I’m already tired of talking about that Drew Westen article about how Obama should have given better speeches and demonized the banksters more. I’m not saying it’s all wrong, but I mostly agree with the Monkey Cage’s take on it, that demonizing the banksters more might not have worked that well and that Westen is “fundamentally wrong in its portrayal of presidential power within American politics”.
American politics is a disaster in most ways. Media commentary is a mix of right-wing propaganda, both-sides-do-it tripe, and infantile fantasies about Reagan and Churchill. Very Serious People — at Brookings, at CFR, at S&P — are consistently wrong about almost everything, from Iraq to austerity. A political party used to sometimes nominate smart competent leaders like Eisenhower and Bush I now elects extremists, some of whom wanted to see a huge government default. The one bright spot is that the Democratic party often nominates good presidential candidates. Whether or not Clinton and Obama got/get everything right, they have to be near the very top of the heap of western political leaders of the last 25 years in terms of intellect and political talent.
I just don’t see why it makes sense to focus much energy on why they are, or were, so awful.
I realize that this makes sound like the worst kind of fanboi, but everything I said is true, right?
Maude
You are correct.
I’m not a fangirl.
FlipYrWhig
Westen studies rhetoric, so he thinks rhetoric is the magic solution to political problems. QED. It’s like that saying about how all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Jeremy H
Yep, I think that pretty much sums it up.
kgc16
Yes.
KG
because some people want everything right now, they don’t really want to engage in politics, the actual process of arguing, debating, and (dare I say it) convincing. they just want to stomp their feet and hold their breath until they get what they want. doesn’t matter where you are on the political spectrum, or what your pet issue is, there are a shitton of these pains in the ass out there.
Samara Morgan
this is just stupid first culture intellectual wankery.
go over to the LoOG where they dig glibertarian c1rcle jerks.
Ben Cisco
Yeah, you nailed it all right.
__
My head hurts sometimes just thinking about how far off the rails these crackpots are going to go between now and Election Day 2012. Can’t wait to see what happens when all their crap doesn’t work, AGAIN.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
One thing you’ll never be able to say about balloon-juice.com – “shit just got real.”
.
.
FlipYrWhig
@KG: I see you’ve read the Freddie DeBoer comments on the last mistermix thread too. Somehow the people with the grandest visions of building lasting movements are also the ones who get tired of all the disagreement and tensions and give up within, like, a day and a half.
aisce
what’s the point of this post? blog as therapy? why talk about things “you’re tired of talking about?” obligation? to who?
and that monkey cage post is completely wrong. his prescription was for obama to be more moderate and bipartisan? to what purpose? not passing health care reform? a tax cuts only stimulus? how is any of that a good idea? then he’d just have no health care reform and a still shitty economy. and why on earth would anybody think there are “70-80 votes in the senate” on anything but the most uncontroversial reforms? very weird.
El Cid
Entertaining as hell: Megyn Kelly (FOXNOOZ) rips the hell out of right wing radio ass-hat Mike Gallagher because when she, Kelly, was out for maternity leave and he was talking about that with one of his radio guests, Gallagher bleated “what a racket” and how men don’t get to do that.
Back from work, Kelly had him on and righteously ripped him one — including shoving his idiot face into the fact that, yes, with the FMLA, men can take time off for leave.
Watch the video via Media Matters.
What’s more, Kelly complains that the US is the only industrialized country which doesn’t require FML with pay.
Less funny: I didn’t hear any mention by Kelly in her rant about who passed the FMLA, and which political party and ideology blocked the requirement of having pay.
It’s all fucking fun and games until something benefits the right wing hacks themselves.
Still, it was a moment.
Villago Delenda Est
Can’t find much to contend with you on this account.
Our media is severely fucked up. It’s become hereditary, which means the rot only gets more extensive and it becomes devoted to defending the status quo of its hereditary members.
This is the sort of shit that leads to, oh, I don’t know, people going nuts in the streets of London and Birmingham.
PeakVT
I think the reason so many people direct their anger at Clinton or Obama is that they feel those two leaders have betrayed them. People usually get more angry at traitors than known enemies because traitors betray trust, and leave the betrayed feeling particularly vulnerable. The problem is that Clinton and Obama (and many other leaders elsewhere) only betrayed the ideal that people formed in their minds about them – though of course that ideal was formed with encouragement from the leaders’ campaign organizations. OTOH, it’s hard to get people to rally around a honest, accurate description of a politician.
It’s not entirely rational, but humans aren’t all that rational.
no video at work
@Samara Morgan:
“go over to the LoOG . . .”
Couldn’t I just have a boiling oil enema? It would be less painful and as useful as the spillage at the leak of odoriferous gentlemen
John Puma
You “just don’t see why it makes sense to focus much energy on why they are, or were, so awful.”
Because Obama has done NOTHING to reverse the effects of “their awfulness” and repeatedly treats them with deference when the good portion of them belong in jail. Capisce?
(Either) Bush competent?
Jay B.
@KG:
So, you think that a call for more and better rhetoric isn’t “the actual process of arguing, debating, and (dare I say it) convincing.”
Rhetoric FAIL. Politics FAIL. Point MISSED.
My God you people are tiresome.
Doug, the economy is in a shambles. The banksters are very much part of the problem. By not articulating the problem, or addressing it in any meaningful way, people will either never know what the problem was OR know what it was and will never trust the people who ignore it again.
It takes a Democrat not to run against unpopular positions held by loathsome people.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
srsly. How old is that little twerp, 12?
I STILL can’t get over that masterpiece of adolescent drek he posted yesterday. I do believe it’s the worst post I’ve ever seen on this blog.
Bob
This post is all about Freddie and what a fucking turd he is. Right?
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: Perhaps there could be some kind of new law regulating the financial sector. No, that wouldn’t count, because you need to say the word “banksters” while doing it.
Lolis
The Obama failed us crowd is pretty light on any evidence that the majority of Democrats or even non-Republican voters agree with them. Obama’s approvals are pretty stunning considering how deep in the shit we are. I think maybe that is part of why the feel need to do the emo primal scream.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
“Intellectual wankery”?
You owe me a new irony meter…you just blasted my current one to atoms.
MattF
@PeakVT:
I do agree that the right-wing hatred aimed at Clinton/Obama needs to be explained– but ‘traitor’ is ‘way too rational.
Lev
My emo-at-Obama energy has also pretty much dissipated at this point. Rehashing old stuff isn’t going to do much good, and the GOP is destroying itself but good in the polls. We’ll see what happens.
I will say this. Obama is getting more grief I believe than Clinton because Clinton pretty much governed like he said he would. He enacted free trade because he believed in it. He did welfare reform because he believed in it. He tried (and failed) to get healthcare reform because he believed in it. Sure, liberals were annoyed at the former two things, but it’s not like they didn’t know. He picked fights well with the GOP and won them. Also, his economic team made the correct assumptions and the economy grew well.
Obama’s more progressive than Clinton (and way more so than Carter), but he ran as a progressive, not as a consciously Third Way candidate. That led to progressives adopting different–and far more ambitious–expectations for his presidency. And in many areas the rhetoric just didn’t match–for one example Obama has been frankly awful on civil liberties, once a hobbyhorse issue of his. Granted, some of this stuff has been beyond just his authority, but the rhetoric hasn’t matched the results. I’m not sure this is compelling to me at this time, but it does make sense to me.
capt
People whining for Obama to “call out” the republicans and teabaggers have yet to ever make a case how that will help anything or anybody but their own person?
How will it move the ball down the field? How will it help get anything done?
I guess if it makes some people feel better it is worth a total distraction from getting stuff done.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: “No one is listening to me. I’m here to lead you and solve your problems! The key is to stand and fight for principles and build an unstoppable progressive movement. And then… OK, shut up. OK, seriously, shut up. All right, you guys, knock it off. Fine, now you don’t get my leadership and clever solutions, I’m leaving, I give up.”
no video at work
@PeakVT:
I’d agree with everything except the “it’s hard to get people to rally around a honest, accurate description of a politician”.
Its not hard – its damn near impossible. we represent a very tiny minority of the voting public here. And even within this tiny minority there are many people who didn’t really know who or what they were voting for any time they voted. They tend to project their desires onto people who they believe think like they do. Obama is a particularly egregious case because so little was widely known about him. He looked pretty, spoke well, seemed intelligent and the Republicans branded him as a liberal so a lot of people who didn’t want to do the hard part of reading and studying projected their wants onto him.
Reagan won for the same reasons. Poll after poll showed Americans hated his policies yet the elected and reelected him because they projected their thoughts onto him.
El Cid
Well, we might want to make sure that in Presidential campaigns, candidates talk a lot less about what they say they’re going to do and make happen, and more about the complexities of the way legislation works, and the alignment of forces in the legislature and the media.
That way, fewer people would have overly high expectations of what a candidate would do once elected. Often people seem to get the idea that a President would be able to do much, much more than he could, and much more careful and limited claims by candidates could help avoid those incorrect notions.
Bill Murray
I suppose it depends on the qualifier much, but if you don’t want to see mistakes repeated, understanding how the mistakes came to be and how they relate to the current situation is pretty useful
PeakVT
@MattF: I wasn’t talking about right-wing hatred. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
Lev
@eemom: He had me at the point where he said he wouldn’t vote for Obama for President. Look, I have lots of disagreements with the guy, but in our system control of the executive branch is everything. If you are willing to kill off Obama’s presidency then you don’t know much about politics.
Not to get all Seinfeld on everyone, but have you ever noticed now all those “primary Obama”/Naderite types tend to be straight white guys? Very rarely do you see women, minorities or gay folks jumping on board that raft. At least, I haven’t. This should be telling us something.
eemom
hey DougJ, you should check out Dana Milbank’s latest. It is quite literally enough to make even the most hardened Village-watcher sick to their stomach.
That guy is such a disgusting toad. Every now and then he throws out a reasonable column, which causes people to think maybe he’s found Jesus or something, which drives me nuts because it’s happened so many times. He ALWAYS goes right back up to #11 on the smugometer. Fucking asshole.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
Whatever. I know it offends your delicate, oh-so-sensible, feelings to, you know, get rather mad at the people who have ruined the world and those who enabled them, but you know, we must think of Obama and how impossible it must be to lift a fucking finger and address what our actual problems are, instead of what he wants them to be. Poor guy!
Also, I apologize on behalf of the world for calling anyone a “bankster”, they deserve SO MUCH MORE CREDIT than I am able to give them. They are our betters Flip, glad you pointed it out.
FlipYrWhig
@capt:
It’s because of “framing,” dude. You have to “set the narrative.” Then the stupid people are like putty in your hands, whoops, I mean, then the very smart people realize that they already agree with what you want. And then you command an unstoppable force of mindless automata, um, I mean, then you speak for the people, and then something something something, and then Republicans are scared and run away and you get what you want. But Obama won’t do that, because, hegemony.
Jewish Steel
@eemom:
@FlipYrWhig:
Maybe here isn’t the place to Freddie pile, but that post plus a pack of Gauloises and a beret might impress some freshman undergrad at Starbucks. But if homeboy thinks he’s going to wow the B-J crew with that kind of bush-league shit?
I don’t know, he’s going to have to try harder.
burritoboy
We do have to look at the other under-inspiring recent leaders we’ve experienced in the Western World and put any disappointments into perspective. Italy has been run as Berlusconi’s underage whorehouse for 10 years. Belgium hasn’t had a government at all for the past year. Sarkozy wishes he could be Berlusconi. The UK got Tony Blair, then Gordon Brown, then David Cameron (what a depressing list of people). Angela Merkel’s going to blow up the Euro because she doesn’t understand that we’re not going to have Weimar II because the ECB allows 4% inflation instead of 1%. Japan? Do they still have an actual government anymore? Russia’s run by an alliance between the KGB, the oligarchs and organized crime. Ireland’s last government managed to bankrupt the entire country.
There’s a few folks around the edges who haven’t been more or less absurd failures, but they’re generally from extremely small countries. For large developed countries, Clinton and Obama are pretty much among the best leaders of the past 30 years. (Admittedly, some of the politicians from developing countries have been substantially better).
aisce
@ no video at work
bull. shit.
more is known about barack obama as a political mind than any president since fucking jefferson, maybe. he could plausibly be described as the most important american political philosopher in the last decade. you know exactly what he thinks and cares about. it’s one of his more admirable qualities. for the most part, at least. he’s still a two faced politician when he needs to be.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@FlipYrWhig:
That is just beautiful! :)
They can’t persuade people to think differently, because they don’t bother to understand the dissent.
Jewish Steel
@Jewish Steel: Also speaks volumes to ABL’s toughness that she keeps coming back in spite of 10X (with 10X the nastiness) the push back Freddie got.
Marc
@Jay B.:
I hope you have a good use for all of that straw. Isn’t it a bit warm to need a bonfire?
Lev
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, just like that “Overton Window” concept. Here’s how it really works:
– If you elect a lot of liberal Democrats to Congress, you’re going to get new social programs, protection of women’s and minorities’ rights, and environmental legislation.
– If you elect a lot of conservative Republicans to Congress, you’re going to get a lot of tax cuts and deregulation.
– If you have divided government, you get a whole lot of nothing.
That is literally all there is to it. No framing is going to magically make those political realities disappear.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT (but come to think of it the title of the thread could be the title of this video) THIS is why I love my fellow countrymen and women. Clapham Cleanup – “After a six hour wait, residents finally got the go-ahead to clean-up their streets. Telegraph TV was there to capture the day.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8691837/London-riots-Clapham-comes-together-for-community-clean-up.html
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: I’m sure you’re the toughest character in all of the grad lounge.
Linnaeus
Folks might be interested in this Democratic Strategist memo about the “bully pulpit”.
Keith G
I just do not get the “either/or”.
Are all voices of concern calling Obama awful? Do all those who express the wish for some changes in tactics imply that Obama must be primaried?
All modalities of political thought have extremists, but treating most who type things you disagree with as extremists quashes intelligent discourse. But then, I am typing comments on a blog.
I want and need progressive change in this country. Obama is the best chance for that change, so I want and need him to be elected. If his main argument for reelection is, “I am not as bad as the other guy”, I will be very worried.
Elie
@FlipYrWhig:
Sing it brother… that should be framed and placed on the wall. They are all for the democratic process — unless it involves developing consensus and bringing folks along through learning…nope — its my way or the highway too often!
CalD
I really thought Jonathan Chait nailed this one to the wall. A “parody of liberal fantasizing” indeed.
Poopyman
@Lev:
Really? What?
Joel
I like Freddie. He’s had some nice posts in the past. I’m not counting yesterday’s among them.
Comrade Luke
@CalD:
Yup, even the liberal New Republic agrees.
huckster
@Lev:
you mean like jane hamsher? Dan Choi? john Aravois?
seriously?
Dave
The bottom line is that people like Westen or Hamsher or whomever want an imperial presidency, but from the Left. They decried W’s run because it was a Republican, not because it dangerously unbalanced the system of checks and balances. If Obama was pulling what W did but for progressive policies, they’d be tripping over themselves to praise him.
Dave
Well, if he can’t demonize banksters, he’s got nothing to run on. Unless it’s “Help the Banksters.” Or, “I’ll Get The Best Deals Republicans Will Give Us.”
Politics!
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
YEEOWUCH! Good one.
Here’s what your steely-eyed approach — since it’s exactly the same as what Obama has done because, as we all know, anything Obama has done is exactly what anyone could have hoped he could have achieved (it’s your mantra, basically) — has accomplished: A GOP house, a terrible economy, mediocre HCR and Financial Reform that leaves Wall St. nearly untouched. Both HCR and FinReg have some good things in them, but hardly enough to run on since HCR is unpopular and FinReg technical and obscure — and those were the two BIG successes.
Four More Years!! After all, what choice did Obama have? Figureheads are really at the mercy of other actors, after all.
lol
@huckster:
He’s pretty off base about the leading firebagger voices, but the Netroots readership on whole *is* predominantly white, male, middle-aged and upper-income, even when compared to Internet users overall.
A Mom Anon
@Litlebritdifrnt: Aww,I love those people. I hope that catches on wherever there’s destruction.
I just hope people are safe and things are better tonight.
Dan
@Poopyman: That the people engaging in destructive behavior have the least to lose?
Southern Beale
Bush I was not smart and competent. He was an idiot who was surrounded by smart and competent people, some of them.
Bush I was a former CIA director who didn’t even have the support of the people underneath him. Even THEY thought he was a moron.
The entire Bush clan is an example of American patrimony at its worst, the clubby “falling upward” elitism in which privileged whites are entitled to certain things and goddamit they get them.
Bob
I spend most of my time on the GOS – much more of substance over there (and junk too, it’s a bigger stage). Here we get a lot of clever snark and superciliousness.
Many over here pretend not to understand the frustration on the left, or mock it as naive and juvenile. Have you been watching events over the past week? The country has been dealing with extortionists for years – every piece of legislation that passes includes a payoff – to the insurance industry, oil companies, banks, defense contractors, and, most of all, rich people – that is as productive to society as Don Corleone’s 25% cut from all the businesses on his block. Except with the Republicans their cut tends to be in the 60% range or higher. We cannot continue to function with such “compromises”. Isn’t that evident by now? Or should be behave like “adults” a little longer until we turn everything over to the Don for $1?
gene108
@Lev:
No.He.Didn’t.
Obama ran as a centrist.
Most liberally liberals were all swooning over John Edwards, because Edwards was wanting to start a new War on Poverty.
Southern Beale
@lol:
Calling bullshit on that one.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Litlebritdifrnt: Thanks!
lol
@Jay B.:
HCR, Fin Reform, Stimulus, auto bailout, Lily Ledbetter, DADT repeal, student loan reform, START, UI extensions, etc, etc.
Obama got more of his agenda out of Congress and onto his desk in two years than Bush got in eight.
Southern Beale
LOL.
Rasputin with Michelle Bachmann’s eyes.
Hilarious.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob:
So what’s your alternative?
@Jay B.:
I’m sure a lot more pointing out how Republicans were blocking everything would have turned that tide. Oh, yeah, I forgot, he did that, repeatedly. But not enough, or else, by the power of framing, he’d have accomplished that most important of political objectives, a slightly less sullen Jay B.
NonyNony
@Dave:
I’m actually not sure what Hamsher wants anymore. If you can tease reason out of her madness you’re one up on me.
Judas Escargot
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, to be fair about it, powdered wigs and scented handkerchiefs are a real bitch to keep clean in a fistfight.
lol
@Southern Beale:
Daily Kos Demographics: Still White. Over 50. Well Off. Male.
Similar surveys for other Netroots blogs say the same, though I believe FDL has a lot more women.
Michael Hall
@ FlipYrWhig:
I’m sure you’re the toughest character in all of the grad lounge.
Yeah, and you strike me as one tough hombre yourself, cowpoke. So long as you’re kept well-stocked with kneepads.
pluege
Clinton undermined Welfare and undermined workers with NAFTA, but righted the economy and strengthened Social Security.
obama is trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, and is pushing the republican agenda to transfer ever more wealth to the wealthiest and destroy the economy. He is also on board with undermining a woman’s right to choose.
pick your poison. But they are clearly not equal in my book.
General Stuck
For Drew Weston, and other tender souls wringing their hands that Obama and dems in general R DOIN IT WRONG, here is a little cold water for that notion.
The usual caveats for polling apply this far out from the election, but this one is significant in its degree toward the negative on the GOP, and from the same methodology and asked question since 1992.
El Cid
Given the prominence with which FDR, the New Deal, ‘how legislation passes,’ and such are discussed here and among liberals (etc) in general, at least a few of you might be interested in this new book by the nation’s best ever scholar on the class (wealth) based domination* of the US power structure, at a time when such forces were in a historically visible clash.
The point would not be to suggest that such power-elite-backed design of and passing of policies tends to lead to good results. No. It’s the opposite.
What the authors do is focus (in this case) on a set of examples in which people today (and many decades of scholars) appear to be most convinced that the policies must have been opposed to upper-class interests in general, and reveal the actual nexus of drafting and support by individual super-wealthy and rapacious capitalists, corporate leadership, and the ‘think tanks’ they created and backed that were involved in even these great, liberal reforms.
Something which would appear to violate the role of upper-class dominance instead, according to the records of actions and words by those involved, instead confirms it.
And yet those same interests backing those New Deal policies opposed the very government and politicians doing so!
Needless to say, it should be a little less surprising to find a majority of cases in which such upper-class domination of US power is indeed counter to the interests of the rest of us. Particularly since the corporate counter-insurgency against New Deal reforms in the late 1960s (from whence we get one of our favorite sources for talkie-talk shows from think tank divisions, the Business Roundtable).
It’s an expansion of scholarly articles Domhoff did earlier. Surprisingly enough for scholars of these matters, it’s based on actual empirical research of who did and said what, rather than intuitive notions of the majesty of this or that force.
“Domination” of our system by the upper classes and the power elites does not, at least in this case, mean that they win every time, and obviously for the primary thesis, neither does it mean that they win every time and at the entire cost of other interests.
For people who would like to take a look at the process by which the super-rich gets their desires made real, even in situations which everyone today seems to presume their interests were being uniformly defeated, check it out.
I know it’s confusing for a number of people that there can be an empirically-based theory of American power rooted in the domination of it by its uppermost classes without it being “Marxist” (that is, if the term has any actual meaning, and isn’t some weird notion that any theory of power involving economic ‘classes’ must be “Marxist”), but reality is what it is, and vaguely similar ideas aren’t owned by one person or intellectual tendencies.
Zifnab
We need a hero!
I’m holding out for a hero until the end of the night.
He’s gotta be strong,
And he’s gotta be tough,
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight.
I’m holding out for a hero, ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure,
And it’s gotta be soon,
And he’s gotta be larger than life.
eemom
@NonyNony:
She wants what she’s always wanted, which is to graduate from nobody blogger to A list Villager.
That’s why she hates Obama so much. She saw herself as Press Secretary or something like that in a Clinton II Administration. Not saying she would have been, but I’m convinced she had her eyes on it.
dedc79
It’s far more comforting to lay the blame on Obama because we voted for him and that’s something we control (to an extent). It’s far more difficult/troubling to come to grips with the fact that this country is in the grips of a republican party that has gone fully insane and that is entirely out of our control.
lol
@pluege:
Sure there’s a difference: one passed legislation harming workers in your imagination and the other passed it in real-life.
Dave
@lol:
That’s just not the stuff of a national campaign, Obama can’t run on them. Nor would he! He RUNS FROM his auto bailout! (Not that he should…)
In an ideal world, he’d run on “I fixed the economy.” But he can’t; less ideal world, “I would have fixed the economy, but…banksters/Republicans.” But he’s unwilling. So he’s going to run on, “Economy could be worse!” and “Mitt Romney is kinda weird, right?”
It’s going to be awful.
ChrisNYC
O/T
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/08/couldnt_happen_to_a_nicer_guy.php?ref=fpblg
First question for Mitt: Will members of the Tea Party play a role in your administration?
Paul in KY
@capt: I think he’d be telling the truth, for one thing. Succinctly laying the blame where it rests (over & over again) is educating the low info voters on whom they should be mad at.
Emerald
@CalD: And this one, that was linked by somebody on an earlier thread: Mischaracterizing FDR to Indict Obama
The money quote:
(Emphasis added)
Chris
@General Stuck:
I wonder how much of that gridlock is moderates realizing that they’re driving the country off a cliff, and how much is crazy teabaggers disappointed that the Republicans weren’t driving it off fast enough… or blaming them because the debt ceiling ended up being raised.
Back in 1992, a lot of those new “unfavorable view” guys probably went to Ross Perot, not Bill Clinton.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
By agreeing with them, repeatedly. We’re a family budget. We all have to share our sacrifices. What could possibly go wrong by misattributing the problem and then giving the enemy 98% of what they wanted — only to have the market roil, even after giving the store away to the GOP. Genius! Oh, maybe he can blame them! Why bother?
My life’s great, actually. My mistake is that I give a shit about politics. If Obama wanted to assure himself a single-term, he couldn’t have planned it any better. Ineffectual when he fights, totally effective when the plutocrats want to avoid accountability, seen as a compromiser, claims credit for legislation that isn’t seen as a help and is the co-author of a deficit-cutting blueprint for austerity that will both kill the poor and middle class in the long-term AND is causing economic turmoil in the short term.
Terrible policy. Terrible politics. And still, you think it’s about me being “sullen”. Political genius!
moonbat
@pluege: For someone who has been trying so hard to destroy Social Security, you’d think he would have made more progress by now. I am so sick of people claiming this. Where’s the proof? Give me some proof or STFU.
Judas Escargot
@capt:
Here’s why the Dems get steamrolled so much: Politics isn’t baseball or football. It’s more like hockey. The goons/enforcers aren’t out there to score goals. They’re out there to keep the other team (ahem) “distracted”, so the forwards can score more easily.
The GOP gets this, and the Dems don’t. So Democrats end up wasting most of their precious airtime defending against BS that isn’t even true most of the time. Instead of fighting fire with fire, most Dems wait pointlessly for the refs (MSM) to see how unfairly they’re being treated.
lol
@General Stuck:
It bodes well for taking back the House. Holding the Senate is an uphill battle but I don’t think the situation is as bad as people make it sound.
There are definitely a disproportional number of Dem senators up for re-election in 2012, but I believe people are overestimating how many are actually in jeopardy in a presidential year.
Paul in KY
@Southern Beale: Agreed. Bush I wasn’t a hard core ideologue who didn’t care if America crashed & burned on his watch (unlike his son).
KG
@FlipYrWhig: nah, didn’t read the comments… just an observation from a decade and a half of following politics.
@Jay B.: except it wasn’t a call for more and better rhetoric. It was a call for calling the other side assholes. Granted, they are assholes, but a bunch of people voted for them and calling them assholes isn’t going to actually, you know, accomplish anything.
Jay B.
@Dave:
Agreed. I just don’t get the reluctance people have here of running against Wall St. and the banks. Or the GOP either, for that matter.
FlipYrWhig
@dedc79:
And the nature of that insanity is qualitatively different: they don’t even want to do things that they _support_ ideologically, or that their constituents would like, because that would hand the president a victory. I don’t think we’ve ever seen that. And the way to fix it has to do with winning the next round of elections, because that’s the only way to push Republicans back into the kind of venal self-interest that used to be the default position of professional politicians.
The rhetoric/framing idea has some applicability to how to get more votes in the next election. It has no applicability to how to get better legislation out of the current Congress. We need to be mindful of that distinction.
PGFan
By refusing to call out the republicans for their extraordinarily damaging behaviors, Obama legitimizes those behaviors, and encourages them to continue (and escalate).
By allowing banksters to pay no price for behaviors ranging from extreme incompetence to blatant criminality, he sends the clear message that the rich and connected can break any number of laws with impunity. Also, that while some poor schmuck in outside-the-beltway-land can be fired for poor job performance, rich and powerful people will often be rewarded for poor job performance, or at least will retain their jobs.
By allowing the abuse of Bradley Manning he sends the message that the powerful are protected but the powerless individual can expect no mercy.
Etc.
Many people persist in interpreting Westen’s article as a call for a bunch of accusatory speeches. That’s missing the point. Narratives are not speeches. Narratives are the underlying story arc which speeches support and defend and promote.
The underlying narrative for much of the right wing is basically biblical. Much of their appeal is based on the notion that they are upholding the Bible. It’s all bullshit, but it works. It works for a number of reasons, one of which is that they have promoted a central platform or rationale that underpins their activities. The Bible is filled with contradictions, as are republican positions. People who don’t know any better are comforted and persuaded by repubs because the repubs continually emphasize that they are “good people who uphold the Bible, blah, blah, blah” and liberals are “bad people.”
The repubs have a narrative. The Dems don’t. Therefore, the Dems are continually forced into having to have very specific, usually somewhat technical, rationales for each issue they confront. The Dems have to attempt to educate voters about everything, all the time. The pubs don’t. The pubs just bring it all back to: we’re good, they’re bad.
Since the Dems won’t/don’t provide a coherent counter-narrative, the repubs benefit. The pubs are very very good at using any advantage they can get.
People who sneer at the potential power of the narrative are much the same as people who are shocked! shocked! that people are as much or more emotional than rational. They think people should be “rational” and they think “fuck em if they aren’t.” Which is all well and good, except it loses elections.
Many people say that unhappy progs fooled themselves – that they projected onto Obama things he never said he’d deliver. OK, fine. Let’s say that’s true. Now what? 2012 is ahead and a whole lot of people who voted in 2008 didn’t turn out in 2010. Who were they? Were they bloggers? Who here didn’t vote in 2010, however upset they were?
The people who didn’t vote were people who thought Obama was going to make changes that would improve their lives. Those changes didn’t happen. So now they have no change, and no narrative to keep them going.
A narrative is the story of Earnest Shackleton. When he was confronted with genuinely dire circumstances, circumstances that went on for months, he convinced his men that he would keep them alive and they believed him, and they lived. Anyone think that was rational? Anyone think that looking at the “facts” would have kept those men alive? You read that story and you understand that an unrelenting vision and willpower can be extraordinarily powerful.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Bob: I understand the frustration, Bob. I see it over there, and it’s the national version of the frustration we see at places like our jobs. But what I haven’t seen is how do we deal with the House. And calls to be willing to default or cut unemployment benefits in order to win an argument don’t make any sense to me. It’s kind of like dealing with that asshole boss who you know can’t get fired.
Ultimately, the frustration has to be channeled into removing Republicans from office when we get a chance, not going after our own.
El Cid
@Emerald: My god. I can’t believe the synthesis between my highlighting Domhoff’s book about the role of corporate / wealthy elites shepherding through New Deal policies, and your link to Pr. Schickler’s version (via Sides / WM) of some of the same points. Unpossible!
lol
@Jay B.:
Maybe you could explain in concrete terms what Obama gave away because over here, it looks like he gave up $20 billion or so in actual cuts over the next two years and wrote “I promise to” notes for the rest. These long-term deals have a long history of being ignored by future Congresses.
Remember how during the budget fight, everyone screamed that Obama got rolled by giving the Republicans what they wanted but in actuality, there were only a few hundred million in actual cuts.
There’s really no point in dealing with your type though. You ignore everything Obama actually says and lie about what he didn’t. You dismiss any and all accomplishments. And in your paranoid mind, Obama is always just about to justify all your worst fears.
There’s literally nothing that can make you happy. You’re a political hipster who tries to be cool by saying Obama is just too mainstream for you. I probably wouldn’t even have heard of the political party you support.
General Stuck
@Chris:
It could be some of all the things you mention, but actual tea partiers are a very small slice of the electorate, and
I wonder how many voters did, and cared to learn the particulars of what happened, beyond the fact that it DID happen, for the obvious reason the republicans were the ones that made it happen.
I think it was a powerful sound bite, repeated several times on national teevee with Obama addressing the nation and talking about a 4 trillion dollar deficit reduction, but with rich people paying more taxes, and the wingnuts slinking away from that, After running around crazy from the first day of Obama’s presidency wailing about tax and spend liberals, pointing at Obama.
Checkmate politics at it most raw
And whatever the reason, it is not a good thing to have in one month, so many voters get mad at you. Anger is often a lasting thing in politics from voters.
Marc
Jay: I actually listen to what Obama says, and you’re utterly mischaracterizing him. That’s what is so infuriating about discussions like this. People who dislike the man run his words and deeds through their filter and everything turns to shit. He has a secret plan to destroy Social Security (repeatedly asserted as fact in numerous comments here, and by prominent so-called progressives.) This is usually based on…appointing the wrong people to some committee, or some strained interpretation of something vague, or a leak, or whatever.
I think the public is firmly behind deficit cutting and he’s trying to minimize the harm. Clinton said “the era of big government is over” as a tactical move to limit the anti-government harm. I hear a lot of Obama’s rhetoric in the same way. I like a lot of what he actually says. I find no relationship between what he says and how it is covered by the so-called progressive left and by his critics here and elsewhere.
Obama will be running in 2012 on raising taxes on the rich and closing their loopholes. Count on it. Support him. Listen to what he says, not what people who hate him say he says. I don’t think you have bad intentions (and I share a lot of the frustration). But I think you’ve been swimming in an environment where there is a lot of willful misreading of the man, based on an utter lack of trust in his intentions.
lol
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I don’t think it’s an accident that an audience of upper-income white men have argued Obama should default to show how tough he is – they clearly believe they wouldn’t suffer any consequences from an actual default.
Jay B.
@KG:
That’s certainly not what Western’s essay was about. If anything, it was exactly the opposite. He’s calling on Obama to make a case about what he believes in. And, conversely, welcoming the scorn of unpopular people. So I have no idea what you were talking about. Western is clearly outlining what he sees to be Obama’s messaging problem and the problems with his political focus and his political rhetoric.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Jay B.: I’m all for attacking the Republicans. But that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying Obama’s a wuss for not attacking the Republicans, while 1) he has been, and 2) he still has to govern with the Republicans running the House.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: You choose not to listen. Obama and Democrats could rip into Wall Street and Republicans at every opportunity. It’d be gratifying. Investment banking is a pustule on the productive economy that somehow started to be mistaken for the head.
It wouldn’t, however, change the outcome of how Congress votes on the bills that come before it. Why would it? Republican Congresspeople are going to be scared of Obama’s bellicose statements and vote his way? Or they’re going to be scared that their constituents won’t vote for them, so they take a more progressive position instead? Does that square with your sense of what makes a Republican politician tick?
That’s why it’s a complaint that’s entirely “Here’s how I’d like Obama to sound” and not at all “Here’s how Obama could get better legislation.”
General Stuck
@PGFan:
Blah blah blah. Overthinking – How does it work?
Danny
@Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
You don’t have to apologize at all. Everything you said was true. And we could add that every piece of legislation Obama’s signed (except the debt ceiling deal) has made the country better for us, both as americans and progressives. I’d say it’s perfectly ok to even feel pride of what was accomplished 2008-2010.
lol
@Jay B.:
You’re a fucking broken record.
Westen says Obama needs to talk about his vision.
People point out that Obama has been repeatedly talking about his vision in speeches and townhalls around the country and that the right and left frequently lie and mischaracterize what he’s been saying.
In response, Westen’s defenders say Obama needs to talk about his vision.
FlipYrWhig
@PGFan:
What percentage of the American public do you think has heard one word about Bradley Manning, much less deduced A Message from it?
General Stuck
Been trying to invent a new term, that isn’t as incendiary as firebagger, or Idiot, to describe those on the left that come here with reams of polemic Obama fail bullshit narratives.
how abut OppoLeft? Of course firebagger and Idiot can remain operable for special occasions.
PGFan
.
Then why don’t people feel it?
What does it tell you when “things have been done for people that are good” and they don’t seem to know it?
Nied
In many ways I’m starting to think “Don’t Think of an Elephant” is becoming the left’s “Bell Curve.” Both books were written by psychologists about subjects they had no professional training in (at it’s heart the Bell Curve is just Statistical analysis mixed with evolutionary biology, and of course Lakoff was writing about political science), and both books ply their audiences with bias confirming bullshit (“the darkies were born lazy and stupid we need to cut their welfare!” or “if we just use the right words and are confrontational we’ll WIN ALL ELECTIONS!”) In the end though that’s all they are: bias confirming bullshit written by psychologists on subjects they know little about. The only problem is “Elephant” isn’t as easily falsifiable as “The Bell Curve” was, so while “The Bell Curve” has been flat out proven false, there’s still plenty of people who think that if Obama would just give speeches like FDR he’d have the same kind of success. Never mind that FDR controlled over 300 seats in the House and 80 in the Senate, it’s the speeches that got stuff passed!
Dave
@FlipYrWhig: “It wouldn’t, however, change the outcome of how Congress votes on the bills that come before it. Why would it?”
If it wouldn’t change anything, anything at all, then demonize the banksters. They’re demons, after all.
Jay B.
@lol:
That’s a plan! Well, there’s that and the actual cuts that will be coming from the Super Congress, which was part of the deal. Then, triggers.
Then, of course, there’s the tone-deaf stupidity of cutting anything during a shit economy. And the fact that he, along with the GOP, politicized raising the debt ceiling to begin with — adding “big deals” are easier to get than small ones.
Look, I know, you are desperately hoping that spin will hold sway over what Obama actually said and what he’s signed on to with Boehner’s blessing, but it’s a political loser. He wanted cuts. He got cuts. He has a mechanism in place which assuredly will drive WAY MORE CUTS, unaccountably, by a consensus of fucks. Crow all you want about the nominal cuts, but there didn’t have to be ANY. And certainly no Super Congress. But Grand Bargains to pass pro forma bills are really what democracy is all about.
lol
@FlipYrWhig:
At least this is progress from the claims that Manning was being “held without charge”.
PGFan
You mean if it’s only 1% of the public that knows it, it’s okay?
Chris
@Emerald:
From that article you linked to (a good read by the way):
Bingo.
There isn’t a broad, motivated left-wing or liberal movement forcing Obama to move to the left or face the public’s displeasure, the way there was for FDR. All there is in that respect seems to come from the right.
lol
@Jay B.:
If Obama was soooo interested in cuts, why didn’t we hear about cuts in 2009 and 2010?
I wonder what changed this year.
You mean the trigger cuts to defense spending and medicare providers? You mean the cuts that *should* be made?
FlipYrWhig
@Dave:
In the spirit of “Why the fuck not?”, fine. But Westen thinks that doing so would help Obama score more political victories. There’s no way that’s true. Consequently, when the subject is “Why isn’t Obama getting better results?”, “Because he doesn’t demonize bankers” is a total non sequitur.
Redshift
The one piece of rhetoric I think has been quite effective over the past thirty years is the demonizing of the word “liberal.” We have endless polls showing support for liberal policies, along with others showing that far more people identify as conservative than liberal. Now maybe this has no real effect on what policies get passed, but I find it hard to believe it has no effect on marshaling support if people are embarrassed to call themselves or their policies liberal, but proud to call them conservative (no matter how stupid they are.)
I don’t necessarily think it’s the president’s job to do this (though Republican presidents haven’t shied away from “tax and spend liberal” and “liberal elites”), but I think a time when record numbers of people seem to be waking up to the insanity of proudly “conservative” Tea Partiers is a prime opportunity to brand “conservative” as “crazy” and make sane people hesitant to publicly declare that they are conservatives.
It’s not a short term project, but I think it’s worth doing. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it can be done through social-media/blogging, since the people we’re talking to are already convinced.
JC
I do dig the IDEA of the “Obama Shaft”, even if it wouldn’t work in practice.
Obama Shaft: “Enough is ENOUGH!! I’ve HAD IT with these motherfucking Rethugs in this motherfucking Congress! Everybody strap in! I’m about to open a can of whoop-ass.”
EDIT: You think someone can Youtube the snakes audio onto an Obama speech?
FlipYrWhig
@PGFan: You’re the one folding it into a case about The Message Obama Sends. You can feel like it’s an atrocious thing to do to somebody, but it’s not part of The Message if no one knows what you’re talking about.
Jesse Ewiak
@Jay B.:
It’s good to see in your last sentence you’ve now admitted you would’ve preferred default to the deal. Because those were the options.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I think too many of these guys picture themselves as action heros. They think, “If I’d been president, and the GOP had taken the country hostage, this is how it would go down…”
GOP: Cut everything or the US gets it!
President liberal: Oh yeah! Take that! {whips out giant bully pulpit}
GOP: Oh my god! We release the hostage! Plus, here is the public option! Just don’t ever do that to us again!
Jay B.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’m saying Obama hasn’t come up with anything to counter the GOP. And he sure as shit isn’t running against those who fucked up the economy.
Things like:
.
A Federal Pay Freeze
2010 SOTU: “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.”
$4 trillion in cuts and: “To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms,” Mr. Obama said. “We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in.” (while then signing on to a deficit deal with NO tax increases).
How is that not his vision?
El Cid
@PGFan: I can’t speak so much on what Americans do and don’t know about the name “Bradley Manning” beyond “I guess zero”; what I do know is that his actions [or if not his, someone or set of someones like him] have helped to some of the most revolutionarily liberating and pro-democratic changes for millions and millions of people around the world, helping to free millions from tyranny that back when I was (briefly, though) in the military I would have been glad to have given my life for, and against generations of collaboration with their oppressive tyrants by our own government. This is true whatever the identities of the individuals involved are. US political discourse can be whatever it is; people around the world, however, are justifiably grateful for such law-breaking secrecy violations.
Ol' Dirty DougJ
@PGFan:
I don’t know what it tells me, this is something I think about a lot. I don’t know the answer.
JC
Forgot the Snakes link.
General Stuck
All this angst over Obama failing this or that, at about everything from the OppoLeft, is so much chattel for the unbelievers. His mid forty to lower 50’s approval is better than Reagan’s approval at the same presidenting point in time.
Doesn’t mean he is going to be reelected, but it does mean he has a solid block of support through thick and thin, and the wailing of him doing it wrong is not that dire, or dire at all.
Jay B.
@lol:
Because we did and you weren’t listening.
CNN, 2009.
Nov. 29, 2010:
The Fiscal Times, 2010.
So, yeah, you were saying?
Blue Neponset
@lol:
Because he was too busy talking about tax cuts to discuss spending cuts. How is that SS payroll tax cut working?
Danny
@General Stuck:
The origin of the incendiary terms has always been the fact that the Emoproggers try to call themselves “we progressives”, “us liberals”, “the left” or “true progressives” both implying that they represent a majority of the left wing of the democratic party and that disagreeing with them means you’re a “centrist”.
But neither has ever been true. Emobaggers have never made up more than maybe 5-15% of liberal democrats. From my point of view they’re trying to steal “progressive” and “liberal” away from me and say that I cant have it.
If they care about labels they should make up an appropriate, non-deceptive label for themselves that goes to the core difference of opinion between them and us. In my view, something like “confrontationists” would be apt, because that’s what they want: a confrontation doctrine as macro strategy for winning the political war.
But as things stand, and remembering who got us here, I don’t give a shit if their delicate feelings get a bit hurt by being called Emobaggers, etc. They made their bed.
Jay B.
@Jesse Ewiak:
Of course it was. It was the inevitability of having no message and no plan. The GOP did. The Democrats haven’t and won’t. The Administration wanted to make a splash.
FlipYrWhig
@lol: IMHO Obama’s view is probably something like this: “Well, everyone knows that over the long term there are cuts and adjustments that are going to have to be made, and even progressive politicians and progressive wonks believe that, so if the Republican majority is going to insist on cuts, let’s do what we can to ensure that those cuts are as backloaded as possible and cause as little pain as possible to the elderly, the ill, and the poor.”
(N.B. Likewise, the health-care bill involved “bending the cost curve,” the ill-fated energy bill involved minimizing the up-front costs of transition and offset those with superior long-term savings, etc.)
PGFan
@FlipYrWhig:
That was one of three examples; you chose the one you think most people don’t know about. It’s one of many examples of actions/non-actions of this administration that reinforce the message that the powerful are treated one way and the rest are treated differently. That message is conveyed because Obama (and other Dems) have chosen, repeatedly, to overlook, excuse, pretend, or approve things that in the rest of the world are considered bad.
Now, the messages get sent, but there’s no narrative to provide context for them. Maybe it’s defensible that Wall Street types can repeatedly break the law and be free and really rich, and the rest of us can’t break the law and be free, let alone rich(!) Or maybe there isn’t (I don’t think there is). Either way, we have no context, we have no explanation, we simply have actions taken that appear extraordinarily unfair and damaging.
Redshift
@PGFan:
It tells you that the economy sucks, and the fact that it would have been much worse isn’t as important to most people’s lives than the fact that it isn’t getting much better. Policies that will make the country much better in the long term are important; policies that make things better for people in the short term may do more to get someone reelected.
Geez, usually politically informed people gripe when politicians do stuff to get reelected, rather than complaining that the lack of that stuff proves that a politician hasn’t accomplished anything.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
It’s working fine. And is likely the quickest acting stimulus spending there is, next to maybe food stamps. Here is a clue for the clueless. Stimulus spending is no more or less in good or bad form, other than the speed at which it leaves the US treasury and is spent into the private economy. What is bought with it, is another topic of discussion, not related to stimulus spending.
The payroll tax cut, in addition to being one of the fastest stimulus deployed, is also quite liberal, in that it aides the poorest among us in hard times.
Next stupid question.
Marc
That’s after the bloody election Jay. You’re clearly not interested in talking, just in confirming your belief that Obama has bad intentions.
At this point these threads are like a bad relationship – people repeating their justifications for Why They Are Right and Why You Are Wrong without even listening to their partner.
Hell, I could write a Firebagger attack from memory at this point. And an angry reply to the exact same message.
Gotta check out of here for a bit. Here’s hoping for good news in Wisconsin.
les
@pluege:
Citation needed. Can’t you ratfuckers at least try? I refer you to this, which appears to have been written with you in mind.
wrb
@Danny:
Emobaggers is pretty good.
Good to keep the “baggers” because of of whom they mirror, but good to get rid of “Fire” as it gives too much importance to one site.
Nied
@Jay B.:
He said that in late November you say? Gosh surely nothing could have happened earlier in that month that would have forced his hand on the type of agenda he could pursue over the next 2 years right?
TK-421
If the only things that mattered to liberals and the American people at large were a person’s intellect and political talent, yes. But those aren’t the only things that matter, and as history has taught us over and over again they’re probably not even close to being the most important.
Results matter, not intellect or potential. And of all the governance results that Presidents have influence over, the economic result is the only thing the American people consistently care about.
And the economic result so far SUCKS. Yes, conservatism in all its stripes and flavors are largely to blame for this mess, but I doubt the American people will hold the Obama Administration blameless. In addition, the American people often care less about finding the “true” culprit to a failure than about fixing the f–king failure and getting everything back to normal/good.
Regardless of intellect or talent, the President has a responsibility to adequately respond to the situation he inherits. I wonder if the American people will sympathize with the argument that A) President Obama has been helpless to do anything, and B) the solution is to give President Obama what he already had in 2009-2010. Again, none of this has anything to do with intellect or talent.
I’m not suggesting this dynamic is fair or right or good. I am suggesting, however, that this is real and (more importantly for the Obama Administration) unavoidable. Unless something changes on the economy in the next year or so, I suspect eventually the American people will tire of the finger-pointing and the feigned helplessness and will just throw the bums out and try some new people.
And as much as I would disagree with that lazy approach, I can’t say I blame them- they’ve got shit to do and lives to lead, and it is unreasonable to require them to be looking over their politicians’ shoulders every damn day/week/month. They elected these guys to do a job, they didn’t do it, so boom let’s try somebody else. That’s the dynamic.
The problem the Obama Administration has and probably will continue to have is that they don’t have an economic record to run on. Results matter, and the results have been inadequate to the situation. No, they’re not completely at fault for this, but no, that won’t matter anyway.
General Stuck
Yes, it does, but no where near like it did, when it was dangling over the cliffs of depression. I don’t have a problem with Oppolefters offering solutions, long as they factor in the necessity of whether those solutions can be made into sausage from the sausage maker that is congress. Otherwise it is just so much emo wankery.
What I object to is the hysterics such as so far SUCKS, that sounds like it was lifted whole from a republican web site. And that goes for all the hyperbolic framing from oppolefters, that is doing the wingnut’s job for them.
les
@Jay B.:
Problem: as many folks here have told you, it is not difficult to figure out what Obama stands for and wants. He’s written two books, he’s been in public life for years, he gives speeches constantly. Your problem is, you don’t believe what he says, for whatever reason. You listen for catch words, to attack; I listen, and every time he says cuts to benefit programs, it’s immediately followed by while preserving benefits. So you’re convinced he wants to cut benefits. And you’re shocked anyone would disagree with you.
les
@PGFan:
Uh, because there are so many people, including you, telling them Obama hasn’t done anything? Fox, the Tea Party and the Pure Left are all pushing exactly the same message.
Danny
@PGFan:
I’ll give it a shot..
Obama calls them out now and again, and at other times others do the dirty work for him. If you watched the sunday shows you saw O’Malley, Axelrod, Kerry and Dean all talking about the “Tea Party Ratings Downgrade”. That’s not by accident, they are surrogates that keeps the presidents hands reasonably clean and dont afford the repubs a nice juicy target for the counter attack (“he’s just trying to deflect blame for his lousy leadership, the default is his fault”).
That’s not someone being a wimp, that’s someone knowing politics 101. For Westen-esque critique to have merit, you guys first need to acknowledge that. Otherwise you just sound clueless. This is the way all presidents do it, even blustering cowboy presidents. Bush says “we should not endanger the troops”, someone else says “democrats are endangering the troops”.
This one I’m withholding judgement on for now. I just don’t know enough to determine if there’s merit to the accusation or not.
But I’ll say this: in a nation of laws the President isn’t supposed to have any influence over who gets convicted and who gets acquitted. There was a certain set of legislation in place in the fall of 2008 and it’s not the Presidents job to determine who broke the law and bring them to justice. That’s a good thing.
Does this have anything to do with Obama or are you now just piling every fucked up thing in the world at his feet?
As far as I can see, Bradley Manning wasn’t mistreated in any major way (though Quantico may have held him on suicide watch a couple of days more than necessary, that’s the critique with most merit in any case). Whichever way you slice it, the President’s got nothing to do with whether his accusations got any merit or not; he wasnt involved. Bitching about Manning is pretty much like bitching about Mumia – it doesnt have much to do with politics.
les
PGFan:
Are you aware that the prez cannot actually prosecute people for incompetence? Would that he could… “Blatant criminality” meaning, of course, mean stuff that you didn’t like? Glass Steagel was gone long before the shit hit; mortgage fraud is generally a state issue, and the Bush maladministration affirmatively prevented state AG’s from going after it. Securities law is massively complicated, but Obama’s SEC is going after it.
It’s not in fact clear that “any number of laws were broken with impunity.” Nor is it accurate that Obama individually bears some kind of responsibility for it all. Statements like that–hyperbolic, overblown, inaccurate accusations–are why you may get less than automatic respect.
PGFan
@Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
I’m glad you’re thinking about it, because we can’t solve problems when we can’t figure out what the problems are.
Back when Kerry “lost”, I was in a restaurant and was introduced to a local political consultant. I was told this guy was being paid the big bucks for his expertise. The consultant said to us “voters are idiots”. He was angry that Kerry had lost and blamed the voters. And I remember looking at this guy and thinking, if you’ve failed to convince the voters, who’s fault is it? You’re the highly paid expert that knows what’s going down; they’re the uninformed schmoes who don’t have the time or interest to be thoroughly informed, etc, etc. It’s all very well to expect voters to be just as informed as politicians, pundits, bloggers, etc. Except they are out there trying to make a living, raise families, keep jobs, not lose houses, and just aren’t all that interested, etc.
And, in today’s corporate-owned, right-wing friendly media environment, they have to try to develop opinions in the face of continuous misinformation and outright lying.
So every time Obama or any other Democrat accepts/promotes a view that is built on a platform of republican lies, he reinforces those lies, and legitimizes them. Result: even more confused voters.
The idea of a narrative, to wind back to the point of the post, is that there is some sort of base set of beliefs or planks or whatever that underpin and support policy proposals and decisions. The actual details of proposals and policies can be the meat and potatoes for all us political wonks; the underlying rationale is what the rest of the world focuses on. Basic sales: you don’t sell the sausage, you sell the sizzle. You don’t sell the features, you sell the benefits.
The Dems lost their narrative a long time ago and have yet to devise a new one. Obama is not the only guilty Dem here. It really goes back to realities that are larger than this debate: what does the Democratic Party actually stand for any more? What philosophical and moral positions underlie their policy choices and proposals? If they can’t answer that – if A. doesn’t inevitably lead to B., then all you have is a bunch of separate, discrete positions and decisions with no overarching logic to hold them together. How can you say you support good jobs for Americans and NOT end tax subsidies for companies who ship jobs out of the country? We’re expected to accept that sort of cognitive dissonance over and over.
Maude
For Obama, this is like dealing with The Village of The Damned.
Danny
@wrb:
Yes, short and to the point.
Jay B.
@Nied:
You do realize that I was asked for “where was all the cuts talk in 2009 and 2010”? And then I provided links for cuts talk in 2009 and 2010. But other than ignoring the other shit and the actual point, yes, there were other things that happened that forced Obama to become a doormat.
Now, we could quibble about what, exactly inchoate, angry, aimless voters were actually mad about, but you guys have already laid it down: we have to serve the tea.
It couldn’t have had ANYTHING to do with a limp economic climate. It had to have been the deficit. Because Obama’s economic team cured the economy in 2009. It’s scientifically and politically proven.
Dave
@FlipYrWhig:
I guess we’ll never know.
les
@PGFan:
You talk almost reasonably, but you aren’t paying attention–the need for reducing Federal spending, compared to projected baselines, is real and obvious. It’s not based on Republican lies; we can’t fix the situation with tax cuts only. What the Repubs lie about is what we have to cut to do it, and Obama does not agree with them. What the Repubs lie about is when we have to cut, and Obama does not agree with them. Did you miss the fight about the debt ceiling? If you’re right, there’s no fight, fer fucks sake. So, if the message you think we should take to voters to educate them is the stuff you spout here, you need to educate yourself first.
les
@Dave:
This, re: would the bully pulpit have changed things. As someone noted above, look here. The man speaks constantly about jobs, investment in the economy, delaying cuts; and we do know exactly how well it works. Alleged liberals don’t even know it, or care enough to check it out. You want a magic wand. Ain’t none.
FlipYrWhig
@Dave: Sure, I guess there could be a bunch of Republican congressmen who got so intimidated by Obama’s anti-banking rhetoric that they decided to vote his way, against the wishes of their own party’s leadership _and_ decades of well-established Republican pro-business ideology. And I guess they could follow that up by inventing a perpetual motion machine.
FlipYrWhig
@les:
THIS +googolplex. Even Congressional Progressive Caucus members agree with this.
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck:
It is? 9.2% unemployment is fine with you? That money would have been better spent helping the states from laying off tens of thousands of workers. Instead Bill Gates gets a $2000 tax cut which I am sure he will use to hire some unemployed people. How about the new hire credit is that working “fine” too?
These are both Republican ideas that Obama embraced. Instead of going to bat for government spending he agreed with the GOP that tax cuts are better. Now that he also agrees with the GOP that the long term deficit is a HUGE problem we must address this instant there isn’t a whole lot the gov’t can do to get the economy moving. Is that fine too?
les
@PGFan:
This may be the biggest and best question; we are cursed with a two party system, and one party has become increasingly psychotic over the course of at least two decades, bound by an unreal ideology, fear and hatred of the other. At this point it’s largely completely nuts. That means everyone else who cares enough to claim a party name is a Democrat; and it may not be possible for that big a tent to work. We may have this argument inside the party until the Repubs implode and the Dems split into center right/corporatist, and center left/fake populist, and the arguments get less intractable because the possibility of compromise without political death returns. Of course, you and I will probably be in the same wing, having the same arguments; but just ramping down the crazy will make a big difference.
les
@Blue Neponset:
Jebus, are you arguing that the long term deficit is not a huge problem? And I should listen to you why?
PGFan
To Danny and Les:
Of course I’m aware that it isn’t the President’s job to personally act as Prosecuting Attorney against banksters etc. But we’re talking about a narrative here, and how they can work. Obama came into office and basically said, we’re going to pretend that everything that happened under Bush was bad, but not important enough to do anything about, at all. We won’t talk about it, we won’t look into things, we won’t even consider a Truth and Reconciliation commission, nothing. It just didn’t happen. Lives lost, careers destroyed, illegal wars, torture, billions of dollars gone missing, members of the Bush administration blowing off congressional subpoenas with impunity – all just water under the bridge. The narrative, such at it was: “I want to look forward, not back.” Why, exactly? What was the underlying rationale? “People just want to move on.” Okay. Hmm. Well. Gee. We’re supposed to be all about the law. No man is above the law. All are equal under the law. There’s all kinds of rules that have been flagrantly violated, BUT!
We’ll make an exception, just this one time. Kind of like the Supreme Court putting Bush on the throne with a “just this one time” decision.
Then we move onto the financial meltdown. Once again, flagrant, flagrant corruption and law breaking. Do we try to figure out what went wrong and fix it? No, we have secret meetings, we give away kabillions of dollars, in secret, to make sure no banks “take a haircut”. Meanwhile, it would be unwarranted interference to give judges cramdown authority to aid people entangled in mortgage problems. No, the little people have to honor their contracts. What is the underlying rationale here?
We just can’t bring ourselves to limit the interest rates that credit card issuers can impose on their victims. Well, we’ll get it down to fucking 36% and pat each other on the back. What was the rationale here? Credit card companies make big dollars by imposing punitive fees and penalties. Can’t interfere with their ability to make money!
Can’t even get Elisabeth Warren into CFPB – makes the pubs unhappy. Fuck the consumers.
In a way, I’m wrong about narratives. Some politicians decide what their narrative is, and use it strategically. (John “Maverick” McCain made that narrative payoff for a good long time. Don’t misunderstand – I despise McCain. I’m just sayin.) Other people let a narrative develop around them. In my view, one of the biggest narratives surrounding this administration is that it comforts the comfortable and expresses heartfelt and toothless regret about the afflicted.
Is that true? Only partly. Obama managed to get unemployment insurance extended a few times. Good on him. He’s managed some other good things too – I agree that he has. I’m going to vote for him as the lesser of two evils, assuming he’s the choice available in 2012 and I’m not suggesting a primary challenge.
But I still say that he’s got no narrative, other than negative-narratives-by-default. He’s failing to use a strategic weapon that is available to him. That failure makes it harder for all Dems to define themselves, get elected/re-elected, and do things that would be good for America. I don’t see why I should be satisfied with that.
Maude
@Blue Neponset:
The unemployment rate is 9.1.
As you are wrong about that fact, it is hard to imagine that you are right about your other statements.
What is it about Republican House don’t you understand.
Go back to Atrios. A lot of people there agree with you.
Blue Neponset
@les: I don’t think you are going to listen to me anyway, but to answer your question. Long term deficits are not a big problem right now because there isn’t much we can do about them and address the horrible economy at the same time. Therefore we have to choose between priorities, the long term deficit or the current economy. My choice is the current economy. Obama has chosen long term deficits.
Danny
@PGFan:
But most of these types of criticisms boils down to cherry picking a couple of sentences while ignoring the larger context.
Case in point: in Obama’s weekly adress on July 6 he early on borrowed the conservative trope that Government “like a family” had to start living within it’s means and cut “spending we cant afford”. He the quickly mentions “one trillion in cuts” that democrats and republicans agreed upon.
Thats the first minute of his adress.
He then immediately shifts focus. Turns out that what he want to talk about is “spending in the tax code”. That’s what we cant afford. He then goes on at length about “tax code spending” for millionaires, billionaires and corporate jet owners.
He the comes back to cuts. But this time it’s to mention all the stuff that people like that will get hurt by “cuts”. Education, law enforcement, healthcare. We cant mindlessly cut that when we can “cut spending in the tax code”.
He then elaborates further. We cant stop investing. Asking everyone to pay their fair share allows us to invest and grow, to win the future.
He finally comes back to the conservative metaphor: Thats how we live within our means the smart way, buy asking those who can afford it to pitch in so we can still invest and wont fall in decline.
Now, only cherry picking Obama’s borrowing of the “family within their means” metaphor you can carp about him caving and subscribing to conservative ideas, that he’s a stealth conservative, whatever.
But that’s completely missing the point. What he’s in fact doing is taking the metaphor – that metaphor that’s worked so well for republicans for years – and subverting it to forward a completely different narrative, one where “cuts” are painful, where there are other “cuts” in “tax spending on corporations and rich people” that arent as painful and allows us to “invest”. He’s using a small initial concession to sell a deeply progressive world view to the public.
So your case doesnt have merit. It’s based solely on cherry picking and misunderstandings or misrepresentations.
(Here’s a link to the speech if you want to listen to it and reconsider: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fA9-SryzY&feature=player_embedded#at=150)
PGFan
@les:
What situation are you talking about? The current deficit?
Danny
@Blue Neponset:
The republicans forced the issue by winning on deficits in ’10 and holding first the budget, then the debt ceiling hostage. Your choice of priorities is a false one because Obama cant get anything through the house without the republicans voting for it, he cant pass jobs legislation.
He choose to work with the republicans on the debt, given that he couldnt avoid the issue anyway, and try to get jobs legislation as part of the deal. He failed on the latter but I agree that it was worth a shot. Now he’s back promoting jobs legislation.
So your description’s got nothing to do with the real world. It only makes sense in fantasy USA of the imperial presidency.
TK-421
@General Stuck:
True, although the unemployment numbers are very depression-like, so we’re still dangling over this cliff. And…good luck running on that. I suspect the Obama Administration is smart enough to recognize this sales pitch is inadequate to win reelection.
Numerous people have pointed out there are things the Administration can do that don’t require Congressional approval. One can debate whether those extraordinary measures should or should not be undertaken, but we shouldn’t ever blur the line between what should not be done and what could not be done. I’m pretty sure that last part has been beaten into the heads of liberals for the last year plus, so perhaps the advice given should also be taken.
And as for your constant questioning of where my loyalties lie, yada yada yada…enough. I’ve said numerous times I plan on voting for President Obama. I don’t know what the hell else you feel entitled to ask of me. Enough.
(And BTW, agreeing the economic result sucks so far but also claiming that saying the economic result sucks so far is somehow GOP rhetoric is…delusional. I’d argue that pointing out the economy sucks is quite non-partisan.)
les
@PGFan:
What a fucking pain. I’ll refer you again to the bully pulpit/better narrative debunking above, not that you’ll read it since you can’t be bothered to listen to what the President of the United States actually says, about much of anything. I may agree with you on the war criminal front, although this country has never gone in for that; and “truth and reconciliation” has pretty much never happened that I know of, except in case of decades of systematic domestic political abuse, not 6 year episodes of foreign abuse actually (then and still) supported by a significant portion of the population; I might love it, but I’m not convinced it would help anything real. Just quit, which he has largely done. But:
You don’t know that; you certainly can’t prove it in a court. The SEC and some state AG’s are trying; if they succeed it will be years before we know it. This is not the nice simple story you seem to prefer.
We don’t have usury laws to speak of, and we’ll never have a national usury law. The prez can’t impose one, and no congress will enact one. We do ahve a new law, passed by this lamentable prez, limiting fees and charges, and limiting transaction fees, which will have a bigger economic impact. But you wouldn’t know that.
And that’s Obama’s fault? You’re trying to play some progressive political guru, and you don’t know the state of play in the Senate on appointments? You apparently don’t know the Senate will be in session as long as Obama is president, to prevent recess appointments? You’d prefer the CFPB have no head for years, to satisfy your need for a pony?
The fact that you can’t be bothered to find out what the prez says and wants, limits my appreciation of your assessment of the big narrative. Stamping your feet and holding your breath for the pony isn’t working for you; why should you think it’ll work for Obama?
PGFan
@Danny:
No, my case isn’t that Obama never says things I agree with, or says things that theoretically represent Democratic positions. He does, and did, and a lot of people voted for him on that basis. A lot of us were then accused of projecting onto him “progressive things” that he never said. But, to take your case, where are the tax code changes he talked about? Did they happen during the debt ceiling debacle? Did they happen and I just haven’t heard about it? Are they happening now? Or are they something that maybe/might happen down the road if the repubs are cooperative? Are you saying Obama is going run on this in 2012? Is he going to promise those changes? And if he does, should we believe him? Or, more accurately, should we believe he’ll succeed? What happens when the pubs say NO?
Blue Neponset
@Danny:
You just said that was not possible. Which is it? Is Obama helpless because of the Republican House or is he promoting jobs legislation? Both things can’t be true at the same time.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
Okay, enough of this . You have been spreading one piece of false bullshit after another on multiple threads today, and this particular one needs to be called bullshit on.
You can absolutely have LONG TERM DEFICIT REDUCTION as is this recent bill, AND at the same time call for short term stimulus, as Obama and his spokesman have been saying they intend to do soon.
We get it you hate Obama, and judging from the cold visceral nature of that hate, and a willingness to proffer one false meme after another, I suspect that hate goes beyond politics.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
Helpless? The House of Reps is a branch of government you dolt. A separate coequal branch of government and one chamber of congress. Using the term “helpless” is just more of your castrating crap.
General Stuck
Emobaggers? yup, can’t improve on that.
les
@Blue Neponset:
Sorry, Blue, but you’re not paying attention. The long term deficit is a problem, and there’s no reason not to address it now, especially since the political world has decided we have to and you’re not going to argue them out of it. What you fail to grasp, for whatever reason, is how Obama wants to address it now. He wants economic stimulus NOW, and revenue from those able without economic damage NOW, and investment in infrastructure NOW. He wants cost controls and budget cuts IN THE FUTURE, and health care cost containment IN THE FUTURE, and more general revenue increases IN THE FUTURE. You’ve bought a Republican frame, and decided to cram the prez into it. Now I suppose you can blame Obama for this, but it doesn’t take much work to find out what he actually, you know, wants to accomplish.
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck:
Why don’t you explain to us how he will do that? As you just said, the R’s control the House therefore they control the purse strings. How is Obama going to convince them to offer up short term stimulus?
General Stuck
@TK-421:
Obama could declare Marshall Law and arrest every republican he could get his hands on, and fix things that way. Or, he could by fiat declare the filibuster unconstitutional. But anyone with any working knowledge of how the Senate works, would know that you would just have to dissolve the senate completely, because the filibuster is not the only means of bringing that body to a standstill.
Other than those two possibilities, I can’t think of what you might mean. But I will say this, there may well come a time when we have to ditch politics of one means for another means. But we are not there yet, and I don’t support moving us there any faster than need be, by one upping the wingnuts on acting all seditious and shit.
You can, but count me out. If we get to the point where practicing democracy can no longer happen, then I will sign up for the revolution, but I will not be a party to causing it.
Jay B.
The long term deficit reduction is for other congresses to ignore, that’s the consensus spin right? Obama can kick the can down the road to fool everyone into thinking he’s serious about cuts and fool the GOP into voting into a plan where they “only” get 98% of what they want with no new tax revenues because the future doesn’t really matter. That’s what I’ve been told.
And yeah, that short term stimulus that they intend to do soon…Hahahahahahahahaha. Shit, how do you even write that with a straight face? What the fuck are they going to do? Apologize for the half-assed attempt when they had at least a nominal majority? Magically appeal to the GOP’s nobility?
The time for Obama was two years ago and he fucked it.
PGFan
@les:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14crisis.html?pagewanted=all
And I quote:
“The report pulls back the curtain on shoddy, risky, deceptive practices on the part of a lot of major financial institutions,” Mr. Levin said in an interview. “The overwhelming evidence is that those institutions deceived their clients and deceived the public, and they were aided and abetted by deferential regulators and credit ratings agencies who had conflicts of interest.”
And I quote:
“The bipartisan report includes 19 recommendations for changes to regulatory and industry practices. These include creating strong conflict-of-interest policies at the nation’s banks and requiring that banks hold higher reserves against risky mortgages. The report also asks federal regulators to examine its findings for violations of laws.
The report adds significant new evidence to previously disclosed material showing that a wide swath of the financial industry chose profits over propriety during the mortgage lending spree. It also casts a harsh light on what the report calls regulatory failures, which helped deepen the crisis.”
Perhaps Obama (and other Dems – I don’t hold him soley responsible for all our ills) was all over this report? He’s been very active in implementing the commission’s 19 recommendations to strengthen our financial system and help it regain the trust of the public, right?
Or maybe that’s Geithner’s job. Let’s be fair. Geithner is spending every waking minute trying to bring malefactors to justice and eliminate conflicts of interest. Right?
wrb
@Blue Neponset:
He’s helpless to pass the sort of jobs legislation that Republicans Republicans are adamantly opposed to, like for big green infrastructure projects.
There are some types of jobs legislation that Republicans would normally support, and he’s trying to get some of those through.
If he doesn’t their refusal will further highlight Republican hypocrisy.
Of course progbaggers will shriek that his attempt at achieving possible jobs legislation validates Republican ideas and is both a betrayal and evidence of insufficiently metallic balls.
The chances of success are small though because there is nothing that will not be unacceptable to one side or the other.
Jay B.
@General Stuck:
How do you write THAT with a straight face? The baseline excuse of literally everyone here was that Obama had to deal with them and that’s why we got the deal we got. They, like the 40 vote Senate majority before them, was the reason, the cold, hard, political reality that Obama had to take way less than was needed.
TimmyB
@PGFan: Exactly right.
Additionally, every simgle time Obama said the least thing bad about Wall Street fraudsters, the fraudsters cried about it. And Obama would stop.
As Obama soon learned, the Banksters won’t let you whore yourself out to them in private and then talk trash about them in public.
les
@Blue Neponset:
He may not be able to; House repubs have decided not to support anything he wants even if it appeals to their ideology, and you therefore will continue to blame Obama. He’s offering payroll tax cuts, which they love but probably won’t pass. He’s long had a proposal for an infrastructure bank, which semi-privatizes infrastructure investment and has been a Repub proposal, but they’ll probably kill it. There are other proposals, which I doubt you’re interested in.
You can’t have it both ways–well, you will, because that’s how you roll–but blaming Obama for not doing anything, and then acknowledging that the house won’t let him do anything, is pretty fucking stupid. Unless your sole purpose is emobagging…hmm, I may be on to something here.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
I said he will propose it, not declare it law by unitary executive, which seems what a lot of you are advocating. The congress is the only body that passes laws until further notice. That is all Obama can do is propose shit, and maybe get his side to vote for it, and try to get the other side to. But they are insane, the republicans , so I doubt even the liberal jeevus could change the House wingnut mindset.
That isn’t helpless, that is honoring and following the constitution at it’s most basic level. The president cannot raise or appropriate funds. But there is a remedy for this stalemate, or disagreement, and that is the election coming up. It is up to all of us, not just Obama, to focus our fire on those who are the problem, and that is the freaking GOP, not the current democrat sitting in the Oval Office.
PGFan
Gotta go feed my beasts. Will stop back in an hour and respond further…!
wrb
@PGFan:
The house and senate weakened the administration’s proposed reform legislation. As one of the legislators said at the time, the financial industry “owns this place.”
The public’s response?
To vote in even more bank-friendly legislators (who won with a big assist from the progbaggers.
wrb
@PGFan:
The house and senate weakened the administration’s proposed reform legislation. As one of the legislators said at the time, the financial industry “owns this place.”
The public’s response?
To vote in even more bank-friendly legislators (who won with a big assist from the progbaggers.
Blue Neponset
@les:
I just explained why we shouldn’t address it now. What did I say that you disagree with?
In order to affect the economy the gov’t is going to have to spend money right now. That makes the long term deficit worse. It really is as simple as a zero sum game. You can’t spend gov’t money without making the deficit worse.
You also say future tax increases and cuts to the social safety net will pay for short term stimulus but none of these things are being talked about right now, by anyone. We just got a long term budget “deal” that was all spending cuts. We don’t have any short term stimulus in the works and we are going to pay for the excesses of the Bush years through spending cuts. What is Obama going to do to secure the tax increases and medicare reform? Right now it doesn’t look like he is doing anything at all aside from agreeing with Republicans that spending cuts are the way to reduce the long term budget.
General Stuck
@Jay B.:
I know you as an Obama hating freak from the beginning, or damn near it. Rarely do you write anything in good faith, everything is sandbagged or outright false. You have no interest in rational discourse. You are looking for the goods on Obama, period, your singular mission on this blogn to justify your hatred of the man, and mistrust, and to convince who you can to join you in the hate. Go soak you fat head, and come back with plausible arguments, of which claiming it an “excuse” that the other party holds a chamber of congress.
Danny
@PGFan:
So what’s it gonna be: does the narratives the President pitches from up high on his bully pulpit have a magical force that influences policy – now and for generations – or dont they?
Or do they have that power temporarily when the President utters a few words that you disapprove of but loses the power when he offers 700 more words that actually pushes a consistent narrative and worldview that is consistent with your worldview?
Is it only when the president says something you like that we have to go have a look at reality to see if he was able to influence it with his words? When he says something you dont like a huge negative impact is assumed a priori? When he doesnt say something you’d like him to say a huge positive impact is also assumed a priori?
Your argument is inconsistent and seemingly 100% based on a need to assume bad faith and cluelessness from the President. If I were to take a guess that’s caused by you feeling disappointed by the direction the country’s taken and you want to bitch and have someone to blame.
But even if I can see why you feel that way in gloomy and uncertain times, it still doesnt make it any more fair or grounded in actual facts.
The congressional republicans showed a willingness to “shoot the hostage” (the hostage being the world economy) so democrats (not wanting that to happen) caved and only managed a shitty deal where the silver lining was defense cuts (37%) and no cuts big enough to influence the economy before fiscal 2013.
Then all the markets crashed and our country got downgraded to AA+ as a direct consequence of what republicans were willing to do to get their way.
Today there’s new polling from CNN that has the republican party at 32% approval, 59% disapproval – their worst numbers since polling started in 92.
USAToday are headlining that 66% want people willing to compromise on the Part II committee and 66% want higher taxes on the rich.
The President got the public with him and on our side, but the republicans opted to press on in the face of public opinion by holding us all hostage.
Let’s hope they pay the price. We may find that they’ll keep paying for a generation.
Yes, I still think that the republicans eventually will cave on revenue because the headwinds they’re facing are strengthening by the minute. But we’ll have to wait and see.
In order: yes; he’ll promise to try to make it happen; yes; we should hope that he does and do our best to make it happen; we use whatever means available to get our way if it looks feasible and wise.
les
@PGFan:
Jebus, PG, is this goalpost moving are are you stupid?
You claim blatant violation of the law and claim that Obama is deliberately ignoring it. To back yourself up, you quote a report that found shoddy, deceptive practices and recommended regulatory change. Shoddy practice ain’t a blatant violation of the law; deceptive practices may be, and the SEC and state AG’s are pursuing them; but it ain’t blatant violation of the law, being winked at by Obama. Are you too biased to get that a recommendation for more and better regulation is a statement that existing regulation isn’t good enough to cover the situation?
If the cited material is really the basis for your emoting, I’ll repeat that hyperbolic, inaccurate, false accusations as a method of “argument” is not particularly convincing.
Obama is actually pursuing regulatory reform; I guess you missed that. Obama is rebuilding regulatory agencies rendered inoperable under Bush; I guess you missed that. Regulators, state and fed, are pursuing many of the things you claim to care about; I guess you missed that. But Obama didn’t personally throw the rascals in jail yet, for various unspecified blatant violations of the law, so your emobagging is certainly justified.
PGFan
Trying to get to the door…
@wrb:
The report came out April 13, 2011, after November 2010.
Now I’m leaving for a bit –
wrb
You can do both
Spending a one-time Trillion this year is covered many times ove by legislation that would reduce the annual deficit by 4 T a year, every year, 15 years out.
And that combination is exactly what they should be doin.
les
@Blue Neponset:
My apologies, Blue. I had no idea your reading problem was this severe. Would more caps help? Do you need definitions for NOW and for IN THE FUTURE? Or should I just assume intent to not read for comprehension, and let it go?
wrb
@PGFan:
After the election? Then there was little chance of getting much done. The congress wouldn’t even confirm Warren, and is trying to pull the teeth of the consumer protection commission he did get created.
Blue Neponset
I don’t roll like that at all. Obama has a lot of powder he seems to want to keep dry for some reason. As each day goes by there is less and less he can do, but he really hasn’t made a good showing against the Republicans. I am angry with him for that. We are going to have a Republican President in 2012. I am really really angry about that. Should I blame Obama for that or Jane Hamsher, Atrios and Digby? My answer is Obama.
The Republicans aren’t going to change the only thing that will change is our reaction to them. Obama, even after the tea party, death panels and constant cries of soshulism! doesn’t seem to want to take the hint that the Republicans can’t be reasoned with.
I guess if I clap louder things will look great and we won’t roll back gay rights, women’s rights, workers rights when a Republican wins in Nov. 2012.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Obama still relatively popular, haters still hatin’, film at 11.
Blue Neponset
@les: I think I made my points fairly clearly for a series of blog comments. If you have questions please ask. Otherwise I will assume your snark is a way for you to beg off our argument. Why don’t you just try a pie filter if you don’t want to engage with me?
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
So this is what the vaunted progressive fighting spirit has come to . Quitting. That is very Palin of you. She blames Obama too, also.
les
@Blue Neponset:
Careful, you nearly admitted a progressive accomplishment by this administration. I can see logic ain’t the point here, but you may need a rest. Going back and forth between “Republicans aren’t going to change” and “Obama could change things if he just narrated better” isn’t helping an intrinsically weak argument.
Blue Neponset
@wrb:
Fair enough. So where is the stimulus that we are going to pay for in 15 years? Also, if we can deal with the deficit in 15 years why are we worrying about it now?
Danny
@Blue Neponset:
It’s not possible to get anything through the house without the republicans voting for it. The only way to get them to vote for it is pressure being so strong that they defect from their preferred option: to obstruct anything that would help Obama.
With debt reduction partly dealt with, with the President scoring fiscal cred points by loudly offering a “Grand Bargain” with more deficit reduction than the republicans (by including revenues) and them walking away from that deal, with republicans coming out of the showdown unpopular and looking like assholes, and with the market crash, chances to accomplish that are far better now than they were a couple of months ago.
I still wouldnt peg it better than 50-50%, and if it happens it’s gonna take some time.
les
@Blue Neponset:
Well, if you’re point was that you didn’t read, didn’t understand or didn’t care about addressing the comment you were supposedly responding to, I guess it was clear.
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck:
Trying to light a fire under Obama’s ass isn’t quitting. I just don’t think the guy has it in him to win in 2012. The economy is going to blow and ‘I’m suck less than the other guy’ is a tough sell for a reelection slogan. Maybe you and les can give us some clapping pointers?
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
I can see that Obama has disappointed you deeply.
I Don’t care
Blue Neponset
@Danny:
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Average uniformed voters don’t care about that stuff. In Nov 2012 if the economy still looks like this Obama is not going to win reelection. Look at Scott Brown’s Senate election. The good people of the Commonwealth were just plain pissed about the bailouts and didn’t care who they voted for as long as it sent a message. I fear we will get the same reaction in 2012 and end up with President Perry. May the Lord have mercy on all of us if that happens.
wrb
Ain’t conna happen unless via something Republicans like and progbaggers will consider a betrayal of their pure world of abstraction not hardly justified by some grubby families’ decadent addiction to food.
TK-421
@General Stuck:
Ok, so I take it you’re now okay with me saying the economy sucks, and that saying such a thing does NOT make one a GOP troll? I just want to be clear.
If you want to know more about the unorthodox stuff that doesn’t require Congress, there have been a lot of suggestions floated by economists over the past few months. Maybe if you were actually curious about that (and not so insistent that THERE’S NOTHING HE CAN DO LEAVE OBAMA ALOOOOOONE), you could, oh I don’t know…look for it and find it or something. If only there was a centralized site on the web where you could access gobs of information, news stories, and blog posts. Oh, if only!
I can help you get started. Just the other day Joe Gagnon wrote up some suggestions. Mike Konczal and Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman and David Dayen (and also Duncan Black) all offered suggestions from a debate started by Jared Bernstein awhile ago. It’s amazing what you can find when you actually go look for it.
Again, feel free to argue that these ideas should not be pursued. But remember my point is not necessarily that President Obama should do these things (though I do believe that), rather my point is that he could do these things. And unlike your sarcastic examples, these are are actually possible.
This “he can’t do anything!” meme is not true. There are things that could be done, but for whatever reason (right or wrong) they are choosing not to do them. President Obama may argue against doing these unorthodox things, but good luck explaining to the American people that he could have done something about the economy but didn’t. Good luck with that.
Aaaaaand we’re right back to the original question Doug asked: why all the hate? Well, because economic results are the only thing that matters, the results suck, the American people are going to at least partially blame the Obama Admin for this, and one could argue they’d be right to do so. That’s why.
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck: This is why you will fail. You should care about the voters. I am going to vote for Obama because I don’t have any other reasonable option, but there are tens of millions of voter who aren’t as loyal as me. Ignore them at your peril.
El Cid
FWIW, there are a lot of studies in the social sciences on the role of Presidential rhetoric in affecting American policy attitudes and in getting policies approved / implemented.
There’s not a real strong correlation, not when looked at systematically over many Presidencies.
Except there’s a great correlation between the nature of a President’s rhetoric and the people and policies he has put in place and is pushing.
Example:
I agree with differentiating foreign policy, not least because it’s (a) astoundingly obvious, and (b) the entire establishment (including news media and the elite punditariat) has traditionally fallen into line with US executive branch foreign policy, no matter what it was, and more so when it’s hawkish or flat-out aggression.
Or,
Like anything, this shouldn’t be taken as absolute, particularly not with any given particular issue.
Some of which might not appear to be “major” policies but are vulnerable to being spun by the Administration.
There are also chain effects which I’d like to see if they’ve been investigated.
I.e., if successful Presidential rhetoric is taken up by politicians at other levels of government, such that the argument prompts legislation to be passed at a local level by politicians capitalizing.
Brachiator
Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
Talent isn’t everything (and I greatly like both these presidents). Clinton was a junky man with junky appetites almost brought down because he insisted on giving his enemies a club that they could beat him with. In one of the Bob Woodward books, Al Gore is quoted as having to tell Clinton to “get with the program” because Big Bill was stuck in an intellectual fog and dithering when he should have been leading.
Dubya was a dope, and yet he and Cheney knew what they wanted and pushed it through. They were resolute despite all the brainier people around them.
Obama is clearly one of the smartest guys in the room. And yet he cannot anticipate or fully counter the GOP rope-a-dope. And he seems to be determined to use the presidency to attempt to forge agreements rather than unleashing his full power and authority. Some of this is understandable, but in other ways, I think it bad strategy.
And in a nutshell, I have huge reservations on his approach to tax policy and his over reliance on input from Treasury and economic advisors.
les
@Blue Neponset:
Well, it doesn’t satisfy you, but something like 2/3 of folks polled agree that the other guy sucks. And twice as many approve his actions, as the other guy. Maybe while you weren’t looking, that Obama guy got some kind of message across. Enough to get re-elected? We’ll see. You’re convinced you deserve to have a magic pony right now, and you believe Obama could give it to you but won’t, and you think you represent some kind of voting majority. Some of us doubt all of those beliefs. It turns out, the House is what it is, and no magic economy fixer bullet is going through it. Nor, most likely, even lukewarm stimulus. Your alternative to what you refer to as “clap louder” is to tell Obama to “yell louder;” in the real world, most folks don’t believe that’s a solution.
TK-421
I don’t know why my comment got moderated. Too many hyperlinks?
Blue Neponset
@wrb: I hope you are right.
On that note, take care all I am going to reheat some mac and cheese and continue to plot Obama’s downfall. See you tomorrow.
Danny
@Blue Neponset:
I dont know what you’re responding to, but it doesnt seem to be what I wrote. My proposition was that pressure on Republicans to compromise is bigger now than it was two months ago. You seem to be talking about electoral prospects in 2012.
But in case you’re wondering, let me reiterate a couple of facts:
– CNN has new polling today where the Republican party is at its worst approval since they started polling in 1992: 33-59%. (Democrats are at 47-47%)
– USAToday were headlining with a poll showing 66% support for compromise and new revenues in the Committee pt II.
I’d say that the narrative of republicans being owned by the teaparty and the teaparty being unreasonable zealots is taking a firmer hold for everyday that goes by. If the public perception is that one party is unreasonable, then those guys representing it start to get evermore questions about how they’re gonna compromise. That is what I mean when I’m talking about “pressure” and “headwinds”.
We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. I own up to my failed predictions in retrospect; I hope you’ll do the same (though I have with time come to not expect very much in that department from your kind).
Agreed on the prayer part, and on your notion that the economy and Obamas reelection prospects are correlated. But once again, you must have read my post sloppily because that wasnt what I was talking about…
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
You do have some serious reading comp problems. I don’t care about your disappointment, not what the voters think. I care very much, and Obama is still doing very well with that right now. With a higher approval than Ronny Reagan at this point in his presidency, under arguably much tougher circumstances with the economy and the politics of his time.
Your worries about the economy are justified, just not your analysis of what can any president do, given our opposing political skirmish lines, and the limits of his office. And there is more to fixing the economy we have right now, than just stimulus spending.
Danny
@Brachiator:
That was a nice, reasonable way to express reservations against different democrats including Obama. I respect your opinions (although I dont fully agree with everything). Is it possible to get more of this, and less of the ranting and emoting?
Tim Connor
@FlipYrWhig: Lasting movements are grand. Movements often come to an end when decision makers make clearly identifiable catastrophic historical errors all over again.
For many leaders, this was the invasion of Russia. For Obama, it was failing to understand the basic mechanics of the economy, and job creation.
I’ll vote for him over the GOP. But all my campaign contributions are going to Democratic congressional candidates.
Danny
Fixed.
Jay B.
@General Stuck:
Listen you asshole. Obama has failed. Whether or not you think so, we are living in the proof every single fucking day. You want to ascribe waking reality to my hatred of Obama? I don’t give a flying fuck. You assholes keep thinking he’s managed and created the best of all possible worlds — to the detriment of his Presidency. And you rationalize it through various mechanisms: “emobloggers”, the media, the voters, the Senate, the Congress, the tea baggers, et. al.
Obama doesn’t have to change his approach to suit me. He should be doing it because he’s a re-elect risk. He should be doing it because his results suck.
He should stop playing the GOP’s game, that is, if you believe he’s against it. I choose to. I’m angrier because I see him making all the same mistakes Democrats have made for almost two generations now. Or you can keep pretending that he’s got it, and it’s all cool.
General Stuck
@TK-421:
How about you just name some of these things that Obama can do without congress. I’m all ears. My guess Obama is also. You do know that he really does want to pass more jobs bills with stimulus, aren’t you? He and I do not need left wing economists to tell us that.
And I have never said the economy was anything but in bad shape, but it is a far sight healthier than the day Obama took office. Not even close.
And see, it’s this kind of smarmy smart ass commentary that makes Obama supporters hostile to well meaning criticism. No one is saying Obama can do nothing, he can do what the limits of his office allows, otherwise he becomes more like the republicans and their unitary executive bullshit
And please, Don’t require readings of economists that also are neck deep in an ideological political movement. They may be brilliant in their pro field, but they are not objective. If you want to debate some of their suggestions submitted by you, that is fine, go for it. And make your argument, don’t depend on others not on this blog to do your arguing for you.
General Stuck
@Jay B.:
all I needed to read of this comment. Go to hell Jay B, and don’t pass go you hateful psycho dipshit.
Danny
@Jay B.:
No he hasnt, yet. The fight is raging all around us and you’re smack dab in the middle of the battle field.
I’m fucking pissed because I keep seeing know-nothing idiots such as yourself making the same fucking mistakes you’ve made since 1968. Focusing all your energy on a president to deliver all the items on your wishlist and a pony too, and then when he eventually disappoints in one way or another making everything into a big messy stinking pile of “betrayal” and “failure” and focusing on shooting at our guys rather than at the enemy. I’ll tell you what usually happens next – you go third party or primary, focusing your energy fucking up any hope of success.
It happened in 1968, in 1972, in 1980 and in 2000. But you idiots never learn.
The only time you’re able to keep your head fairly straight is when there’s been a republican in the white house for eight years or more. That’s probably why you keep working so hard to put them back there all the time, so you’ll get some righteous rage without feeling bad about it.
Jay B.
@Danny:
Yup. That’s me all over. Hopelessly naive. It’s not that the economy sucks, it’s that I have unrealistic expectations. It’s not that his prescriptions were wrong and he invested WAY too much in his awful economic team, it’s that I want a pony. It’s not that the Democrats are a nearly useless vehicle for change (albeit the only one we have), it’s that I’m too pure.
Got it.
Clap. Louder!
slightly-peeved
Where is this wondrous country where elections aren’t about which major party sucks less?
to all the progressives who think witholding their vote will lead to their voices being heard: isn’t the most listened to demographic in the US old people? The people who, because they are less likely to work, go out and vote more often?
the threat to withold votes only works if you’ve made your vote count in the first place. Progreessives say they have, but have they ever mustered the voting numbers that old people have?
Jay B.
Also, Danny, to whine about how we idiots are the ones “focusing on shooting at our guys rather than at the enemy” while simultaneously using up all you ‘angry face’ vocabulary about how stupid and hopeless we are, really is a kind of stupidity. I’d call you a hypocrite, but I’m not sure you’d understand it. I’m sure you fancy yourself a steely-eyed political realist above that kind of thing.
Danny
The economy sucks and you have unrealistic expectations – if you thought that fixing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression would be easy. In case you forgot, it took FDR 12 years and a war economy to fix things back then.
Yes, if you consider his economic team “awful” and the main cause of our present troubles the “wrongness” of Obamas policies then you are indeed asking for a fucking pony.
It’s not about “purity”; I think there’s a fair chance that I’m “purer” than you, buddy. It’s the fact that you seem (by appearances) to be fucking stupid.
Danny
But see, we didnt start it. You did. I hadnt heard the name Jane Hamsher before she started shitting up the place and teaming up with Grover Norquist, and I wouldnt give you a hard time if you werent in here pouring your heart out about how everyone but you are big sellouts. If you dont like getting flack dont fucking dish it out. Piss outside the tent, not inside it and you’ll stay dry, warm and happy.
I understand, but it doesnt apply.
No just another progressive partisan, with my own feelings and my own pet peeves, which happen to include people like you.
TK-421
@General Stuck:
I take it you didn’t read any of the links I provided.
That is awesome. Seriously, this kind of willful ignorance posing as pragmatism is really something. You claim there’s nothing he can do without Congress, I point you to many economists who have already thought this through and came up with some ideas in the posts I provided, and then you ask me to name some suggestions. No wonder you’re not aware of what President Obama could do, because anytime someone tries to point out some examples you stick your fingers in your ears and sing LALALALA.
I submitted those links in good faith. The least you can do is reciprocate by reading them in good faith. Or not.
Yes, because that matters more than the ideas themselves. No no, let’s not put our egos aside and investigate whether the President actually can do something about the economy without Congress, let’s bitch about who’s being a “smarmy smart ass” in presenting links from a discussion back in MAY…because that’s what’s important. BTW, ad hominem much?
Look, you’re not informed on this stuff because you weren’t looking to be informed on it (and you’re STILL not, because you still haven’t read the stuff). That’s not my fault and that’s not my problem. You can go looking for information, or not, but don’t ask for information and then bitch about the manner in which it was provided to you.
Which is exactly what those links acknowledge and discuss how to work around Congress. Except you didn’t read them, so never mind.
That is a diverse set of people that engaged in this discussion, and I think all but one (Dday) is an economist. We’re discussing economic policies, and you’re complaining about reading what economists think. Ur doin it rong.
Which is economics, the topic of our discussion here. So according to you, they’re “brilliant” in the topic we’re discussing, but you don’t want to hear what they have to say. You really really really want to hold on to your prior beliefs, don’t you?
Says who…you? So what? If somebody with an agenda says “2+2=4,” I don’t disagree with them just because “they are not objective.”
You just admitted they’re “brilliant” on the topic we’re discussing. Jared Bernstein used to work for the Obama Administration. Brad DeLong and Joe Gagnon are, if anything, moderate or perhaps even mildly conservative. I don’t know what, if any, agenda Mike Konczal has. While you may claim Paul Krugman and Duncan Black aren’t “objective,” without any context I don’t know why that matters. Their economic predictions have been spot on, but you reject them because…well, just because it’s more important to you that someone pass your “objective” test than to be, you know, right about stuff. You must have had a lot of fun in the runup to the Iraq War.
Not tonight, I have a headache. All I want is for you to read those links and either acknowledge that, contrary to this zombie learned helplessness meme, President Obama can do things economically without Congressional approval…or I want you to explain why every single one of those suggestions is literally impossible.
Note that I’m not asking for you to reject them as bad ideas- they may actually be bad ideas for all I know. All I’m looking for is acknowledgement that they are possible, and therefore President Obama can do something about the economy.
Or you can not read those posts, not explore what could be done, and just endlessly (and dishonestly) claim there’s nothing President Obama can do without Congress and therefore we should all just sit tight and suck it until after the 2012 election.
I gave you information, and it’s up to you what you do with it.
TK-421
@Danny:
@slightly-peeved:
You guys need to get your stories straight.
General Stuck
@TK-421:
Let me explain to you how this blog works. You make an argument, of your own. You can use links to others as evidence to back up your argument. But you fucking make the argument and articulate it. And not assign homework for the rest of us to complete and get back to you.
And your comment is laced with all kind of little passive aggressive swipes that I hate with a passion. If you need to insult someone, be more direct about it, okay.
And yes, we all choose what experts to rely on. I don’t trust progressive movement experts, so called, all that much. I have that right, and you can believe who you want. That is how that works. I don’t belong to a party or movement except the bowel kind. I believe what I want and support who I want, and right now it is all democrats in office. Nothing is second to that, not one goddam thing.
You admitted up thread that it was true the economy is way better than it was when Obama took office. Most people would maybe say he is doing something right. It is not yet to an acceptable state, but I reckon I will keep my support for the guys and gals in the trenches of actually governing, and not as much anyone else. Have a nice day.
Danny
@TK-421:
As it happens both of those statements are true, but first I should point out that it would serve you well to think of me and slightly-peeved as two separate individuals.
Now, the reason both are true is this: you make yourself more relevant in terms of influencing policy by consistently voting, and consistently voting for the guy that is closest to your preferred policies and who has a fair shot at winning. That’s what seniors do.
However, if you go about “punishing” every electable presidential candidate relatively closer to your own position over insufficient koscher-ness or perceived betrayals then you are – sure – having an impact insofar that you’ve managed to fuck up for your own team. But your team is weakened as a result, the other guys get to govern, set policy and not look clownish.
The emobaggers – and earlier, the New Left – helped us lose in those elections mentioned above. Did that make them more influential, in the United States of America? No. It made them less influential. The zenith of New Left influence was in 1968 and 1972 and it’s been downhill ever since. Doesnt mean you cant still screw things up for us. But it means you cant influence or bring new people into the tent and you can’t shape policy more to your liking – only less to your liking (by revolting and getting republicans elected).
TK-421
@General Stuck:
I did, multiple times. I guess I have to repeat it- there are things President Obama can do about the economy and this helplessness meme is not true. I provided links to back up that argument.
You can “explain” all you want, but if you ask for information and then complain that it’s “homework,” that’s not my problem. I would also add this isn’t really an “I’m all ears” attitude.
I gave you links to blog posts discussing what President Obama could do to help the economy that doesn’t require Congressional approval. What is the problem with reading up on this stuff? When I heard about this discussion I was (and still am) curious/”all ears” about such things. You? Not so much, I guess. I don’t know why it’s important to you that you scrape together all sorts of justifications to NOT read stuff that runs counter to your prior beliefs. Only you can answer that.
If you don’t want to read them, that’s your decision, but it’s not my fault if you don’t want to read them. You may justify this “all ears but not really” attitude all you want, but I think at this point it would be dishonest of you to claim that liberals just want to criticize and are unrealistic and don’t have practical suggestions, etc. You’ve had multiple opportunities to obtain new information, and you’ve declined that information each time. Liberals are not to blame for this.
Again- there are things that President Obama can do about the economy, and the fact that he’s not doing them means he simply chooses not to do them. If you don’t want to know that and you don’t want to admit that, then definitely don’t read those links I sent you…which, hey, that’s what you’re doing! What.A.Coincidence.
And I never said the economy is better now than it was when President Obama took office. Maybe reading comprehension is hard for you, and that’s why it’s “homework” when someone gives you links about stuff that you’re “all ears” about? I don’t know, but at this point I’m confident I’m not the problem here. Goodnight.
Danny
@TK-421:
I was actually thinking exactly the same thing as Stuck reading your prior post: it’s fucking lazy and shifting your homework onto others to just post a few links and say: here this proves my point, refute it.
If you’re gonna be credible then you’re gonna have to summarize the salient points made on those links and tie them in with a consistent argument that you make yourself. That also forces you to show your hand on what you consider a strong argument and strong proof. Keeps us all to a high standard.
I also browsed through the first of your links and noted that the two proposals he made that looked like they had potential to influence the economy both seemed to be actions that he wanted the Fed to take, not Obama….
Just saying.
Brachiator
@Danny:
I’ve tried to go back and read most of the other posts here, and did more skimming and skipping than deep reading, but I will still go out on a limb and suggest something.
I agree with the frustration with those who want to talk nonsense about Obama supposedly betraying them. And I understand those who point out the problems of dealing with this Congress.
But there is also something simpler happening. I lot of people I work with and commute with absolutely LOVE Obama. They just love him. But they feel deeply disappointed with this recent compromise. They still hate Republicans, but they are not going to waste a second of their time trying to turn what they perceive as a defeat into a partial victory. There is a palpable sadness, and a worry about the future. They see the Republicans gaining far more than they are giving. And they have deep concerns about the direction in which the country is headed.
They will not be mollified with nostrums about long struggles and incremental gains.
I am not in any way saying that their votes are up for grabs. Yet. But I will say absolutely that if the smart men and women in Washington don’t have an understanding of this change in sentiment, then they may be in for a nasty shock.
I am not quite in this group. But to put some of my other cards on the table, after seeing the results of this compromise, which I totally understand, I am reinforced with a view that I expressed at the time that Obama should have firmly, clearly, and with finality, declared that the Bush tax cuts were dead and not coming back. Ever. And I realize that this might have resulted in a lot of pain for many citizens had the GOP been as stupid as they continue to show themselves to be. But I also think that Obama could have shown more starkly that the GOP will happily shank the poor and the middle class to protect the wealthy.
This might have shocked the GOP into not playing dirty with respect to the debt ceiling.
But this was not Obama’s play. And we are where we are now, with the GOP abetted by their Tea Party advance guard, still doing as much damage as they can.
Also, I do not put sole responsibility for these debacles on Obama. I got no love for a lot of Democrats. But I certainly am not looking for a progressive rescue team.
It’s a mess, and I am not seeing a bunch of happy outcomes.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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@Danny:
Who is “us,” balloonemo? The lazy, enabling, cult-of-personality USA! USA! USA! feelgooders you represent? Just curious.
.
.
Danny
Well, sure. I was writing specifically about a festering mindset particular to a subgroup of the left wing of the democratic party – those who are consistently obsessed with concepts like “betrayal” and “sellout” and have been ever since Chicago.
That mindset shows up every time there’s a democrat in office and those people or people like them has been doing the same schtick when LBJ was in office, when Carter was, when Clinton was, and now again under Obama. Those are people that not only have doubts or reservations or lost faith but has gone to full out war and is now actively trying to convince others and putting their faith and future dreams in acts of rebellion and revenge.
That’s not the same people who are just pissed at this last deal (I for one am myself pissed at it – but rather more pissed at republicans). Those are not the same people as the average Joe that is disappointed and depressed over 9% unemployment and a lagging recovery.
Because Obamas favorability is still high and his approval ratings are still far higher than we would expect. But the people I’m talking about – and talking to with such lack of subtlety apparently to merit guidance – those are in full out hate / rage / I’m betrayed mode, and if you ask them you find out that they are that over e.g. the PPACA, which is solid progressive legislation in comparison to status quo, any way you look at it.
So I don’t think we’re talking about the same people here really.
There is a point where the economy is crappy enough or other shit is fucked up enough so a certain part of your base is gonna defect. There’s not much you can do about that with policy or messaging or whatever if you cant get at the cause of their gloominess. Obama could have passed Single Payer and a 5 trillion dollar stimulus and if unemployment for some reason was stuck at 25% he would most likely still lose a substancial part of his base.
I cant bully those people to stay in the fold by “proving” that Obama has passed “good” legislation; neither can he; neither can anyone.
Those people have genuine concerns. That’s a way that you can go down that there’s simply not much to do about it.
But the Jane Hamsherian endless bitching about imperfections that are fairly standard in the grand scheme of things and pie in the sky fantasies about magical bully pulpits and other nonsense, those are not concerns that merit the amount of endless bitching and moaning around here and in other places. If there are valid concerns then it sure as hell aint them we’re discussing, or when we are they’re discussed in an insane way. And it’s not a coincidence that this thing always happens on the left.
The New Left movement adopted the democratic party and brought with them a deep suspicion against all leaders and a propensity to quickly and without much consideration consider themselves “betrayed”. That’s what I’m talking about, not about regular folks with valid concerns. Here’s how I respond to stuff that rise above the inane.
Oh I think Team Obama are very aware that they were balancing on a razors edge from day one given everything they had on their plate. And from where I’m standing it’s not like they’ve had a whole lot of luck.
So I think they know full well that they cant afford to piss people off, or tell them to sod off. Which they arent. And I think they know that many on the left thought the debt ceiling bill was a shitty deal and I actually think that they consider it fairly shitty themselves.
But I’m not the Obama admin so if I think there’s a bunch of folks running around who are both annoying and also think that they are the only ones that are allowed to unload and that their own behavior and ideas are above criticism, and if that same behavior and those same ideas has cost all of us dearly before – then I feel a bit more free to tell those people to grow the fuck up and stop being so fucking stupid and annoying.
Danny
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
The Democratic Partys presidential candidates in 1968 (Hubert Humphrey), 1972 (McGovern), 1980 (Carter) and 2000 (Gore), and those of us who would have preferred their presidential pen over the ones wielded by Nixon, Reagan and Dubya.
sparky
ooh a dead thread! my favorite. but on the off chance that its writer is still looking at it,
ok. relevant question would be is it WORSE now than in the past?
true. though arguably if the Ds actually said something of note–that is truly differentiated themselves from the oligarchy–there might be something else to talk about.
i confess to finding this one upsetting. not because of the past but because they get to keep on going. my guess is that’s because they are so good at justifying the conventional wisdom of the moment.
Pitchfork Ben Tillman was a lifelong Democrat.
your class bias is showing. being a good president is not about credentials or intellect, but rather about governance. Clinton and Obama are good at getting themselves elected, and that’s about it. Clinton set the stage for today’s debacles in ways that have already been discussed. he also squandered the peace dividend and ensured that GWB would be in the white house. Obama has shown that he will embrace any position that allows him to claim a deal. he’s constitutionally incapable of alienating anyone, including constitutional violators. so no, they both stank at governance.
people here spend much too much time arguing about image. the only thing that matters is what actually happens, and on that level Obama and Clinton are both creepy secret oligarchy courtiers.
ps: shoutout to El Cid’s comment re: wikileaks. maybe manning could get the Nobel. then the US would look like the Soviet Union, no?