad rule is that you never pull a gun unless you fully intend to use it, and I’d like to see that rule extended to posters at rallies.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@aimai:
A good liberal friend of mine is former military and has a f’ing personal armory that he is quite proud of. You could know him for years and not know that he is a gun nut because he doesn’t advertise it. He is very discreet about handling his weapons and I would be surprised if his neighbors had any idea of what he has.
He says that the nuts who are going to public places armed like that are “insecure little bastards” who need a gun to complete their “look”. He said that he wouldn’t want to have to depend on people like that in a pinch because they have a “Rambo” complex. He shoots with a bunch of guys who he says are ok to be around for that but are pretty much hard right in their political views. He says that they just assume he agrees with them even though he studiously avoids any political issues and frequently finds himself biting his tongue almost to the point of drawing blood.
But he works with a couple of the guys and they have a good time practicing though he says that he leaves it at that. He prefers good liberal company when he wants to relax, kick back and tip (or toke) a few. :)
JM
The rage, petulance, hyperbole and outright threats of the Republicans on losing against HCR stand in start contrast to Al Gore’s reaction to the true political outrage of our times: a partisan court handing the presidency to G.W. Bush. Instead of venting what I’m sure Al felt, he gave a remarkably gracious speech, in the name of holding the country together. I was one who railed at him at the time, wishing he’d fought harder, wishing he’d called out the outrage that went down in Florida and the Supreme Court.
But Al Gore offered us what he thought was best for the country. As apposed to the Party of No, which is handing us a mountain of stinking, sour grapes.
Any time the Democrats question Republican’s policies of further enriching the rich on the backs of the poor, Republicans accuse them of “Class Warfare.” I think we’ve got too many wars – in Iraq, on drugs, on terror. But if there’s a Class War, the Democrats are winning without firing a shot.
Al Gore gave a classy speech, and went on to run a classy campaign against climate change. And Obama’s the classiest guy in the room. Funny that a short time ago “High Class” Republicans wouldn’t have let him in the door of their country clubs, except maybe to shine their shoes. Republicans leaders in congress have been acting with all the class of a bunch of psychopathic schoolyard bullies, who when lose a fight, revert to terrible twos in full tantrum mode.
Spanking is uncool. Time we sent them for a “Time out.” A LONG one.
Ming
…
I think Obama is saying that “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” is who we are, who we are meant to be. I believe it’s no accident he’s a constitutional scholar, and that his vision is deeply grounded in the system of government set out in the Constitution. He’s trying to get Congress to legislate, he’s trying to make government more accountable and more transparent, he’s trying to get us citizens more involved, he’s trying to reduce the influence of special interests and corporations.
That’s not necessarily 11-dimensional chess, but it’s by necessity a long game, and a different game, than winning the 36-second newscycle.
Linda Featheringill
To aimai:
Interesting analysis. I think I will mull over that for a couple of days and maybe get back to you. Okay?
Keith G
Obama spoke:
Now I love that man and will support him through most anything, but that is a dash of rhetorical wistfulness. Dreamy, but almost silly. I am tempted to add that this is the type of magical thinking that gets progressive activists clubbed by the GOP like so many baby seals.
That is not who we are and I doubt its who we will ever be as a society. If men were angels…..
slightly_peeved
I’ll tell you a story. In the gradual world acceptance of an “R” rating for games, the lone holdout is Australia – because to change the ratings, all the state attorney generals must agree, and the one holdout there was South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson. He started saying all this stuff about how games couldn’t have “R” ratings because they have some bigger effect on kids, and when people disgareed, he started talking shit. He started saying gamers could try and oppose him but they’d never get more than 1% of the vote.
A bunch of people who hadn’t been involved in politics before formed a political party – Gamers4Croydon – 6 months before the election. They started publicly attacking his statements, and defending the introduction of an “R” rating as a better way of educating parents about the content of some games. Atkinson, in response, said more and more of this shit. He said that his constituents had better things to worry about, that he found gamers more dangerous than bikie gangs, that he expected Gamers4Croydon to use criminal tactics against him.
Gamers4Croydon got 3.7% of the vote in his electorate, and over 1% in every other electorate that they ran. Michael Atkinson still had his seat, but had a 14% swing against him in the vote. Next day, he resigned his position as Attorney-General, wanting to spend more time with his family (translation from Australian politics-speak: Caucus probably told him to go).
If a bunch of people who’d never been involved in politics before know how to make an asshole’s assholery clear to the public, I’m guessing Obama knows how to too.
Mnemosyne
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Don’t forget welfare “reform” as yet another black mark against Clinton.
As many other people have said, Bill Clinton was our best Republican president in years.
superdestroyer
@kay:
The U.S. went over 40 years with almost no new immigration. From before World War I to 1960 there was little immigration. The U.S took the time to assimilate the immigration. The continous flow of illegal mexican immigrants for the last 30 years has basically establish a separate culture in places from Brownsville Texas to Los Angeles.
The question is thus how does a U.S. that looks like El Paso generate the wealth to fund the welfare state.
Calouste
@superdestroyer:
In the timeframe you mentioned America also had the worst economic crisis in its history, so I don’t see the point you are trying to make.
But go back to 1910 and replace Hispanic with Irish, Italian or Jew, and you’ll fit right in.
K. Grant
@superdestroyer:
What utter nonsense. Pure pablum spewing foolishness. I live in the Valley (Deep South Texas) and while yes, indeed, it is a majority Hispanic population, you might want to remember that this part of the world has always been majority Hispanic, as this use to be Mexico. In fact, a good number of families in the Valley have relations on both sides of the border because their families have always been here. As Gloria Anzaldua comments (paraphrastically) – it just so happens that without moving an inch they went from citizens to foreigners when the Republic of Texas was created. Guess who the first immigrants were to this region? I will give you a hint, it wasn’t the Mexicans.
This is a region on the rise, growing, building infrastructure, starting to actually develop high-tech companies (through the university), and slowly but surely moving beyond a simple agricultural and service oriented economy. The growing population, both Hispanic and Anglo (and Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.) is what makes the area dynamic. Yes, we still have areas of disastrous poverty, but this takes time and intelligent people in the statehouse (something we have lacked since Ann Richards was governor) to turn around. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have Mexico get its act straightened out either.
Foolish politicians, short-sighted and bigoted hacks, and glib media types do not help in the slightest. Stop being such a knave.
superdestroyer
@K. Grant:
Brownsville Texas is 92% Hispanic and 7% white. Not much room left for Asian or other immigrants. The mean household income is less than half that of the U.S. If you look at the students at Brownsville Pace High School, it is 96% Hispanic. Not exactly the kind of environment that is going to attract high tech no anything other than business that depend upon low wages.
And there is nothing that a Democratic governor could go for Brownsville that is not done today. Robbing Peter to pay Paul just does not play in Texas.
As the U.S. becomes more like the “Valley”, the culture will become more like the Valley. No matter what politicians do, no one is going to turn Brownsville, Texas into Burlington, Vt.
K. Grant
Yes, the Valley is predominantly Hispanic, it always has been. This isn’t any different than, well, forever. What you are arguing is that this is always a negative. Your bigotry is appalling.
Not but a few short decades ago, the Valley was predominantly agricultural. Since that time the economy has been changing dramatically – the growth industry is medicine, education (including two UT system schools), and small tech start-ups (developing various technologies created in the engineering and science departments at UT Pan American).
Do we have a great deal of crushing poverty? Yep. No question, but you must recognize that the Valley has suffered from systemic neglect, as the folks up in Austin have tended to pretend that anything south of the Nueces River doesn’t exist, and certainly doesn’t deserve any actual concern and development. This is going to take a bit of time, but the potential of this region is extraordinary. It would help if we didn’t have such a yahoo as Governor.
I teach at Pan Am and I can see, on a daily basis, at a school that is 87% Hispanic, the drive, entrepreneurship, and inventiveness, and favorably compare that drive to any where in the country – it is simply that we have a great more work to do. But this is a region that is making significant progress, even though you would like to deny such progress.
We have two of the most innovative High Schools in the country – Science Academy of South Texas and South Texas School for Health Professions. The Science Academy is a high achievement college prep academy with a focus on science and engineering (one of the senior classes is in its second year of developing residential and community wind turbines for college campuses, hospitals, and rural communities off the grid – from design to production to installation – they have already installed one on the high school campus, will be putting one on the UTPA campus this year, and will be building at least three more for local colonias). There are two other schools in the system that are likewise innovative – BETA (Business, Education, and Technology Academy) and Med Tech (a high school geared toward a more medical vo-tech curriculum). These are schools that opened their doors in the 1990’s, and the impact they are starting to have on the community is remarkable.
So, let me guess, you have never been to the Valley. You have cherry picked your data points, completely ignoring their actual context, and have gone your merry way on your pointless bigoted and hate-filled screed.
superdestroyer
UT-Pan American has a four year graduate rate of 10% and a six year graduation rate of 33% according to collegeresults.org. Not exactly the type of university that is doing to set the world on fire. Not exactly the statistics that demonstrate drive, entrepreneurship, and inventiveness
For Science Academy of South Texas, according to greatschools.com, it is 24% white and 11% Asian. My guess it is the one public school in “The Valley” that professors at UT-Pan American are willing to send their children to. If packing all of the smart kids into a single school is the future, then the U.S. is just becoming a third world country where most effort is put into avoiding the underclass.
K. Grant
@superdestroyer: You hide behind your statistics.
Have you talked to the people? Watched the progress over the years? Talked with long-time residents of the Valley – Hispanic and Anglo? Spoken to the newer residents of the Valley – Asian, Indian, Pakistani, African? Have you spoken to the new crop of politicians, ones breaking away from the old patron system?
I have said that this is a work in progress, I admit that, everyone in the Valley admits that. Yet you, with your stubborn refusal to admit that your argument is not quite as iron-clad as you would like to believe, are completely unwilling to give an inch. You are a fool. Worse, a blind fool.
Again, I ask, have you ever been to the Valley? Have you ever peered behind those precious statistics of yours? No, no you haven’t, and you probably don’t care to do so because that might upset your neat and tidy perspective on the world.
You are a perfect example of the Republican party today – stubborn, immune to reality, fixated on a bigoted world view, desperate to not feel threatened by the rest of the world, including the people who are as American as you, and failing miserably in that task.
You do realize the definition of utopia, no? You so desperately want to create one, a place in which only people who look like you, speak like you, and think like you can live. Thomas More was rather clever in The Utopia, he provided the perfect definition. Come on, you know the real translation, the real definition of the word – it fits you perfectly, aptly. No place.
You are welcome to it – the rest of us have work to do, lives to live, progress to make.