The New Incompetence Dodge
David Sirota sez:
This [“President Pushover”] story line is a logical fallacy. Most agree that today’s imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.
Considering this, and further considering Obama’s early congressional majorities, it is silly to insist that the national political events during Obama’s term represent a lack of presidential strength or will. And it’s more than just silly — it’s a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe “their” president is with them.
Such apologism, of course, allows liberals to avoid the more painful truth that Obama is one of America’s strongest presidents ever and is achieving exactly what he wants.
Yup! Obama had as much political capital as any incoming President since Reagan; he certainly had more than George W. Bush when he entered office. And like Bush, he used what he had exactly how he wanted; unlike Bush, he used it to thwart rather than to fulfill the wishes of his base. Some of the things Obama’s supporters thought about him are true: he’s smart, shrewd, smooth, an inspiring speaker, charismatic, just tons of personal charm — he, not George W. Bush, is the first politician you’d want to have a beer with. But his actions since taking office have proven that the most important thing Obama supporters believed about him is false; the man is just not a liberal.
Since the Democratic candidates first started campaigning in 2007, no one had supporters quite like Obama had supporters — except, of course, for Hillary Clinton and PUMAs (but Obama’s fans were so fanatical even then that lefty Obama-skeptics were accused of PUMAryness or whatever, even when such skeptics were equally suspicious of Mrs. Clinton). When Obama won the nomination and thus required every decent person to either vote for him or not vote at all, many of us who doubted Obama’s liberalism were assured: Don’t worry, he has to sound centristy and wishy-washy to fool the Villagers; once he’s President the trickfuck will be on them! Well, the trickfuck happened, all right, but not the way they thought. In retrospect, the PUMAs and Obamabots both got screwed though they’ll be the last to admit it: Obama has governed like a triangulating Clintonoid to the eleventieth power, and worse, he’s done it not out of desperation nor even out of cold political calculation, but because it’s what he believes in.
Sirota compares him to previous Presidents:
Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt — but a bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor — but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of “organized money” that FDR once challenged.
No argument with that, but I’ll throw out three other names: First, John Tyler, elected VP but swiftly inherited the big office when President W.H. Harrison picked a bad time to be a windbag (record longest inaugural speech, given in bitter cold), caught pneumonia, and promptly died. The Harrison-Tyler ticket was Whig, but Tyler had previously been a Democrat; and when he became President, governed like a Democrat, shafting the voters and party and ghost of the man who’d all given him office. FWIW Tyler, like Obama, had a charming, attractive, and involved wife. Second, Andrew Johnson, who also inherited office on the death of his President. Johnson had the choice of either being loyal to his party or being loyal to his predecessor; Johnson choose the latter, treating the South as Lincoln (“with malice toward none, with charity toward all”) would have done, not as the Republican Congress (full of “radicals” whom Lincoln hated) and base would have liked. Third, Chester Alan Arthur, also a VP thrust into the highest office when the President, in this case Garfield, died. Arthur was a 19th-century hedonistic type, and in the context of those incredibly corrupt times was thought to be on the take as much as the next Republican politician. But it turned out that Arthur backed reform measures and neatly alienated himself from the rest of the party. All these men trickfucked their base — albeit “accidentally” because the base didn’t elect them as Presidents. Neither Obama on one side, nor Obama supporters on the other, have the excuse of “accident;” he’s trickfucking them fair and square.
All politicians lie, especially while campaigning. But usually they lie by exaggerating what they will do in office; they make promises they know they can’t keep in order to energize their base and at the same time grab independents. Once elected, they lie to keep their office, and they keep their office by appeasing their base. John McCain was a terrible candidate and the Republican Party brand was destroyed after many wearisome and worrisome years of that Texan retard. A Democratic candidate had a winning share of independents by default. Barack Obama, while most of the time a typically pants-flaming liar as candidate, has been consistently and remarkably candid in office: he’s told us what he believes in, and what he believes in is conservatism — what he called “bipartisanship” on the campaign trail, a heavy and relatively honest hint that the trickfuck would be at the base’s rather than the establishment’s expense. Like the one-termers listed above, he’s effectively told his base to either believe in him or believe in their principles; IOW, he’s told them to go fuck themselves. Unlike the examples above who lived in simpler times (or who, like Arthur, were relatively on the side of angels), Obama will probably get away with it because in fucking his base over, he’s sided with interests who can buy him out of any electoral jam. Moreover, like Ronald Reagan, Obama is fortunate in the stupidity (part hero worship, part battered-wife syndrome) and masochism of a large section of his base; he knows he can slap them repeatedly and they will love him anyway just because of who he is, never mind what he actually believes in, or how he actually governs.
Sirota concludes:
In forging such bipartisan complicity with what were once exclusively right-wing Republican objectives, Obama has achieved even more than what he fantasized about when he famously celebrated a previous bizarro FDR. In an illustrative 2008 interview with a Nevada newspaper, Obama lauded Ronald Reagan for “chang[ing] the trajectory of America” and “put[ting] us on a fundamentally different path.”
Reagan was a truly strong executive — but the Gipper was nothing compared to our current president.
Sadly, yes. Think of the conservative stranglehold on politics from Reagan to 2006. When the Republicans ruled, they ruled; and when their brand went in the tank, it went rock bottom. 2008 was the chance of a lifetime for the left, for the country. It’s no one in particular’s fault that the Democratic candidates in 2008 were anywhere from bland mediocrities to total shitheads, and therefore the situation was not exploited to its best potential. But it is Obama’s fault that he’s functioned as a de facto wingnut Trojan horse, and it’s his fanatic supporters’ fault that there is not a consensus on the left accepting of the reality that Barack Obama, a Democrat, has won victories for wingnuttery that Republican Presidents could never win — or dare to even try. One hears “Only Nixon could go to China” a lot these days in reference to Obama’s behavior, the point, I think, being that Obama is performing a superficially self-reversing maneuver in order to substantively further his and his party’s goals, for the good of all — which is what Nixon more or less did. Nixon’s tilt toward the Chicoms did not sabotage what he thought was the most important goal in his party’s foreign policy, which was the containment of the Soviet Union; in the context of conservatism, Nixon was unorthodox but “meant well.” In contrast, in making it safe to destroy social security and medicare, Obama does not “mean well” by liberalism; he does mean to sabotage the most important plank in his party’s philosophy, which is equality through a social safety net. Nixon was using liberal means to further conservative aims; Obama is putting a liberal face on conservative means to achieve conservative ends. Obama’s not a tragic figure of incompetence; he’s a relatively straightforward conservative genius — and his truly liberal victims love him for it almost as much as his fellow centristy centrists do.
Also, too as well: It’s fun watching Obama’s Clintonoid Secretary of Defense more shrilly oppose military cutbacks than Bill Fucking Kristol.
Uh oh, HTML was just softening us up w/ his “Ha ha Ruhnoo Murkans iz dum” posts.
Here comes the real stuff.
*sobs* I can haz funnee thread now?
I listen to Sirota every morning out in Colorado, I was kinda hoping the post would turn out anti-Sirota so I could watch the smart people dook it out.
But alas, consensus:
No ponies.
Some of the things Obama’s supporters thought about him are true: he’s smart, shrewd, smooth, an inspiring speaker, charismatic, just tons of personal charm — he, not George W. Bush, is the first politician you’d want to have a beer with. But his actions since taking office have proven that the most important thing Obama supporters believed about him is false; the man is just not a liberal.
Why the hell couldn’t Dennis Kucinich look like Cary Grant?
Or, hell, just even like used car salesman, Mittens.
“Retard”?
That’s right, I’m that guy.
Have you seen Kucinich’s wife? Dude’s doing something right.
Obama could be fortunate in being matched up with a totally unelectable dumbass teabagger.
I still think Romney will get the nomination and beat his ass, however.
*sobs* I can haz funnee thread now?
HTML will make us eat our peas, EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE.
I keep thinking these awful thoughts like “Maybe the dumfuck electorate should actually get the teabagging govt they apparently don’t mind. THEN they’ll be sorry!” *sigh*
Yeah, his wife is gorgeous. It’s like they’re a fairy tale couple, a benign little troll and his beautiful trollwife… I’d check under her skirt for a tail, just to be sure.
“HTML will make us eat our peas, EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE.”
I made a basil/mint puree the other. It tasted nothing like THIS.
I keep thinking these awful thoughts like “Maybe the dumfuck electorate should actually get the teabagging govt they apparently don’t mind. THEN they’ll be sorry!” *sigh*
We all do. Too bad we can’t do a sort “A Christmas Carol” type showing of like REALITY in the past and present, and what a teabagger fantasy future really looks like. That way my daughters don’t have to live in the The Dark Ages II, The Darkening.
I still think Romney will get the nomination and beat his ass, however.
Romney’s got a long, ugly slog ahead of him in the primaries. I sure hope he gets a serious teabagging.
I keep thinking these awful thoughts like “Maybe the dumfuck electorate should actually get the teabagging govt they apparently don’t mind. THEN they’ll be sorry!” *sigh*
And then you realize that you’re not on the spaceship when the country is “nuked from orbit”.
I’d check under her skirt for a tail, just to be sure.
After you’re done, I’ll have a look too. Just to be sure.
“I made a basil/mint puree the other. It tasted nothing like THIS.”
Apparently I’m writing Mad Libs posts now. Just put your favorite noun in.
I made a basil/mint puree the other ________.
Fun!
We all do. Too bad we can’t do a sort “A Christmas Carol” type showing of like REALITY in the past and present, and what a teabagger fantasy future really looks like.
If the sharp contrast between the Clinton years and the Bush years didn’t make it perfectly clear, what the hell could?
If the sharp contrast between the Clinton years and the Bush years didn’t make it perfectly clear, what the hell could?
They’re not terribly observant.
They’re not terribly observant.
They were observant enough to notice a stain on a dress. Shit, if they spent as much effort looking into their politicians’ real masters rather than poking their noses into the private matters of two consenting adults, the country would be so much better off.
I keep thinking these awful thoughts like “Maybe the dumfuck electorate should actually get the teabagging govt they apparently don’t mind. THEN they’ll be sorry!” *sigh*
To quote our post’s author’s namesake: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Only Nixon could go to China, and only Obama could put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.
And he did it while turning the GOP from a justly reviled and discredited pack of sad sacks back into a potent force for the plutocracy. Also.
~
an inspiring speaker
Puhleease, he might be to Americans but as a Brit I think he’s pretty average. Hell, even Gordon Brown was more inspiring than Obama. Maybe it is because the previous idiot elected as president was just so bad that even an average speaker looks good.
again, good good good html back goodness. keep being back until i don’t have to say it anymore pls.
also, for those who haven’t tried it: cape cod creamery bass river black rasberry ice cream. just fucking find it. epic.
I still think Romney will get the nomination and beat his ass, however.
Romney’s got a long, ugly slog ahead of him in the primaries. I sure hope he gets a serious teabagging.
If he does win, he’ll end up picking a Tea Party-approved running mate, and he’ll have to run a Tea Party-approved campaign. All the more ammo for the Billion Dollar Obama Campaign. I’m not so ready to proclaim Obama as the victim of an electoral ass-kicking yet.
This is either the longest and most incomprehensible parody in SN’s history or HTML is trying to turn SN into FDL times eleventy billion.
Also congress: how does it work? Also BULLY PULPIT!
Well, I guess I’m one of the trickfucked, though I never loved Obama. So Pres Obama is actually a conservative, that’s how he was able to dupe the Republicans, by being more conserative than they are.That is brilliant, except perhaps for his legacy: Trickfucked the Democratic Party. And using Drum’s perspective, that Bush was actually a liberal, I guess it would be safe to hope that if Romney becomes POTUS, he’ll turn out to be a liberal too. Or better yet, during the presidential debates, Obama and Romney will switch parties (right on the stage!) and argue from opposite platforms. Now that would be brilliant.
I still think Romney will get the nomination and beat his ass, however.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, never underestimate the Republican voting blocks in petty bigotry. 5% of that lot are still terrified of Catholics, for fuck’s sake.
Hmmm, needs more “Dear Leader” from Sirota.
bwahahaha. Okay, that is fucking funny.
Dare I say it? New thread!
Obama’s no progressive hero — that is obvious and agreed. But this seems to suggest that there was a viable alternative in 08 who would have been a progressive hero. Am I supposed to believe that Hillary would have been that hero? Or that Kucinich was a real choice?
Personally, I never expected Obama to be anything more than he appeared to be — a more or less centrist Democrat. And I can’t for the life of me conjure up clear memories of the kind of blind messiah worship of Obama this post posits. I’ve read about that kind of thing mostly on rightwing sites where they accuse all lefties of worshiping Obama but it doesn’t ring true to me. Maybe I slept through all that. I felt my choice was between Clinton and Obama. I made my choice because of Clinton’s support for the Iraq War and differences in their health care reform plans. Unfortunately, imo, Obama gave us the the health care reform that Hillary promised so I feel kind of betrayed. But I don’t think “Geez, wish I’d voted for Hillary so I could have known I was going to get her health care plan.” Seems kind of pointless.
BTW, I’m not so sure the Clinton years were the glorious progressive paradise either. Gramm-Leach-Bliley, anyone? NAFTA? DOMA? DADT? Welfare Reform?
There weren’t any unicorn ponies then, either.
I supported Obama largely because I didn’t want yet another goddamn election to be about what the candidates were doing during the Vietnam War era, but the right went ahead and tried to drag Bill Ayres into it.
I felt for a long time that Barack Obama was the first president of the 21st Century (Bush being the last of the 19th). Unfortunately, the 21st is shaping up to be a pretty sucktastic century.
Plus, from what I hear, Obama is not white.
I supported Obama largely because he was the guy who won the Democratic primaries.
At this point, I’m still pretty much okay with voting for him. Libya’s kind of a suck-fest outside of my expectations for him, but overall, things have proceeded around-about what I expected for a centrist Democrat to go with.
Would it have been nice if he’d gone all Fear of a Black Planet on people, sure! Did I expect that happen? Not outside a real humdinger of a fever-dream.
Ooooooh, there is no fuckin’ WAY I can’t play Devil’s Advotroll here, baby!
Yeah, there are a number of ways in which Obama’s a conservative – but all this “Worst Prez EVAR” horseshit is getting old, & amounts to giving Dubya a shitload of credit by default. The same cast of characters were saying “LOL Obots, he’ll never repeal DADT – anyone who REALLY knows politics can see that he’s just going to tease the left along with the promise of doing so because OFF TEH PIGZ” not so long ago. How’s that cynic-y, gloom-&-doomy thing workin’ out for ya?
Obots’ fault that lefties can never agree to stuff? Whoa. I know there’s an instinctual need to blame the Big Daddy figurehead (or his fanclub) whenever it rains on your picnic, but this is just weak sauce. Also, if you want to see what a total Manchurian Gooper the Kenyan Usurper has been, go here … & keep clicking … then ask yourself how much of all this a GOP El Presidente would dare to suggest, let alone put into law – & keep in mind that a lot of those nice things were done back when his approval ratings were circa 70%, so it’s not like he was hard-up for brownie-points with voters. Odd too that I missed the chorus of wingnuts lustily cheering on all these glorious victories that they themselves could never have dreamed of achieving – I CAN HAZ CITATIONZ NAU PLZ?
Here’s part of a comment I left over yonder:
“It’s pretty safe to say that the day Obama “goes all left-populist” is the day he insures that Air Force One will soon have a Cemtex-related boo-boo at 22,000 feet, with him in it. To me, all this “Obama = Dubya 2.0!” poutrage on the American left betrays just how perilously naive they are as to the nature of modern realpolitik. There are manifold benefits in thinking through all the different reasons that Bismarck called politics the art of the possible.”
Republicans know that getting & keeping power is a long, ugly, frustrating affair – & they put their collective head down & willingly take the lumps necessary to win. The American left has fucked the pooch badly in this regard, & so now it’s raising the litter. If you’re getting tired of the constant aroma of puppy-shit, maybe you need to change your game-plan?
LOLWUT
Sorry – this just isn’t passing the laugh test any more.
The GOP beats the Democrats black & blue when it comes to both exercising party discipline & (arguably much more importantly) using primaries to winnow out unwanted seekers of office, while electing ones who have a proven track-record of doing what they want. Learning how to get good at what your opponents are better at than you will not automatically turn you into a bunch of shambling revenants, & until libtards absorb THAT lesson they’ll keep being a political T-ball for the right to bash around.
PS: POOP.
Okay, one question – is he actually “making it safe” to destroy Social Security and Medicare? I thought that was the one thing that wasn’t on the table after this deal he just passed with the teabagger side of the aisle.
And I do have to LOL at the saying that “Reagan was a truly strong executive — but the Gipper was nothing compared to our current president.” I’m sorry, but ROFLCOPTER. Reagan was able to finance and deal with terrorists (including those who’d just held U.S. diplomats hostage for over a year) after Congress had explicitly forbidden it, and he and every last person involved got off scott-free even after it was made public. The day I see Obama getting away with anything close to that… yeah. In the meantime, “flaccid” actually describes him pretty well. He’s a technocrat who appears to have very few convictions beyond “can’t we all just get along.”
HTML, I see an awesome movie script in there. You know, along the lines of that one that just came out with Jason Bateman and Ryan Gosling.
The set-up: On the day of the inauguration, Bush and Obama are both taking a piss in one of the many Washington fountains, when they “cross streams” at the same time as a lightening strike…hilarity ensues.
And pretty much explains everything you wrote above.
I mostly agree with Saint Jimbo, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t nitpick, so,
Let’s be completely fair here: they’re wingnuts. Ya know? We’re talking about people who were given a stimulus right out of their own economics textbook, whose single biggest piece consisted of tax cuts on pretty much everybody, and they responded with a three-year bitching session about “tax and spend” Washington (and apparently are cheerfully convinced that it “discredits Keynesian economics.”) These guys couldn’t even be bothered to notice that their own fucking taxes hadn’t gone up a dime. They don’t know shit from peanut butter; I’m not arguing this particular point, but what they are and aren’t “lustily cheering” is entirely irrelevant to what’s actually going on.
That was true up until Reagan was elected. I think something inside them decided then and there that they’d won the White House and settled all the questions in American politics forever (or maybe it was just the reinvention myth that started the second he’d left office), plus earned a permanent claim to the presidency.
Which is why both times a Democrat’s been elected since then, they’ve gone stark raving bananas and entered a berzerker rage that prevented them from seeing anything clearly (hence the self-destructive acts that were the government shutdown and the Lewinski trial).
As for the general theme of why Washington isn’t getting more shit done – sorry to be such a depressing party-pooper, but I’ll continue to lay the blame chiefly at the feet of the electorate.
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s bad form to whine that people aren’t voting for you, but I’m not a politician, and I’m tired of making excuses. If by this point you haven’t realized that Republican ideas mean devastating ruin, you’re a fucking moron – and if you don’t care, a sociopath. There’s only so much anyone can do when an electorate has as many of both as we appear to.
This may count as “battered wife syndrome”, but I’ll vote for Obama again. largely because I don’t want an entire executive branch that thinks I’m not really a person because of my lady-parts. Again.
Wow! This is one of the best posts I’ve read in a long time. I prefer the phrase “Battered Obot Syndrome” because
1. Not all Obamessiah dead enders are wives.
2. The term “Obot” really pisses off Obots.
Or, for that matter, an executive branch who thinks many of my friends and family aren’t real people because of with whom they choose to have sex.
I’d check under her skirt for a tail, just to be sure.
BBBB is prejudiced against kangaroos. H8r.
You obviously haven’t spent a lot of time at Balloon Juice. That place is infested with fluffers.
I like to think I was pretty clear-eyed about Obama. I can remember an IM convo with a friend during the campaign, where he bitched about Obama throwing the gays under the bus again (coming out against marriage? Something like that). Anyway, my response was to the effect of “You expected something else from the corporatist, centrist candidate?”
While I think he’s given away the store a couple times and I wish like hell he’d close Guantanamo and stop with the illegal wiretapping I also recognize he’d have a tough time doing either thing even if he wanted to. Can you imagine the political fallout? “Obama is opening up the country to terrists!” “Obama doesn’t want to keep you safe!”
He’s performed more-or-less as I expected, maybe a little worse but (and you can start howling now) he’s still better than the alternative and none of the opposition candidates either present or speculative look any less fucking loony.
Your choices in 2012 will be the moderate Republican or the loonball. Pick carefully.
Is this thread parodying the hysterical reactions of certain left-wing blogs, or are you actually serious? Barack Obama is not a conservative. He is a liberal, as has been proven by his words and deeds up until he became President. You can’t judge him by his actions now; he is a politician, and politicians do what is politically possible and expedient.
I would say the same about Bill Clinton: He was more liberal than people gave him credit for.
@aws – “bwahahaha. Okay, that is fucking funny.”
I didn’t say I wanted “to have a beer with him” Just because a guy is likeable, doesn’t mean he is a good speaker.
First, I have NOTHING to do with the “PUMAs” referenced above!
My question: What, exactly, is the political strategy in proclaiming that YOUR president is weak in order to explain what he is doing?
I kinda think both the Obama sell-out theorists and the fluffers have it wrong, and I’ll give an example: every time the “OMG why won’t Obama say he loves gay marriage?” topic comes up on one of the blogs and I respond, here’s the type of answer I get:
What’s the issue? Well, first of all, there’s a lot of inaccuracy there, starting with “he’s made it clear that he’s not in favor of gay marriage equality, certainly not at a federal level.” First, this is a surprise? When the man was running, he SAID he favored civil unions rather than same-sex marriages. Now, I don’t believe that he does, but you tell me how he would have won OH, IN, NC, CO if he had said otherwise. So first of all, he’s being damned for, as I noted, sticking, in his public statements, to what he said during the campaign; secondly, he’s being damned for the nebulous sin of not being in favor of gay marriage equality “at a federal level,” and I don’t even know WTF that is supposed to mean, given that marriage isn’t a federal issue other than for DOMA, which his DoJ is actively working to overturn. IOW, the guy with the BEST RECORD in history on gay rights is a sell-out on gay rights. Clearly we would have been better off with McCain and his VP Palin who favored a constitutional amendment making gay people second-class citizens. I’m sorry, but that’s just lunacy.
The housing issue I’m not that familiar with, but the job issue? News flash: in over half the country you can be fired for any goddamned reason your employer chooses, with no recourse. It’s called “right to work” and it’s not so much a gay issue as an issue that affects us all. To pin that on Obama with what’s been going on in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, etc. is again simply not accurate or dare I say, fair.
Bottom line: the only folks who thought Obama was a lefty-leftist are those who were willfully fooling themselves during the campaign or those who listen to Rush and watch Fox. It was pretty clear from the half-measures he touted on most everything that at best he was a centrist in the mold of Bill Clinton. I happen to agree with HTML that in times like these, that’s not good enough, but I also agree with those upthread that it’s the best that was on offer.
But moving forward, it would be nice if we could stick with criticizing him for either not doing the things he said he would do or doing things he said he wouldn’t do, rather than in every discussion dragging in every single thing he’s ever done that wasn’t what we personally wanted to see done, mostly because that’s not particularly constructive. It would also be nice if there was some acknowledgement that the man is not a dictator and cannot call the shots entirely on his own, and that he’s been dealing with an insanely obstructionist group of assholes whose primary goal in life has been to defeat and demean him since the moment he was sworn in. That’s not an excuse; it’s a fact. Even without them blocking damn near everything that needs to be done, he wouldn’t be nearly left enough, but he should at least get recognition that he’s working under impossible circumstances.
Shorter: the president is a great disappointment. Just like every president we’ve ever had has been. But at some point we have to recognize that no one man can halt the slide of a crumbling empire, even if he wants to and tries really hard to, and that’s the situation we’re dealing with here. The country’s over and our choices are whether we want to come in for a hard landing or a soft one. Under the circumstances, anyone holding the office would be a huge disappointment, because no one would be able to change the end result. The best anyone could do would be to mitigate the amount of pain we go through in reaching it.
Obama has trickfucked the liberal base and it’s still going to vote for him. Wowz, big shock to us smart lefties that the liberal base has low information voters too who don’t know about that turd sammich thing they’re being fed. Still going to come down to a choice between turd sammich on white or whole-wheat. Get your orders in now kidz.
This post sounds like my father, who complained that George W. Bush was a liberal – mostly because of immigration, but also spending to some degree – and voted for Bob Barr in 2008.
Look, Obama told us he was going to be a negotiator. That was the subtext behind the “we are all one America” lines in his campaign speeches. I was hoping he wouldn’t give away quite as much as he has in his negotiations, but I am happy that he’s taking the centrist path. I think the worst possible result for this country would be answering hyper-conservatism with hyper-progressivism.
Yeah, he’s a centrist. A centrist who believes in compromise and good faith and has decided the most important thing he can be doing is ceding large swaths of political power back to congress which is so fucking broken I don’t know where to start.
This is screwing both himself and us because the right has decided that black president means its closing time and they are cashing in their chips. They are allowing no compromise that isn’t absolute surrender. Our bought and sold media is about one step away from cheering right wing terrorism and blaming Democrats for breathing (actual liberals are already blamed for breathing).
In many ways, all he’s ever wanted to be was Clinton. Someone to set the budget right, pass a few small improvements on how we do things and make the country at least functional if not perfect. And that goal is doomed by a right-wing out to use every dirty trick in the book to ensure this black man will do nothing, not even the mediocre and disappointing “bits” that he’s been trying to do.
I mean, I get the Obama defenders when they note fairly that there are entrenched forces of old white men in congress that have made it their life mission to make nothing of Obama’s pass because they view him as the Antichrist. That all of Obama’s appointments have been locked up from ever going through and the appointees terrorized by right-wing forces seeking the destruction of everything progressive until the left can no longer muster up the effort to ever hope.
And I get to the point of wanting to punch people’s faces in that “yes, for fuck’s sake, yes, Obama was a better choice than McCain and the Democrats in general are better than Republicans and always will be.”
But see, here’s where HTML has a really strong point. He’s not saying Obama is worse than Bush. He’s not saying that Obama is worse than current Republicans.
He’s saying Obama is conservative, that he isn’t a strong progressive and that he believes in centrism more than anything else.
And you know what, he’s right.
Obama is conservative because he prides himself on being a moderate and the middle, especially politically, in this country is actually rather far to the right as compared to that seen in Europe and most other countries. Decades of the right getting crazier and crazier and the “left” or rather Democrats going further and further to the right in compromise.
I mean, I get the Obama supporters that this isn’t a battle of left and right, but rather sane and “will fucking destroy the world with their crazy”.
But the counter to that is “yes, but…left vs right didn’t stop being important.”
I mean, the problem of having a congress made up of fascist far right versus centrist to old-right being the main political debate is that actual left-wing ideas and voices are shut out completely and we can see the effect that is having on both coming up with real solutions to real problems and generating any faith or excitement in voters.
Sure, we vote for the least evil option. We still will. I have no doubt that most every liberal doubter of Obama will wrinkle their nose and vote for him in 2012.
But just because that’s how the world works currently doesn’t mean that it’s how it should work or even that such a world isn’t completely fucked.
Right now we have a massive discrepancy between where we are as a country socially and where we are politically. What we believe in private and what we are allowed to vote in public. What we hold to be important in our private lives and what the political debate gets fixated on.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, we’re in a Depression, people are starving, dying, going broke, and suffering in a thousand different ways, not to mention the fact that there is at least 30 years of political oppression needing to be thrown away, massive infrastructure to be recreated due to lack of maintenance, and justice delayed.
And what is our political class talking about?
How many Hooverist policies to enact and how much the poor need to be screwed.
Neither of these things is even close and its because we have spent the last 30 years accepting the shutting out of liberal voices in politics and just going with whoever is slightly less terrible.
Hell, perhaps Obama could have even been a great president in better times or different circumstances, but I have no doubt he views himself as liberal and the progressive voices as “out there” and brash simply because the culture is such that progressive voices in the circles he runs in and has run in for a long time are absent.
It’s “shocking” to hear common sense ideas with strong popular support and it’s viewed as “off the table” to even consider such ideas.
And what’s worse is there is a mass of those who call themselves liberal who are taking cue from the political class and arguing that here on the ground level we must also purge liberal ideas for not being serious and being politically impossible. That we cannot fight for things and ideas that are important if they couldn’t be passed by the current congress.
The refrain is not the audacity of hope but rather the futility of it.
We’ll never have a better world so stop dreaming of it. There is not a way to not be fucked, so stop struggling against it and learn to love it. And never push against the political class for there is no way to reform them without revolution and never dream of revolution.
It is the mindset of a serf.
Of course our political class has drifted how they have, but we have not and the 1920s illustrate that a corrupt political class can not forever escape the political rewards for social progress engaged in behind the scenes. The fact that the system is constantly getting worse, less survivable, and is killing more and more for the open greed of immoral rich fuckheads is one that must be addressed in some fashion.
And while we may claim that we’ll never get a progressive president, we also thought the same about getting a black president. That same force of social liberalism and unheard voices can do the same if we allow ourselves to trust and stop screwing ourselves over before we begin.
Sure, we’ll elect Obama again, but 2016?
Let’s nominate a progressive. One who is not frightened of speaking their voice and defending the centuries of success liberalism has had on every major issue it has weighted in on. Let us try and not fear that he’ll be “unelectable” or “turn off independents”.
In the meantime, let us stand up for progressive values and make our voice heard socially. Let us even pressure and beat at where our elected officials are failing us and let them know.
Right now, with our owned media all they are hearing is the drumbeat of Right Right Right. We need to show that the left, that even the center-left in this country is not dead and buried. We need to demand the audacious.
Let us learn from our minority movements. Civil Rights, Feminism, LGBT rights. They have moved mountains in mere decades simply by daring to ask for the “unaskable”, the things seen as impossible in the next hundred years, and fighting for the basic rightness of it and making it obvious to all that the arguments against it were so much bupkiss.
We can be those people.
We are those people.
Obama is a centrist, a conservative?
Let us yank him back. Let us yank them all back.
Progressivism created this world, saved this world, defended this world.
It can do so again.
Jennifer-
Not his fault really, it’s just gay rights progressed a lot faster than he or anyone else expected.
I mean, I give him full credit on some of the very very very very very few legitimate no bitter taste in my mouth WINS that there have been and I give him no illusions that such a feat is by any means easy.
But I think he’s not getting much credit and getting a lot of flak from the gay community is a conflux of several things.
And the biggest part of that is that gay rights took off really fucking fast. We’re approaching a point where a majority of the people are in support of gay marriage, where the bigots who used to be all powerful are being made to feel hunted and small and where there is starting slowly to be social retribution against hating gay people versus being gay people.
Thus his personal viewpoints, despite being more evolved than any other president, end up looking archaic in their time. A throwback unseemly in any person who would call themselves liberal. I mean, things are changing so much that there are Republicans (and the idea of a sane or moderate Republican was an impossible one even 10 years ago) who find the pressure to support gay marriage is stronger than the pressure to fight it. And this is a party that operates like the mafia, where disobeying of party doctrine gets you a final boat ride and a bullet in the head.
Things have changed way faster than someone who is trying to look reasonable to all sides can keep up. As such, he looks unevolved on the issue and his repeated refusal to grow and listen about gay rights in general ends up making him look childish and obstinate for no other reason than a commitment to looking equitable and moderate. In short, it forces him to reveal his worst side of an overall good man.
Similarly, like many political rights, many gay rights have been won socially a long time ago. As such the protracted and self-important political fights have been like frustrating show theatre where pompous windbags discuss things everyone has agreed are stupid as if they were important and fresh.
DADT is one of those things. By the time it made it to the point where it could be fought against, the public was in full support of its overturn, the military was in full support of its overturn, and even some conservative anti-gay churches was in full support of its overturn. It had something close to 90% approval for overturn.
It and other laws had been won socially so thoroughly and for such an amount of time by the time that the political reality was possible that the protracted battles while important, successful and praise-worthy, ended up looking more like the long delayed coda to a successful orchestral score. On one hand, applause for the fine performance and the mastery of that ending. On the other, why the fuck were we waiting an hour picking our noses while the band scrambled to find their final page?
This is not to steal credit where credit is due and a lot goes to Obama and even more goes the activists who have spent decades fighting for these basic rights and building the social support, but just a sad fact of where we are.
Our political system is so behind social progress in this country that by the time something halfway liberal actually passes (which is infrequently rare and should be celebrated every time), it’s almost assumed to have already passed. Wait, what, DADT repeal, not allowed to murder transpeople with no police investigation, equal pay for equal work for women? These were political battles we still needed to fight? And did they need anything more than a “no shit” vote for show.
Again, not Obama’s fault, but rather a fault of a broken system and the massive gulf between social and political.
One which must be fixed if we are going to survive as a nation.
Say, maybe the fact that more than half the Democratic party, both politicians and voters, isn’t liberal has something to do with why Democrats have trouble getting gen-you-wine liberal policy passed. And maybe that explains Democratic relations with its “base,” in that the base is not liberals, Keynesians, and civil libertarians who keep close tabs on political developments, and thus catering to “the base” isn’t inevitably being more liberal in word or deed.
Nah, that’s crazy, it’s probably because of an elaborate Trojan Horse scheme involving ritualized displays of weakness just to rend the social safety net and spite the left edge of the Democratic voting public. That’s much more logical.
Nothing new here folks.
Okay, okay, I get it. Obama is not a leftist, he’s not even a liberal, he’s not even really a centrist–center-right is more like it. He’s not going to push for single-payer NHC because he doesn’t believe in it. He’s not going to end the Mongolian clusterfucks in Iraq and Afghanistan (and he’s going to start another one in Libya) because that’s who he is and what he likes.
I get it.
But tell me, please–how in the hell do the people I see every day claim he’s a socialist? There’s a billboard on the interstate near my house with a picture of Obama looking menacing with the caption “SOCIALIST BY CONDUCT”. How does someone think that without their head exploding? I can understand this kind of talk during the campaign, because his Senate resume was slim to nonexistent and all that anybody had on him were his books (and every presidential candidate writes one of those) and a few comments by those who knew him. But after two and a half years?
Okay, Fox news, right wing blogs, willful stupidity, those are all possible answers, but for anyone to non-ironically say that Obama is a socialist today beggars reality, and I think we are well and truly screwed as a country.
Of course, I live in Texas, so your experience may be different. All hail President Perry (with right arm extended straight out).
I’m not going to argue with the whole of HTML’s post, but I do want to make one point. Many of Sirota’s criticisms about President Obama’s performance are couched in comparisons/contrasts to previous Democratic presidents’ records; sadly, they often do more to obscure than to enlighten.
“He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor…” appears to preface a negative contrast of President Obama’s overall effectiveness, but Sirota’s premise is plain wrong on many levels. The most empirically obvious wrongness is easily seen by looking at the makeup of Congress during FDR’S first term. In the 72nd and 73rd Congresses, Republicans never held much power in either chamber: in the Senate, it was never much more than a third; in the House it was well below a third. Moreover, the coalitions within the Democratic Party of 1933 through 1936 were much different than they are today, as were the conditions in which they operated (w/r/t re-election concerns and pressures).
If a professional like Sirota is going to use past presidents’ performances to support his critiques, he should take care to be accurate in analysis of the empirical data, otherwise he undermines his credibility with educated audiences.
I’ve never understood why the people who criticize the president from the left Re called PUMAs, and are suspected of wishing we got Hillary instead. Hillary I was fairly confident would turn out to be a saber-rattling third-wayer. Obama, I had better hopes for.
I don’t agree with the “stealth conservative” line. I think all of the president’s actions can be understood with one rule of thumb: he absolutely does nit want to “lose”. Ever.
Most of the stuff the left wants and didn’t get (single payer, public option, defense cuts, closing Gitmo, real financial reform, etc) are just plain impossible. He spent the first half of his term negotiating with the right wing of his own party just to get the weak tea versions of health care reform and financial regulation that he did get, and even at that, Evan Bayh was ready to stab him in the back the day they elected Senator Nudepix. Then, of course, the nutcases took over the house in 2011 and started threatening to kill old ladies if he didn’t give in.
In those circumstances, he had only two choices. He could spin his policies as “Here’s what we should do;what America needs. Over here is what your bought-and-paid-for Congress is letting me do”. Or, he could figure out what he was going to get, then pretend it was exactly what he wanted all along. The first way, he looks like a better liberal, but he also looks like a whiny bitch. He prefers the second way.
I think he’s not as far left as I’d like. His economic choices seem to show that he’s drunk a bit too much of the supply-side Kool-Aid. (But even there, I can’t really fault him. “Clinton balanced the budget and Bush blew it up!” has long been a rallying cry on the left.). The mood of the country when he took office was such that maybe, just maybe, if he had gone after Wall Street with both barrels, and extradited Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to the Hague, he might have had enough of a tailwind to pull Congress along. Or, he might have been impeached by June 2009.
But, in general, the problem is that he has a nutcase opposition, and a media environment that is completely incapable of calling bullshit by it’s true name. I think he ‘s doing the best that could be expected given the constraints.
And it’s a damn good thing this is a dead thread, because there are an embarrassing number of typos in that. Frickin iPhone.
Supreme Court, bitches.
Supreme Court, bitches.
Yes, I agree, that alone, if nothing else will justify US liberals voting for Obama again. However, that said, it’s really sad that it’s down to that, which is really just the very last resort of reasons to vote for Team D.
The worst part is, if Obama is re-elected and gets lucky enough that one of the Corporate Power Rangers on SCOTUS departs their post (Scalia is fairly old, it’s not impossible), I have this trepidation I can’t quite shake that he wouldn’t nominate a Republican to fill the post out of some kind of “bipartisan comity.”
I fear we’d be lucky to see him replace Scalia with another Kennedy type, or Sandra Day O’Connor.
It’s hard to improve on Cerberus’s excellent comment up there, but let me just say that the kind of liberals who defend Obama must be the same ones who were cheering about the debt ceiling being raised rather than cringing about the trillions in spending cuts that are about to deepen the recession. In other words, the ones who don’t understand that austerity is essentially Reaganomics.
Now, I understand that the Tea Party is primarily at fault for the austerity, but Obama didn’t even try to stop them; he simply tried to tack on a token amount of tax increases. From everything Obama has said, it’s clear that he genuinely believes that austerity is good economic policy, and what our country was left with as a result was two sides arguing over just how badly to fuck the economy. It was frustrating to see that sensible policies weren’t even on the table, and that IS partly Obama’s fault because he blatantly refused to bring any.
@Cerberus, that is one of the greatest blog comments I have ever read, and I agree wholeheartedly!
Because I have lost faith in Obama, liberals are calling me a traitor and a troll.
Y’know, to be perfectly honest, the REAL reason this old black blocker supported Obama was the carefully weighted choice of which shitty-assed candidate would torque off the fascists the most. Which one of these centrist bastards would drive the right utterly batshit? In lieu of a crippled lesbian Arab, I went with the black guy over the white lady. Mission fucking accomplished!