History echoes. It doesn’t exactly repeat–but events are informed, defined and argued by the fragmented memories of our shared past. Around the globe there are conflicts that have roots in events centuries old. We have one of those in America that is often shorthanded with the term ‘The Civil War’, but really the conflict goes deeper. At the root of it is the question of slavery, but even that is a side issue to the main flash point–the role of white supremacy in America.
A common thread from some founding fathers fighting to protect slavery to the treason of the Confederacy to the terrorism of the Jim Crow years to today’s rantings from TeaBaggers, neo-Confederate Republicans and other wingnuts is the idea that the Constitution was perfect when it was drafted and that any changes since 1810 or so have been attacks on that perfection. This is why they hated Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Johnson, Clinton and now hate Obama. All of these cats and many others subscribed to the idea that our Union, our Constitution was not perfect when ratified and that it is still a work in progress. Every time Obama talks about “perfecting our Union” it is like fingernails on a blackboard to those folks who see the original Constitution as perfect and filter that view with rhetorical bullshit firmly rooted in privileged, property and white supremacy. This ongoing fight in America is more than 200 years old and it is at the heart of most of our current political battles.
I happen to believe that our laws, Constitution and Union are alive and always evolving–always moving towards a more perfect Union. I am firmly in that camp and feel my point of view is firmly rooted in history, culture, nature, science and life. Everything evolves. And yes, I also believe in evolution and that there can be proven scientific facts. This makes me a liberal because as Colbert once said “We all know that reality has a liberal bias”. This puts me at odds with those other folks who think that Jesus rode a dinosaur and that the Constitution was perfection when drafted–as if the good Lord rose out of the Potomac and handed the completed document to Madison from the back of a winged stegosaurus.
The ideas of the other side are doomed to failure. History will one day move them to the dustbin. Evolution will take care of that. But in the near time these wankers will continue to do real damage as they work overtime to protect their oligarch sugar daddies and sell the old snake oil that white supremacy is why America is an exceptional nation. I call this group of folks the Confederate Party as their name and political affiliation keeps changing to follow power, but their core ideas always remain the same. And because their ideas are stupid (and always have been stupid) the only political tactic they know is obstruction, hostage taking, name calling, fear mongering and a refusal to compromise.
A NYT editorial, titled One-Sided Compromises could almost be run today with a few word swaps like switching ‘Republican’ everywhere you see ‘Democrat’ and vice versa.
This editorial came out just as the Succession crisis was heating up. Lincoln had been elected but would not be sworn in for months. Congress had just returned to Washington and there were efforts to avoid the coming bloodshed, but the Democrats and Southern secessionists refused any and all efforts to discuss a compromise. This has been a tactic of the Confederate Party since the early 1800s and it still is today. And they always backed up this refusal with the implied and sometimes specific threat to shut down, destroy or break the Union and the Federal Government. So it was back on December 6, 1860.
Here are some snippets from a 150-year old editorial that could have been written about today’s Republican Confederate Party:
There is a universal desire for “conciliation.” Everybody demands that something shall be done to save the Union and restore peace to the country. [snip]
But when we descend to particulars the affair assumes quite a different aspect. It then becomes apparent that what the Democrats mean by compromise is the absolute surrender of the Republicans. It is the Republicans who are to make all the concessions, — who are to propose and execute all the compromises, and by whom the Union is to be saved. And they are expected to do it by abandoning every principle they have ever professed, — by accepting every law and every sentiment against which they have hitherto protested, — by surrendering all the fruits of the victory they have just achieved, and by handing over everything to those whom they have just defeated! [snip]
Equally insulting is the manner in which the action of the Republicans on this subject has been received. Those of them who have recognized the reality of danger to the Union, and have been willing to take measures to avert it, have been taunted with tardy cowardice and with a disposition to abandon their party. Those of them who have not done so, have been reproached with reckless disregard of the peace of the country. The conservative declarations of the President elect, are utterly ignored. Not the slightest notice is taken of the sentiments proclaimed, or the action proposed, by leading and influential members and organs of the Republican Party, — unless they afford material for fresh taunts and abuse. And the most inflammatory declarations of the most Ultra-Abolitionists are coolly set down to the account of the Republicans, who are held up to the South as hostile to their rights and resolved to make war upon their institutions.
Now, in our opinion, this game is about “played out.”
Of course the game was not “played out” as the same old plays are being run yet again. To see this in action just follow the news. One side is willing to destroy to get what they want and unwilling to compromise. The other side seeks to find ways of preventing the worse of the damage and limiting the harm that always follows any agreement to move forward with these assholes.
The key to victory when dealing with the Confederate Party has alway been to keep your eye on the prize–to keep your focus on the slow and steady work to perfect our Union. This work is about governing and the slow bending of the arc of progress towards justice. It is tedious and unnoticed work. It is about passing laws and then writing smart regulations to move those laws towards justice–and then implementing them. It is work that almost never gets a mention in a news cycle. It never wins the morning over at Pravda on the Potomac. It never wins the Tweet cycle. And yet–over time–it does win the day. It does move us towards a more perfect Union.
This is why I am an optimist. This is why–despite the current levels of Republican obstructions–I know that they are Confederate dead-enders and that time, reality and demographics are moving them to the dustbin of history.
This fight has been going on for 200 years. It is important to understand that you move towards steady progress by the embrace of persistence, patience and pragmatism. This means that you will lose news cycles and that some folks will will always be in a panic about losing the news cycle and other passing events of the day. It means that some of your allies who can only grok a frontal assault as the only viable tactic for every occasion will always be upset when that glorious fight they long for fails to materialize. So it goes. This is how progress has been made throughout the history of our Nation and it will not change even if the Tweet cycle and punditeers try to speed it up.
Yep, things are difficult now, but whatever your worse view of policy or your greatest fear, things were far more fucked-up 150 years ago, 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. We have made progress despite the endless obstruction. The real fight is a long game. Many will disagree, but I am glad that we have a President who knows this, that he is fighting the long game and that he’s willing to lose a few news cycles to move us towards a more perfect Union.
Cheers
lacp
Shoot, even the Founding Fathers didn’t think the Constitution was perfect – far from it. Just finished Jack Rackove’s Original Meanings, which covers the thinking of both Federalists and Anti-federalists. Good stuff.
mclaren
When the president of the united states orders American citizens kidnapped, tortured and murdered without charges or a trial, the rule of law has disappeared and the constitution no longer exists.
As shithole America collapses and society breaks down, the only question is whether those who survive to come out the other side of the chaos will resemble FDR, or Pol Pot.
Given America’s post-WW-II history, the answer is clear.
If you wear eyeglasses, get rid of ’em now.
hhex65
Stegosaurus did have wings, I saw it on The Learning Channel.
Amok92
Wow, Obama as Lincoln? Try Clement Vallandigham.
Dennis G.
@lacp:
But you argue that because you’ve read the facts. Try telling that to Jim Demint or that Quitta from Wassila.
These wankers don’t do ‘facts’ from books. They make up concepts like ‘original intent’ and form think tanks and societies to craft talking point that will promote the idea that the original Constitution was perfect and that the founding fathers were our almost divine in their whiteness and rightness.
goblue72
Who says the GOP isn’t playing the long game too? They’ve been working on moving the judiciary to the right for over 20 years and have largely succeeded. They’ve cut taxes to the lowest share of GDP since WWII. They’ve drowned the government in debt to the point where DEMOCRATS are talking about cutting Social Security.
The bad guys are winning dude.
Dennis G.
@hhex65:
Well, then that must be how we got the Constitution.
Nick
and then that fucking sellout Lincoln said this;
Worst President EVA!!!
Martin
@hhex65: They got it wrong. The wings were from the angel that Jesus was fucking while he was riding it to America.
I saw it on Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
sfinny
Reading history is one of my coping methods. I know it is not saying much when you comfort yourself by saying it’s not as bad as the black plague, but hey it works for me. Imagining myself in different eras makes me appreciate the fact that I probably would have been eaten by a lion or walked off a cliff owing to my (lack of good) eyesight.
Delia
So you’re arguing that history is replaying this time as farce? It would certainly explain Sarah Palin’s career.
Lolis
@Nick:
All Democratic presidents who had great triumphs also had many huge failures and disappointments. There was Japanese internment and the Vietnam War done by three of the best presidents of this past century.
It is why I try not to sweat some of the failures that seem epic in the moment. In the big picture, President Obama has already made the list above. We can help him do more and do better but this talk of primarying him is insane.
sfinny
@Delia: Well, I came to see the Bush II years as farce, so maybe Sarah is Post-Farce?
Allan
Everyone’s just shouting and jockeying to get the most airtime and most attention in the noisy public sphere.
Happened across Jonathan Franzen on Oprah and he commented on how incredibly connected we all are across the globe and how well most of us live from a historical perspective, and yet everyone is just a big ball of rage.
Did Maslow think to rank “an enemy” among the hierarchy of needs?
Angry Black Lady
i sure hope the constitution wasn’t perfect as drafted. if it was, i’m hoping my heart, lungs, and other major organs are all in the 3/5 of me that matters.
i don’t want my lungs in that lowly 2/5. i’ll never be able to breathe.
Corner Stone
@goblue72: Well that’s the funny thing about playing “the long game”.
Some people can play both.
hhex65
@Martin: is that the new zombie show? I heard it was good.
Yutsano
@Angry Black Lady: I think the division is on the cellular level. Or perhaps the subatomic. Something impossibly small so the three fifths that counted was still pretty much powerless.
Seebach
If everything in the state department cables is stuff that everybody already knows, that means we’re paying the state department to do jack shit but read Newsweek, right?
Davis X. Machina
@Nick
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Signed: Another Over-Promoted Illinois State House Hack.
Suffern ACE
I think we’re just out of time. Here we have Robert Samuelson in today’s Post complaining that the Debt Commission failed to come down hard enough on the elderly and didn’t take it upon itself to define the nature of government. What the Debt Commission Left Out
I think certain classes of people should feel lucky if a few months of rioting is the defining moment of the the theft. What the panel missed was creating a document that 14 of the 18 members could sign off on. i really don’t think it would have gone any better had it been given the task of defining the purpose of government. I understand that these are some powerful people on the commission, but this is hardly Philadelphia in 1787. Erskine Bowles is not Benjamin Franklin, the Role of Madison is not being played by Alan Simpson, and this group of elite we have is certainly full of itself. I suppose Samuelson thinks he is writing one of the new Federalist papers. He thinks the constitution has evolved to allow blue ribbon commission members to write foundational documents.
But that is what we are left with. Thousands of Economists to choose from, and we’re left with Only Bernanke Can Do The Job. Lincoln eventually found generals to prosecute the war, but we don’t have much to put faith in at the top of any of our institutions, and apparently very little opportunity to find people who can do these things.
hhex65
@Dennis G.: heh. great piece, esp. the 2nd half.
sfinny
@Angry Black Lady: As a white lady I kinda like the whole voting thing too. Good gosh we are an angry demanding crowd.
Mitch Guthman
Yeah, well, not to piss on your parade or anything but could you explain with actual reasons why you think that it’s the Republicans that are headed for the dustbin of history and not the Democrats? It looks to me like the party of civil rights and good governance is the one in terminal decline and it’s the party of the old Confederacy, the “lost causers” you so blithely dismiss that are in the ascendancy.
This business of the “long game” is just a crappy exercise in self-delusion. The “long game” is the whore of history. She’ll lay down with anyone. I mean, really, unless you’re secretly Hari Seldon and you’ve perfected psychohistory, who’s to say that the next hundred years are sure to go your way and not theirs?
The leader of the party you assume will inevitably be the victor is in way over his head. He’s so desperate to avoid a fight that he has given away the crown jewels and severely damaged the nation’s economic health all for some Republican chicken feed. But mostly because he wanted to avoid a fight. This is exactly what he’s done from day one. His weakness means that he’s going to be shaken down for his lunch money every day from now until President Palin takes office. How is this actually good for the Democrats?
His presidency is finished. For the good of the country, he needs to step down and allow Joe Biden to serve a caretaker president and allow an open primary in 2012.
Nick
@Mitch Guthman:
who the hell thinks this?
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Yeah, remember how Obama imprisoned thousands of American citizens for absolutely no reason and allowed other people to move in and steal their property while they were moved out to camps in the desert? Oh, and remember when Obama made a deal with his own party to oppose federal anti-lynching legislation, thus allowing Jim Crow to continue to run rampant?
What an asshole. I’m sure glad FDR never did anything like that, aren’t you?
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you. If you didn’t block-quote him from time to time I would think he was just some dude with a pie fixation…
Allan
@Nick: Well, Mitch Guthman does, so there’s one.
Yutsano
@Mitch Guthman:
I smell a ratfucking.
Allan
@Yutsano: The best part is when, after being poked and prodded for an alternative, they finally reveal their dream candidate. You just can’t stop laughing!
Davis X. Machina
@Mitch Guthman:
He just got shaken down for some of my students’ lunch money, although I am sure they would have found a diet of message sandwiches and a principles side salad equally satisfactory.
Lunch is 10:23 tomorrow. President Palin’s a long way away.
hhex65
@Yutsano: Wait, is Delaware in the South now?
kdaug
@Mitch Guthman: Just to get ahead of the onrushing wave:
Take off your partisan petticoat and man up, bitch. We’re all in, or we’re all going down together. The USS USA is in a storm right now, and the last thing we need are whining finger-pointers. Time for that later. For now, get busy righting the ship of state.
Yutsano
@kdaug:
I am so stealing this.
Baud
Thanks for the dose of optimism. Really need some of that these days.
Nick
@hhex65:
Actually, technically, it is. The Mason-Dixon line is the Pennsylvania border and Delaware was a slave state
kdaug
@Davis X. Machina: Ahh, the pie filter…
Bob Loblaw
Is it possible for you to not repost your same thesis each time out, dengre? Unless this is being crossposted elsewhere (which given the format is entirely possible, and if so, I apologize in advance) I think we have a pretty thorough understanding on your thoughts about the Confederate Party by now. Do we really need to click through just to read the new content?
I fear this is far more platitudinous than reality. How do we define the “more perfect Union” in this day and age? Is it defined by more democratic and less corrupt governance? Are we redefining the corporation’s influence on the state and its economy? Not really.
Is it defined by broader and more egalitarian sharing of wealth? Because that’s not going so well. Actually, it’s never been worse in any of our lifetimes.
Is it defined by a greater intolerance for war and respect for civil liberties and human dignity? Gulp.
Is it defined by a reformation of consumption habits and a new appreciation for sustainable growth and development? Yeesh.
Obama’s election was a transformational event by itself. I think we try to convince ourselves that it’s built something bigger, but I’m honestly hard pressed to say what that is. Even his signature progressive reform-mostly universal health insurance-is fighting obsolescence before it is even fully enacted. It won’t hold cost growth to inflation levels. By 2020, the median family premium is going to be over $19,000 a year. How is that affordable? We’re going to have to blow the whole system up before the fruits of the bill’s labor are even allowed to bloom.
Mitch Guthman
@Nick: Maybe I misread the post but it seems to me the Dennis G. thinks this. I look to these quotes especially: “The ideas of the other side are doomed to failure. History will one day move them to the dustbin”
Corner Stone
Yes, I always enjoy fighting the long game.
cat48
Excellent post, Dennis. I’ve muted cable & twitter. Everyone is so very angry about someone or something. It’s helping not to listen. I find populism/grievance politics very stressful.
suzanne
@Yutsano:
I imagine that to smell not unlike my dog’s farts. (The food changeover goes on; my nose may one day recover.)
Nick
@Mitch Guthman: He said ideas, not Republicans. The Republican Party will always exist, it’s ideas probably will not.
Yutsano
@suzanne: I imagine it going something like this, but I r an Ichirobot.
Andy K
@Angry Black Lady:
Heh.
After Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow laws came in, you’d be counted as a full person for the purpose of divvying up seats in the House- you just wouldn’t get the vote.
That’s to say that, in a way, the end of slavery actually gave whites in the South MORE power in the federal government up until blacks started migrating north and west in big numbers.
Martin
@Mitch Guthman:
Really? What core Republican principle has been reliably advanced over the last, oh, let’s say century.
hhex65
@Nick: bingo! it’s like something out of the Da Vinci Code.
Actually, I remember now that Biden said something about that during his campaign, trying to play the “cracker” card.
Dollared
Dennis, I love you and I learn a lot. But today has about a 27% overlap with then.
Today it is about the F@#(#$%#$#%king money. Today’s Republicans are about the money, the money, the money.
They pull along the 27% of the racist crazies because it’s all they need to control the rest of us, and like all people primarily motivated by money, they don’t care what they do to get it. If it weren’t politics, it would be reality TV or just internet porn.
But today is the great triumph not of the Confederate Party, but of the Prescott Bush faction of the old Northeastern Republican Party. They have waited for 70 years to undo the horrors of FDR’s assault on their monopoly on wealth and power, and today they finished the big, central section of the moat. With no money, the government will have to give up on its social welfare goals, adn with no social contract, we will all have to kiss their asses just to stay alive and raise our children.
Many of these old F@#$#ks were abolitionists, Dennis. But make no mistake, they want a monopoly on power. And make no mistake, they are treasonous, since their key tools are an Australian media magnate and the Chinese communist regime. But today Obama moved them closer to achieving their goal. That’s why they cut a deal for the estate tax at lower rates. They are playing the long game.
mclaren
““I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” — Jay Gould, 1897
And nothing has changed.
BarbF
I wish I had your optimism. Yes, the pendulum will swing the other way, but I doubt that I’ll live to see it (I’m middle aged), and I think it’s going to get much much worse before then.
Yes, their ideas are shit, and yes, they will fail. But the American public has been so thoroughly dumbed down, so thoroughly terrorized, so thoroughly fragmented, that by the time we see the forest for the trees, much much MORE damage will have been done.
There’s been a concerted effort by conservatives to game the media (they have), to game the judiciary (they have) that it’ll take a true insurection from our side to unseat them. Do you REALLY think it’s just coincidence that they’re arming like they’ve never armed before? Do you think it’s really coincidence that even a Supreme Court Justice has said that Americans have a DUTY to rise up against an immoral government? Scalia has.
Look at the front page of the NYT right now. It says Obama has alienated his ‘liberal’ base. No, he’s fucking alienated the huge proportion of Americans who voted for him, many of whom were Republicans, many of whom were former conservatives, many of whom are moderates, who thought this fucking wimp was really going to make a difference from the plutocracy driven madmen who’ve put us here. Not to mention, the HUGE majority of Americans who did not want the tax cuts extended for the upper brackets.
But the NYT has framed it as those (no doubt FAR FAR LEFT) liberals who are unhappy.
They have the media. They have the judiciary. They have the money from the oligarchs. And with the gift of Citizens United, those oligarchs can spend all the money they want saying whatever they want, all unnoticed by the media.
This country is well and truly fucked. For decades, most likely.
Yutsano
@BarbF:
FTFY. And we’re cross-posted somewhere cuz I’m seeing strange names popping up out of the woodwork.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Ever the sociopath, Mnemosyne now claims that FDR is worse than Pol Pot (!)
Comment is superfluous.
Mitch Guthman
@kdaug: I don’t disagree that the Democratic Party and the country are in trouble. I do not, however, understand the point you are trying to make. Do you actually believe that President Obama is doing the best job possible under the circumstances, that he is truly a great fighter but prefers to remain in the guise of a bullied milquetoast and that nobody could every hope to achieve more? Respectfully, I say that you are deluded if you think so.
You say that we should fight to right the ship of state before it sinks. I agree wholeheartedly. My preferred method is to replace the captain with a seasoned navigator and a more capable commander. You seem to believe that the ineffectual man who steered us onto the rocks is the best person to repair the resulting gaping hole in the side of our ship. Unless you think that Obama really can play 11 dimensional chess, I just don’t see why you think your method would work.
One other point I would make is that my call for Obama to step aside does mean that I believe we should run someone against him in the Democratic primary. I believe it would be a fatal error for liberals to mount such a primary challenge. I am old enough to remember the unbelievable damage that Teddy Kennedy and his crowd did to this country with their quixotic, ego-maniacal efforts. Likewise, I personally regret that the left did not come together behind HHH. This was a terrible mistake and we liberals would be fools to repeat it. If President Obama does not step aside for the good of the country and his party as LBJ did, then we must do what we can to reelect him.
Nevertheless, I hope that President Obama will see that he has hopelessly compromised himself by his continual appeasement of the Republicans and that if he does not step aside the remainder of his presidency will be a disaster. Frankly, he is a Neville Chamberlain at a time when we Democrats need a Churchill. I hope that President Obama, whom I believe to be a basically good man, will see this and selflessly step aside as LBJ, a truly great president, did in 1968.
Andy K
@mclaren:
Certainly not the way I read it. But then I have no sworn archenemies on teh intertubes, nor a need to feel I must have any.
Suffern ACE
@mclaren: Are FDR and Pol Pot really the only choices here? I’m fairly pessimistic about a lot of things. My guess is we’ll end up with demographic stratification and government Brazil during a more authoritarian period and end up with a lot of poor….but gosh, Pol Pot or FDR? At least let us start with the choices of the Madonna or a Jezebel and discuss some of the many points in between.
Bob Westal
Ah, useful advice. /major league fucking snark
The idea that we aren’t all doomed, doomed, doomed is just so offensive to some people. Few of us are happy with the state of affairs and I’d argue anger is appropriate. But defeatism and doomerism are fool’s games. If Pol Pot ever comes to the U.S. it will be partly because of this kind of thinking, not despite it. Despair is deadly.
mclaren
@Martin:
5 core Republican principles:
[1] The Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to you unless you’re rich.
[2] You have no right to join a union. If you do, you may be summarily fired, then brutalized by company goons.
[3] Unless you own lots of property, the police can beat you and kill you and torture you (today, using tasers; in the past, by beating you with rubber hoses) with impunity.
[4] Your vote doesn’t actually count if you’re poor or working class (hanging chads, anyone?)
[5] Facts mean nothing — reality is what the newspapers and media owned by the wealthy tell you it is. (Global warming is a scam, Peak Oil isn’t real, the global financial crisis was caused by immigrant mexican gardeners and blacks who bought houses they couldn’t afford, Obama is a scary angry Muslim who wasn’t born in America, etc.)
As usual, Martin is ignorant and incompetent, pervasively clueless about the horrific new landscape of our new Gilded Age.
asiangrrlMN
Thanks, Dennis, for this dose of determined optimism. I am not as sanguine or positive as you are because I see a lot more ugliness before there is another upswing. I do think, ultimately, that we are grinding towards something better little by agonizing little, but some days, it doesn’t seem like enough.
And, I, too, am one who does not think the Constitution was perfect when it was written for many many many many reasons.
Bob Westal
@mclaren Sometime, just for fun, try addressing people in a respectful manner. Sometime, just for fun, try assuming that the world isn’t coming to an end. Sometime, just for fun, stop giving into despair,
It might make you look like less of a complete and utter douche.
Just a thought.
kdaug
@Mitch Guthman: And yet, he moves the ratchet forward. One click at a time. Small increments, true, nothing to report on in the 24/7… and yet, it moves.
Mitch Guthman
@Nick: The Republicans promote their ideas so if that party is in the ascendancy, so are their ideas. Indeed, I would remind you that William F. Buckley ran the John Birchers and the hard-right (basically the “Teaparty”) out of the Republican Party because even he found their ideas repugnant and their leaders dangerous. But Birchers are back—-look at Bachman, Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh—-and the non-crazy but conservative Republicans are the ones being purged.
There is no Seldon plan. History, like God, is always on the side of the big battalions.
sgrAstar
@mclaren: I’d like to add that the Republicans, those despicable cads, have successfully advanced the notion that the government is evil, that it is incompetent, and that it is your enemy. A significant percentage of
Americans‘Murkins has swallowed this shit, hook, line, and sinker.Mitch Guthman
@kdaug: Really? Could you perhaps describe some of this “forward movement”? Do you believe that he has driven the hardest bargains without receiving due credit or is it that he is playing chess whilst other play checkers? (And, therefore, that what I see as comprise is really a brilliant maneuverer in the “long game”). How has he ratcheted liberal goals forward in a way that I do not understand? Please explain.
I see only appeasement and weakness. I see Obama settling for crumbs when he could have an entire loaf.
Mitch Guthman
@Davis X. Machina: I understand that a diet of message sandwiches and a principles side salad is not the same as putting food on the table. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but even if Obama had fought to save the social safety net as I have often urged and lost, your students would be no worse off since Obama surrendered without a fight even though he has huge majorities in both houses and the bully pulpit at his disposal.
I would also point out that those same principles of Liberalism embodied in the New Deal and the Great Society were what provided the poor with real food and a social safety net in the first place. It was fighting liberals who created the programs which gave the food to your students. It is liberals who are fighting right now to preserve the social safety net. May I remind you that neither I nor any of my kind created a “cat-food commission” to destroy social security and appointed Alan Simpson to lead it.
Let’s be clear about something: If your students go hungry it won’t be because of me and my principles. It will be because Barrack Obama turned his back on your students in his rush to appease Republicans.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Funny how your deep concern for civil rights only extends to US citizens who actively working against the US government in foreign countries and not to US citizens who were imprisoned and impoverished by their own president for the crime of being Japanese. Not to mention the US citizens who had to continue living in fear while they were lynched with impunity so FDR could pass a New Deal and Social Security that excluded them.
That says a lot about you, actually.
Mnemosyne
@Mitch Guthman:
Just out of curiosity, do you guys misspell his name out of ignorance, or is it one of those strategies to deliberately annoy people like the one the Republicans adopted of calling it the “Democrat Party”? I keep seeing it over and over again — the people who seem to hate Obama the most are incapable of spelling his name correctly.
Barack. One R. Google it sometime.
FlipYrWhig
@Mitch Guthman:
I don’t see how Obama could get an entire loaf. I think the bakery is burning down.
nhoj
@FlipYrWhig:
He has a clear leap into the burning bakery from the bully pulpit.
Giants fan
I’m agnostic, but leaning toward Mitch G’s point of view. Maybe Obama’s doing this incremental thing and really can’t rock the boat re: torture prosecutions, ending the war in Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo, not to mention fighting for the public option, expiring tax cuts on the wealthiest, etc. Maybe he’s doing the best he can under the circumstances. But the evidence is against that so far. We see him begin with lip service toward the public option but never really twisting arms for it, starting with the expiration of the tax cuts then bargaining it away for unemployment extension. We never see him stand firm on things we know are right. And giving him credit for his decency and intelligence, he knows are right. So it’s possible there’s some angles I don’t see, and that’s why I’m agnostic. But if I had to bet, I’d bet based on the evidence. It seems if you’re still so optimistic about Obama, that must be as a matter of faith. Which is one way to look at it, but typically for politicians, I think it’s better to judge them on evidence.
Mnemosyne
I’m sure mclaren is busily typing her 5,000 word response to me explaining once again how I’m the sociopathic psychological twin of Mark David Chapman for pointing out that it’s inconsistent for someone who claims to be solely interested in civil rights to idolize FDR, but I just can’t stay up and wait for it any longer. You guys summarize it for me and I’ll read it tomorrow, ‘k?
‘Night, all. Smooches, mclaren.
Dennis G.
@Mitch Guthman:
I’ve a friend who was in town around Thanksgiving. His idea, which many folks here and elsewhere seem to share, was that we are totally and absolutely fucked. He is convinced that our time is the worst time ever and somehow he has decided that it is President Obama’s fault. His solution to this massive problem is your solution. Obama should resign for the good of the Country and the Party. When pressed on how this might make anything better or who is waiting in the wings to replace him there was no answer, just some feeling that Obama had to be punished.
It is a heavily freighted and irrational response to the problems that we face. It is an idea that is wrapped up in many levels of magical thinking and an idea that only makes sense if you view events without regard to history and facts. Mostly this kind of thinking seems to grow out of the old Baby Boomer idea that everything that happens revolves around them and that their time is always the most important time in history and events they experience are always more deeply felt that any other generation. This generational selfishness is now a common way for some to think about everything.
I spent hours discussing this with my pal and it was clear that he no idea of how this solution would work and no idea of this would lead to a more progressive replacement for Obama. The entire idea is just magical thinking. Much of it relies on the idea that things have never been so bad, that America is ‘stick a fork in it’ done and that nothing will improve. He convinced himself that Barack Obama was a magical negro who could fix everything and is upset that that did not turn out to be true. So naturally it is Obama who should go.
The argument made no sense when he made it and your effort does not do any better.
Cheers
Dennis G.
@Mnemosyne:
And let’s not forget that the New Deal left most people of color out of the game. Social Security was designed NOT to apply to agricultural workers specifically to appease Southern white Democrats who did not want to see this program give new benefits to black folks. FDR went along with that and many, many other sops to keep the Confederate Party of his day voting for his larger agenda.
It was good in the long run that he made those compromises, but he did make them and they hurt many more people than any of the compromises that Obama has made to date.
The story of progress is a story of compromises and the one step forward two steps back shuffle. The idea of “the Great Leap Forward” is a myth.
Cheers
Bob Loblaw
@Dennis G.:
I rather wish you had answered my post instead of one that advocates a President voluntarily resigning for no reason “for the good of the country.” I don’t even understand where that thinking comes from. This isn’t an Aaron Sorkin show.
Whereas I do think it’s interesting to find out how people define “perfecting the Union” here in the twenty first century, now that 80% of the civil rights issues have been largely settled.
Is simply waiting out the white supremacist legacy good enough, or is more required?
Valdivia
Very late to this thread but just wanted to thank Dennis for this great great post.
El Cid
Sometimes I wonder why the fake super-Constitutional fetishist teatard types think the Constitution set up a Congress anyway.
After all, you don’t need a legislative body, right? You just have a bunch of judges who share your outlook on society interpret the Constitution as to whether or not something is permitted.
Clearly, Congress and the passing of bills into laws is un-Constitutional.
alwhite
@Dennis G.:
I agree that talk of removing President Obama is silly and self-defeating but I do not see this path to a brighter future you claim to see either.
Where is the path to full employment when billionaires can make so much more with Chinese labor? Particularly now that it is popular to believe the government can not create jobs and that eliminating the deficit without raising taxes is job one.
Where is the path to the social safety net that is even half as good as the Europeans enjoy – with is attendant increase is social mobility and standard of living?
Where is the path to human rights when administrations both R and D violate the 4th & 5th amendment. rendition and torture without a peep of decent from the press or the people?
Where is the path that does not contain more spending on military adventures to prop up the failing structures of America’s oligarchy?
The fault is not purely President Obama’s but we just passed a moment in time when the supposed forces of good controlled all three branches of government and, through timidity, incompetence, sedition or who cares why managed to reinforce all those bad ideas.
gene108
@Dennis G.: I wonder what people learn in history classes, regarding the Constitution and compromise.
The whole thing was a bunch of compromises, which the people who wrote it realized wasn’t 100% infallible, which is why the built in an amendment process.
The first compromise was the anti-federalists demanding 10 amendments be added to the Constitution right off the bat and the federalists agreeing to it.
You even have vulgar compromises, like the 3/5th’s Compromise for counting slaves. I’ve never heard it referred to anything other than the 3/5th’s Compromise. It was a trade-off to get the Southern colonies on board.
Good government comes from compromise. I just don’t get why more folks don’t demand this.
jwb
@Seebach: That’s more or less Eco’s point: “The top-secret dope on Berlusconi that the US embassy in Rome beamed to the Department of State was the same story that had come out in Newsweek the week before.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Sounds like the story of Jesus. And his “allies” have been making up for that shortcoming ever since.
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: WTF, you tell Dennis basically to take a hike and then get offended when he doesn’t reply to you? What a shit.
JMS
Magical thinking. Exactly right. What happened to being reality-based? When we were all in agreement that Bush was the worst president ever, it was easy to overlook or not know about certain traits of one’s fellow travelers, but now that the situation is different, I am completely sick of “wand wavers” or whatever you want to call the people who want their magical unicorn ponies right now and only see what they want to see.
But I suppose it’s a truism that the people who shout loudest in politics are the one that think things are the most wrong. It gets to the point where people can’t be happy about anything as long as there is still one hungry child or an endangered tiger or something. I absolutely think that in general things are trending in the right direction and have been, steadily. It’s just that “in general” tends to go in a 1 step forward, .95 step back fashion, so some individual or individuals do tend to go backwards even as some other group zooms ahead.
If I were making the rules, I’d stipulate that if anyone has a criticism, they would be required to also offer a better solution for what Democrats should do, and one that’s a bit more concrete than “it would all work out if he just shouted louder.” If you can’t, then limit yourself to complaining about Republicans.
About the tax situation specifically, frontal attacks clearly failed, but I think tax bracket reform might be another way to go at it. Schumer tried to scramble something together with his millionaire tax proposal, but there wasn’t enough time to organize a coherent argument or strategy. Imagine, then, instead a tax bracket reform initiative (perhaps as part of a bigger tax reform initiative) that allowed for more tax brackets in the over $250K category. You could incite a class war between the $300K/year and just getting by in Manhattan crowd and the million dollar a year people. It would be nice to see some creativity applied to these problems. If you assume that many Republicans aren’t that bright, it would be extra cool to sneak something productive by them.
Final cynical comment from me. Deficits don’t matter to either party. I think the last person who cared about them was probably Bill Clinton, so don’t believe anyone who is a partisan of either side who claims to care about deficits. Economically speaking, partisans of the two parties break down roughly among those who would like to punish the rich and those who’d like to punish the poor. The interesting thing about this deal is that it punishes neither, but just makes the debt go up…and if you don’t care about the deficit, it doesn’t really matter. Of course, someday it may turn out that the deficit actually does matter.
Stillwater
And yet, the American electorate continues to elect them as reps and Preznits. WTF does that say about the American people?
Time to lay the blame squarely where it belongs – US citizens. I mean, you can’t blame the snake-oil salesman for trying to sell his product, right? You blame the fool who bought it for thinking he was getting a deal.
Right? Amirite??!!
Stillwater
@El Cid: You just have a bunch of judges who share your outlook on society interpret the Constitution as to whether or not something is permitted.
Hell yeah! It would eliminate lots of effluvia and distractions from daily life, like the heavy burden of voting, and informing oneself of policy proposals, and the need to listen to talk radio. Just set the thing up with the right people in place, and … relax!
I think you’re onto something here.
Socraticsilence
@Mnemosyne:
Well lets be honest no one who holds Civil Rights dear could idolize FDR- seriously, the man wasn’t just bad for his era, as a President he was arguably the worst Civil Rights president of the 20th century other than the actively racist Wilson.
Socraticsilence
@alwhite:
In fairness the European Social Safety net is a freaking faustian bargin- seriously, there is almost no concievable way that it survives in its current form the looming demographic crisis.
steve
if you want to see something really interesting, get presidential election outcomes back to 1968 and graph the republican % of the vote. 1968’s when Nixon and the brand-new Southern Strategy stormed the white house with 60% of the vote. Since then, as the demographics have changed, and the country’s become less white, southern, racist, uneducated, and christian, there is a clear general downward trend. In fact, if you draw a trendline you would find it landing, in 2008, exactly on McCain’s 43%.
In other words, all other things being equal, the demographics have just passed a tipping point, where GOP presidents will be very rare until the party fundamentally changes to find new constituents.
steve
But in each of those 5 examples, Americans are better off now than a century ago.