Let’s everybody go buy at least one copy of the October 15 issue of Rolling Stone, and see if we can stealth-seed them into the waiting rooms at the dentist, Jiffy-Lube, Gymboree, the break room at the office, and wherever “low information” voters might be in need of an easily palatable update on How The World Works. It has a nice tasteful Newsweek–worthy cover, three-quarters profile of Our President, nothing that might hint of naughty thoughts or profane words to even the most tender sensibility. And there are two great long-form articles that deserve to be widely read.
First, Jann Wenner’s interview with “Obama in Command“, which includes a lot of the details people need to be reminded about, starting right on the first page:
How do you feel about the fact that day after day, there’s this really destructive attack on whatever you propose? Does that bother you? Has it shocked you?
__
I don’t think it’s a shock. I had served in the United States Senate; I had seen how the filibuster had become a routine tool to slow things down, as opposed to what it used to be, which was a selective tool — although often a very destructive one, because it was typically targeted at civil rights and the aspirations of African-Americans who were trying to be freed up from Jim Crow. But I’d been in the Senate long enough to know that the machinery there was breaking down…
__
But the delays, the cloture votes, the unprecedented obstruction that has taken place in the Senate took its toll. Even if you eventually got something done, it would take so long and it would be so contentious, that it sent a message to the public that “Gosh, Obama said he was going to come in and change Washington, and it’s exactly the same, it’s more contentious than ever.” Everything just seems to drag on — even what should be routine activities, like appointments, aren’t happening. So it created an atmosphere in which a public that is already very skeptical of government, but was maybe feeling hopeful right after my election, felt deflated and sort of felt, “We’re just seeing more of the same.”
[…] __
How do you personally feel about hedge-fund managers who are making $200 million a year and paying a 15 percent tax rate? Or the guy who made $700 million one year and compared you to Hitler for trying to raise his taxes above 15 percent — does that gall you?
__
I’ve gotta say that I have been surprised by some of the rhetoric in the business press… I know a lot of these guys who started hedge funds. They are making large profits, taking home large incomes, but because of a rule called “carried interest,” they are paying lower tax rates than their secretaries, or the janitor that cleans up the building. Or folks who are out there as police officers and teachers and small-business people. So all we’ve said is that it makes sense for them to pay taxes on it like on ordinary income….
__
The average American out there who is my primary concern and is making 60 grand a year and paying taxes on all that income and trying to send their kids through school, and partly as a consequence of bad decisions on Wall Street, feels that their job is insecure and has seen their 401(k) decline by 30 percent, and has seen the value of their home decline — I don’t think they’re that sympathetic to these guys, and neither am I.
[…] __
But you know what: I have to play the cards that I’m dealt. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit and the worst recession since the Great Depression. But you work with what’s before you.
(Also, he tells a great Bob Dylan story, but you’re gonna have to click the link to read it.)
Then, as a reward for our civic diligence, we get to enjoy Matt Taibbi on “Tea & Crackers: How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster”:
“We’re shaking up the good ol’ boys,” Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. “Buck up,” she says, “or stay in the truck.”…
__
Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn’t a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!” — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
__
“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”
__
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
Most of Taibbi’s article is an examination of how Rand Paul got where he is today, and what his rise to national attention says about his supporters (both the aging white people in scooters, and the far-less-visible individuals providing the funding). As with most of Taibbi’s work, there are some iffy assumptions, but he gives you details that will make you snort liquids through your nose even as they break your heart.
But hopefully not your political will, because we’ve still got just shy of five weeks until the election.
4tehlulz
ZOMG CLASS WARFARE
arguingwithsignposts
Early morning crew working hard today.
ETA: still happy to have a grown-up in the WH. Not perfect, not everything i hoped for, but i’d vote for him again. suck on that, firebaggers. /obot
August J. Pollak
He had me right up until “the average American making 60 grand a year.”
Any chance an average job like that is hiring somewhere?
Linda Featheringill
I read the interview. Very nice.
I was pleased to see that Obama is not as upset by all the fuss and bother as I have been.
Your idea of slipping a copy of Rolling Stone into waiting rooms is excellent.
Omnes Omnibus
@August J. Pollak: He should have said average family, but I am not going to nitpick.
Omnes Omnibus
@August J. Pollak: He should have said average family, but I am not going to nitpick.
Wag
I will buy a couple is copies to leave in my waiting room
liberal
The Fed and Obama’s Treasury continue to get rolled over by AIG.
Pancake
The Obama article’s were nice little press releases.
rootless_e
@liberal: Yves Smith has so consistently been wrong about Geithner that she should get an award.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This is the article that has the Lefties so up in arms: “He said bad things about me because I’m not going to vote in November, so I’m not going to vote in November.”
arguingwithsignposts
@Pancake: And the early morning troll squad also hard at work.
nevsky42
@Pancake:
A little grammar help for you…
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
nepat
The sad fact is that in this environment the president really needs to be out there making sense every g-d day since we are completely incapable of motivating ourselves. It’s nothing but long stretches of crippling inertia without constant reassurance from our Motivator-in-Chief. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. So Morebama.
General Stuck
I bet they smoke Mary Wanna over at that Rolling Stone.
ChrisS
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And you’re being so fucking helpful.
TR
That Taibbi piece is outfuckingstanding.
geg6
I don’t care whatever minor inaccuracies in statistics or whatever Taibbi commits in that article. I read it and he hits the fucking nail on the fucking head in his descriptions of his encounters with the Teabaggers. I know this is true because every.single.encounter.I’ve.had with these idiots is exactly the same as his.
Completely full of shit about everything. Almost all on the public dole in one way or another (state/municipal/federal jobs or in industries which receive federal funds or retirees on SS and Medicare or collecting SSI), almost all talking in racial codes, and perfectly fine with sucking the public tit themselves while characterizing anyone else who might receive public funds as welfare queens. They rally every other weekend in front of our country courthouse (which is convenient for all the ones who are county workers who can use their county parking passes to park free in the county parking garage).
I go and taunt them as often as I can. Call them out by name. I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. Which would bother me, I guess, if I was a good Christian like they are.
The Republic of Stupidity
And therein lie two significant problems…
1. A lot of people would have to admit they were wrong…
2. Then, they’d have to be willing to support the black man in the White House…
Tom Hilton
Thanks for posting these. I read the Obama interview yesterday morning, and watching the emo-progressive reaction was a little surreal–it was as if the people who saw ‘insults and threats’ to progressives in it (formerly sane Dave Dayen, I’m talking to you) had read a completely different interview.
Of course Maddow devoted half her show to the foolishness and then O’Donnell led off with it (Jeezus, Adam Green is an idiot). But O’Donnell showed an actual quote from the interview (from the coda, where he says people who give up were never serious) and Jody, who hadn’t followed any of it during the day, said “that’s what people are upset about?”
JPL
Thank you for highlighting both articles. Yesterday another poster linked to the section Fox News highlighted. Obama loves Gansta Rap. lol
I’m glad the President is in campaign mode and after his first year and 2/3 thirds, he finally realizes that the repubs don’t play fair.
Tom Hilton
And the more I see of reaction to this President from across the political spectrum, the more convinced I am that the old dynamic is still at work: he has to work twice as hard and do twice as well to get half as much credit as a white guy.
General Stuck
OT
From our SHOCKING NEWs department.
Say it ain’t so Gracie
Kristine
@arguingwithsignposts: With errant apostrophes as an added bonus.
Kristine
@nevsky42: Ah, you beat me to it! Love that cartoon.
El Cid
@geg6: I think it’s kind of interesting, this new concept that TeaTards like so many on the right aren’t racist, they just happen to think most of our nation’s problems are either the result of how dark skinned people act or how the government enables them.
And also that “Muslim” when used WRT to Obama is more or less a handy substitute for “n*****”.
Senyordave
I go and taunt them as often as I can. Call them out by name. I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. Which would bother me, I guess, if I was a good Christian like they are.
geg6,
Give em’ a taunt for me, please. I’m in Maryland, and they don’t seem to be a major presence here, hell, the Republican candidate for governor is more liberal than any Blue Dog out there.
The Tea Party has no answers, they don’t even bother making a proposal. Anyone who votes for them on the basis of being a Tea Partier is an ashhole, pure and simple.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ChrisS: What I find funny is that, except for Cenk over at GOS, it’s not the GOS people that are throwing a fit. It’s the readers at TPM. Go figure.
And if you don’t believe my quote, go read Cenk’s diary.
mikefromArlington
@Tom Hilton:
+1
Lolis
That’s a really good suggestion.
eemom
@Tom Hilton:
Actually I think it’s worse. He has to work many times as hard and do many times as well and he still gets pretty much zero credit from anybody.
Don’t know how he does it.
AxelFoley
@Tom Hilton:
Speaking of the progressive response, Tom, check out what that ratfuck Cenk Uygur posted at DKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/29/906233/-Obama-Scapegoats-His-Own-Voters
geg6
@El Cid:
Oh, yeah. Racists through and through. Watching them carefully pick their code words to call the darkies something they think I won’t find offensive is a real enlightening experience. And their indignation when I decode it for them is the most fun you can have for free. They wave their guns and canes and scream incoherent crap until the code deserts them and they say what they really think. Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er is what it all comes down to.
@Senyordave:
Beaver County, PA is a very small place where everyone knows everyone else. I KNOW these people. My parents and older brothers and sisters went to high school with these people. Their kids and grandkids get their federal and state student aid put in place by ME in order for them to attend the branch of the large university at which I work. Some of them even have enough self-awareness to be embarrassed when they see me.
...now I try to be amused
P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores is 20 years old and still required reading IMO. O’Rourke did some quick arithmetic of taxes and benefits and estimated that the average American was on the mooch. I imagine it’s more so now.
“Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us. “
Deb T
They look like great articles. After work, I’ll click the link and read them in full.
I have one complaint though. What is the deal with ridiculing folks because they are 1. old, 2. fat, 3. need oxygen? Is that meant to indict them in some way? It reminds of the Republicans ridiculing Gore because he got fat.
Is that kind of ridicule supposed to make those of us who are not old or fat or physically infirm feel superior? Smarter? Are the authors the cool kids at the table making fun of those who are not?
I’m just sick of it. I hate it when the Republicans do it, and they do it all the time, but I don’t like it any better when liberals or so-called Progressives (progressive only if you are attractive and in good health apparently) do it.
Grow the fuck up!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@AxelFoley: He is getting called on it in the comments.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Deb T: His point about the oxygen and scooters is to point out how obvious it is that these people are railing against something they are benefiting from.
Sly
@August J. Pollak:
James Carville once said during the ’92 campaign that when a Democrat says “2+2=5” and a Republican says “2+2=5,000,” the common refrain from political journalists is “Well, they’re both wrong.”
Numbers on median income vary depending on how you slice them up. It’ll vary heavily by gender, race, and state of residence, and whether you’re talking about household income or individual income (or confusing the two). 60K is a bit high if you’re going by nationwide household median income, since its closer to 50K. Up to 10K more if you live in states like NY, CT, or CA. Up to 15K less if you live in states like AL, MS, or KY.
But to put it in perspective, the GOP is putting 250K (or more!) as a benchmark for middle class status. To put it in McMeganesque terms: Obama = Technically Wrong, GOP = Collectively Nonsense.
JAHILL10
@Tom Hilton: I agree. And if through all this obstructionist crap he’s had to and will have to deal with he still pulls this country out of the crapper, the MSM will critique “the way” that he saved our collective ass. Did he show enough emotion? Did he lecture too much? Was he too cerebral? Gah! I think I’ll go give some money to OFA.
eemom
from the sublime to the dreckulous, anybody who happens to feel like throwing up this morning should go check out the “Magazine Preview” on the front page of the NYT.
I guess it is determined to not let the WaPo beat it in the race to the dustbin of history.
AxelFoley
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
True, but he’s also getting support from the usual suspects I see over there. Plus, his POS diary is on the rec list and last I checked, had 34 recs versus 1 hide-rate.
Of course, his shit is just one more added to the garbage that was posted there yesterday.
Sly
@AxelFoley:
The “progressive response” would likely be more along the lines of “Who the fuck is Sank Oy-gar?”
geg6
@Deb T:
Um, no. It’s meant to show how colossally hypocritical these assholes who are getting their oxygen and scooters from Medicare and their massive quantities of empty carbs, saturated fats, and sugar from either government jobs or Social Security truly are.
someguy
Thanks for posting the link, Laurie.
Hamsher’s Hamsters should take note – that, not Cole’s bit – is Obotics.
JAHILL10
@Deb T: More to the point, I think it is an illustration of just how narrow, demographically speaking, this so-called broad based grassroots movement’s members are. The majority are seniors who never in their lives thought they’d see a black man voted into the Oval Office and they’d rather cheer some winking, empty-headed grifter there than have to deal with the fact that the Whites Only sign on the White House has been taken down.
bemused
Every time Taibbi or others interview old tea party farts, the same common resentment surfaces. They spend a whole lot of time pissed off that someone else is getting something they aren’t. Even if the old farts get gubmint money through SS, Medicare or whatever or not so old farts get some kind of break from government subsidies, loans, grants, they deserve it, dammit but those other people are freeloaders and stealing their money. This is nothing new. For decades, I’ve read letters to the ed in newspapers from people pissing and moaning about teachers having it easy getting summers off and over paid, assistance to unwed mothers (why should we have to pay for their kids?), welfare of any kind (they’re just lazy) and on and on.
Armey, Koch bros, etc plus media took advantage of this and gave all these self-centered assholes a national soapbox.
Bender
So… it’s come to this. Rolling Stones at Jiffy Lube. To show how the world works.
Enjoy November, OZombies!
dcdl
@August J. Pollak:
Ha Ha, I hear you on that. Let me know when you find one.
Chyron HR
@Bender:
I appreciate that the “Mosque at Ground Zero” hysteria hasn’t carried the GOP to election day like you were hoping, but I don’t think trying to whip up “Rolling Stones at Jiffy Lube” hysteria is the answer.
Tom Hilton
@eemom: I think how he does it is somehow he just has an extraordinary ability not to internalize criticism, and not to be too dependent on praise. Which is good for him, and good for the nation.
Tom Hilton
@AxelFoley: Ugh. Made the mistake of clicking through, even though I know what to expect from him. That guy is dumb as a box of rocks with rocks piled on top sitting on a big pile of rocks in a bigger box.
wilfred
Stop it. The American Homelander is immune to sense-based appeals about anything. If he/she was, he/she would be mightily fucking crazed about 2 wars that have cost a trillion fucking dollars of his tax money and the blood of his/her children. Not happening.
On the other hand, he/she can be rallied to the barricades. Thus, in response to the imbecilic, softball construction of:
We get the stirring, bloody shirt rhetoric of:
Yeah. I wonder what the guy working at Jiffy Lube thinks about that.
AxelFoley
@Bender:
Yeah, see you in November. You will show up here when you GOP bitches get your asses kicked, right?
ruemara
Both the interview and the Taibbi piece are required reading for anyone who wants to understand what this political season is about. As far as the whine fest, wtf, does no one like Cenk or Hamster understand the irony of the poutrage at EVERY. LITTLE. THING. It’s not really about progress or they’d be spearheading the charge on regulation improvements and the next spate of tweaks on HCR. Or whatever the pet project is.
But no. It’s over personal feelings and interpretations of what people in power could possibly be saying to insult you. The president is a grown up, but are the supposed base? And the amount of people who think Obama should just issue a bunch of EOs that disregard the current law-it’s staggering.
With regard to the $60k earning American, the median income in my rural, albeit, connected to a university connected area, is $90k. So you’d qualify for moderate income housing if you earned $60k. There are so few $60k jobs around tho.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Tom Hilton: Obama’s the least thin-skinned pol I’ve seen in a long time. For all that I disagree and even dislike, I think he really is trying to be a civil servant, in the old sense of the term — a citizen-politician who does a duty. I think that’s what pulled him to pick Biden, who has that same sense, even as a “lifer”.
I think that’s the core of the issues he’s having, because so many pols are great people, but are also invested in surviving as pols way over any sense of duty. That’s far from new, but there’s a lot, including the ease of access/data on their works and the increased feedback of the modern communications age, that seems to be making the going harder. If I’m glad of nothing else, it’s that Obama generally avoids that level of wank.
sparky
@wilfred: stop it! don’t you know you can’t do that in one of these Obama is teh bestest EVAR threads?
edit: my favorite part so far is this:
who knew Dick Cheney was still in the White House?
Allan
Barack Obama, Madison, WI 9/28/2010
Nick
@sparky: I really don’t see the issue with that.
General Stuck
Come firebag walk with me
under a cheater moon
down by the river
lol
@Tom Hilton:
You’re wrong because progressives can’t possibly be racist or prejudiced. Why? Because they’re progressive, thus ipso facto, you’re wrong because SHUTUPTHATSWHY
Nied
I’ve been going around posting this at a couple different sites now and I’ve yet to get a straight answer from someone who advocates it: Can anyone name a time when “punishing dems for not being progressive enough” actually worked? I mean when it lead to substantively more progressive policy? I either get dead silence in response, or I get a lot of sophistry about how it’s really moderates fault or something along those lines. But I’ve never gotten a straight answer to the simple question: When has abandoning dems for not being liberal enough caused them to become more liberal?
A Conservative Teacher
How amusing… people who have never been to Tea Party events, don’t talk regularly with Tea Party people (both followers and leaders), and who don’t agree with anything they say visit one or two events and suddenly are some sort of expert on them, so much that they can dispense judgement and advice. And even more amusing, others honestly believe them.
If you want to understand the Tea Party movement, pick up a copy of the Constitution and study it, then follow that up by reading the Federalist Papers, and end by listening to a week of Rush and Sean. You’ll be a better person for it.
General Stuck
deleted. screwed up link
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
Lord God Above, even with all the shit raining down on him and things looking bad for his party in this upcoming election, Obama manages to sound utterly self pitying, milquetoast and bland; one might even think his demeanor is representative of who he is as a leader.
I’ve come to believe arrogance and hubris are his biggest problems.
and by the way, the U.S. is not now waging TWO wars, but three: Pakistan is now the location of the “cancer” that will fuel the military industrial complex for decades to come.
John Bird
I don’t really feel like hearing more from the Democrats before I take some nausea medication and go vote for them. They’ve done enough as it is in the last month to try to get me to stay home.
General JAFO Willibro
@lol: Haysoose, get a room, fanboys. All the progressives I know are still voting for Democrats, as will I. The only folks you will see sit out this election will be the independents who actually put Obama over the top in 2008.
Anyway, Greenwald already called all this hippy punching and “blame the electorate” for the utterly witless horseshit it is. Cenk and others are just piling on. The real point of this is: If teabaggers take over either or both houses in 5 weeks, the WH will have nobody to blame but themselves.
John Bird
@A Conservative Teacher:
Are you the dude who got duped by that McSweeney’s article? You are, aren’t you? Because, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Tom Hilton
@John Bird: wow, that is priceless. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha indeed.
John Bird
@Nied:
Well, I’m not planning on ‘punishing’ them, but the best answer to your question I can think of is:
You’re right, history doesn’t show ANY effective way to make the Democrats more liberal – except by making all the conservative Democrats become Republicans.
Joseph Nobles
@John Bird: Unless that’s a spoof account, that’s the blogger that got duped by the McSweeney’s article. Amazing, showing up here and telling us to find a clue.
“Looter!”
Dennis SGMM
@John Bird:
And here I thought that it was a spoof/parody post with the “…and end by listening to a week of Rush and Sean,” piece being the tip off.
This person professes to be a teacher. It’s a bit frightening to think of how many young minds are going to be crippled by his “teaching.”
HopeOverFear
@Tom Hilton:
EXACTLY.
Elie
@nepat:
If we can only assure decent governance if the actual leader has to “goose” the citizens to want and do the right thing, we are doomed…no leader can sustain that. No leader should sustain that… people have to become citizens again and stop waiting to be parented
Bobby Thomson
I found this comment at TBogg’s place and adopt it.
Elie
@Bobby Thomson:
Well then, since radishes can do it, why arent you up there running things? You clearly have all the answers and know your vegetables too.
eemom
@Joseph Nobles:
plus, he’s here to tell us that Teatards are NOT stoopid tools like we think they are. This is virtually Platonic in its perfection.
trollhattan
@A Conservative Teacher:
I’ve attended some teabag events and find, if anything, most descriptions of similar events rather understated. They’re a loosly knit pack of middle-age white folks who seem to be able to take the day off work to yell about taxes and gummint.
Actual consitutional scholars seemed conspicuously absent.
Nied
@John Bird:
While it’s always an ego boost to be told you’re right, I don’t know if I share your pessimism.
I mean you have to go back fairly far but the progressive movement has made some fantastic advances in the past. It’d be tough to argue that FDR was a failure of liberal policy even though he was for the time a bit of a mushy middle roader compared to people like Huey Long.
It seems like we could get a lot more done by trying to emulate the progressives of that era than the ones from the last 40 or so years.
Paula
I’ve disagreed w/ POTUS on a lot of things over the years, but we seem to agree on the relative usefulness of catering to the so-called progressive blogosphere.
But it’s funny how they can both claim to be the base of the party and then get annoyed that their concerns can be so ignored by the administration. Newsflash: if the people in power can afford to ignore you, you’re probably 1) not the base or 2) forming only a small part of it. So, to solve your problem you should either 1) leave the party if they’re ignoring your concerns or 2) start educating people so that your POV is more substantially represented within the base.
Tom Hilton
@Bobby Thomson: Which happens to be pretty goddamn close to what the President actually said (which, in turn, was nothing at all like the imaginary statements to which emo-progs reacted).
Which gets to the point I made way upthread: what people are reacting to is not what he actually said. Greg Sargent pissed me off yesterday in a piece identifying three different types of criticism, and saying instead of attacking their right to criticize him the President should actually try to address the criticism. Except that a) he didn’t dispute the right to criticize, and b) he did try to address the three critiques Sargent identified. And Sargent is one of the smarter, more reasonable people writing about this stuff–but it was as if he hadn’t read a word of the actual interview.
Tom Hilton
@Paula: Right. Emo-prog bloggers have an inflated sense of their own importance; they think they’re ‘marginalized’, but they’re really just marginal.
FlipYrWhig
@Tom Hilton: Yup. Every comment I’ve seen from Obama that’s supposed to be “hippie-punching” has _invariably_ been something like, “I know people aren’t satisfied, but we have to keep working together to move forward.” And for some reason that’s a Very Bad Thing to say.
I don’t get what people want him to say. “You’re right, Jane, I’m a colossal fuckup who deliberately tanked the public option just to spite you, and I also hate gay people and have big plans to assassinate Americans on a dictatorial whim, so when you think about it really the best course of action is to disengage so as not to encourage me to continue these my many failings”? Even if he did say that, the criticism would be, “Pfft, that doesn’t make me feel fired up either.”
In all honesty, whenever I hear an answer to what people want him to say — Bobby Thomson just supplied one — it’s something he has already said and keeps on saying.
Snaporaz
Anyone else notice that Conservative Teacher tries to say Taibbi doesn’t know anything about the Tea Party because he only attended one or two events (false), but then makes a comment that is verbatim to what Taibbi wrote is one of the 5 things that every tea partier has in common? Way to prove yourself wrong in your own post Conservative Teacher.
Sasha
@nepat:
The problem with that is Obama’s talent is to walk in when the opposition acts up and immediately be recognized as the only adult in the room loses its power if he always is in the room.
He really needs to appoint a motivator czar.
Bobby Thomson
@Tom Hilton: The imaginary statements:
This isn’t off the cuff. It’s a planned, “I wanna say something. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski” moment. That doesn’t mean to disregard what he says. It means that you should take it seriously because he wants you to.
My take is that the last clause crosses the line from promoting his accomplishments to unseemly horn blowing, but admittedly, that could be just me.
It’s actually incorrect. The enthusiasm gap is with people who tend not to vote because “they all suck.” I’m sure that yelling at these people and calling them irresponsible, which I’m sure they’ve never heard before, will get them to put out, though.
Odd for him to pick civil liberties as a point for contrast. At least he’s giving some idea of what he would try to do with a Democratic Congress, so points for that.
(Might not have been such a good idea for him to have put the word out to stop funding liberal 527s.)
I’m trying to imagine someone who thinks that all politicians are the same, but who voted for the president in 2008 because they thought this time it might be different, being persuaded by this. Don’t see it.
(Implicit message: People who feel discouraged and haven’t been involved up to now because they don’t see the point of activism aren’t serious.) Again, I don’t see someone who’s been unemployed for several weeks and looking for a rescue taking this very well.
Sorry, just not seeing that message that you’re seeing. And while I’m not the choir, I’m not one of the people that needs to be persuaded to go out and vote, either.
My sense is that Obama initially dropped the prepared speech because his instincts told him it was a bad play, but that one of his advisors talked him into going back and doing it.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: He didn’t say that in the quoted comments in Rolling Stone. If there’s some “attaboy” dog whistle there, I am not hearing it. I think you are projecting onto his statements what you want to hear.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson:
Why do you think that’s the audience? I thought it was supposed to be another potshot at the “professional left.” That’s who’s acting all up in arms about it.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson:
Um, what? How is that statement not about the PCCC/Kos/FDL crowd who crowd around in comment sections threatening that they’re too discouraged to vote? Or, if not that in particular, there really is a segment of self-avowed progressives who really do talk about how they don’t see the point, they’re all the same, I’m tired and don’t want to bother, right?
I don’t see where you’re getting “people who don’t see the point of activism” from.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: That should be the audience, and I’m assuming basic competence. Look at the internals on all the polling. It’s not liberals and Democrats who are abandoning the president.
Unless, of course, he wants to set up a false narrative that disappointed liberals cost Democrats their majorities.
FlipYrWhig
My criticism of that would be that he’s speaking too directly to the FDL nexus and mistaking them for “the base.” But it sounds like what he and his people have said before: there’s a group of people who dog every step and talk about how the things they wanted to see haven’t happened fast enough, or well enough, or pointedly enough, and if they really do follow through on their threats to sit out the election because they’re so discouraged, they’ll only succeed in hurting themselves and the causes they believe in.
Where I agree with you is that he’s tangling up two messages, the “professional left is dampening enthusiasm” one and the “everybody who was on board in ’08 needs to get back on board because God knows we need ya” one.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson:
True, but you sure hear about supposed liberal discontent a lot, including on MSNBC primetime and most of the major blogs, including this one.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig:
Again, I’m assuming basic competence. That crowd amounts to about 0.01% of the electorate. And Gibbs said that the professional left is “not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama,” so with those people still on board, it must be aimed at someone else.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig:
He should be delivering the second message every day through the election. He shouldn’t be touching the first message with a ten-foot pole. Frankly, not even surrogates should be giving the first message because it’s counterproductive and just creates a whole new cycle of circle jerking every time it pops up.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I think our comments crossed, but my response would be that that sliver of the electorate has gotten a lot of alt/prog media attention, and so he’s addressing it. And I also think it eats at the inner circle, as evidenced by cracks by Emanuel and Gibbs as well. I’d rather see him speak to the people who were enthused in ’08 but who disengage after that, which everyone has always known was likely to happen; I think you agree with that too. These concluding comments seem to get tangled up between “disengaged base” and “discontented liberals,” which I like you see as quite different; but it’s pretty clearly the case that the “discontented liberals” story has gotten a lot of–largely undeserved–airtime.
Ruckus
@Tom Hilton:
It’s even worse than having to work twice as hard for half the credit. He’s a democrat as well. So he only gets what one-eighth the credit?
(2*work=1/2credit/democrat=1/8 positive credit)?
Kerry Reid
@eemom:
Seriously. Name a president who came into office with more things against him than Obama.
Two wars, a tanked economy, an insane wingnut machine aided and abetted by major media outlets, several unstable regimes with access to or the capability to develop access to nuclear weaponry, an environment in meltdown…and some whiny fucktards STILL think that passing that weak-tea “public option” that barely made it through the House should have been the key focus.
Everyone needs to read the New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell piece on the difference between social networks and social activism. I’m evangelical on this today.
Deb T
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I know, but it’s more than that. It’s a tone. I guess I’ve also read it a number of times in other articles where these folks are ridiculed. Even diabetes becomes some kind of negative shorthand for these analysts.
You can talk about medicare scooters without referring to, how does he put it, “atrophied glutes”.
It’s a hot button with me because I see a trend to the use of insult instead of reason.
Sasha
@Nied:
Indeed.
It there is one lesson to be learned from the Tea Partiers/Baggers its that if you want your pols to vote your way, you don’t threaten to not vote for them in the general election — you threaten to vote for his replacement in the primaries.
Kerry Reid
@Nied:
So what group of Americans would you like to see tossed into internment camps based on race and ethnicity?
rickstersherpa
Last month, I read this on the blog put out by “Thorstein Veblen,” and I wish Jame Hamshers’ of the world the would take put some perspective on their rants:
http://firelarrysummersnow.blogspot.com/2010/08/rant-against-liberals-who-rant-that.html
Recently, there’s been a lot of liberal rage against Obama
So, I’ve long been critical of the Obama administration’s economic policy, but there is one thing to know — first off, there aren’t actually all that many liberal economists, and even fewer with the stature to be Presidential advisers. Yes, there’s Stiglitz and Krugman, and Brad DeLong, but, to my knowledge, none of them came down on the right side of Bernanke’s fateful reconfirmation. Obama’s choice to go with a team including Romer, Summers, Geithner, Austan Goolsbee, and Peter Orszag was a choice for Democratic economists with some sharp (or very!) sharp CVs (plus Jared Bernstein…). (How many of us have got “tenured at Harvard in our mid-20s” on our resumes?) Obama himself is not an economist and couldn’t possibly have known about the Dark Ages economics has sadly fallen into the past few decades… And Summers published some extremely populist Op-Eds in 2009, rants about Bush Administration tax cuts and inequality, the kind of thing no liberal would have any qualms about, with an explicit eye toward appealing to candidate Obama.
I think that says Summers thinks Obama is a liberal. And I think it also makes it a touch more difficult to blame Obama for what were the key mistakes — the reappointing of Ben Bernanke (which was supported by both DeLong and Krugman), the feet-draggging on the FOMC appointments, and the small stimulus. Obama deferred to the “experts”. The experts turned out to be medeival priests on the key issues, even though these are not low-IQ, unqualified people. Then there’s health care — Obama did not give Summers control over health care, and the constraint on getting a more liberal health care bill came in the Senate, not from the White House.
Point is there just aren’t that many doors President Obama could have knocked on to get competent advice on all three of these issues. And there are very, very few economists over the age of 35 who are ever worth listening to. More liberals need to get Economics Ph.D.’s instead of Anthropology or History Ph.D.’s if they want to shape policy (that’s why I switched from Poly Sci/Law to econ), and we need to have more liberals who’ve got “Goldman Sachs VP” on their resume as well…
Maybe bring in John Corzine as Larry’s replacement. Corzine is far more liberal than Summers. He made mistakes as governor, but his far biggest mistake was being governor of New Jersey when the ecomomic downturn from hell arrived.
Deb T
@geg6:
I get it.
Meanwhile folks who happen to be elderly, overweight, forced to use some kind of medical equipment for a chronic condition are alienated. It proves to them that the “left” is elite and full of young snobs. There’s a way to make the point, a very good point, without using slapstick, insult humor.
The main trait the tea-folk have is ignorance. They don’t think they are hypocrites and are unlikely to read the articles that say they are.
It’s just a style I don’t like.
FlipYrWhig
@rickstersherpa: OMG I cannot even _conceive_ of the shitstorm that would result from putting a former Goldman executive into that spot. Even a liberal.
Kerry Reid
@Kerry Reid:
I apologize for being unnecessarily snarky — but the point is that FDR only looks “progressive” if we are willing to overlook some things that contemporary lefties would presumably find pretty appalling. EO 9066 is the most obvious, but I’d also include his — I assume reluctant — acquiescing to Southern Dems on shelving anti-lynching legislation, signing a Social Security bill that at least initially failed to cover most women and minorities, etc.
But I think I’d identify that as a difference between hindsight criticisms of FDR and the ongoing ones about Obama. I am willing to give FDR the benefit of the doubt that, had there been a way to get New Deal legislation passed AND stronger federal action on lynching, he would have done it. If he could have passed SS and included more people initially, he would have done it. I have no doubt that he would have introduced some form of universal healthcare if there had been support for it in Congress.
What chaps me about the “professional left” or whatever is that the kneejerk assumption is that Obama is a stalking-horse conservative, he never was serious about healthcare or FinReg or whatever. (And yet, he still ended up with legislation that the insurance companies and banksters screamed about — which seems to contradict the line that those bills were just big pay-offs to those industries.)
“FDR” only has become this progressive light in retrospect. At the time, he took a lot of heat from his left wing, too, for not moving fast enough, being in thrall to the financial kingpins, etc.
Which gives me some hope that Obama will be viewed the same.
Also — FDR didn’t have to deal with a bunch of whiny-bitchy bloggers. ;)
rickstersherpa
But now to express, if not rage, at least exasperation with the President. One obvious move that would fire up the ol’d New Deal coalition and at least get some working class whites back under the tent would be a strong statement that “I will maintain and strengthen social security. No change in the retirement age, no reduction in benefits.”
Of course, one problem with doing that is it contradicts what he said and appears to have silently supported with the catfood commission that “everything is on the table.” And second, the sneaking suspicion that Obama shares with the Rubinites (Orzag, Summers, & Geithner) a belief that “the retirement age should be raised and benefits cut for the sake of “Fiscal responsibility” (and as the Republicans in both Congress and the Commission are demonstrating, Fiscal responsibility goes out the window when it comes for more tax cuts for rich and very and super rich people.)
Kerry Reid
@Kerry Reid:
And keeping the ouroboros alive — Nied, I’m not sure if by “progressives of that era” you meant FDR as the person to emulate, or you meant the voters/activists on the left of that time. If the latter, then I clearly misread you and I humbly apologize, as we seem to be making the same argument that FDR wasn’t the great progressive that many today view him as. And yet — he managed to pull off a lot despite the nattering.
rickstersherpa
@FlipYrWhig: Yea, I expect Jane, Glenn, and Tabbai et al. would blow fuses. I am not sure about Arianna who knows and likes Corzine. From what I read, Corzine was bounced out of Goldman because of his disagreements with the trader mentality of Rubin and later Blankfein in the mid-nineties. He came from the investment banking side of Goldman, the side that traditionally built businesses, and not the traders who seem to specialize in wrecking countries. Corzine fought a lot of good liberal fights in the Senate and then in New Jersey as Governor. Stuck up for unions, etc. There would be a lot cheap shots about the Goldman Borg controlling the Government but perhaps we should treat him as our Snape, coming over to fight on the side of good and utilizing his awesome knowledge of the dark side.
Bob Loblaw
@Kerry Reid:
1. FDR: This should not be controversial. Unless you’re a fucking zealot.
2. Harry Truman: He had been VP for all of two and a half months before Roosevelt croaked. His first few tasks: dropping some atomic bombs, ending two world wars, Potsdam conference, Marshall plan, etc. Oh, and the US was still in a recession and he was about to deal with the mother of all labor influxes. Just saying.
3. Nixon: Just because he didn’t act to solve the problems he was supposedly tasked with solving, doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. It just means he was a bad president, which isn’t what we’re ranking here. I haven’t noticed any high profile assassinations sweeping the nation lately. Or Vietnams.
I think people make the mistake of not realizing there are two operating forces a President has to deal with: internal domestic forces and external geopolitical forces. Obama has one of the toughest internal oppositions in the last century by far, his domestic opposition is utterly nihilistic, but he’s had it pretty easy on the external front. This country’s problems are almost universally self-created and self-inflicted.
Nied
@Kerry Reid:
I was referring to the left of the time yes, so we are in complete agreement.
The apocryphal story had FDR saying “make me do it” not “go home and pout until I do it for you.”
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
FDR might be a good example, but he also had the luxury of winning by 20 points, winning 43 stats, and, oh, being white.
The war was essentially over when Truman came to power and the recession didn’t happen for another year.
I definitely disagree that Nixon came to power with as many things against him as Obama did.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@A Conservative Teacher:
I own a bound copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One thing I’ve learned from listening to Tea Party people is that they love to wave it around, but they only seem to have read VERY selective parts of it. They completely ignore or dismiss large chunks of it. For example, FREEDOM gets defined as being the freedom to conduct business without reasonable restrictions. Individual liberty, especially that stuff about EVERY PERSON having the right to contest their detention and to be tried, seems to be entirely ignored. I’m also not sure how it is possible for their to be infinite tax cuts and no cuts to medicare, social security, or defence and YET have a smaller government and reduced deficits. It is fantasy budgeting.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
You believe that Roger Ailes and Jim Demint are existential threats to Western democracy. They aren’t. Barack Obama’s primary problem is procedural abuse in one of his own country’s legislative chambers.
Josef Stalin carved out half of Europe and threw it behind the Iron Curtain. Then he initiated the Cold War.
There’s a difference.
Anon.
“(And yet, he still ended up with legislation that the insurance companies and banksters screamed about —which seems to contradict the line that those bills were just big pay-offs to those industries.)”
It doesn’t. Unfortunately there’s plenty of evidence that the whiny babies running the big finance companies will scream if you even propose to look at what they’re doing, even if it involves a big payoff. They are *that* full of themselves.
Anon.
@Bob: “Barack Obama’s primary problem is procedural abuse in one of his own country’s legislative chambers.”
Similar procedural abuse actually led to the destruction of 17th century Poland, which ended up carved up by its neighbors. As Krugman noted.
This is in fact a threat to the existence of the United States.
Anon.
“If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we’d better fight in this election. ”
Hmm. On which side? Not Obama’s, clearly.
Anon.
Nied, I’ll *GIVE* you an answer:
Before the Civil War, abandoning the Whigs and Democrats for not being liberal enough may not have changed the Whigs and Democrats …. but it did create the Republican Party, which *was* more liberal, and it also caused the Whigs to evaporate, leaving room for the Republican Party to win elections.
A Conservative Teacher
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Are you serious? You own a copy of the Declaration, so you are now an expert? And you seriously think that your interpretation of what the founding fathers meant when they wrote it means anything at all? Read Locke, Hobbes, Rouseau, and other Enlightenment philosophers- many ‘tea baggers’ have and therefore are a lot more educated than you (or President Bobbles the Clown) are on constitutional law and theory. Government exists to protect life, liberty, and private property rights, which all existed before the state, and only exists for that reason, because empowering it to do anything else leads to less security of human lives (death panels, decisions to suppress life-saving drugs because they are too expensive, abortion, etc), less security of liberty (increasingly being forced by the gov to make decisions, by both liberal Democrats and liberal GOPers), and less security of private property (increasingly confiscatory tax laws, seizures of businesses by the government in violation with laws, etc). Wake up, or else one day you’ll find yourself dead at the hands of a tyrant.