I don’t Think There is a Grand Plan — by anyone.
Boehner has a small plan: Keeping his job as Speaker. That’s all he ever wanted and probably he’ll save it.
The GOP plan we all know – keep Obama from being re-elected no matter what it takes.
Pelosi just wants to keep the safety net “off the table” at this point. I wish her well. In my opinion she’s been the best of the bunch on the Dem side, but she doesn’t have the strongest hand at the current poker table and Obama has not exactly been very helpful to her.
Reid? I can never figure Reid out. Sometimes I think he flips a coin before deciding what to do.
Obama? I know a lot of people think he plays 11th dimensional chess and is a tactical genius as a politician. Sorry, but I’ve yet to see it. He was a great campaigner. I’m sure he’ll run a great campaign in 2012.
But he is not “The Negotiator.”
Tell me how wrong I am if you like, but I have heard all the arguments in his favor and they just don’t cut it with me. He’s been too compromising with his adversaries and too contentious with his allies. He could have accomplished much more, especially in early 2009 when he had all that momentum from his victory and the GOP was in a funk. He could have used the “bully pulpit” much better.
Instead he hired Wall Street guys (Summers, Geithner) as his economics advisers and Rahm “I never met a Democrat whose balls I wouldn’t threaten to cut off” Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. He kicked his best people, like Elisabeth Warren, to the curb. He never took a stand when a stand was needed. He was always looking for a deal, not a solution. He preached hope and change but practiced the politics of settling for less. I wanted someone who would be tough and inspirational, and willing to grab for the most he could get because God Knows we needed someone like that. He isn’t that guy, however. I now believe it simply isn’t in his nature.
He’ll probably squeak out re-election for a second term (mostly because the GOP field is so bad) but Democrats will not ride his coattails to recapture the House and there is a better than even chance the Dems will lose the Senate.
He is what he is. I don’t hate the man. I even have some sympathy for him, but to claim he has been a victim of circumstances is only half the story. He created a lot of his own problems, in my opinion. A great leader would have found a way to get single payer, or the public option through the Congress, to prosecute Goldman Sachs and the other Banksters, to push for a larger, more effective stimulus when he had the chance. We needed him to be FDR. Hell, we needed him to just be LBJ. Instead, we got Bill Clinton-lite: a little more eloquent, but a lot less skilled as a political in-fighter.
And that’s a damn shame, because it’s highly likely things will get worse, much worse, both in the short term and in the long term for most of the people in this country. A lot of people will suffer, and frankly I believe it didn’t have to be that way.
Call me an alarmist, a purist, a gloom and doomer or whatever term floats your boat. I frankly don’t care anymore. At this point I am “hoping” that a miracle happens next year and the Dems retake the House, but I don’t expect it. I “hope” that Obama becomes the President and leader he should be and that the country desperately needs. But I’m not betting on it.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Prove me wrong Mr. President. Prove me wrong.
No fair, you breaking out Shatner.
Politic is a dirty game, you know that.
Indeed. I don’t even have a comeback for Shatner. It’s like, argument over.
Can’t wait until this whole thing is over with. So people can have new things to complain about. Politics as primal scream.
I’m tired of topics like this. Really tired.
You’re out of your mind.
How did you come to write for Booman’s site here? Because…there’s no easy way to put this: you’re a hack. Right down to the Larry Summers and Lyndon Johnson memes. Never heard those before. Making fun of “hope and change?” Groundbreaking. Do you have something to say about Rahm Emmanuel? You do?! Wow!
Just ridiculous.
Calling someone a hack is not an argument.
Does it need to be?
Unless this is a parody of every warmed over firebagger talking point smashed into one post, there’s no dialogue here. He’s as unreasonable as a Republican.
Elizabeth Warren? Kicked to the curb? Are you kidding me? A great leader would have gotten single payer?!
This can’t possibly be legit. Nobody could be this willfully ignorant.
See, with a little prodding you can actually defend your position rather than just resorting to insults. I think what makes this site valuable is that we have one of the best comments sections in the blogosphere. But that’s because people are willing to engage each other with some respect.
It’s okay to say that a post disappointed you or that you think it’s off-base, but try to make your case rather than just attacking.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you: why don’t you demand that Steven D back up his arguments too?
Want to know why I read Booman Tribune? Because you lay out your theory of what’s going on, you look to the reality of the process, and you look back at your previous posts to see if your predictions have borne out. Quite often they do, but you also acknowledge when they don’t. You have evidence.
Steven D here has nothing but blind faith. Look at this post. It boils down to “Well I don’t believe this is his strategy because I just don’t see it. The argument doesn’t cut it for me because it just doesn’t cut it. He could have done better by doing it my way, and I know that’s true because…” Well, to date, he hasn’t filled in that last part. I have yet to see Steven D lay out a realistic plan for getting more out of a Senate that requires 60 votes.
I’m sorry, but it’s gotten to the point where I just skip every post by him. It’s not because he disagrees with Obama or thinks he’s doing a bad job or anything. It’s because he just isn’t offering me anything useful.
One hundred percent agree. A lot of these comments remind me of a great lost Nirvana song; “I Hate Myself and Want to Die”. I think it was meant to be a joke but in the end maybe not.
Because I have an unspoken agreement with Steve that he can post whatever the fuck he wants. We don’t ask each other for permission to express our opinions. Every so often we make comments in each other’s threads questioning each other’s premises. But we seem to agree on about 99% of the things we write about.
If you’re not reading him then you’re missing out on some very high quality stuff.
Steven D here has nothing but blind faith. Look at this post. It boils down to “Well I don’t believe this is his strategy because I just don’t see it. The argument doesn’t cut it for me because it just doesn’t cut it. He could have done better by doing it my way, and I know that’s true because…”
He puts the absolute worst possible interpretation on every event, and then uses those “facts” to justify putting the worst possible interpretation on each new event. Rinse repeat.
a great leader who promised single payer would have at least TRIED to get single payer. unlike BarryO, who made a secret deal with the health insurance companies before the deliberations even began.
in fact, he specifically said he did not support it during the elections.
did. Clinton, Edwards, nor Obama ever had single payer in their platforms. They all agreed it was the best system but they also said that because of entrenched employer based insurance it was not going to happen.
His and Clinton’s healthcare platforms were almost the same with her having a mandate in it and his not and at the time he was criticized by progressives for not having the mandate.
of the progressives who feel betrayed by Obama even though he never signed on.
The only thing that was missing was, “He didn’t close Gitmo.” Seeing that tells me I’m reading someone who intentionally sets his hair on fire, then wonders why he can’t find a ‘leader’ to put it out.
So the left is being split in roughly two camps — the so-called “realists” who more-or-less support Obama on everything despite reservations because they think he’s pretty much got done as much as he can in the situation — and the “other group” (“idealists”? “purists”? “progressives?” “Democratic wing of the Democratic party”?) who feel that Obama has fallen fall short of his promise and potential because of his own flaws.
I say “roughly” because although there are those who fall 100% in one camp or the other there is still a spectrum of opinion. Booman is still more on the “realist” side although I see him venting more steam lately. Steven D has definitely shifted more to the “other” side, but perhaps because one of the areas of biggest disappointment has been climate, Steven’s specialty.
It’s not surprising to see Booman’s fans start to turn on Steven D and call him names like “hack” given what is happening now. And depending on how this latest confrontation turns out it could get really ugly.
One thing the GOP has done well during their 30 year reign of terror has been to keep the base happy during that run, with the elected leaders appointing base favorites to key positions and adding lines to speeches designed to enthrall the base. Ok, you can argue that this ultimately led to the disaster that is the Tea Party and I can agree with that. But it seems to me that you can’t really get any movement started if, upon election, the leader has worse words for his base than for his opposition — and less time for his base than the opposition — and picks initial negotiating positions that are closer to the opposition than his base — and has his spokespeople piss on his base publically.
Yeah, I know that the gay rights issue has been a high point. But, well, while I agree with that issue it wasn’t on my top ten list in 2008 and probably wasn’t for most of the base either. Otherwise, what do we have to celebrate? Arctic and off-shore drilling? Massive rolling back of abortion rights? A temporary extension of unemployment benefits, paid for by a longer extension of tax cuts for the rich? A health care plan with some goodies, but which was essentially what the GOP was pushing until Obama picked it up? An ever growing military? Continual violation of constitutional rights — in direct contradiction to all Obama’s statements prior to the election? A HAMP program designed to help banks and screw the homeowners? Many public endorsements of the supply-side view of economics by the President himself?
Nope. This is a President who has intentionally chosen to screw his own base in hopes that it will improve how he is perceived among independents. We can disagree about the specifics, or the specifics of policy, or what could have been accomplished with different approaches. But there is no question that he’s positioning himself as ‘against the professional left’. And that, IMHO, isn’t the way to build a lasting movement.
My biggest disappointment is that we weren’t able keep the movement going after 2008. The base isn’t the professional left. Everyone knows that. The base of the party are the people who have benefited the most from the signature accomplishments of the Democratic Party in the 20th. century. Primarily the elderly, the poor, and the disenfranchised.
The professional left are generally wealthier, more educated, and in general much better off than the base. They are also the activists. They are the ones who should be organizing at the local level from the school board to the county and state governments.
I consider myself part of the professional left. I’m not going to sit and blame Obama for our state. We dropped the ball. The other side didn’t.
Hey man, I’m on Medicare and Food Stamps. I wouldn’t trust my life with these “lefty” assholes. Not for one second.
Right on. Your critique, that is.
The left is splitting into two camps, the way a maple tree splits into two camps when it loses a smallish branch.
Elizabeth Warren is very outspoken about the choices the President offered her and very outspoken about the way that the President has steadfastly supported the consumer protection bureau. When Stephen puts up that whiny lie about the President “kicking Elizabeth Warren to the curb” it makes it clear that we are not having a political discussion as much as yet another one of the emo-left’s self-therapy venting episodes. Fuck it – I’m sick of it.
Ever work on a hard job with someone who just wants to do no work and simply bitch bitch bitch? That’s what it feels like dealing with with the whiner left.
As opposed to the “Obama is my hero” suck-ass Obama lovers. Not that I’m pointing any fingers, but some people apparently have no limit to the amount of abuse that they are willing to accept while still saying “I loves me some Obama” in a hushed, adoring, and syncophantically lugubrious voice.
I point to a specific documented lie in the post and you respond with data-free obscene insults
Fuck off.
And I’ve been called a nword-lover before. Doesn’t bother me.
Double fuck off.
Here’s what we have
etc.
“Hope and Change” if we had some hope or change.
Oh please. Obama is trying to get stuff done. He could care less with how impressed bloggers are with his negotiating skills. That’s a contest you all set up not Obama. He’s just trying to govern. This is what I think the 11 dimensional chess stuff really means. He’s playing a whole other game (governing) while every one is looking at the shiny object (who’s got the biggest dick) in the corner. Its not about him being a super genius—although I do think his emotional intelligence is through the roof.
I want to also point out that Obama was able to do somethings that Bernie Sanders and other liberal heroes haven’t been able to do. With all his “capitulating” and “caving” Obama has exposed the GOP as the frauds they are. It was first clear during the tax deal when Obama made it clear that the only thing that moved Republicans to make a deal was an extension of the tax cuts for the rich. That was their sacred cow. It was made apparent again during the budget deal. And now they are protecting the rich AGAIN despite the fact that the US economy could be brought to its knees. The GOP no longer has a credible claim on “fiscal responsibility”, Obama does. He took that away just like he took away their national security creds. I don’t think it was Obama’s grand plan to do that, but I’m sure it made the “pros” list of his political strategy.
Oh please. Obama is trying to get stuff done. He could care less with how impressed bloggers are with his negotiating skills. That’s a contest you all set up not Obama. He’s just trying to govern.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, some of us are judging him based on results not intent.
I want to also point out that Obama was able to do somethings that Bernie Sanders and other liberal heroes haven’t been able to do. With all his “capitulating” and “caving” Obama has exposed the GOP as the frauds they are.
To whom? Not the 2010 voters, for sure. Not the people who don’t pay attention to politics in odd-numbered years, but who decide elections in even-numbered years.
Also, “trying to get stuff done” and “exposed the GOP as frauds” aren’t the same thing at all. The first is about results for people. The second is about electoral politics. Make up your mind.
ZOMG, MEH! YOU MADE AN ARGUMENT ABOUT RESULTS AND AN ARGUMENT ABOUT POLITICS IN THE SAME POST!
YOU CAN’T DOO THAT!
WHat a LAME-ASS argument. Obama showed us that the Repukes care only about the tax cut for the rich? HE EXTENDED THAT TAX CUT!! Did you forget that?
Perhaps your fury is getting in the way, because you aren’t making any sense.
Noting that Obama extended the tax cut and in return the Republicans gave in on a bunch of stuff, including no longer blocking Senate business (their tactic throughout the entirety of that Congress) doesn’t refute the point you’re objecting to; it demonstrates it.
So, in response to giving them everything they wanted, he allowed them to stop blackmailing us.
And this is a good deal?
Nope, it was a suck-ass capitulation, but since it was an Obama giveaway, I wasn’t really shocked. Obama is the worst negotiator I have ever seen at his level. He must have lost thousands playing poker. He begins by giving away his position, and then uses bipartisanshit shit to justify even bigger giveaways.
Until Obama was elected President, I thought that there was something unique about sports radio that attracted people who knew absolutely nothing to ignorantly lecture talented professionals about how to do their job.
Is that a moment of overdue self-criticism?
no, but you are getting close.
If hes playing 11 dimensional chess or caving this should not be happening. The Republicans (and Blue Dog helpers) filibustered everything to wreck every initiative. Sixty votes needed always. Then a manufactured debt crisis to scare the hell out of everyone and rape the poor. The outrage by an informed population should be deafening. Unfortunately we have half a nation transfixed by the flow of half truths and propaganda spewed by Fox News and Talk Radio.
… but I’m really getting furious at Obama. Putting Social Security and Medicare on the table was unnecessary, immoral, and freaking stupid as hell. If he just stuck to a simple English absolute defense of these programs and a simple English absolute demand for taxes on people earning over $250,000 a year he’d be mopping the sidewalk with the republicans.
Chess or no chess, it’s getting more and more impossible to think that Obama is anything other than an agent of the corporations.
DaveW captured my feelings in another diary, so I’m just going to quote him. FTR, this is especially why I love coming here — even though I’m more on Steve and FDL’s side lately, I cannot stand the vitriol in their comments. It’s sickening:
Great analysis..for all the wrong reasons, of course.
Greece vs. Germany (i.e., counter to you guys’ hero, Krugman, cut spending and increased economic growth)…California vs. Texas…
Progressives mean well, but your “model of governance” does not work…
FDR, LBJ, even Clinton, lived in a world where most of the people were still pulling the wagon and not riding in it, enabling them to buy more votes by inviting more people to take a load off and ride in the wagon…for the people pulling the wagon (evil people making money), the load was bearable and worth the trade-off…
We are at a tipping point…roughly 50 percent of the population now rides in the wagon (i.e collect more money from the government than they pay into it)…and is at war (see Wisconsin) with the 50 percent of the population who pulls the wagon…
At a minimum, it’s great drama…
The 2012 election will indeed be a “nail-biter” due to the dynamic described above…
Arrant nonsense. If fifty percent of the money was in the wagon, and fifty percent of the money was outside the wagon, you’d begin to have a point.
We’ve got wealth and income disparities the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since Harding, and a Gini coefficient that is an open scandal.
So let’s not talk about wagons — let’s talk about tree-houses. 3% of the country has built a beautiful one, with everyone else’s money, and has pulled up the ladder.
Two things of a factual nature:
Don’t question the narrative Jake, it’s Progressivetown.
Messiahville.
Dickheadland.
“Messiahville” ?
Is that were online bloggers line up to support John Edwards the only True Progressive©?
No, Bernie Feingold Kucinich Nader.
I know that place. It’s right after WeinerGraysonville.
Geitner was NY Fed. has ties to Wall Street CEOs. Clearly has said that the economy is measured by Wall Street results (rather than Main Street)
It’s almost inconceivable – in Progressive Land.
What I’m getting at is the nature of those “ties.” He’s never worked on Wall Street. To call him a “Wall Street guy” implies that he’s a moneybags i-banker (like Rubin). If you’re going to complain about Geithner, you have to be more specific than that — IIRC the usual complaint is that he was too cozy with Wall Street guys, rather than a Wall Street guy himself.
And I admire Elizabeth Warren, but I don’t remember Warren being part of Team Obama. Christina Romer is the one whose name usually comes up as having been sidelined by the more banker-friendly parts of Team Obama.
There may be some substance to the claim that Obama has been too banker-friendly, but IMHO citing Geithner the Wall Street guy and Warren the insider-but-ignored Cassandra figure are two instances of barking up the wrong tree.
“Great leader would have found a way” on singer payer, public option, – where would those votes have come from? I don’t see him kicking Elizabeth Warren to the curb. It’s one thing to force through congress legislation that the corporations want (prescription drug benefit). Legislation that the corporations have dedicated themselves to oppose is another thing entirely
<blockquoteA great leader would have found a way to get single payer, or the public option through the Congress…</blockquote>
Just like FDR did! oh, wait.
Just like Truman did! Oh, wait.
I know, just like LBJ did! Oh, wait.
Please, criticize Obama all you want, but let’s stop with FDR would have done it, because he didn’t.
We return now back to your regularly scheduled performance art.
F.D.R, with as large congressional majorities as he had, his social security was a piece of shit. A sellout. A bamboozle. A fartknocker. He is still my favorite president behind Lincoln, but still. Don’t get me started on how big a fraud Ol’ Abe was now.
He violated the rule of law and the constitution several times by violating the neutrality acts, he didn’t support anti-lynching legislation out of fear of aliening the south, he didn’t desegregate the armed forces, he ignored the Holocaust, he spent chunks of the treasury to build the atomic bomb, he fire bombed civilian populations (purposely-intentionally killed women and children), he created the OSS which led to the CIA, he failed to enact any kind of national health insurance when he had the perfect opportunity, he bailed out wall street, and imprisoned american citizens in concentration camps.
And yet somehow he’s the foremost liberal idol.
Now, he did some good, but he also did a lot of bad, yet he gets a pass on all his atrocities and failures.
Eh, you read enough history then you find out there is no perfect President. All you can do is vote and hope for the best. I give Obama a lot of slack since I’ve already been through the whole presidential disillusionment thing with Bill Clinton.
The left version of “affirmative action hire” is “naive”. The black guy just cannot analyze the situation as objectively as the White Progressive.
You obviously weren’t there when the rest of these folks saw Obama walk across the Potomac.
You must realize, however, that he has superhuman powers – he raised the Republican Party from the dead and singlehandedly created the Tea Party with just a year of dithering and vacillation.
Among the faithful his bleats about being “left at the altar” and whines about Boehner “not returning my calls” are seen as signs of strength and leadership.
We have, indeed, stepped through the looking glass. The Republicans are totally insane and Obama’s non-leadership is seen by some as, as you say, “11th dimensional chess”.
Where “dithering and vacillation” are defined as “passing the most extensive legislative agenda in generations.”
Hence, the creation of the Tea Party. Hence, the fucked-up mess we are in today.
There were no racists in American until Obama caved. Nice to know.
Oh, Ed, you just don’t understand the wonders of Bipartisanshit, in which you gain support by cravenly and cowardly accepting every shit sandwich handed to you, and saying “Please, sir, can I have another shit sandwich?”
If Obama could compromise faster and more abdjectly, I am sure that he would. Vaccilation, groveling, and vindication of the Repukeliscum frame is his middle name.
Rahm Emmanuel – Rahm was known as a deal maker who knew congress. I will never understand the Rahm Emmanuel versus Howard Dean arguments. Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy and Rahm’s recruiting of blue dogs went hand in hand. The 50 state strategy required blue dog candidates. In some districts blue dogs are the best we can hope for. I know I would rather have Pelosi as leader and several blue dogs in those seats than Boehner as leader with a lot less blue dogs.
Elizabeth Warren – she just went on TV this week saying that there would be no CFPB without Obama. There is also the legitimate question of is someone who has never run government agency or prosecuted a case the most qualified to run the CFPB? I know she is the brains behind the concept but creation and administration are not the same thing. Many a person has a great idea but do not have the skills to adminster that great idea. Richard Corday is a proven entity in that area and she is wholly enthusiastic in her support of him. Frankly I would rather have him as the leader of the CFPB than her because we at least know if he can ever get confirmed he has the necessary skills to run the agency.
Single Payer/Public Option – Single payer was never on any Democratic candidates platform because it never even had 50 votes in the Senate. You know why? Because the key to getting health care legislation passed was never convincing people who don’t have health care that the will get it but rather convincing people who do have health care that they won’t be kicked off of it and put into a unknown entity.
Public option. It was one the table but unfortunately with the 60 vote rule it didn’t have a chance of passing. Where I think Obama made a huge mistake was that it was pretty obvious early on that was the case. Instead of letting negotiations continue he should have found out the “cost” to the votes of Nelson, Lincoln, etc, put that in those in the bill and shoved the thing through Congress.
The comparisons to FDR and LBJ just are not valid. Both had much larger majorities in congress and LBJ at least had an opposition he could work with.
To conclude I have my issues with Obama. I think he has royally messed up by not have his first focus be jobs. Every press conference and statement has has should have an overriding theme of jobs, jobs, jobs even while he discusses the debt negotiations. Even during the healthcare debate it should have been tied to jobs, jobs, jobs. He, like most Democrats even Bill Clinton, have let the Republicans dictate the terms of this debate and it needs to stop. That said I just don’t find your particular criticisms having a lot of merit.
Casmussie, Good post. Thank you.
Steven D, I was reading your post with interest, trying to be open to the arguments of those who think Obama’s been a bigger part of the problem than I do. And then I got to this:
“A great leader would have found a way to get single payer, or the public option through the Congress, …”
You lost me right there and gave yourself away to boot. How can I give any credence to the arguments of those who think Obama could’ve gotten Big Rock Candy Mountain, and must therefore be weak because he didn’t?
I have been beating my head against the wall at now three blogs trying to deal with the BS obamabot-firebagger crap. Listen up.
Whatever else these self-important assholes who become national politicians are, they are not omniscient or omnipotent–despite their own opinions. And they make individual and collective mistakes. Which creates a pressure-cooker working environment.
Obama can have grand objectives of laying to rest the deficit, debt, and debt ceiling issue well before the 2012 election–and fail to accomplish them because of the other players. Better to have tried for the long shot and have time to recover than be pushed to try it late in the game. Notice my framing in 2012 election strategic terms.
Boehner has the same problems with the House that Obama has with the Senate. There is kabuki in Kongress, but not everything is kabuki. Obama has had stuff he didn’t want to do extorted from him by the like of Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman. This is a limitation that principle-minded progressives continue to discount; that is a mistake.
Obama has been too openly confrontational with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and it does indeed look like a “punching a hippie” strategy to position him to the right of where his 2008 campaign positioned him. It is irritating because it looks cynical.
When Obama took office, there were few progressive candidates for cabinet and advisory offices who knew the inner workings of the executive branch of government (including the Federal Reserve). And no doubt, the transition team consulted with Democratic members of Congress about who would be easily confirmable.
To understand Obama’s appointments, look at the Democrats in the Senate. Who is the chair of the Senate Finance Comittee? Max Baucus. Now compare Geithner’s outlook to Max Baucus. Who is the chair of the Senate Banking Committee? Tim Johnson of South Dakota. Align Geithner’s position with a Senator from a state that depends on credit card call centers for employment.
Emmanuel and Summers in particular were Clintonistas. They knew who in the high-level civil service could be trusted and who couldn’t. So did a lot of the Clinton folks who were appointed–including Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. And there have been some surprising results. Ken Salazar finally had the opportunity to clean house at Mining and Mineral Services. Kathleen Sibelius has implemented the ACA at fairly rapid speed, given the mandatory public comment periods on regulations. (Did any of you comment on these regulations or did you leave it only for the lobbyists to comment on them?) Ray LaHood, an advocate of transit, trains, and bicycles, has been a pleasant surprise for a Republican appointee. Robert Gates, another Republican appointee, shepherded Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal through the Pentagon. And ensured that the brass saluted and said “Yes, sir.” to the Commander-in-Chief. No small achievement given the racism and homophobia that persists in the US.
Elizabeth Warren (and President Obama, who signed it) got the Consumer Financial Protection Board through a hostile Congress. Elizabeth Warren was the architect of an innovative approach to setting up a new regulatory agency in the internet age. It is now operating, collecting public comment on regulations, and has a deputy director who is now the director designate. And that leaves Warren the ability to play the outside pressure game or run for Senate (it really is too early to poll anything in the midst of this debt ceiling crisis).
No one is claiming he was a victim of circumstance. He is not a victim. He has made some misjudgments. He has not had a lockstep caucus like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have enjoyed. And he was too lacking in seniority in the Senate to whip that body into a lockstep caucus like LBJ could — on occasion.
Here is the fallacy in the thinking of principled progressives. What the times need does not automatically guarantee what the government can, with the particular mix of self-important assholes, deliver. And FDR and LBJ delivered historic changes only in the rearview mirror of history. FDR always had Republicans he could deal with in trust that they would deliver on their deals. LBJ had Everett Dirksen and Charlie Halleck as the minority leaders he had to deal with. What you are comparing Obama’s performance to — it never was. And it was messier than today. FDR has uniformed Nazi-allied groups organizing in almost every state and a continual series of labor strikes in the midst of high unemployment. LBJ had the advantage of a country’s guilt over a President’s assassination in a Southern state to propel the politics of passing the Voting Rights Act.
We will not be able to judge whether Obama was a great leader until his term (or two terms) as president are over.
On the other side, it has not come out as Obama had envisioned the process unfolding. I can assert this without having access to Obama’s mind because he is a human being and human plans never, never, ever come out as envisioned. So the folks asserting this crap need to back it off a few notches. Obama is neither omnipotent as progressive critics would have it or omniscient as his defenders would have it.
Obama-fixation is a major problem for progressives and Democrats right now and blocks work on dealing with two things that matter for 2012:
1. Ensuring that there are progressive candidates for every possible office on the ballot. I would extend that to the Presidency if I thought that it would unify folks around the winner (likely Obama) instead of divide support). Notice that I do not consider Obama to be progressive but a pretty much mainstream Democrat. If this were 1964, he would be aligned with Gaylord Nelson, Warren Magnuson, or Joe Clark.
And by having progressive candidate down-ticket with active grassroots campaigns for them, turning out the vote for upticket candidates in Congress, the Senate, and the President.
2. Finding a way to starve the GOP-controlled media and still win an election. Making media campaigning ineffective is right now the best way to start wringing money out of politics. The Supreme Court might consider it speech, but if no one is listening the MOTU just wasted a whole heap of money. We don’t need to be that foolish if only because we are financing the enemy.
Instead we have this continual bicker that is distracting from the possibility of winning.
Your scare quotes around “hope” betray the belief that hope is anchored in the data. Nope. Hope is what you experience (and it happens or not, you can’t goose it up) when you stand and move forward (I almost said fight) in the face of doubt of success. Jesse Jackson has some great spins on the nature of hope.
What happens in this debt ceiling crisis will be the results of many individual decisions. The President’s is only one of them. The 533 members of Congress (2 vacancies) will dictate the shape of the end of the crisis, not the President. The President will have the responsibility for picking up the pieces after the fight is over, regardless of what happens.
And the public has the responsibility of responding to the results. The same public that did not see what the Republicans were up to in 2010.
Despite their illusion in this, progressives do not hold the fate of the President’s re-election in their hands. Nor did they have the power to alter the 2010 election one way or another. This is a conceit that occurs in the few places where progressives have their own local echo chambers.
It really doesn’t matter if you are an alarmist, a purist, a gloom and doomer, or whatever. What matters is what you do to change the “stinking thinking” of your personal networks. And how many people you get out to vote for progressive candidates and initiatives.
And empowering Van Jones’s Rebuild the Dream movement would not be a bad idea either. A total of 1600 house parties to discuss issues in an independent progressive platform is not encouraging in a country of 160 million voters.
I am stunned that people still expect the outcome of the mid-terms to have made no difference.
If you lose elections, there are consequences. If you lose the house of Congress that originates money bills, there are budget and fiscal-policy consequences.
Jonathan Bernstein, who’s a political scientist, and not a polemicist, had a salutary warning in the Plum Line yesterday that no one wants to hear, and everyone needs to read.
The bottom line is, you don’t have these problems if you don’t lose elections.
Yep. So maybe we need to stop worrying about the inner working of the White House and the latest Politico and WaPo gossip and figure out how to beat a multi-billion-dollar propaganda campaign without spending a whole lot of money.
OMG………….. I’m…… I think I’m in love.
TarhealDem, that was superb. Just superb. Incisive, clear-eyed, comprehensive, and flat-out just damn GOOD.
Thank you.
Absolutely pitch perfect. This is why I got myself elected to my local county board. There wasn’t anybody else more liberal than I am who was going to run for the seat who had a hope of winning it. So, much as I have neither the time or the inclination, because somebody had to do it. I’m in a blue pocket in a rural county in a swing district which means with my politics I’m pretty much topped out where I am, but I’m doing my part to show that liberal policies can work for the people of my county, and maybe that means there’s more room for someone to the right of me but the left of the current incumbents to take those higher offices.
When you write something like “kicked Elizabethe Warren to the curb,” you make it clear that you don’t have any intention of allowing this president to “prove you wrong.” You’ve got your story, you’re sticking to it, and you will spin any fact or set of facts however you need to in order to avoid acknowledging error.
Take one part of factesque Progressive narrative
Two parts self-pity
A couple of gallons of naivete about how the system works
and a hefty serving of solecism
And presto! You have made a progressive – complete with bus tracks.
And I love how Elizabeth Warren has become a kind of Saint in Captivity. She’s a straight-talker and true Democrat whose words in praise of the President are somehow inaudible.
At some level, I am sure Steven knew he would get flak for what he wrote. A hack he is not, and I was surprised to see that term tossed around here, as it’s pretty contrary to the normal tone. Steven’s work is by and large excellent and particularly well-researched for the blogosphere. He wasn’t doing a piece like that here: he was venting, which is fine. You can do that on a blog.
Most of my disagreement has been expressed by others. I would make one point that had been in my head before I read this article, and not about Steven particularly. There’s a large swath of the left that has a view of politics not far from Hitler’s. Politics, not policy. This is to say, they subscribe to the Leader Principle, imagining that an individual will, by force of will, make things happen. What doesn’t happen in Obama’s presidency doesn’t happen because he doesn’t will it.
Reality doesn’t work this way. Bush or Cheney didn’t will this mess into existence. They went with a certain powerful strand of the logic of the system. We on the left who would want a more just society need to change the contours of the system. That work takes place on the capillary level. The right in its 30-year rise started with school boards, etc.
The President strikes me as having a consistent sense of getting done the best possible deal at all times for working people. Working people have, essentially, no representation at all in government, unlike the (upper) middle class who pulls some weight with mainstream Democrats and Republicans. Working class people can’t afford not to take the lesser of two evils.
The point on which to critique Obama is whether or not his sense of the possible is too timid. I have yet to see a critique of the run-up to the health care law that demonstrates convincingly that there was a path through the Senate to a public option in actually existing reality. The bully pulpit argument has some merit, but I would counter that large sections of white America were not and remain not ready to have any Black man educate them on how things actually work, no matter how right he may be. Obama knows this.
Obama is not a bully pulpit guy. If anyone had read any of his books that becomes loud and clear. A lot of bully pulpiteers are bullies. He’s not.
The quintessential Illinois politician. Things haven’t improved around here since before the Fire.
That’s an insult to Bill Clinton.
You have a very rosy view of Bill Clinton. Welfare reform was such a bully pulpit progressive accomplishment. I really wish the internet was around in ’96.
Actually, it was. The conservative movement was making deep inroads into blue collar support of Liberals. People working their ass off in harsh conditions with sadistic racist sexist bosses get very very angry at the idea of someone else getting welfare for life on their taxes. Very few workers complain about welfare any more. They used to obsess about it. Limiting welfare was a reform that was needed. I do feel that if someone can’t get their life together in seven years ten they probably never will.
By that logic, a deficit reduction deal would be a big accomplishment for Obama. After all, it is a real problem. And dealing with it would erase the issue from the public dialogue.
Yeah, fuck ’em!
But NAFTA was a labor/left Triumph. And deregulation of finance was a great idea.
Oh.
Well at least Clinton was white, there is always that.
If Clinton becomes a liberal fucking hero now I’m going to slice my wrists. Now this is officially getting ridiculous.
racism of the left.
Terminal clueless of the endlessly pure
The quintessential Illinois politician’s on the penny and five-spot. Just another Springfield state-house hack.