Apparently, Obama has lost Katrina van den Heuvel. I’m sure Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is next…
And before you concern troll me, and claim she makes legitimate points, any alleged Democrat who goes on to the pages of Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap and claims Obama is on his way to a failed Presidency after the accomplishments of the last couple of years in the face of multiple crises, a depression, complete lack of help from the GOP and a fractured and spineless Democratic party, can just go fuck themselves. I don’t care what they have to say.
BTW- when the Democrats lose the black vote because of what has gone on during this administration, don’t act all surprised. I’ve warned you all of the simmering anger just below the surface in the African-American community. They’re being blamed for everything (Acorn, the housing crisis, voter fraud- hell, the day after Prop 8 failed people rushed to blame black people), they are treated to a clear double standard in Congress (Charlie Rangel humiliated for what the panel concluded were small mistakes and not designed to benefit him while DeLay is a felon and no one blinks, Vitter and Ensign and hundreds of others go unpunished. And now they are after Waters. There is a reason the CBC wants to get rid of the ethics panel.), they’re watching their party elites savage the first black President when they have been the backbone for the Democrats for decades, and they are watching a President be submitted to racist smear campaigns by folks outside the party that make any and all of the bullshit the Clintons went through look like small potatoes, and NO ONE is raising any hell in defense of the President. It’s all go along to get along. The only congressman who called the Republicans out was defeated. The rest just sit there and whisper behind the scenes about how Obama won’t tell them what he wants. All of this while the AA community is the hardest hit by recession.
I’m telling you, the black community is noticing this shit even if you all aren’t. Read the damned comments here and see what people are saying.
And I’m banning every asshole who tries to claim that I am suggesting criticism of Obama is racist.
eemom
omg. This is it ladies and gentlemen. He’s gone full metal Hamsher.
But let’s look at the bright side. At least now we’ll get to see him on teevee.
LITBMueller
Carter accomplished a lot, too. The problem is that a “failed presidency” is not defined by what you did, but who you failed to please.
chopper
nice, cole.
Linda Featheringill
Several good points.
Personally, I am disappointed. I am disappointed in the Republicans. I thought they were patriots. They haven’t acted that way. I am disappointed in the MSM. I thought they were interested in facts, regardless of their personal bias. They are not. I am disappointed in a lot of Americans and their irrational hatred of Obama. It all smells like racism to me. I am disappointed in the “Left” who descend into bitch fits with the slightest disappointment. I thought they were interested in facts, too, but I guess not. I am disappointed in the Senate because they haven’t put up a decent fight for a lot of things.
And occasionally, I am disappointed in Obama. He seems to have given up. Maybe he is disappointed in us, too.
liberal
You think the average black voter out there is pissed at…who? Liberal bloggers who attack Obama from the left? LOL.
IMHO they have a right to be pissed about that. But IMHO “blackness” isn’t the issue; rather, it’s liberal-ness. (I thought I’d heard something about Porter Goss being in a position in the ethics office; WTF is up with that?)
Which party elites? Savaging Obama, how? Just so we’re on the same page, I claim that “liberal/left bloggers” are not party elites.
Huh? No “personal” attack on Obama has been nearly as nasty as the claims about e.g. Vince Foster, and Clinton was impeached.
Not that I’m going to carry any water for the Clintons, and not that I would be surprised if the Republicans impeached Obama.
Trentrunner
Well, when my President labels me “sanctimonious,” a “purist,” only interested in “the game of politics,” I tend to get a little peevish.
In tone and substance, Obama at today’s presser reminded a lot of John Cole.
Not kissing ass, mind you, but just an observation…
cleek
OMG how racist.
chopper
@LITBMueller:
obama’s done more in 2 years than carter would have in two terms. yeah, a lot of it is in who you failed to please, but that only lasts until the pissy liberals/conservatives grow up. what you accomplished is the metric for the ages.
Sarcastro
Of course not, they’re all blaming the hard left for… something.
Pigs & Spiders
Someone ate their Wheaties.
freelancer
Can’t believe you’re gonna dangle that mackerel over the pool and not expect the orcas to bite.
Trentrunner
Oh, and now I have a name for the Obama/Cole approach:
Exasperated Pragmatism
Awesome?
Cat
The problem is figuring out who is criticizing Obama for legit reasons and those criticizing him Because they secretly thought a Black president would fail and are now using his missteps to further advance their narrative that white people are just better and should be running things.
Of course there are the obvious things, but the subtle racism of reduced expectations is pretty hard to catch.
Hawes
I wonder what percentage of the left wing commentariat were at least closet Nader supporters in 2000? I’m not happy with a few of Obamas actions, but they are almost entirely in the realm of executive power and the failure to go after Bush era shit, especially torture. A lot of what he has done is a “big fucking deal” but it’s not EVERYTHING we want.
We will miss him when he tells us all to fuck off in 2012 and moves to Alberta to grow arugula
NobodySpecial
You really think Obama’s not running in 2012?
TR
Amen, brother.
Obama just called some of his liberal critics “sanctimonious” in his press conference, and I’d bet my fucking house that right now a thousand angry blog posts are being made that will recoil in horror at this betrayal and, at the same time, be prime examples of that sanctimonious attitude.
Obama has gotten more shit done in his first two years than any president since LBJ, despite having to deal with two wars, an economic collapse, and an opposition party flirting with outright treason.
Anyone who gets pissy from the left can help themselves to a steaming hot mug of Shut the Fuck Up.
liberal
This just makes Obama sound like an insufferable asshole.
Matt
You gotta love Mary Landrieu claiming that this tax deal is morally corrupt. This is the woman who would not allow a confirmation on the President’s new budget director because Obama wanted a small reprieve on the oil industry raping the Gulf of Mexico. STFU!
Midnight Marauder
@liberal:
I think it’s pretty clear that Cole was referring to attacks on Obama from all sides of the political spectrum, including supposedly progressive activists. These are some specific examples he provided:
If you are reading this blog, you most likely know who is responsible for blaming black Americans for the aforementioned examples.
There is a legitimate issue in terms of the Left not vigorously calling out explicitly racist propaganda attacking President Obama for exactly what it is, and a large portion of black Americans are aware of this.
This is bigger than just a bunch of fucking liberal bloggers.
mr. whipple
What a shock!
Tonal Crow
@Sarcastro: There’s a “hard left” in America? Where?
Nellcote
Thank you John Cole.
Tractarian
@Sarcastro:
Fixd.
Corey
and NO ONE is raising any hell in defense of the President.
I think progressives would probably be a lot more inclinded to “raise hell” against racist right-wingers if the president, say, didn’t shit all over them in a nationally-televised press conference.
geg6
@LITBMueller:
This.
Gotta say, Cole. This post sounds an awful lot like Obama cannot fail, he can only be failed.
As for the racism displayed, I am appalled by racism in every form and don’t really care to indulge in it for any, let alone political, reason. Even when some people try to tell me that calling someone weak is racist.
Moe
Yep, black people are held to different standard.
So, no, we aren’t surprised that the first black President or that black members of congress get overly criticized.
What we’re surprised about is that Obama, who was supposed to bring change, is merely amounting to business as usual. HE will lose the black vote because he’s afraid to do anything specifically for the black vote. Just like every other Democrat.
“The AA community is the hardest hit by recession.”
And the AA President isn’t doing shit about it.
A L
Obama’s a bad president. Sorry you got snookered Mr. Cole but yelling at other people for your mistake is not how you handle problems.
P.S. A liberal whining about alienating blacks is pretty rich. Look in the mirror, Mr. Cole. The mirror.
DavidNC
for REAL. nice post John.
mr. whipple
Agreed.
Oh, the crybaby butthurt is gonna be epic on this one. People who want Obama to be macho for them are all gonna dissolve into puddles of sad little tears.
August J. Pollak
Oh look guys, John Cole’s back.
Elizabelle
@Linda Featheringill:
What Linda said. At comment 4.
Mr. Cole: what did you think of the press conference today? Your take?
jwalden91lx
@TR: I love this. Love it. Love it. Love it.
NR
The way Obama’s going, he may lose everything BUT the black vote.
Obama has fractured and pissed off his coalition. The results of the midterm made that clear, but he obviously doesn’t care.
I do agree, though, that we need to stop calling Obama weak. He’s not weak. He’s getting exactly what he wants.
Bulworth
I have to say there wasn’t anything in Katrina’s column I disagreed with. Among other things, she says this:
Last week we were told about the need for “shared sacrifice” in reducing the deficit, hence the salary freeze. This week we get a $900 billion tax cut whopper, including a 2 percentage point cut in the Social Security payroll tax to be funded by $120 billion in non-existent general revenue funds. The Republicans wouldn’t allow a vote in the Senate to raise the taxes on income above $250k. Think they’ll allow a vote to restore the $120 billion payroll “tax increase” on the first dollar of earnings next year when they have even more members in the Senate and there’s a GOP House?
I don’t think so. I don’t see any policy here at all. Just political mechanizations. Oh well.
Will
The really funny thing is that this is a post beating on progressives for beating on Obama prompted by a speech by Obama beating on progressives.
Don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s not good politics. Probably a lot of fun for Republicans, though.
Marc
John, two things.
I’ve been broadly sympathetic, but this tax deal is different. Note the elected congressional democrats who are furious about this; there is a reason. There are some issues that define who you are; there are some lines that you don’t cross. Agreeing to tax cuts for the rich and tiny estate taxes for the rich is not something that Democrats do. Our society is terribly unequal and agreeing to this – when it is deeply unpopular – is simply a betrayal. I’ve defended many things by this man, but this is just a bridge that you can’t cross. I’m actively rooting for him to be defeated on this, and from his news conference he apparently detests people like me. So be it.
Second, the Nation has been very supportive of Obama for the reasons that you give. Having one of the most credible progressive voices around express extreme displeasure about the post-election course of things is actually quite reasonable. I didn’t disagree with anything on her list, and I didn’t see you doing so either. You just dismissed her as an out-of-touch elitist. That’s not fair, and that’s not the history of the magazine that she’s representing here.
tomvox1
I don’t quite understand why the progressive wing is making this particular deal Armageddon for Obama. Is it because he just won’t play the game the way they want him to? Is it that they really want a Left Wing George W. Bush (“With Us or Agin Us!”) of their very own? Is it that Obama was a giant Rorschach test that so many liberals projected their ideals on that they cannot help but be disappointed by his every move in the actual real world of, you know, governing the whole goddamn nation?
He always said he preferred Lincoln to FDR and that is how he is governing: exhausting every avenue for the other side to show the better angels of their nature. He always said he was pragmatic, not an idealist and would work to find solutions form the center. He always said he was going to ramp up Afghanistan. Hell, he even said that he was a big proponent of what Reagan did as president. So where is this sense of betrayal coming from? It is the delusional belief that the man was lying during the campaign and would suddenly turn into Super Liberal once he conned enough moderate white people into voting for him?
Even Krugman gives the proposed tax deal a big fat meh–he can’t seem to get exorcised over it like Katrina “A Thousand Betrayals!” vanden Heuvel. It’s the fucking status quo plus some help for the unemployed and a payroll tax cut, ostensibly for the middle class and small business. Was the Senate really going to pass anything else? Isn’t this not the worst deal possible considering that Snowe, Collins, Nelson, Conrad, Baucas, etc were always going to find a way to torpedo any other option on the top bracket? Is everyone on The Left willing to cut off unemployment benefits to score political points (as if people can really follow who’s to blame for what!)? Why is this Obama’s (latest) Waterloo?
Tractarian
@Corey:
Shorter Corey:
Screw this country! Obama hurt my fee-fees!
NR
Oh, and as for this…
…it would probably help matters if Obama didn’t keep giving ammunition to the people attacking him. As Atrios pointed out yesterday, the deficit is going to get worse because of these tax cuts for the rich, and who do you think the Republicans are going to blame for that? Themselves?
Obama will be attacked again and again over the next two years for raising the deficit even further.
Bob Loblaw
This bipolar act is getting stale, Cole. These are pretty extreme swings in behavior you’re going through.
Ensign went unpunished by the Department of Justice. Which is headed up by a black guy.
rdalin
I think Obama might the right decision here. Nobody’s happy about this, and clearly he isn’t either. Now I want to hear more about those hostage takers!
Lolis
Sadly, part of the Republican strategy is to demoralize our base so much that we turn on the president. They are also forcing the president and Democrats that want to do the right thing to choose between disgusting and horrible. This is all part of their plan. For that reason, I try not to get too demoralized. We have accomplished a lot.
I still want Obama’s tax cut deal to go down in flames but the left needs to find a way to get Unemployment insurance passed. Nobody seems to have any better solutions than the president. If they do, I’d love to hear them. To me, Obama clearly made the deal for the unemployed who have been most affected by this recession obviously. How can we help them?
hhex65
Tonight I am probably going to party like it’s 1994.
AnnaN
Soooooooo…
What’s the queue like on your server?
Tractarian
@Marc:
And upper-income tax cuts really, really shouldn’t form one of those lines. Especially in the midst of a near-depression. (Or do you think that the upper-income tax cuts will actually hurt the economy?)
soonergrunt
It would be nice if the President and his people would suit up for a fight every now and then.
The pattern has been House Democrats fight for something, Senate Dems all look around everywhere but at the actual subject of discussion, White House either does nothing or does a deal with Mitch McConnell and John Boener. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I get the strong impression that Harry Reid and President Obama keep looking to each other to provide leadership and neither one of them wants to actually, you know, LEAD.
Loneoak
Oh man, I wish I was home and could kick back with a beer and watch the epic freak out.
No, wait. I don’t. That doesn’t sound relaxing at all.
gene108
@chopper:
A lot of what makes a President great gets revised by history as time goes on.
Truman couldn’t run for re-election in 1952, because he was unpopular and barely won election in 1948, after fracturing the Democratic Party by integrating the military.
Yet his historical standing as a President is pretty high, because of his response to Communism, integrating the military and managing the transition from a war to a civilian economy.
The Democrats lost badly in a mid-term election. If losing the legislature is a measure of success and failure of a President, no one should think highly of President Reagan. The Republicans lost the Senate, which they won in 1980 and the Democrats had larger majorities in the House, after his 8 years.
For whatever reason, right-wingers don’t harp on this negative / failure of the Reagan Presidency.
salparadise
I love how all the “progressives” who are upset about Obama “giving the GOP what they want” have spent all day ripping into the president.
Good job, the GOP really doesn’t want that. Oh, they also don’t want to be thrown into that briar patch.
Everyone needs to calm the fuck down. BO’s made some pretty good calls so far & I trust that he knows more about what he’s dealing with than I do.
Everyone who thinks the president has betrayed them and hasn’t earned at least a little of their trust is going to be real fucking happy with president Huckabee or Palin in 2012.
I was really looking forward to the GOP eating their own liver (heh) over their 2012 candidate, but now I’ve got to listen to this bullshit from the Dems instead.
Suffern ACE
She is correct. People do want jobs and those are in short supply and it would have been probably better if there was more focus on jobs, even a few more little symbolic efforts, so that people believed that he cares about their issues and not just beltway issues like the deficit (as she says).
I don’t read the Nation as much as I probably should. Could someone who does point me to the issue of that prestigious magazine where she gathered together the sharp liberal policy minds and devoted their energy to coming up with suggestions on how to create jobs? Powerless as she is to influence discussion. She is only the mere editor of a magazine. The “Jobs and what we can do about it and what we should be talking about” issue. Was she scooped by Mother Jones on that?
If there are deficit peacocks amongst blue dogs and conservatives, I’m beginning to think that there are jobs peacocks as well. Is she mad because her specific jobs policies haven’t been enacted, or is she just mad because the president didn’t talk about what she wanted to talk about?
JenJen
@Lolis:
This is pretty much exactly where I am right now, too.
Also, I’m beginning to think my friends are way smarter than I am for blowing off the blogosphere entirely.
FeFiFo
Obama’s doing exactly the same thing any other US President would do in this situation – kowtow to corporate interests and the big money. You can keep telling yourself he’s doing the very best he can, and I’m sure he is, but his goals and our goals don’t necessarily align.
Lolis
@soonergrunt:
Not really. What other deal has Obama made with Republicans? The only one I can think of was the stimulus deal he did with House Dems. Not the best deal, but not a disaster. For most of the first two years, Obama has negotiated with other Democrats. That is what kind of shitty party we have.
FlipYrWhig
Has anyone yet shown that Democratic losses were due to Democratic constituencies not turning out, as opposed to Republican constituencies turning out in a frenzy? Because there are two ways for a proportion of the composition of the electorate to go down, one being lower turnout for Demographic Group X, the other being higher turnout for Demographic Group Y. And of course both can happen too. But I haven’t seen any numbers to back the conclusion that “lower turnout for Democratic base” dictated the results of the election. I wish I would, so I could stop raising this question.
Zifnab
The President is the first to compromise and the last to flinch at offense. He speaks the softest, treads the lightest, and tries to be as accommodating as possible to even the most hardened and bitter racists. He’s the Beer Summit President for Christ’s sake. Obama has lead the charge of the Go Along Get Along brigade.
Meanwhile, the radical fringe socialist fruit bat 5th columnist left catalogues every racist sign, every political slur, and every Limbaugh-esque Klan rallying cry. Then they build fund raisers around it. They try to run TV ads protesting it. They trumpet the offenses to the high heavens. And they cheer like mad when a Congressman speaks up in protest.
For our troubles, we don’t get a lot of love. Rahm Emmanuel tells us to fuck off. Harry Reid warns us to calm down. Robert Gibbs admonishes us for getting out of line.
Republicans cannot appease their base enough. Michelle Bachman would strangle a kitten on national television if the Tea Party asked her. Half a dozen House Reps are still demanding to see birth certificates. Governor Rick Perry is going to run for President on the platform of Batshit Fucking Loco.
I’ve been getting the Democrats’ backs for the last six years. Volunteering, donating, campaigning, dragging friends – kicking and screaming – to the polling booth. Since ‘0-fucking-4. You must remember. It was the year you voted for Bush.
John Cole
I wasn’t beating on progressives, and I haven’t seen Obama’s speech.
I’m sick and fucking tired of Democrats going on right-wing networks and in right-wing papers and trashing the President. Knock it the fuck off.
Snaporaz
Apparently John Cole was not alive during the Clinton presidency.
To think that Obama has been under more fire than Clinton is ridiculous. Has there been a cover of Time Magazine about Obama called the Incredibly Shrinking President?
Clinton was hated by the left and the right.
Ever heard of a little videotape called The Clinton Chronicles?
Seriously Cole, you may not have a memory that goes back more than 10 years but if that’s the case then read a freakin book. Obama hasn’t been accused of murder. I don’t recall a republican congressman firing a gun at a watermelon in his backyard to prove one of Obama’s associates couldn’t have committed suicide.
Clinton was hammered as a draft dodger, a traitor to his country and his race, a liar, a multiple felon, a murderer, and had to weather more baseless investigations springing from the arkansas machine than you can apparently fathom.
I know you like to blot out that whole time you were a right wing dupe John Cole, but maybe your conversion to somewhat-sanity can help you go back and take another look at some of your past held beliefs?
Marc
@Tractarian:
Yes. Because this is something that sticks around forever; if it isn’t defeated now there is no hope for removing it.
Yes. Because the Republicans will turn right around and slash social spending because of the deficit. Every penny will be taken out of the hides of the poor.
Yes. Because the rich are not suffering in the slightest in this economy. Raising taxes on them is just.
Yes. Because a nation without estate taxes is one where wealth is a product of accidents of birth, not actual effort.
KG
@liberal: that makes Obama sound like an insufferable asshole? Because he actually has to make deals to govern the country and still managed to get more done than anyone thought possible four years ago? Sorry, but the insufferable assholes, on both sides, are the purist fucks who would rather lose every election and bitch and moan than the ones who are actually interested in governing, you know, the whole point of… government? Would you rather Obama be like the Republicans who may be giving Jim “I rather have 30 true believers than a majority of squishies” DeMint a leadership position?
suzanne
@TR:
WORD.
Has he won every battle worth winning? No. Certainly not. But the assertion that he’s won nothing at all, quite frankly, pisses me off.
DJAnyReason
…and the black vote staying home/voting republican is different than the gay vote staying home/voting republican how?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
You have this exactly right, John. And so does Obama.
This is a weird moment in American politics, nothing is settled today.
One thing that’s clear is that over the long term, the American right can’t govern. Also clear is that the American left can’t politic well enough to get out of its own way. If the fact that politic is not really a verb bothers you, just substitute the word “persuade.” Pound for pound the left is the most unpersuasive bunch of characters on the stage. If it weren’t for the fact that events and facts tend to be liberal in nature, liberals would have nothing but the sound of their own carping like a bunch of old ladies.
Last but not least, Obama is not the President of the Left. There are quite a few things to admire about him, but that one is right up near the top of my list.
Elizabelle
@salparadise:
Yup.
Zandar
I have missed you, Stone Cole Steve Austin.
Malron
I’ll have a double shot of whatever Sir John is drinking.
SteveinSC
@August J. Pollak:
Yeah, backing the wrong horse again, like say GWB in Iraq. As an early and a “put my money where my mouth is” supporter of Obama , he’s lost me. Let’s try Occam’s Razor: If he walks like a duck and he quacks like a duck he’s a fucking loser.
Elizabelle
@DJAnyReason:
Do you even get John’s point? I think not.
chopper
@TR:
lols. this, a hundredfold.
Everett
Thank you, John.
A L
FeFiFo has the right idea. Obama’s not fighting for you because he’s not on your side. Wake up, please.
Dannie22
Great post John.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
Take it up with Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson, Democrats who support tax cuts for the rich, and Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, Democrats who didn’t want to have the issue of tax cuts for the rich come to a vote before Election Day.
I’ve been reading The Nation since the Clinton years. In what way have they been supportive of Obama since he took office? They dogged him on bailouts, they dogged him on Afghanistan, they dogged him on Iraq, terrorism, civil liberties, the public option, health care they slowly and ruefully shuffled over to defend. I can’t think of anything they’ve supported him on.
guster
@TR: “Anyone who gets pissy from the left can help themselves to a steaming hot mug of Shut the Fuck Up.”
That’s telling the sanctimonious jackasses! Ah, sanctimony.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Snaporaz:
Buncha crap. I remember Clinton’s years pretty well. And Reagan’s too. And Kennedy’s for that matter.
Obama is not only despised at the Clinton level of being despised, he has moneyed interests pouring dollars into a campaign of destruction against him at a higher rate and coming from more directions than Clinton did.
BobS
The examples of scapegoating you cite (“Acorn, the housing crisis, voter fraud”) are emanating exclusively from the right. Delay is on his way to jail. If you think this is any more or less ugly than what the Clintons endured, it’s only because you belonged to the mob throwing the rocks in the 90’s.
That’s not to say there isn’t and hasn’t always been an undercurrent of racism in American politics and society (duh) which has come to resemble the more overt racism of the past with the election of Obama.
Or that the modern incarnation of Democrats (including Obama) are as spineless as the Republicans have always been in their subservience to Wall Street, and will never miss the opportunity to run the other way when given an opportunity to fight the good fight.
But I’d caution you not to use Angry Black Lady as a barometer of the black electorate.
mr. whipple
Every week there’s a new Armegeddon for the LW bitch industry. It’s as predictable as the sun rising.
Obama losing precious Katrina? I’m only shocked it took this long. I think she dumped Clinton much faster.
Marc
The congressional leadership is goddamn angry about what Obama just did. This should be a pretty clear clue that this isn’t of the same caliber as over-reacting bloggers. I’d suggest, perhaps, paying some attention to why, say, Democratic senators are lashing out at Obama. It may just be that this isn’t the same as hypersensitive Internet souls getting mad that Obama Has Failed Them Again.
chopper
@Corey:
yeah, progressives were just this close to finally raising hell against racist right wingers, but today’s presser totes turned them off. and dammit, they were so close to finally giving a shit after 2 years of preparation. this is all obama’s fault.
ruemara
Thanks, Cole. I think you may actually get it. For the record, I was fairly annoyed with fellow progressives since 9/08 because the dissatisfaction was so palpable and I didn’t get why. Now, I’m being told by people who are not AA that we have no reason to feel the way we do about the names, the images, insults that have more venom than when it was GWB. I get it. It’s valid when it’s you, not valid when it’s not you.
OK. I thought progressive was a “we” thing and hearing that a sizeable group is getting very uncomfortable with the tones of the criticism, not the criticism itself should make the thoughtful, tone and nuance conscious community address it. But we’re whiny, and when Rahm said that primarying a conservative dem in a conservative district was fucking retarded, he meant all the progressive community and we should all be insulted. But black progressives who brindle at “black jesus”, “Presnint”, “black messiah”, we’re tossing out the race card to discredit criticism. Ah ok. I see.
I’m still progressive. I still want Afghanistan over, Gitmo closed, DADT/DOMA repealed, a huge number of progressive causes are my cause. The President’s not to blame for Senators who are douches, nor to blame for the fall off over voting that led to even more douche senators and crazy house members being elected. But, what the hey, let’s write articles blaming him & throw up some ads. That will fix it.
I’ve taken away from this the feeling that progressives want my money, my signature and my vote, but not my voice and they don’t have my back. My family, my community-we may not want the tax cuts for the rich, but damn, we’re hurting and UI extension is a blessing for many. But, if we would just be willing to lay ourselves down on the chopping block so progressive principles could be validated and this could roll over to an even more lunatic 112th congress to fuck up even more, ok. How valuable we are. As fodder. Plu ça change.
Shinobi
It’s almost as if Obama is a real president in the real world, instead of the ideal president in magical liberal fairly land.
Cat
@Snaporaz:
There is still time for this to all happen, though Obama appears to be a dedicated family man so I don’t think he’ll be partaking in intern sampling like Clinton.
I dont know the history of Cole, it would be interesting to see what he thought about the freakout the Right had over Clinton.
Tractarian
@Marc:
First, the “starve the beast” theory is bogus. Lower taxes are not correlated to lower spending, no matter who is in charge.
Second, the deal does not eliminate the estate tax, which is what the GOP wanted.
Finally, think about what you’re saying here. You’re saying is that raising upper-income tax rates is so important to you, that you’d readily give up the economic stimulus that was part of the package. You know, the part of the deal that actually helps the non-wealthy?
So you’re willing to cut off poor people’s noses to spite your face. Fine. But you can’t reasonably expect any president seeking re-election to do the same.
TooManyJens
I am so motherfucking sick of people acting like everything that happens right now, in December 2010, is set in stone and can never change and the only possible thing that can happen now that Obama Sold Us Out is that the rich will be paying low low taxes forevermore and Social Security and Medicare are going to vanish and we are finished as a country.
God damn it, you act like this is the only time in history that the rich and powerful have exerted their power to make the world better for themselves and tried to fuck everyone else. You act like there is no precedent in fucking history for making progress in the face of injustice. This one vote in this one month, man, that’s worse than slavery, worse than internment camps, worse than Jim Crow. We can’t come back from this, it’s not possible, nobody in the history of this country has ever had it worse than us.
Do you want to make things better or do you just want to be superior to all those naive slobs who haven’t given up yet?
Fuck all y’all.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@SteveinSC:
Yeah, everyone knows that the big winner around here is you.
Like Sarah Palin, you are apparently ready to quit after two years.
If you were a real man, you’d get that shithole state out of your handle.
jaleh
I needed to hear this.
And this is what Andrew Sullivan has got to say:
It’s been fascinating to watch the left’s emotional roller-coaster these past few weeks. It’s also been fascinating to watch Obama out-run them, and to observe their responses to the final deal in the last 24 hours. Krugman has gone from “Let’s Not Make A Deal” to “better than what I expected.” The response from the far-right has also been illuminating. Drudge rushed to declare Obama’s payroll tax cut as a Republican idea. Hinderaker below insists “Obama has admitted that the Republicans were right all along.” Notice something about all of this? They all now realize that Obama has been a little shrewder than they took him to be.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@Linda Featheringill:
I am disappointed in the Republicans. I thought they were patriots.
Are there fairies and elves in your world, too?
FlipYrWhig
@Lolis:
You’re right. Obama made a deal with key Senate Republicans to get the stimulus passed. Other than that, I can’t remember any other deals with Republicans. I remember attempts to woo Republicans for the health care bill, such as the press on Snowe and the Baucus talks with Grassley and Enzi.
I can remember _many_ deals that moved legislation in a less-progressive direction, but, while the popular blogosphere interpretation of that common development has been that they show Obama “capitulating to Republicans,” those compromises and waterings-down had the immediate effect of getting _conservative Democrats_ on board. I don’t find much “there” there to the charge of capitulating to Republicans. If anything, the people to whom he capitulates–if you want to use the word–are the Lieberman/Lincoln/Landrieu/Nelson group, which has other members besides, like Bayh and Baucus.
Allan
The finest thing you’ve written. And I have something in my eye.
JenJen
@Snaporaz:
Not yet. But remember, for the lion’s share of Clinton’s Presidency, the blogosphere didn’t exist. Also, Clinton’s first term was entirely Fox News-free, as it didn’t come into existence until the autumn of 1996.
The way I remember it, Clinton was under a constant barrage of attacks from the right; for awhile there, Rush Limbaugh even hosted a syndicated television show where he assailed the President weekly to a wider audience than those who listened to him on radio. It was crazy to me at the time, and being a lot younger then, it was an eye-opener. Big Dog had it rough, but I do believe the attacks on Obama are at a far greater saturation point than Clinton endured, due mainly to the fact that the media world has grown tenfold since. At this point, I think it’s pretty apples-to-roast-beef to make the comparison. The Right hated Clinton to be sure, but back then they hadn’t figured out the Tea Party angle quite yet.
I think it’s just a point of fact now that, because of what Clinton and Obama endured and are enduring, that all future Democratic Presidents must expect a similar barrage of organized, well-financed hatred and negativity. I think most of us knew that going into 2009 anyway.
FormerSwingVoter
@Tractarian: This. But apparently, we’re all firebaggers now.
georgia pig
I’d say that’s pretty dead nuts on, John, and I don’t get what’s driving it other than a lot of the left commentariat are simply mirror images of Tea Partiers, a bunch of whiny fucks who are pissed off they don’t get to run everything. If you are so bitterly disappointed in Obama, then run your ass for President — you wouldn’t get any votes beyond your own family, if that. God love her, but Nancy Pelosi has a 20 percent approval rating, Obama’s is in the high 40’s. The lack of respect and Monday morning quarterbacking of this President is fucking mindboggling but, I have to admit, it ain’t new.
It seems like the nature of the presidency is one thing that Republicans, as natural authoritarians, get and Democrats fundamentally misunderstand. The President is like a temporary monarch, but in a symbolic sense, not necessarily a dictatorial sense. He’s your standard bearer. You don’t kill your President until it’s time, that is, after he leaves office. Then, if need be, you can blame him for fucking everything up so you can reposition for the comeback or, if need be, deify him like that dementia-ridden Reagan to create a working mythology. Learn from the fucking opposition, for chrissakes. Go bitch at your chickenshit representatives and senators, leave Obama the fuck alone. In fact, send him a damn Christmas card.
rootless_e
I want to thank the principled left for spending two or more months agonizing about the “Catfood Commission” and pointing out that the stupid POTUS doesn’t realize Paul Krugman says deficits don’t matter during a recession and also for forgetting all of that in a fucking nanosecond in order to bitch about the President trading deficits for keeping 7 million unemployed people off the streets. Stalin had to kill people to get this kind of ideological zig-zagging, but Progressive Americans do it just for the feeling of losing.
Zifnab
The President is the first to compromise and the last to flinch at offense. He speaks the softest, treads the lightest, and tries to be as accommodating as possible to even the most hardened and bitter racists. He’s the Beer Summit President for Christ’s sake. Obama has lead the charge of the Go Along Get Along brigade.
Meanwhile, the radical fringe soc ialist fruit bat 5th columnist left catalogues every racist sign, every political slur, and every Limbaugh-esque Klan rallying cry. Then they build fund raisers around it. They try to run TV ads protesting it. They trumpet the offenses to the high heavens. And they cheer like mad when a Congressman speaks up in protest.
For our troubles, we don’t get a lot of love. Rahm Emmanuel tells us to fuck off. Harry Reid warns us to calm down. Robert Gibbs admonishes us for getting out of line.
Republicans cannot appease their base enough. Michelle Bachman would strangle a kitten on national television if the Tea Party asked her. Half a dozen House Reps are still demanding to see birth certificates. Governor Rick Perry is going to run for President on the platform of Batshit Fucking Loco.
I’ve been getting the Democrats’ backs for the last six years. Volunteering, donating, campaigning, dragging friends – kicking and screaming – to the polling booth. Since ‘0-fucking-4. You must remember. It was the year you voted for Bush.
ChrisWWW
Did you guys see Ezra Klein pushing the new White House meme that this deal is a great “stimulus” package?
lol
@FlipYrWhig:
Here’s a fun factoid: African American turnout went down in 2006 compared to 2002. The census stats are kind of a mishmash comparing mid-term to mid-term.
One thing is pretty clear – whites, especially older ones, turnout in much higher numbers than traditional Democratic constituencies during mid-term elections. I mean, it’s true in general to a certain extent, but they don’t experience the same drop-off the Dems do every time.
One thing that annoyed me about Markos’ constant harping of the “enthusiasm gap” was that there was no context to tell what the numbers meant. Is there a gap because Obama=Bush and threw lefties under the bus and now the Dems are staying home? Or is it because he’s a marxist fascist socialist Kenyan and all the Republicans are voting? Or both? Or neither? Who knows? Who cares? Markos didn’t.
I think at the end of the day, the data is going to show base turnout wasn’t substantially different from 2006 which means Dems lost the House because indies broke for the Republicans.
BGinCHI
Here’s Mary Landrieu on the tax cuts deal:
That has to be the fucking stupidest thing I’ve heard yet from a sitting Senator. 60??!!
Oh, thanks Mary, because none of us or Obama thought about trying to get 60 votes for some stuff.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
SIA
AGREED.
shortstop
@TR: Like the comment immediately after yours. Problem is that when you read the whole transcript, which requires making our emotions go shushie and engaging other parts of our brains for a few moments, the “this entire press conference was about Obama insulting me!” outrage kinda looks…stupid and small. Unless you’re kinda…stupid and small.
Good post, Cole.
handy
Michael
@freelancer:
Dangling it in his teeth, he is.
mr. whipple
But it’s the principle! Fuck the people on UI.
Allan
@tomvox1: It’s the first big showdown after the midterms, and the justification to call for primarying the incumbent.
Comrade Luke
So just for my edification: are you saying none of this is Obama’s fault, and other than the GOP the fault lies in the Democratic Party?
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
They’re welcome to hammer out a better deal and pass that, then dare the president to veto it. Given that the Democratic-led Senate couldn’t get more than 53 votes for the income-under-$250K-only cuts, I don’t think they have much of a shot. If they’d rather blow up the whole thing and let all the tax cuts lapse, bully for them; that’s their role in the political process, after all. But they’d better come up with a way to make that a winning campaign issue.
Marc
@Tractarian:
Nope. I’m saying that a Democratic president should want to make Republicans cast difficult votes. He should be able to force them to approve unemployment benefit extension because it’s popular. I supported what he did on health care because he had to do something positive; the status quo was bad. Here he just has to block bad things. His tactical position is stronger and his tactics should be too. Instead he makes no effort to even try. The estate tax is gutted – 35% above 5 million? Noting. A pure gift to the ultra-rich. Note that Democratic senators, not just me. are seething about this giveaway.
Sometimes a guy you support does something stupid, and he badly needs to be defeated on this. Then, perhaps, he might actually have some ammunition to get a better deal – because he can credibly claim that there is some ground he can’t give.
fourlegsgood
I spy a bunch of whiny-ass titty babies in this comment thread. Whatsammatta? did the pres hurt your feelings?
If you don’t like the tax compromise, take it up with the congressional dems who were too chicken to force a vote before the election.
I’m all for principal, but I’m less happy about the thought of children going hungry at Christmas because Daddy’s unemployment benefits ran out so that Jane Hamsher could feel like a power player in D.C.
Oh, and those of you talking of with holding your vote? how’d that work out in the 2010 elections? If we end up with a President Palin because some of you were off throwing a hissy fit, I am going to personally track all of you down and sectum sempra your sorry asses. kaithxbai.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
OT but Elizabeth Edwards has died today.
FlipYrWhig
@BGinCHI: What is Mary Landrieu smoking? They _held_ those votes, and they got 53 votes each time. It wasn’t hypothetical, it actually happened. Is Mary Landrieu volunteering to go bring Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin along, which she totally would have done, except for Big Mean Obama preventing her from helping him to accomplish his 3-years-long stated goal of extending only the under-$250K tax cuts?
fourlegsgood
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly. If the dems can force a better package, well then I’ll congratulate them for finally finding their balls.
Otherwise, they need to face the fact that it’s their fault this bullshit came down to the wire.
stuckinred
Elizabeth Edwards died.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
They just had a vote on a plan that didn’t involve any deal, and got fifty-fucking-three votes for it. Let them seethe. They’re ridiculous.
tomvox1
@Allan:
Good luck with that.
BTW, I think this thread is gonna break Cole’s server once and for all. LOL.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I think what this is, more than anything, is liberal despair at defeat on the philosophical tax issue. Liberals believe that providing adequate revenue for important social services through taxation is a major function of government; but for the last several decades the “tax” part of this formula has been radioactive.
Democrats had some hope that this time might mark some sensibility on the tax issue–the public was broadly on their side (against continuing low bush tax rates on the affluent), theres’a Democratic president, etc–but EVEN NOW, the argument falls flat.
It’s less about the mechanics/details of the deal and more about what the deal presages–more entrenchment of the “taxes bad, always!” mindset in the american populace. What one imagines in 10 years is the US as California–a place where social services are being dismantled and cut to the bone because the very idea of adjusting taxes to provide adequate revenue is radioactive.
JenJen
@TooManyJens:
May I buy you a drink?
fourlegsgood
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: Oh dear. RIP Elizabeth Edwards.
chopper
@KG:
if making deals and still getting more done in 2 years than any president in 60 years makes you an insufferable asshole, then more insufferable assholes please.
@mr. whipple:
yeah, how many katrinas is obama up to now, 12?
Admiral_Komack
This is a shout-out to the fake-ass progressives who believe President Obama should be primaried:
Who do you think should primary President Obama?
C’mom, let’s see some names!
And for those who say, “Gee, Admiral, it’s too early; it’s not 2012 yet.” I say, “If you want President Obama primaried, give up some some names…or shut the fuck up.
JenJen
Rest in peace, Elizabeth Edwards. What horrible news. I’m deeply saddened. :-(
Michael
@Corey:
It always goes this way. Paid progressive activists love to preen, and then go out of their way to “activate” by lobbying legislators from the top, building utterly zero grassroots support (the grassroots is, ideally, what should be doing the lobbying of the executive and legislature). When those in the legislature and executive branches who would otherwise be inclined to support a progressive agenda notice that the populace they represent isn’t exactly behind progressive policymaking in a big way, they wind up pre-emptively compromising to accomplish as much as they can.
This, in turn, sets off hysterical wails of “turncoat”, “he sold us out”, “blue dog” and “conservadem”, as the din from the lefty side joins the din from the righty side in squealing about bad, unresponsive, incompetent government.
This, in turn, helps create the narrative that Grover Norquist, the Christianists, the Heritagists, ScAlito and Uncle Clarence Thomas want the public to hear through their megaphones of wingnut radio and accomodationist cable news.
In a nutshell, this is a big part of why America can never have nice things.
Jules
@Shinobi:
WHERES MAI PONYS!!!!111!!!
and thanks Cole.
and thank you President Obama for caring a bit more about the working class and the middle class and the unemployed then you do about playing political games or the sanctimonious whiny ass progressives who inhabit the internets but not the real world.
Mostly cause the butthurt is awesome…
FlipYrWhig
@BGinCHI: Wait, is Landrieu actually saying that there were Democratic Senators willing to stand up for higher taxes for everyone, i.e., the inevitable result of digging in and making no deal? That would be different. I don’t believe it, though. It’s painful that we even have to have this conversation, because the Senate had its chance, _twice_, and before the election they punted, and after the election they couldn’t even round up a unanimous Democratic vote. I don’t know what she thinks “rely on us” means.
tomvox1
@Matt:
Well that is her area of expertise…
NR
@FlipYrWhig: And how the fuck is this deal a winning campaign issue for Democrats? For it to pass, Democrats will have to vote for it and the president will have to sign it into law.
What are your imaginary political ads going to say? “Republicans want to give away your kids’ Social Security money to rich people. We Democrats only do it when the Republicans threaten us!”
There’s a winning message!
MaineDem
And Obama was right about another thing — The Dems could have voted on this before the election and would have had a good issue distinguishing them from the Republicans, but they didn’t. And now folks are freaking.
I told a friend yesterday that Obama has had an incredibly successful two years but she’s still pissed about no public option.
Pangloss
Great stuff.
The only thing I would add to your list is Van Jones, The Henry L Gates furor, automatic weapons at Town Hall Meetings, painting the first lady as a welfare queen, McConnell’s “top priority,” Glenn Beck, Citizen’s United, etc.
Makes the Clinton years look like The Era of Good Feelings.
Nice job on that principled pushback, progressives. So who’s throwing who “under the bus?” (sic)
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’ve read this post twice now and I still don’t know what it’s about. Somebody help me out.
Zuzu's Petals
OT, but very sad news:
Elizabeth Edwards has died.
R.I.P.
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know what bugs me more about Mary Landrieu. Her rank stupidity (she really, really is exceptionally d-u-m) or her brazen displays of venality disguised as victimhood.
A L
@Admiral_Komack:
Obama being primaried or not being primaried is completely irrelevant. If liberals want to get what they want, they have to get it themselves. Stop relying on the federal government. Start working on your own neighborhoods.
Obama and virtually everyone else in the American political establishment is an errand boy/girl for America’s corporate interests. You’re out of luck.
Hugh
@Snaporaz:
I think he was a Republican then wasn’t he? The proud Democratic tradition of publically eating your own children drives him insane. He needs to have a couple more Democratic presidents to get him used to it.
FlipYrWhig
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
The _argument_ didn’t fall flat. The ability of the argument to sway politicians into voting in accordance with the argument fell flat. That keeps happening. Basically, it doesn’t matter anymore what the public thinks about issues, because politicians know that the public doesn’t really vote on the basis of issues, so they have no incentive to change their voting patterns to match what the public says it wants. If that’s true, and it keeps _looking_ true, we have dark days ahead of us. If people don’t even care that their representative does what they want him to do on important issues, then the whole point of representative government has collapsed.
chopper
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
shit.
jl
I do not agree with a lot of what Obama has done, and think he has made too many flawed compromises. But the idea of any liberal or progressive declaring that Obama has ‘lost me’ or similar acting out is stupid.
I think there is negative value added to all this analyzing Obama and whether he has ‘betrayed us’ or not.
Obama was plainly more centrist on a lot of issues than his primary opponents. So, what did people expect?
I disagree with Obama’s general approach. I think his contrast between pragmatism and idealism in the presser today was facile.
With regard to economic policy, it is not only a matter of ideals. There is also a little detail of the truth about what works and what does not work in economic policy. Obama seems to forget that, or not know that. So, he makes bad deals, he does not seem to strongly stand for anything, or advocate for the objectively best policy before he compromises to make what I think is a bad deal.
But he is said he was, directly and indirectly during the campaign, and it looks like that is who he is. I remember reading interviews with his ex students and people he worked with in the past. They pretty uniformly said to expect ruthless pragmatism, and that is what we see.
I think ruthless pragmatism that is not tied to a strong statement of principle and of what one sees as correct and incorrect approaches to solving problems can become clueless pragmatism. Let us hope that Obama does not go that far, or that he lucks out and is not driven that far by what he perceives as political necessity.
But I think that if people want different policies, they should expend their energies and resources advocating for the policies, not whining about Obama, or any other politician.
I do think there is a structural political problem for liberals and center left progressives now because the president is usually the prominent leader who advocates for his party. Now we have ruthless pragmatist who makes deals, with an opposition who is very assertive in advocating bad faith BS policies and principles on a continuous basis, but there is no comparable advocate on our side. What to do about that, I do not know.
I think Cole is 1000% right about the African-American community. To a lesser extent it is true about other minority groups, such as Hispanics and Muslims. The GOP opposition effectively has turned into a hate group against all these communities whenever it suits their political interests for short range advantage. The mushy compromised Dems cannot bestir themselves to put up much opposition. What prominent political leader will strongly advocate for fair play and point out the BS?
In the long run I think this dooms the GOP unless it changes it ways soon. I think we can already see that fate in the NE and the Pacific coast. But the GOP’s ideas and policy proposals are so toxic and dangerous, the question of whether we can get from here to there in one piece is a serious one.
Angry Black Lady
@Linda Featheringill: thank you.
eemom
As one who HAS always blamed the republicans and never blamed Obama, let me tell you what the problem is with “why are we blaming this on Obama not the republicans?” in this particular instance.
Because this time, he HAD the chance to blame the republicans. Credibly, from a position of strength.
Again: this is entirely different from the scenario where he needed to get something PASSED, and the only way to do that was to compromise. And if didn’t compromise he’d lose.
This time, he did NOT have to compromise. All he had to do was stick to his guns and Just Say No — and THEY would lose.
And if things went to hell after that, pick up some chalk and draw that straight line from Point A (no unemployment extension) to Point B (because republicans held it hostage to rich tax cuts) that any idiot can see.
“but…..but……but…..MEDIA SPIN. but…..but……but….but…..people always blame DEMOCRATS for taxes.”
Fuck. That.
This was his chance to FIGHT the Conventional Bullshit.
You know, a chance to make CHANGE.
And he fucking blew it.
gene108
@soonergrunt:
Leadership is as much a matter of perception, as it is what you actually accomplish. If your supporters decide you’re not a leader, than you’re not a leader, no matter what you do. If they decide you are a lead, you are a leader, no matter what you do.
I think a lot of liberals have decided Obama is a failure, because their projections of him being the Liberal Reagan, turned out to be false.
Obama won a lot of support for his anti-war stance, expressed in 2002. He didn’t say he was against the use of force. Far from it. In 2007 he was the first candidate to say we need to increase our military presence in Afghanistan and use military force, if needed, in Pakistan.
I just don’t get what the Left really wants or how they want to get it.
At some point, if you are trying to influence things, you deal with disappointments, but get your shit together and keep trying.
Privatizing Social Security was a horrible issue in 2005 and died a very quick death. It still keeps getting brought up. People are still pushing it.
If the Left wants to change things, they need to keep pushing. Sure get mad, but remember which Party gives a damn about your agenda and make sure you back them. Especially remember not to bite them publicly.
In my opinion, Obama showed leadership on HCR. He was dealt a fatal blow, in 2009, with Senator Kennedy suffering from brain cancer. There wasn’t another Democratic Senator with Sen. Kennedy’s stature on the issue, who would have been able to hammer something out by August 2009 recess.
You ended up with Max Baucus trying to do the lifting on it and he failed. President Obama didn’t give up. He got something through, despite crazy opposition and predictions HCR was dead, by the spring of 2010. The bill makes some of the glaring problems of our healthcare access model better for most American and comes closer to achieving the decades old liberal goal of universal coverage than any other bill in history.
Yet no one calls this leadership. They say capitulated and betrayed their support.
I just don’t get what people on the Left expect the President to do, if they’ve already made up their minds about his lack of leadership skills.
He showed leadership in saving the U.S. auto industry. He and VP Biden went all across the mid-West, using their “bully pulpit” to declare how they saved thousands of jobs and Republicans would’ve let people lose their jobs.
Liberals didn’t care. I doubt van den Heuval, Hamsher, et. al. ever acknowledge the leadership taken in making a tough and unorthodox decision to use TARP money to rescue GM and Chrysler.
NR
@fourlegsgood: This reminds me of the health care debate. I can’t begin to count how many times people said that anyone who opposed that corporatist pile of crap wanted sick people to die. And now these same people are saying that we have to support tax cuts for millionaires in exchange for some crumbs for the unemployed.
Obama has realized that he can get whatever he wants for his rich friends, and get many people who call themselves Democrats to support it, by tying it to much-needed assistance for those who need it most. I have to hand it to Obama–he’s managed to play the left brilliantly these past two years.
Kryptik
Without getting into the shitstorm flying around here, all I can say is that this last month has had to bee the single most demoralizing and depressing month politically that I’ve ever seen. This is shit that causes people to tune out of politics out of sheer apathy or depression.
Martin
Yeah, swing that ban stick Angry Black Lady! Show Cole how it’s done!
mr. whipple
The same way it should have been used when they passed the first round of middle class tax breaks. It should have been trumpeted by them and LW blogosphere 24/7. But the LW blogosphere/bitch industry didn’t give shit working people had some extra coin in their pockets, and as a result 50% of Democrats thought Obama raised their taxes.
And the Obama team also fucked up by not giving it to people as a lump sum, even though that wouldn’t have been as effective as a stim but better politics. In fact, they shoulda sent out refund checks with Obama’s beaming face watermarked on every fucking check just to make sure people knew where it was coming from.
suzanne
Elizabeth Edwards died. That sucks.
stuckinred
@gene108: It’s the hungry ghost
BGinCHI
@FlipYrWhig: It’s ASS COVERING pure and simple.
The tell is when she decries how much black people are suffering.
Gosh, thanks for that, Mary. Now that they have you as their champion I’m sure they’re all feeling lots better.
Right there is your example of why the Dems suck. I have my probs with Obama, but I hope he outlasts all these pathetic, opportunistic fucks.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
It’s not. I guess it can be spun as a tax cut, and everyone likes those! But no deal would be a _worse_ campaign issue. A better deal would be a _better_ campaign issue, but how do you get one?
My thinking is that letting the tax cuts lapse creates a situation where the Republicans get to say that Democrats raised your taxes and we lowered them. To that Democrats would get to say, what, that we believe it’s important for everyone to pay more because we need to pay down the deficit Republicans created? Or simply we wanted to give you a tax cut but Republicans blocked it because they’re dicks? Is there a better defense of that position Democrats could articulate? Especially that latter one? Believe me, I’m dying for a smart, snappy argument Democrats could use to spotlight Republican obstruction. They’ve tried to put Republicans on the hook for some callous votes, like rejecting funding for sick 9/11 first responders, but it hasn’t stuck.
In lieu of winning the argument by making Republicans look obstructionist, it seems like, to get a better deal, you’d have to create a way for Republicans to believe that your willingness to let the tax cuts lapse for everyone is sincere, and that you’re not only ready to have that fight, you’re _eager_ to have that fight. Would you be?
Tom Hilton
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Obama has to do twice as well to get half as much credit as a white guy. If there’s anything that disappoints me, it’s the fact that so many so-called ‘progressives’ who should know better apply that standard.
stuckinred
@suzanne: Some people believe she’s in a better place.
BGinCHI
@shortstop: Why choose?
scandi
I guess if you’re not with us, then you’re with the Republicans. Glad to see there’s no middle ground.
WyldPirate
@Moe:
Now, c’mon Moe. That’s not being reasonable. He did take care of all of the black titans of Wall St in the investment sector. And the hordes of Wall St. Bankers that are black are getting great bonuses this year.
Think of all the black pro athletes and entertainers that are multimillionaires. they will be getting great tax breaks. I mean they must be what all of 0.0001% of the AA community.
And didn’t he look after all of those UAW members when in negotiations for the auto bailout they had to void a bunch of their lawful contract? They should hbe greatful they still have jobs.
valdivia
Thanks John. Needed to be said. And I loved how the Pres got angry today and went after everyone for being the fuckers they are on all sides.
Mary Landrieu can go die in a fucking fire.
Lysana
They won’t say that to your virtual face, John, because you’re white. Only ABL will get that kind of crap thrown at her by the monkeys who fancy themselves free of racism because they never say the N-word out loud.
And I co-sign your entire rant. OVER this shit. I am SO over it.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom:
You have more faith than I do in people understanding that their higher taxes and/or lack of unemployment checks are due to Republicans, not Democrats, when the president is a Democrat.
suzanne
@stuckinred: Maybe she is. But her kids aren’t.
chopper
@Martin:
what?
Mike M
The Democrats had more than enough time to deal with the Bush tax cuts before the election. It’s been known for the past 10 years that they would expire at the end of 2010. Don’t blame the situation on Obama. The Senate Democrats chose to keep the filibuster in tact, and all of us continue to suffer from institutional gridlock as a result. They had the chance to pass the House version of the tax bill on Saturday, and they only mustered 53 votes.
At this point, saying “no” to the tax deal will only result in nothing more being accomplished during the rest of the lame duck session: No DADT repeal, no START treaty, no UI extensions, no middle-class tax cuts.
The situation sucks, but standing on principle is not going to put food on the table of the millions of unemployed or help boost the economy. And the situation is only going to get worse next year on all fronts.
Yeah, I wish that the President had come out swinging harder and earlier. But there are only two weeks more to get something done In Congress, and I’m standing behind him his plan unless someone in the Senate can find 60 votes for something better and soon.
Seebach
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-saudi-arab-invasion-lebanon
TooManyJens
@BGinCHI:
Yeah, Senator Landrieu, it is pretty hard to figure out why Obama didn’t think he could count on the Senate. Why, a person would need to have been sentient during the last two years, which apparently rules you out. Christ.
@JenJen: Thanks. We Jens need to stick together.
Comrade Luke
I think it’s interesting that dozens of people in the comments are piling on the “fuck the liberals” meme, when the post isn’t saying “fuck the liberals”, it’s saying “Don’t air your dirty laundry in conservative outlets”.
Everyone is so eager for new posts that enable them to punch a hippie that they don’t even care what the post actually says.
stuckinred
@suzanne: agreed
Suck It Up!
@Marc:
Like he said in the press conference, he gave them an opportunity to get it done PRIOR to the midterms and they didn’t take it. So they can get pissy at the tax deal or they can negotiate a better one. Obama is not going to be mad if they get a better deal, trust me on that. And if those two flaky republicans bail on DADT because they didn’t get a tax deal, I don’t want to see anyone blame Obama for that either.
chopper
@WyldPirate:
think of all the blacks who are on unemployment, which was just extended by this deal. oh wait, you can only envision ‘pro athletes’.
Bulworth
Part of the problem lies with Democrats who have acted as if tax cuts for earnings under $250k are free and tax cuts for earnings above $250k are gargantuan budget-busters, when the truth is keeping the sacrosanct “middle class” tax cuts would still cost $3 Trillion, give or take a few billion, over the next decade. The budget is already $1.2 trillion in the hole. How does the president think this gaping hole will be made up and who does he think should begin the process of helping American voters prepare themselves for the tax increases/spending cuts that are sure to come? All of this of course leaves aside the need for public investments in our infrastructure, energy independence, etc. Or maybe we don’t need those things after all. Anyway, the debate now is all about tax cuts, just what Republicans want. And that won’t improve in two years. It’ll only be worse.
stuckinred
MSNBC just ran the moveon “don’t extend” ad! Must be paid for through the 1st of the year.
DJShay
@Corey: @Corey: So where have they been the last 2 years? The press conference was today. People like Carville, Harold Ford, etc have been shitting on Obama since he was elected.
D. Aristophanes
I like how the more craven Obama gets, the more Cole ratchets up his own he-man act to compensate. It’s really kinda like clockwork.
Tsulagi
Now that’s a post. Dang, can’t recall when I’ve seen emo on burst before. So condensed you’re saying the president deserves the victim crown. Okay.
In more important news, appears Elizabeth Edwards has passed. RIP, ma’am, and like you wish all the best for your kids.
PS
Yikes. I’m basically with Our Generous Host. Look, Obama was always the candidate of the common ground. Call it shtick, call it delusion, call it anything you want, it’s his thing. The Republicans have been unusually obstructionist (for whatever reason), but if his response had been “screw you” then he would have been betraying himself. Can he make our politics better by descending into the gutter? I doubt it.
I am way to Obama’s left, but I respect him anyway. I just watched the “sanctimonious” part of his presser, and folks if that pisses you off, you have problems, you really do. He made valid points that may make you (and me) uncomfortable, but so what? Can we listen and discuss? I hope so.
Hal
I think people have rarefied Obama to the point of Deityism. I grew up the bi-racial child of a white mother and black father, and all my life I’ve had white people fawn over my proper english. Telling me how well spoken and smart I am! Wow, that’s so rare!
With Obama, I’m finding myself pissed at some of the things he does, like others, love more than a few, and I’m infuriated again at others; but, I just can’t help going back to my belief that if Obama were white, he would be in Bill Clinton disappointment territory instead of Hitler’s.
I’m very quickly coming to the conclusion that Obama should not seek a second term. I told a friend of mine he would never live up to expectations, and I’m pretty much convinced of that.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t legitimate criticism of Obama, but some of it just seems massively out of proportion. The gay community is more angry at Obama because DADT and DOMA aren’t history yet than they were at Clinton for signing the damn things into law in the first place.
Bill Clinton made compromise his middle name in the 90’s and left office the most popular Dem President in decades.
America might have been ready to elect a Black President, but I sure don’t think they are ready to treat that black President the same as they would a white one.
jacy
@Lysana:
Agree with what you said. And the most frustrating thing to me is the people who use racially charged language and then cry foul if anyone calls them on it. It’s like the kid in the back seat of the car holding his finger a half-inch from the other kid’s face and going, “I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you.”
Maybe it’s because I’m a white non-Southerner who grew up with very colorblind parents, and then was forcibly moved to the South as an adult, but, man, do I see the racism I didn’t ever realize actually existed. It pissed me off most from the people who are condescending and supposed to be on the side of good much more than it does from the outright KKKers.
Joe Beese
@salparadise:
Ah, the old “The President has secret knowledge so we should trust that he knows what he’s doing” line.
A Bush-era classic.
stuckinred
Nora O’Donell reports that John was with Elizabeth when she died.
CaptainFwiffo
When the payroll tax holiday expires in a year, we’re going to go though the same shit again; Republicans will accuse Democrats of trying to raise everyone’s taxes. The temporary cuts become de-facto permanent, and then are used as an excuse to gut social security – under a Democratic President. Then Republicans will run against him as bold defenders of the social safety net.
And does anyone honestly think that START or DADT are actually going to be dealt with as a result of this deal? They’re not in the deal, are they?
Meanwhile, they’ve sneaked in billions in capital gains and estate tax cuts. They’re gonna starve the beast in ways they never could have dreamed under Bush, and they’ll be able to get away with it because they can hide behind Obama, waving his finger at the DFHs that are somehow always wrong for being right.
Just watch.
Suck It Up!
@Marc:
Uhm, Marc, for two years Obama and the Democrats have been passing bills that should have been considered difficult votes for either party and the Republicans sat them out every single time. They went on tv and bragged about blocking and voting against his bills every single time. then they went out and proudly told the people that they went against the president on everything. And they got rewarded for all of it.
Tom Hilton
@BGinCHI: Mary fucking Landrieu said that? The Mary Landrieu who put a hold on Jack Lew for what, 6 months or so? Gosh, I can’t imagine why the President wasn’t confident in her standing by him.
shilohsmama
@liberal: You have your entire torso up your ass.
You have no fucking clue about what we are angry about. Black folk know about the political shenanigans that exist on the Hill, be it bullshit ethics investigations, slow moving on the Black Farmers’ settlement, or anything else for political theatre. Since we have President Obama, the light is now on for us full blast. Shining that spotlight is showing us people like you, who sit on the sidelines and throw burning shit bags when PBO is fighting for the things you supposedly espouse. You are still defending a president out of office for 10 years, but you don’t take a second to consider what PBO has to do to get things done with those motherfuckers who ultimately mean him (and you) no goddamn good.
It’s been fascinating to us to witness you, the congress, the republicans and the professional left find 6,916 ways to call him nigger or to remind him that he is not good enough. You don’t have his back when he needs you, be it blog posts, Democratic congressmen or senators who are willingly INVISIBLE to the public via big media to fight for a cause, but show up to blast PBO – WITHOUT HESITATION – about what needs to be done. You best believe we are watching, and we’re not going to forget this shit.
So primary him in 2012. PLEASE.
Jack Bauer
@Midnight Marauder:
Exactly.
Personally I feel the battle against Christian Corporate Nationalism is best fought supporting Obama against the neo fascist right wing conservatives. Even though the only senator who represents my views is Sanders, it’s with the D’s and Obama that we will see anything we’re interested in ever happening in this country. And we might still get fucked over by the right, they have all the money and power and have been winning for 30 years.
Where is Assange when we need him?! Oh, that’s right, he’s locked up in Blighty on tenuous politically motivated rape charges, completely unrelated to his little leaks.
tomvox1
@eemom:
The problem I have with this logic–and in the abstract I think you’re completely right–BUT:
When those unemployment benefits ran out how would it have helped those people that the Republicans “lost” on this issue? The GOP are perfectly willing to let the unemployed sit and spin–they think they are all lazy drug addicts. Do you think there would have been a groundswell of sympathy throughout the country that would have forced the Republicans to revisit this issue? I’m not so sure–there’s a lot of I Got Mine, Fuck You going around these days. Not to mention the middle class tax cuts expiring when a majority of people seem to believe their taxes were already raised the day Obama took office.
So, as I say, going to the mat to de-link taxes from the conventional meme that Dems always raise taxes is great in theory…but when taxes on nearly everyone actually do go up as a result of this principled stand, I think that has backfire written all over it. Add to that the collateral damage to the unemployed and the fact that people tend to blame the QB and not the O linemen for their troubles and I don’t think that move actually works in Today’s America.
Comrade Jake
This. A million times over.
Paris
When Bush finally agreed to speak at an NAACP meeting, he acted as a representative of the GOP. He was always happy to represent 51% of the voters. Obama at least attempts to represent everyone. I subscribe to the Nation but usually skip the editorials because they all sound like the column that was linked to.
Newsie8200
@Michael:
stuckinred
@shilohsmama: Fuckin A right.
ItAintEazy
Will it be disrespecting the dead when I say John Edwards can go fuck himself sideways?
ChrisNBama
Frankly, I needed a cigarette after reading John’s rant. Right on, brother!
jl
Krugman has a couple of good posts today on the economics of the deal and how that interacts with the politics.
My guess is that Obama and his economic team are counting on an eventually stronger recovery to give him more political room when all this has to be dealt with again in a couple of years.
Krugman says it is probably too little, and that too little probably comes too soon to help politically either for the next election or in the next negotiations. I hope very much that Krugman is too pessimistic, but I cannot see anything wrong with his arithmetic, at least in terms of a best guess on expected outcome.
For strategic positioning on things like the conintuing effort to kill Social Security, the details matter on some of this, and I do not know them yet. Is the payroll tax holiday a legislated change in the payroll taxes, or a temporary refund that increases take home, with the current deduction still in place.
I think it is silly to flat out call this deal a disaster. Maybe Obama would have had to settle for something like this in the end.
I still don’t see why the Democrats could not have dealt with this better before the election, unless the Blue Dogs and centrist Senate Democrats were such corrupt and craven cowardly morons that there was no reasoning with them.
I think Obama should have made more a stink, and made the GOP pay a political price in having to publicly defend their position before the deal was struck.
Was this the best deal Obama and the Democrats could have gotten? The way things are done, and the weakness in party discipline caused by the corrupt corporate Democrats means that we do not have a good feel for that.
alwhite
Not to steal your thunder Mr. Cole but I made that same point about a permanent lose of black voters because of the behavior of some Dems several threads ago. I don’t think a lot of it is racism but some of it is and some of it is indistinguishable from racism.
Maybe the the past 2 elections were just a blip in the permanent Republican majority.
Tom Hilton
@Hal:
Yeah, I’ve been making this point myself. The epitome of this attitude is Dan Choi saying the other day that Obama was the worst president for gay rights ever (I paraphrase but do not exaggerate), which is just several steps beyond delusional.
Suck It Up!
As for Ms. Landrieu, I bet money she’s saying that crap so she can get the president to allow offshore drilling in her state. wait for it. morally bankrupt? that itch has got some nerve. the whole senate has nerve. sit on your hands and whine Daddy didn’t tell you what to do? well there it is, want better? fix it, and get the damn votes? no votes? then you better be all over tv explaining why you are letting 2 million starve this Christmas and why you are willing to increase the american people’s taxes by $3,000 – after hearing Obama’s press conference today, that’s exactly what the american people will demand to know. He made it very hard today for Democrats to walk away with no deal.
Tim I
John Cole, you’re back!!!!
Fuck, for a while there, I thought you might slip over to the Dark Side. Give the fuckers hell!
Jules
Wow Mary:
If Obama had 60 votes and if y’all really cared Mary the House bill would have been able to make it to the floor for a fucking vote this weekend.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
I’m sorry, Mary “I’m blocking President Obama’s nominee so I can benefit the oil companies” Landrieu is now claiming to be a close ally of the president who’s been betrayed by him? Really? She probably should have remembered to pull her knife out of his back first.
I would say I can’t believe her fucking nerve, but this is pretty much par for the course with Landrieu and the other Blue Dogs in the Senate.
PS
@Hal (168) — indeed, yes, on the DADT stuff.
Everyone, please note that judges who disproportionately sentence black men to death very rarely even think they are racist nowadays; it’s the statistics that prove it. Very few people would call Obama “uppity” (or any other coded or indeed uncoded epithet) in public; many, many more demonstrate that they think it. And he is trying to work with some of them.
Tim I
Oh yeah, I wanted to mention that Ed Schultz is perhaps the stupidest asshole on the face of this planet.
lllphd
@Will:
isn’t that the definition of circle jerk?
John Cole
@D. Aristophanes:
What does that even mean? What part was the “he-man act?”
mr. whipple
Stopped sneaking around hotels for a day, eh?
Big of him.
Jules
@eemom:
did you not watch his presser where he blamed Republicans?
FlipYrWhig
@jl:
The NYT had a story that specifically mentioned Boxer and Murray as two of the Senators who pleaded not to put it to a vote before the election. So it wasn’t just Blue Dogs and centrist Democrats. Alas.
AAA Bonds
I genuinely appreciated vanden Heuvel’s columns during the Clinton scandal, in which she pointed out that nothing even close to criminal had been done, but also that Bill Clinton’s treatment of women was obviously pretty terrible and that it said something about him as a person.
Making fun of her name is pretty low, all things considered.
Christin
John: You need a month in Saint Thomas. Again – since you have a blog (and god I love this place so much) and you have to read so much and absorb so much to maintain it, you HAVE to live and breathe this crazy far left hate and anarchist progressive stuff. The rest of the real world doesn’t. I’m at work today, no one is talking about any of this or cares. The only thing people are saying if they are saying anything is they are happy they are getting tax cuts. That’s every income level. Most of us are MC. I ;m not making any of this up either.
In the meantime, who cares about Katrina VH. Seriously. I’m one one the former subscribers and people who donated to keep it going. I canceled in 2007. They served their purpose. I’m not going back. They thrived off the hate, and mine, during the Bush years. They are hurting now. And they need O to fail and lose to stay alive. Shrug. Who cares.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Tim I:
Well, certainly the biggest asshole on our side :)
But go over to CNN and listen to Bernie Sanders stamp his feet.
Why oh why says Bernie can’t Obama get a few moderate Republicans to support our position? Then we can get our 60 votes.
Well, why doesn’t Bernie get those Republicans to vote for our position? Because nobody else seems able to do it, and apparently the excited Bernie knows a way to do it … if only Obama would make the phone calls.
Phht. Bunch of posturing buttheads.
Tim
How did ABL hijack JC’s screen name to make this post?
SFAW
What about if someone suggests that it’s anti-Muslim?
BGinCHI
I wonder if Landrieu’s millionaire oil money backers were laughing their asses off when she was giving Obama hell.
They sure spent their money wisely.
Mike M
Well if it isn’t a full blown fucking Hippie pile on. Way to bounce back from that brief moment of clarity last week. Now lets get those pom poms out and show the world we know who the real evil assholes are in the world – the people who elected this guy.
I’m sure we can all weather what will likely be the NUMEROUS disappointments and subsequent rationalizations the next two years have to offer if we just cheer louder and punch those hippies harder.
dr. bloor
@Jules:
Forty or fifty or sixty? WTF does she even mean by this? Obama knew exactly how many he had watching his back–53, when he needed 60, no less. Mary’s been huffing too much light, sweet crude.
ColleenSTL
And this entire conversation is a wonderful example of the circular firing squad that is so emblematic of Democratic politics.
1. Katrina VH was one of the few progressives who actually did spend a considerable amount of her media face-time calling the TP shit exactly was it was: racism. Not only do I not remember a lot of other media Dems doing that — but I DO remember many of them denying this obvious fact. Although I admit to not having read the editorial she wrote, she is entirely within bounds to criticize a Dem President. This is one of the things that makes Dems different from the intellectually-bankrupt Republicans — we criticize our own.
2. I agree that some perspective is in order here — and any Dem who suggests a primary challenge has just forfeited any chance at being taken seriously. Period.
3. Much of the left ire is a direct result of having deluded themselves about who Obama was from the beginning. I can personally attest to the fact that anyone pointing out that Obama was the LEAST progressive choice during the primaries was subjected to such vilification from the Left that we just withdrew from the conversation.
4. The President argues pragmatism and feels dissed by the Left. Fair point. Perhaps he feels that he is just being more efficient to anticipate the Republican position and concede it before the conversation even begins. But the Left realizes that they will be around longer than Obama, and that the national “conversation” actually has consequences. So when he unilaterally appears to agree that the pay of federal workers needs to be frozen, or goes on national television to tell the Left to “grow up” he shouldn’t be surprised when people respond as if he’s thrown gas on a fire!
Obama may be the most brilliant person to be President in a long time, but when it comes to managing his constituency, I can’t remember a politician who has been more clumsy.
JPL
@Seebach: Who will destroy Saudi Arabia. I remember a certain attack on 9/11 that was carried out by Saudi Arabian extremists.
Marc
@FlipYrWhig:
They only need 40 to stop any package; we have ample evidence for this in the past 2 years. There may not have been 60 votes, but there may very well be 40. And, more to the point, all Obama needs for leverage is 34 votes – enough to sustain a veto.
There is a difference between being pissed at Obama about everything and being pissed at him about this one thing.
Nanette
@D. Aristophanes:
Well, thank goodness *someone* knows how to play the game. And politics, is, of course, a game. (Obligatory blah blah, Obama isn’t perfect, I disagree about this or that, etc) but the game is a bit dicier for Obama, partially because of culture, history in the US, images of Black men in the media, Angry Black Men, and so on.
Some people – Cole among them, from what you are saying – realize that, sometimes, when Obama steps back, that’s when it’s time for white “progressives” – and yes, it has to be white folks – to come out and ROAR. And rush to fill in the gaps.
(Others also roar – but only AT Obama and not for him, or in place of him. Go figure – burning down the wrong barn. And then running away.)
M-Pop
I really like van den Heuvel and appreciate her lone voice in the wilderness when she’s on This Week, but I’m tired of all the bashing and blood-spilling that’s taken place needlessly. I watched President Obama’s clip on Greg Sargent’s Happy Hour on the Plum Line blog, and agree that we’ve been wanting him to act like Chuck Norris or (shudder) GWB. What the president is doing is pressing the reset button on this screechy rhetoric that’s reduced the Democratic party to a bunch of whiners and the Republicans to B-movie villains.
Um, I guess I don’t have a point other than…right on, John!
Btw, longtime lurker on BJ, now occasional commenter :)
calling all toasters
Until this very moment I had no idea that Katrina van den Heuvel and her fellow effete liberals (not “real” Democrats, like black people) were responsible for the attacks on ACORN and claims of black voter fraud. This is why I come to this blog: they never tell you this stuff in the Times.
beulahmo
@tomvox1:
I had the same reaction. I’m not certain why Katrina vanden Heuvel responded this way, but I’m thinking she’s just being plain dim here.
Look, this particular political “loss” — that is, NOT raising the taxes of the top 2% of the country’s income earners — is not going to be something that independent and moderate voters take into consideration in 2012; however, they WILL notice if their taxes were to go up, all because of a failed game of chicken with nihilist Republicans. Obama’s hostage analogy is apt here. Republicans don’t care if they get a win-lose outcome in this struggle with Obama. A lose-lose outcome will serve them just fine because they can just shrug and blame Democrats; but it’ll do real harm to Obama and the Democrats at election time. Republicans know this.
With the current deal, we’re getting a sorely-needed extention on unemployment benefits; politically, during the next two years, Obama and Democrats will be able to showcase the Republicans’ hypocrisy on the deficit, their parsimony wrt the lower income tax brackets, and the expensive favoritism Republicans show for the extremely wealthy. This should put them in a good position with independents and moderates for 2012.
We know this current situation is obviously unjust, and gratification from characterizing Republicans as greedy dickheads will be delayed, but it’s probably the best shot we’ve got.
goblue72
@Bulworth: Its worse than that and Cole is a enraged fool to think otherwise. The payroll tax cut is trap. It’s gone from 6.2% to 4.2% – that’s not a cut of 2%, that’s a reduction by 33% – that means the revenues generated by the payroll tax go DOWN by 33%. And do we really think after the year is out, the GOP are going to let it go back up? Hell no. They’ll pull the same bullshit they pulled with the expiration of the Bush tax giveaways. And since the economy will be in the toilet still, and election season around the corner, Obama WILL cave.
Then you get to 2012, GOP takes over the Senate, and maybe the WH and then what – maybe making it permanent?
And what does the payroll tax fund? Social Security. The catfood commission is already talking about cuts to SS and that’s BEFORE cutting the payroll tax by 1/3. Social Security – a New Deal program the GOP has been trying to destroy since FDR. This is not fantasy – this is in their fricking platform. And they’ll get plenty of help from Wall Street dollars to lobby to get it accomplished – because those hucksters are just salivating at the chance to rip off the American people with “personal retirement accounts”.
This is their game plan. The GOP know how to “play the long game” too.
Seriously – I’m fine if Cole doesn’t want to man up and put his pads on. But don’t criticize the rest of us who are willing to play full contact and fight. WE are the ones who know how the game is played – and its not played by those who are willing to settle for a few scraps because they are too afraid to lose.
fasteddie9318
Cole, this “losing the black vote” theory doesn’t make any sense. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but it still doesn’t make any sense.
They’re being blamed for all this stuff by Republicans, not Democrats.
This I agree with. The Rangel and Waters investigations are bullshit when you consider who’s gotten off recently over similar or bigger crimes.
What “party elites”? Katrina fucking van den Heuvel? She’s a party elite now? Jane Hamsher? We seriously think that the average Democratic voter, regardless of race, has any idea who the fuck Jane Hamsher is? What party elites are we talking about?
…least of all the President himself, or anyone at the White House, or anybody closely affiliated with the President. They’re the ones with the megaphone, and if they won’t use it to speak openly and honestly about the virulent and obvious racism in the Republican Tea Party, what good can the rest of us hope to achieve?
Wordsmith
Welll – fuck, what fun is this going to be?
Amanda in the South Bay
I have absolutely no problem with criticism of either Obama or Congress, but (to put my 2002 warblogger hat on) when prominent left wing pundits say stupid shit like this (KVH) its fucking treason. I don’t think people realize how disasterous a primary challenge would be for Dems, or realize just how bad a GOP win in 2012 would be either.
Seebach
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency on Tuesday charged former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney over a bribery scheme involving oil services firm Halliburton Co. during time he served as its top official, a spokesman said.
FlipYrWhig
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
They had a vote and topped out at 53. So Obama just has to make a few phone calls. First round up Webb, Manchin, Ben Nelson, Lieberman, and Feingold, who are sure to play nicely, then get two Republicans to flip, but not by promising them anything, but by appealing to the goodness of their hearts. And for each Democrat who still balks, you have to find _another_ Republican and appeal to the goodness of his or her heart.
Or, you can try the $1M threshold, which also got 53 votes. Just give a ring to Lieberman, Feingold, Rockefeller, Durbin, and Harkin, then add any two Republicans without changing any other parameters in the deal.
Easy!
dr. bloor
@Christin:
I’m pretty sure a magazine that has been around for 145 years still serves a purpose–circulation numbers are irrelevant in that respect–and I’m pretty sure they don’t need Obama’s failure to stay alive.
Tom Hilton
@Mike M:
For the umpteenth time, the emo purity trolls did not elect Obama. They may have been a small percentage of the overall vote for Obama, but they were neither a majority nor a plurality in Obama’s coalition and they were not by any means a decisive factor in his election.
WyldPirate
@Lysana:
The reason he said that was because Cole didn’t say criticism of Obama was racist.
The reason ABL is catching shit is because she is making unfounded accusations.
Big,big difference as Cole didn’t make those sorts of accusations, although I think he wasn’t specific enough on exactly WHERE some of the shitty treatment of Obama is coming from and underestimating the vitriol for Clinton in the ’90s.
j low
@Tonal Crow: I am. Er, was.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
In pursuit of what? What do they actually want to see? If it’s the end to all tax cuts, great, they should totally block the deal, because that’s what will happen as a result. If it’s something else, they’d better have a plan for either getting it passed or raising such a ruckus that when it doesn’t get passed people remember it and continue to want it.
beulahmo
John Cole:
I know you don’t have a high opinion of sycophants, but I have to tell you that I love you for this post. (Actually, I love you for many other things too, but I’ve resisted the urge to tell you until now.) I’ve had the same suspicions wrt African Americans’ perceptions about the shitstorm of criticism blowing at Obama from both the right and left, and it’s left me with a very sick feeling about some of our “progressive” brethren. You expressed what I’ve suspected in a more compelling way than I ever could have. Thank you.
BGinCHI
Interesting Jonathan Bernstein column on what’s good about the tax deal:
http://www.tnr.com/print/blog/jonathan-cohn/79679/the-obama-tax-cuts-and-bargaining
Yeah, I know it’s TNR.
D. Aristophanes
@John Cole: Just the part about banning people and such. It’s funny to me that you seem to get more aggressive about defending Obama whenever he himself displays more passiveness towards the GOP agenda.
Anyway, this:
There is a difference between being pissed at Obama about everything and being pissed at him about this one thing.
… sums up my take on the Obama tax cut for the rich. And I’m not too happy about his tossing Pelosi et. al. under the bus with his line about Congress being to blame for the extension of the tax cut, either. The fucking House Dems are the only players in this Kabuki that actually passed the bill we wanted.
But overall, I like what Obama’s done in office – just not today’s giant middle finger to fiscal sanity. Health care reform alone makes Obama’s WH stint a successful one in my opinion.
FlipYrWhig
@Tom Hilton:
What’s the connection between the blogs and the small-dollar donation model? In the case of Dean, it felt like a very neat overlap: Dean raised money via bloggers, so bloggers and Dean have had a romance ever since. Is that the reason why the blogs feel like they were so important to getting Obama elected? Or is it just delusions of grandeur?
blondie
@TR: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
We all thought we could take it easy after electing Obama in ’08 – he’d take care of all the heavy lifting, cleaning up the Augean stables’ piles of steaming shit. And then the Republicans dumped new loads of fresh shit on top of the old shit. And blamed him for the new crap.
Do I agree with everything he’s done? No. Do I support what he’s trying to do. Abso-fucking-lutely.
You know that old saying about how you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt? It doesn’t go far enough – remember, that’s the only way to get a new hand.
And frankly, that’s up to US, not him.
JenJen
@TooManyJens: Loved the kicker, but the entire comment I responded to was aces. Hell, you deserve more than a drink for that. You actually cheered me up a little today, just when I needed it.
Must be a Jen thing!
FlipYrWhig
@D. Aristophanes:
He should have said “Senate” instead of “Congress”? Or did he say “Congress” to mean “House”?
lacp
So now the story is “even Democratic legislators are enraged?” Sorry, but I have more than a few doubts about the sincerity of politicians of all stripes.
goblue72
@AAA Bonds: Katrina vanden Heuvel was fighting the good fight on behalf of unabashed, unafraid liberalism while Cole was still a goose-stepping Republican with teenage acne. I’ll take her side in a fight every time.
Midnight Marauder
@ColleenSTL:
Well, that depends on what we are defining as President Obama’s “constituency.” Are you talking about the constituency that elected him to office, his constituency of Democrats (many of whom are ConservaDems that share a multitude of philosophical concerns with Republicans), or his constituency of all the citizens of this nation, since he is the President of the United States of America?
Which of those constituencies has he failed to managed?
Kenneth
@D. Aristophanes:
LOL his healthcare package? You mean that giant sell-out to corporate interests that forces us to buy a broken product?
Nothing more the corporate feudalism.
Odie Hugh Manatee
That’s gonna leave a mark…lol! I agree and thank you for stating it. While I do believe that there are real Obama supporters who are upset and/or angry with him, I think that much of the noise we are hearing from them is being amplified by racist Democrats and prodded on by ratfuckers on the right. I know we have a couple of PUMAs here who have knocked Obama from day one.
The President is stuck with a Congress that is basically worthless and only looking out for their own skins. The focus by the left blaming him for the whole mess in Washington is self-destructive, intellectually lazy and shortsighted.
Sko Hayes
I don’t comment here much, but I had to say go, John, go! All this talk about primarying Obama is incredibly short-sighted, considering that a lot can change in two years.
WyldPirate
@chopper:
dude, I’m thinking of myself. I am on unemployment, have diabetes, had a heart attack and bypass surgery 13 months ago and am in my last month of subsidized COBRA. My insurance premiums will go up to $505/month at the first of the year. I cannot afford this. I will have zero insurance beginning in 2011.
Selfishly, the UI extension will keep me from digging into my meagerly pitiful life savings and retirement fund. It will allow me to continue seeking employment and traveling to the infrequent interviews I’ve had. It will allow me to keep a roof over my head–for a while. From that standpoint, I’m happy–selfishly so I admit. Intellectually and for the country’s sake, I think that this “deal” Obama worked out is not going to bode well for either Democratic electoral prospects, the country or the less fortunate in our country.
It is sort of like “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
lllphd
@tomvox1:
ooh, bravo! what you said!
i’ve been watching this thing for over a year now, so many liberals i know just shaking their heads like they’ve been betrayed and so on. like angry black woman said last night, didn’t get their unicorn, as ordered.
hey, you will not find – and i triple dare you – anyone more liberal or progressive than i am, period. but i will say this: the anti-obama rhetoric has honestly sounded way way too much like the teaparty guys, throwing down gauntlets and hyperbolic threats. different words, but only most of the time, not all the time. it’s pretty interesting, and i wish more folks would pay attention to what our words sound like and what implications and consequences they might carry from a wider angle.
two thoughts here: one, i defy any one of you out there to explain in gruesome detail just how you would have crafted this nightmare given the republican rigidity and the media’s rightwing bias? i’m still stunned the man was able to do as much as he did in this gawdawful climate. (a climate that cannot last, by the way; despite the ‘wins’ last month, this republican party is essentially chewing its own leg off to get out of the governance trap.)
two, say what you will about obama, what he’s done and what he’s said and who he talks to and all that stuff. but i have to tell ya, i really really trust him. i mean, really trust him. he is smart. he is calm. he is principled. and he is pragmatic. and he takes what he’s doing very very seriously.
folks might think it’s a good idea to start pulling out a can of whoopass about now on the republicans, but the truth of human relations is, you can’t humiliate your enemies. not only is it just bad karma, it’s bad joojoo; they will hate you for it and never come over to your side. i suspect these old white guys are still sore they’re not able to dictate everything like when bush was there, and without having to think about it (the dick did it all for them). plus, they’ve had to submit to a woman leading the house, and now a black man (insert their racial epithet about here) as president, which is just wicked too much humiliation for them to stomach, before obama even opens his mouth.
i’m not saying have sympathy for them, mind you; but perhaps a little sympathy for what obama is trying to manage out there. given just how insane and evil they are (and they really truly seem to be), i do know i could not even begin to have done better in fact, i’m learning stuff watching obama do this. it’s truly impressive. but for it to work as well as he’s hoping, we have got to settle down and really start thinking about this whole board in 3D.
Citizen_X
@NR:
What the fuck? Obama tied the tax cuts to UI? In what universe is this true? Because in this one, Boehner and McConnell and all the rest of the Republikaner assholes were pretty fucking explicit about the hostage deal they were proposing.
If you want to earn your Limbaugh bucks, you’d better be a little more subtle than to just flat-out lie to our faces.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@John Cole:
I don’t know, but then I don’t know what your original post meant either. Something about Katrina van den Heuvel and then African-Americans are going to stop voting Democrat.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Too Funny.
1. I think it was only 10 days ago when Glenn smeared The Nation as a White House organ. To their credit, some of his followers said that went to far. Unfortunately, a number of groupies said, they must be a house organ if Glenn says so. It must be charming to be witless.
2.
Cole, look in the mirror. While you’re clearly not a Firebagger, how many times have you become drunk from reading the blogospher and become overly emotional and savaged him for no good reason.
Suck It Up!
Thank you for this post, John. Really.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@mr. whipple: OMFG! How dare you! That’s a horrible thing to say!
JMC in the ATL
Amen, John. Amen, Linda. Amen, Lysana. Amen, Hal. Amen, ABL. Amen, Jen(s).
I know I missed more than a few, but I am on an iPhone.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oh boy, someone at the GOS likes this …
JenJen
@shilohsmama: Sublime. Thank you for that.
@Jules: That’s exactly the thing, isn’t it? From the open thread to this thread, to just about everything I’ve read on the blogosphere and Twitter today, it’s as if nobody listened to a goddamned thing the President said at that presser today.
@JMC in the ATL: Back atcha. :-)
Mike Kay (Team America)
O.T.
Wah? No self-pitying, sanctimonious posts from BJ on the President’s hippie punching?
Mnemosyne
Why does the Senate sound to me like the whiny teenager who insists that he was TOTALLY about to set the table when you came to yell at him about it? No, really, if you’d just gotten off his back, he was TOTALLY going to do it, but now you’ve RUINED EVERYTHING by pressuring him!
Erikthe Red
Don’t tell me not to be pissed, cuz I am.
Except for his great SOTU speech earlier this year where urged his party members in Congress to not flee from healthcare reform and publicly called out the GOoPers for being obstructionist assholes, the most passionate I’ve seen the Prez is when he’s punching us DFHs.
lllphd
@FlipYrWhig:
i don’t know about any ‘lower turnout’ numbers, but today there are numbers out showing that obama’s approval ratings within the democratic party are about what they were in november of 08, or thereabouts.
if that tells you anything.
mr. whipple
And I’m just the guy to say it.
NR
@Tom Hilton: Ah yes, the “emo purity trolls,” the people who are simultaneously completely irrelevant and so pervasive and dangerous a force that they must be attacked nonstop, day in and day out.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I’m pretty sure this was it.
Midnight Marauder
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
And on that note, I think it’s time to head for the exits before the Emopants Brigade REALLY cranks up the inanity.
JenJen
@Tom Hilton: @lllphd: Be careful now. Any minute now people are going to call those particular Democrats “low-information voters.”
Aren’t family fights super-awesome?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Erikthe Red:
You forgot when he wailed on the GOP conference in January
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/transcript-of-president-o_n_442423.html
Even Arianna had a multiple orgasm.
MJ
Thank you for this post John, seriously. It is really heartening to know that you get where black folks like me are beginning to view the way the President has been treated by some folks on the left.
Just so I am clear, I want to emphasize that the position in my house has never been that Obama can do no wrong. To the contrary, we see that there are clearly areas where his administration has made some unforced errors and some outright inexplicable mistakes. We understand that Americans reserve the right to criticize our politicians regardless of color. The problem that many black folks have is the degree to which this President has been diminished and demeaned over and over again, using some very obvious racial tropes on the right, but also by way of some pretty subtle ones on the left.
All of this talk about wishing Obama was more like Suge Night (Bill Mahr) on the one hand, to his being accused of being a ball less punk, on the other hand, has started to get just a little too close for comfort to the stereotypical scary n!gger /emasculated negro roles that have been reserved for black men.
We know that some of our reaction may be overreaction due to our community’s sensitivity over these issues. However, it is getting harder and harder to dissuade some of the older black folks from wondering out loud about why so few while are willing to give this president the same benefit of the doubt that black folks gave Bill Clinton.
Thanks again for this reminder that although black folks are indeed paranoid, some of our friends in the lefty blogosphere are not actually out to get us. ;)
FormerSwingVoter
@scandi: I dunno – not blindly parroting right-wing talking points about how weak Obama is might help.
News Reference
Obama protected Republican war criminals, censored torture photo evidence, appointed Republican Bush’s military adviser to run the Defense Department, expanded Republican Bush’s reckless wars, and has asserted the unilateral right to kill American citizens from robot drones.
But clearly it’s ‘the left’ who point any of that out who are the problem.
shortstop
@fasteddie9318:
News Reference
Obama has protected predatory Banksters from accountability and Obama’s gifts to millionaires and billionaires, which will vastly increase the deficit, followed Obama’s DEFICIT COMMISSION that demanded that the least amongst US have to tighten their belts.
But clearly it’s ‘the left’ who point any of that out who are the problem.
El Tiburon
I simply don’t know what is going to make some of you bastards wake up and smell the goddamn coffee. Seems many of you are playing the short-con; you know make a $20 spot here or a fiver there.
What many of us believe is happening is the continued corrosion and deterioration of this country vis-a-vis total and complete capitulation to the right. It has to stop.
But when? I guess according to Cole, ABL, and others, not now. Not in the next two years. Let’s continue to compromise the entire goddamn republic to the Waltons and the Kochs and the fucking Scaifes.
We are at war with these Republican motherfuckers. Appeasing them and working with them ain’t getting it done. What part of FUCK YOU from these bastards do you not get?
And yet, there is Obama promising to reach across the aisle, that maybe he didn’t do enough. Yeah, I’m about at the end of my rope as well. But I guess I don’t get the lure of the short-con.
Let me ask: Is there anything this man can compromise away that you are NOT okay with? Anything? According to the logic, there is NOTHING that can’t be compromised away. NOTHING. When you stand for NOTHING, then what is the point.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@NR: I don’t get that. The firebaggers never shy away from “fighting”, but when ever someone, like Cole, makes the slightest criticism, let alone actual throws a punch, they scream “stop punching me!”
You can’t be a “martyr” and a “fighter” at the same time. And if ya gonna throw a punch, you can’t whine if someone throws one back.
theturtlemoves
I, for one, am opposed to hippie punching, as many on this thread have mentioned. It’s just too hard to get that fucking patchouli smell off your hands afterward.
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: Durbin balked on the $1M threshold? I missed that.
Mike Kay (Team America)
btw, who’s gonna step forward and primary Obama?
Kos, Glenn, whatzhername? Rachel? Olbermann?
Who will come forward and primary him? Surely the all powerful fighting bloggers aren’t afraid of a fight, are they?
Erikthe Red
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Fair point. That was quite a proud moment.
Pretty sad what’s happened since then.
Alex
On top of ACORN, the recession, Prop 8, the unemployment rate, etc., I hear the “African American community” is most perturbed about ads from progressive groups that obscenely lessen the background lighting of pictures of the President so that the superimposed text can be better observed.
goblue72
@El Tiburon: Preach it.
Mike Kay (Team America)
can anyone answer why “hippie punching” is bad, but obama punching is okay?
Shouldn’t it be a two way street?
Joe Beese
I too am glad to see Mr. Cole back in his customary pugnacious form.
It will make it all the more entertaining when, 5 or 6 days from now, Obama kicks him in the balls yet again, causing Cole to screw up his face, blink back the tears, and write, “I just can’t make any sense of it.”
Mnemosyne
@fasteddie9318:
Yes, because black people publicly complaining to the media about the racism directed towards them are always listened to respectfully and their concerns are taken seriously.
Do you even live in the US?
Lysana
@WyldPirate:
Her accusations are only unfounded if you’re convinced racism isn’t endemic to the American culture. I’ve realized it despite being white. You might want to think about it a while longer.
Kenneth
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, and Alan Grayson are all possibilities.
Sly
Progressive activists are shitty allies. Partly because they think they’re the only constituency that matters when they aren’t, and partly because they’re too sanctimonious and ego-centric to care if they have friends or not.
And then they wonder why they’re votes are “taken for granted,” when the answer is to that question is rather obvious.
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: Let me ask you, just what the fuck are YOU going to do besides berate people on a fucking blog?
D. Aristophanes
@Mike Kay (Team America): Well, reverse the order and you come up against the same problem.
El Tiburon
From the article:
Exactly. We are going in reverse. The conservative position is stronger now than when Bush was President.
Oh yeah! We got a Cato Institute/Bob Dole Health Care! Yippy!
Yeah! We have more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than ever! Yippy!
We still hold people for years without charges, kidnap them, and murder Americans without due process.
The rich continue to get richer, us working stiffs continue to suffer.
Oh, but we got a wise Latina on the Supreme Court! Rejoice Heavens and rain that old timey liberalism down on us!
Obama has failed as a leader. He has performed wonderfully being a moderator making sure that the Republicans got just as much (if not more) than the majority party.
Yeah, good luck with all of that.
News Reference
Obama’s right-wing economic policies have continued the Republican’s crippling of our American economy.
Obama’s appointment of Republican Bush’s Fed Chairman got US disastrous Republican monetary policies.
Obama appointment of right-wing ideologues Summers and Geithner got US disastrous Republiclone economic policies.
But clearly it’s ‘the left’ who point any of that out who are the problem.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Erikthe Red:
you mean like passing HCR? you mean like passing landmark student loan reform? you mean like negotiating a nuclear arms treaty? you mean like Finanical regulatory reform? You mean like credit card reform? you mean like the new consumer protection agency headed by Elizabeth Warren? you mean like Kagen to the supreme court? you mean like ending combat operation in Iraq? you mean the 20 billion dollar trust fund he squeezed out of BP for the gulf residents?
I swear, Obama could cure cancer and you guys would be calling an empty victory because he didn’t spit in Boehner’s face during the signing ceremony.
shortstop
@Tom Hilton: But every one of their votes counts as two of everyone else’s, because they feel things so strongly.
@beulahmo: He hates us all when we’re not sycophants, too, so go with whatever grabs you.
@Mnemosyne: Perfecto analogy.
William
John,
You seem to question the Steelers coaching staff and their management/coaching decisions more than you do with this democratic administration.
President Obama, some of his defenders would say is just a pragmatic dealmaker, many others on the left are saying he is a weak negotiator/deal maker.
I’m sure if he were G.M. of the Steelers you be pretty pissed
at his trades.
P.S. Your Tunch has better negotiation skills. He always gets what he wants.
Elizabelle
Gosh. The press has been quick to pick up the “fighting with and disappointing Democrats” theme, but I have yet to see the word “hostage” on any front page treatment.
Nor did NPR mention it in the brief update I heard.
FlipYrWhig
@Erikthe Red:
Well, he probably expects Republicans to be douchebags, but expects more of people who agree with him on the vast majority of his agenda but have disputes over tactics, who then express those with a never-ending howl of outrage about betrayals and capitulation. It might get a wee bit frustrating.
Like Mike Kay (Team America), it seems a bit ironic to bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch about Obama, then get the vapors when he bitches about you.
“OMG what a sellout he never fights what a wuss oh no catfood! and public option mcclurkin i’m so upset i’m never voting again oh tempora oh mores. Hey, why does Obama seem so annoyed at people like me?”
DonkeyKong
The President spent most of the 30 minutes of his press conference attacking the people that worked to get him elected rather than the republicans that want him to be a failed one term President.
I don’t care how Cole positions himself as the reincarnation of John Brown, the President cannot afford to be that stupid.
We all need to know who the real enemy is.
Resident Firebagger
Cole is getting there, but he still so wants to believe that someone in DC is on our side.
He’ll figure it out…
policomic
Thanks again for the sanity, Mr. Cole.
Some of the rest of you need to read a good Lincoln biography, taking special note of the outraged criticism from “the left” of the Emancipation Proclamation. Then go back and read what Obama said about “the long term, and the long fight.”
El Tiburon
@stuckinred:
I am going to berate people on a fucking blog to show my anger and disappointment in a man and a movement that I so believed in. I was in tears election night, thinking that this 8-year clusterfuck was over. That the healing process was beginning. I didn’t expect a miracle overnight.
But if you can honestly tell me that we are moving forward as a nation, then I call bullshit.
And if my berating people here causes just ONE person to do something more than I can do, then I did my best.
Or what do you want me to do? Sit down on my hands and STFU? Just be content? Sorry, can’t do it.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Kenneth: for what county?
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
At some point, we have to accept that President Obama sees his primary job as keeping the United States of America functioning as a (somewhat) competent, effective, and constructive nation. That’s just who he is. The man is focused on governing, first and foremost. I think it’s worth pointing out again that this was not some kind of battle in the abstract; this was not a philosophical chess match.
We are talking about the President of the United States being faced with a choice to either do what he can to keep millions of unemployed and struggling Americans with some semblance of the chance to improve their dire economic situation, or he could launch himself headfirst into a partisan battle that would result in those same millions of unemployed and struggling Americans tumbling into even further economic despair. Considering his role and his responsibilities in this equation, there is just no conceivable way that he could walk away from making a deal like this. And the fact that he was even able to obtain what he did is rather astounding, considering the circumstances.
But again, I think President Obama said it best himself today during his press conference:
That last line is the crux of the matter.
shortstop
@Kenneth: How young you are. How very, very young.
Not necessarily in the chronological sense.
News Reference
Obama is expanding disastrous right-wing trade policies that hurts American workers and hurts America’s small businesses.
But clearly it’s ‘the left’ who point that out who are the problem.
lacp
@Mike Kay (Team America): The primary thing makes no sense to me. I’m not an Obama supporter – I’m not even a Democrat – but the only people who gain from primarying him are Republicans. It’s starting to sound more and more like the progressive version of the Rapture, or Gotterdammerung, or some other really, really insane end-times shit.
FlipYrWhig
@Kenneth: Look, I like Sanders and respect Feingold, but the country is not going to elect Alan Grayson, a chubby angry guy in an ill-fitting suit coming off a loss in his own home district, any more than the country was eager to embrace onetime progressive darling Paul Hackett (remember him?).
Sly
@NR:
Speaking for myself, I don’t attack purity trolls because they’re pervasive. I attack purity trolls because they think they’re pervasive. Mockery has always seemed to work in the past when it comes to people who are full of shit up to their eyeballs.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@DonkeyKong:
and bloggers spent 24 consecutive hours attacking him.
have you ever had a girlfriend or wife? At some point, after being yelled at all day, you yell back.
Mnemosyne
@Kenneth:
Russ Feingold lost a statewide election. Alan Grayson lost his district.
And you think that they’re magically going to be able to win a nationwide election because, what, the voters in Wisconsin and Florida aren’t in any way representative of voters nationwide?
I want some of what you’re smoking.
Kenneth
@shortstop:
Yes, because SURELY they’re all less qualified than a person who has been in the Senate for two years before he starts running for President with zero executive experience.
But hey! He wrote two books about himself!
El Tiburon
@policomic:
What a complete and utter failure for a comparison.
Obama just sold us down the river for the SHORT TERM. He is giving away trillions in tax cuts for short term unemployment benefits. The LONG TERM effect is more deficits and more money in the pocket for those who use it against the working class.
shortstop
@DonkeyKong: “Most of the 30 minutes”? Dude, you better go back and read the transcript–after donning some heavy-duty emo-filtering shades.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@lacp: it’s in the far-left’s nature to be self destructive. Just look at the 60s. Instead of just opposing the war, Jane Fonda goes to Hanoi and poses for photographs while manning an anti-aircraft battery.
FlipYrWhig
@DonkeyKong:
Not true. The last 8 minutes, sure. Not “most” of it.
ETA: And that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt on whether the “sanctimonious” people were the ones who “worked to get him elected.” Some of them did work to get him elected. So did millions of other people who do not share their litmus tests and outrages du jour. This gets right back to the “who’s the base” question. Progressive purists claim the mantle of the base, but that’s only part of the base, and not a very large one.
El Tiburon
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Really? Is the President going to slam the door and sleep on the couch? He is the fucking President, not a boyfriend.
It is his job to take the criticism, especially from those of us who have the most invested in him and his policies. This aint’ the Kardashians.
News Reference
But gosh, at least Obama sold me Republican Nixon’s/right-wing Heritage Foundation *health* insurance plan that vastly enriches the predatory Corporate insurers….
Oh, wait, I hate that.
Clearly my pointing that out makes me the problem.
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
I like how, apparently now, placing liberal justices on the (uber-conservative) Supreme Court is no longer a big deal or a relevant matter because a deal was made that may not even have the votes to pass.
Awesome job, liberals. Way to shit on our own accomplishments and achievements.
cat48
The prez brought out the STFU today which He Will Be Pummeled for, but at least I have a new fun video. Katrina has been threatening to take action for at least 6 months on Twitter! I had to unfollow her b/c too stressful. Unfollowing is my new favorite thing to do on Twitter now. It’s bad there and has creeped onto Blogs which I’ve stopped reading.
He’s not damn perfect or anything, but I Stand With The President! I’d like to machine gun the Senate & the Rethugs, but can’t! TThe Economist is impressed with what he got in Tax Package. Those Foreign people love him!
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: “a man and a movement that I so believed in”
Well, that was you first mistake. He’s just a human being (or less according to Hamsher).
shortstop
@Kenneth: Sheeyit. You really don’t get what people do when they walk into those little booths the first Tuesday on alternate Novembers, do you? See, the idea is that your candidate will be able to get lots and lots and lots of people to do that thing for him or her.
Unless getting nobly (I’ll leave Grayson, a shallow showboater, utterly out of that adverb, but I’m keeping Feingold in) shellacked was your actual goal…wait, it is, isn’t it, Kenneth? You can tell us.
El Tiburon
@Midnight Marauder:
Exactly. That’s why the Krugmans and the ven den Heuvels and so many of us are so pissed. We don’t think he is doing this.
Putting a bandage around a dude’s bloody forerarm as he lays paralyzed in the middle of the street as a tank is heading for him ain’t really helping the dude, you know? It may stop the infection getting to his arm, but not gonna prevent him from getting flattened by that tank.
That is what I see happening here. Obama is not doing anything about that tank.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Sly:
That is the danger of any self-reinforcing echo chamber, whether it be hate-radio or GOS.
Bob Loblaw
@El Tiburon:
I am rather surprised the death of the social contract continues to go so unmourned in this country. Unemployment is not only no longer a guarantee, it’s an acceptable bargaining chip in the pursuit of greater maldistribution of wealth and equality. And the Democratic Party, and the overwhelming majority of its supporters, never even gave a shit until it was too late.
The Republicans continued their relentless onslaught of the working class, and rather than concede that we have long crossed the Rubicon this time and changed their behavior accordingly, the Democrats raised back over the top with a couple hundred billion dollars more in tax cuts. You know, for the jobs and shit. Because overseeing the second worst job creation record in modern history hasn’t been an educational opportunity, I suppose.
So goes another day in our merry misadventure of corporatism and corruption in America. I honestly don’t understand why anybody would want to be a politician anymore.
Bob Loblaw
@El Tiburon:
I am rather surprised the death of the social contract continues to go so unmourned in this country. Unemployment is not only no longer a guarantee, it’s an acceptable bargaining chip in the pursuit of greater maldistribution of wealth and equality. And the Democratic Party, and the overwhelming majority of its supporters, never even gave a shit until it was too late.
The Republicans continued their relentless onslaught of the working class, and rather than concede that we have long crossed the Rubicon this time and changed their behavior accordingly, the Democrats raised back over the top with a couple hundred billion dollars more in tax cuts. You know, for the jobs and shit. Because overseeing the second worst job creation record in modern history hasn’t been an educational opportunity, I suppose.
So goes another day in our merry misadventure of corporatism and corruption in America. I honestly don’t understand why anybody would want to be a politician anymore.
News Reference
But at least Obama pushed through financial regulations!
Sure, they were weaker than what existed under Republican Reagan and Republican Bush I….
And then Obama repeatedly undercut even those weak regulations….
And Obama refused to hold criminal financial predators accountable for destroying America’s (and the world’s) economy, even going out of his way to protect those criminals from “pitchforks”….
But, see, I’m clapping louder!!
MD Rackham
@FlipYrWhig: They just had a vote on a plan that didn’t involve any deal, and got fifty-fucking-three votes for it.
That vote was held after Obama had already announced that he was willing to compromise.
So there was the opposite of pressure on Dem Senators to vote for it. Obama had already given away the vote, it was just a matter of what he was going to get for it.
We’re back to him either being a hopelessly inept politician (no, I don’t think so) or he wanting things to go the way they did. This is the comparison to health care he dodged in the press conference: he gave things away before starting negotiations.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
If you really thought that the only issue was Bush and not the 30 years of Republican rule that preceded Obama’s election, I can see how you would be shocked and astounded to discover that the Village, the media, and Congress were all still oriented towards the right wing.
Those of us who lived through Reagan weren’t nearly as surprised to find out that official Washington would be completely intransigent. These are the same people who complained that the Clintons had dirtied up their sweet little village by coming in and being so redneck.
Sly
@El Tiburon:
Funny. I’ve flipped through the 100-page “Rulebook the President Must Live By,” which was handed out to every member of the Democratic Party by the ever-important Liberals on the Internet Faction, and have yet to come across this particular proviso.
I’m using the 7th Edition. Has a newer version been published? I figured I wouldn’t need to update, seeing as how they’ve been so consistent.
Allan
@El Tiburon: What a whiny little emo bitch you are. We’ll rustle up Obama and stand him before you so you can dress him down until your last hot bitter tear has been shed.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@El Tiburon:
yet 10 days ago, you were one of the morons defending glenn when he said Katrina’s magazine, The Nation, was a WH organ.
Angela
@Tom Hilton: This.
And thank you John Cole.
chopper
@shortstop:
indeed. problem is, white progressives started walking away from obama the day he was sworn in.
obama’s stuck in this trap where he can’t be visibly angry, and the people who can and should be loudly angry on his behalf are screaming at him for not being visibly angry enough.
Joe Beese
I don’t suppose Mr. Cole has considered the possibility that if Obama loses the AA vote, it will be because he hasn’t done shit for AA voters.
Because obviously it will be Jane Hamsher’s fault.
Allan
@News Reference: I think spamming might also get you banned, but that’s never my call.
Nick
Three hundred comments and no one has made a “This is Obama’s Katrina” joke?
jeez.
I’m shocked he still had Katrina actually. I figured she was gone after we didn’t start raping and pillaging the homes of Wall Street execs.
chopper
@Tom Hilton:
double plus this.
FlipYrWhig
@shortstop: I think it would be _possible_ to shift the political conversation leftwards in this country by running someone leftier than Obama. But he or she would get slaughtered in the process. It would basically be a Goldwater ’64 idea where you run a staunch believer in your ideology and train a bunch of staffers and volunteers to fan out across the country to spread the word, so that down the road there are more vocal progressives in the country. Kind of like the way people say that the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one started a band.
The problem is, what happens to everyone who is left to suffer under conservative rule while the project of rebuilding progressivism happens? I don’t like the sound of that.
That’s the choice: pull the plug on getting the most out of currently-electable Democrats and work towards something bolder and fresher while losing election after election, or keep muddling through with what the current configuration can produce, by which you can win once in a while.
shortstop
At some point I’d like the president to realize that justified as some of his criticism of pony-demanding progressives is, it’s automatically going to become the headlines, and not just on progressive blogs. He was being openly baited today by a media that wanted him to dis the left side of the base.
Okay, fair enough. He’s a smart enough guy that he ought to be able to turn those questions around: “…Well, Asshole Reporter X, [obligatory admission of criticism by the left and comment about pragmatism]. However, ARX, I want to note again that the real problem we’re facing is a 100 percent obstructive Republican caucus that is, as I said, holding the middle class of this country hostage…”
John - A Motley Moose
I always thought one of the differences between liberals/progressives and conservatives was that libs were more optimistic. Obviously, you can’t work for change unless you believe change will bring better conditions. However, the big gap on the left seems to be between those who only focus on the negatives and those who want to focus on the positives. The naysayers look at HCR and can only see that there is no public option. The naysayers look at this latest deal and can only see that tax cuts for the rich were extended. They look at Afgan and ignore the draw-down in Iraq. You never hear anyone from the negative camp talk about student loan reform. You never hear them give credit to the President for fighting for civilian trials or his efforts to close Gitmo. Obama could show up at their house with a plate of cupcakes and all they’d do is complain that they didn’t have sprinkles on them.
Dee Loralei
Thanks, John, that is all.
4tehlulz
>white progressives started walking away from obama the day he was sworn in.
This.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Kenneth: Ah yes, the ol’ ‘not enough experience’ canard, well known to African-Americans attempting to reach higher up on the career ladder. That’s really mighty white of you.
DonkeyKong
Trying to end the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that are being used to “starve the beast” and set up social security as the first snack thrown to the bond market is not “sanctimonious”
The President just “refinanced” breaks for top earner/looters as a way to goose the economy to create “millions” of jobs, check the transcript. We pay attention to nuance from the President, the public doesnt.
El Tiburon
@Midnight Marauder:
My point is that many of the impressive things Obama has done, in my opinion, would have happened regardless of who the President was. The Dems had massive majorities, so it was a no-brainer that, unless he nominated Noam Chomsky, his picks were going to pass.
And yes, his picks are very important, and that is the main reason I will vote for him again is the hopes that he will get to nominate another Justice.
But again, he has failed to change the trajectory of this country. We are in reverse. Yes, many of us are blowing off steam. He has two more years to prove his mettle. As long as he continues to hear us, he can choose to either ignore and bitch at us and continue down this path or start doing what he campaigned and promised to do.
Allan
Cole, I think more than a few white people would agree with me that if the Democratic Party were somehow stupid enough not to re-nominate Obama, I would simply write him in.
Those of you who are interested in primarying Obama might consider forming fantasy leagues and battling it out online.
chopper
@Midnight Marauder:
as i’ve said a million times, it’s the ‘jewish mother’ school of politics. nothing is ever good enough, so everything good is ignored.
FlipYrWhig
@MD Rackham:
Axelrod talked about that compromise, and before him Orszag had said much the same thing. To me that means that they had already been over and over the whip counts for the various plans and could see the writing on the wall. To other people that means that Obama undercut the stalwart Democrats who would totally have voted for something else, but, gee, whiz, they never got the chance.
Obama was out there stumping for “decoupling” for months, and has been framing his tax cut plan since the presidential campaign, so I hardly think that there was some big surprise at the end where he suddenly changed his mind and wounded all the Senate Democrats’ feelings and undermined their bargaining positions. That’s what they’re pretending. They lie. Look at Landrieu today, pretending she would have Obama’s back.
lkatrell
Amen John Cole!
Big City Mary
Look Cole, the current President of the US is a Democrat and as such is the leader of the Democratic Party. The party got beaten badly in the last election and he is being held accountable. That’s how it is. It is not other peoples fault, its his fault, thats how it is. He wanted to be the leader, he ran, and he won so he owns the election results. Lord knows, it has nothing to do with race. Bottom line is, no one likes a loser.
He has a very viable choice with the extension of the tax cuts. Let them expire. When Clinton finally was able to ram through tax increases-the economy just took off and the 90’s were golden for the economy. Yes people are hurting, there have always been people hurting in this country, but you have to stand for something and the economy is a good place to take a stand. Yes we need economic stimulus, but not this way-not token BS that offers no long term solutions. He should have threatened to let the cuts expire in exchange for real job stimulus, real jobs, benefits, not UI checks for a few more weeks that are pathetic, demeaning and destined to end soon and abruptly.
After the election, he should have given a speech in which he firmly and clearly admitted his biggest fault which was to try to be a bipartisan appeaser, that few people ever understoood or appreciated his efforts, and that going forward “no more Mr. Nice Guy”. He should have held up a pen and stated that “any further effort to undermine the tremendous progress that Democratic initiatives have provided for this country from SS to Medicare, Medicaid etc.. will be vetoed.” “And that certain people who benefit every day from the hard work of the average American, who benefit from America’s infrastructure, education systems, laws and courts, and its tax dollars, will pay their fair share.”
Something like that.
Nick
@DonkeyKong:
Figures a lefty would ignore the whole thing about Republicans being hostage takers who want to harm the hostages.
News Reference
Obama sure showed his supporters how to fight Republicans:
Obama appointed Republican Bush’s military adviser to run the Defense Department.
Obama appointed Republican Bush’s Fed Chairman to run the Federal Reserve.
Obama appointed a Republican to run the Department of Transportation.
Obama appointed a Republican to be the Ambassador to China.
Obama tried appointing a Republican to run the Commerce Department.
Obama handed Republicans control over our military policies, our monetary policies, the distribution of vast amounts of the stimulus money (roads/infrastructure), our trade policies, and our economic and business policies.
That’s showing those Republicans! Hooray Team Obama!
azlib
Folks, Obama is not going to have a primary challenger in 2012. Nor is going to lose the Left. However, his comments today and his compromise on the tax issue is going to reduce the enthusiasm of his progressive base. And his base is more liberal and more progressive. You would never see a Republican President say what he said today.
Republicans do not go around pissing off their base. That can lead to some other political problems, but in general you want to keep your base happy. Whining about not being appreciated for all the things you have done is never a good political strategy. I sensed that in his comments. What is he thinking? Sure if I was in his position after the midterm, I’s be pretty annoyed as well. But throwing it in the face of what are your most enthusiastic supporters is just politically stupid.
Suthrnboy
Oh yes! You go ABL! Obama can do NO wrong! I’m done with this faux-progressive site. Y’all are only progressive when there is a white Democrat in the presidency. Oh yeah! Thats right! This site wasn’t around when there was a white Democratic president. This site was all up George Bush’s ass from its inception. I, a lifelong liberal who has been called “a white boy with a black soul” from a brother I know who lived in Cabrini-Green at the time of the compliment, will not be lectured by part-time liberals such as yourselves. Fuck off, Homey!!!
Gus
As someone far to the left of Dennis Kucinich, I don’t expect Obama to fulfil my policy dreams. America is,after all a center right country. If he can move the Overton window a bit to the left I’ll be satisfied.
Nick
@MD Rackham:
No, that vote was held after he had already been rumored to be willing to compromise. Clearly you missed the tweets, e-mails, Facebook status and press releases endorsing the House bill and calling on the Senate to pass it.
Hal
@fasteddie9318
Yeah. Like when Obama said Henry Luis Gates being arrested for sassing that cop on his front porch was stupid and everyone rushed to his defense, and agreed, and didn’t say the President was stupid for getting involved.
Or when he pointed out that McCain’s he’s not like you and me narrative had certain undertones, and people didn’t accuse him of playing the race card.
Anyone who knows the history of race in this country knows when minorities talk openly about racism they will be accused of playing the race card.
There is no way for Obama to do what you suggested and not have it shot back in his face by the so-called liberal MSM, Republicans (obviously), and even plenty of Dems.
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: “My point is that many of the impressive things Obama has done, in my opinion, would have happened regardless of who the President was.” Unfucking believable, is this where we can get banned for saying that is some racist bullshit?
FlipYrWhig
@DonkeyKong:
Is that what the progressive blogosphere wants? I don’t think that’s been clear at all. Or is the point for Obama to look tougher when he makes deals?
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: Yea, any motherfucker that walked in the room. . .
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I am shocked, shocked, that Democratic congresscritters would shiv the President in the back. Its not like they abandoned Clinton to the wolves, or shot down HillaryCare, or actively worked against Carter, or…
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
I
Fair enough, but please, what Bush and the Republicans did to this country from early 2000 forward was pretty impressive.
@Allan:
You feel better? Got it out of your system, to talk tough over the internet? Good. If you want to add any substance to this debate, feel free.
@Sly:
Maybe you are right. Maybe he can also get on here and call Hamsher a c#nt or something, you know, real presidential and all.
Allan
@Big City Mary:
Yeah, a speech. With some ideas in it. That might work.
Angry Black Lady
@Snaporaz: I don’t recall Clinton being incessantly attacked by his own party.
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: Well, but that takes so much more than time and one Goldwateresque candidate, even if, as you say, we were willing to sacrifice a generation in the meantime. The GOP started constructing that operation in 1964, building bottom-up as events required (as with the religious right’s local school board stealth campaign of the 1990s, for just one example) and cannily focusing on media consolidation/radio saturation. They were unbelievably patient; they never stopped, never let up, and their organization was pretty damned smooth for the most part, with a few major miscalculations. I just can’t see Democrats, who can’t order coffee for four people without a struggle, having the patience or the unification to do it, even if the media and Citizens United weren’t standing in our way.
It’s a horrible dilemma. But if we’re going for pulling the plug rather than muddling through, we ought to have a reasonable chance of long-term success. I just don’t think we do–or at least not a reasonable chance of succeeding before the perfect storm of economic, educational and environmental collapse hits with the GOP at the helm. (Cue the wide-eyed crowd telling me that if we just let the whole thing go down, Americans will wake up and smell the coffee. Uh uh.)
Huntski
The blogospheric reaction has not let me down; it’s like what happens when you piss on an anthill. I like Obama, and I think the guy genuinely cares about peops, but in the end he’s still a political creature in the U.S. which means he’s to some degree corporate-controlled. It’ll be interesting to see how this latest deal plays out in the House and Senate, but I don’t see any real opposition after the initial fist-waving is over. And while it’s great that UI gets extended for some, I don’t think the 99ers are helped at all (correct me if I’m wrong), and the rest of it just seems to kick the can a few more years down the road. Wasted time, but maybe this really was the best he could do.
There are a lot of you harshing on so-called “butt-hurt magical thinkers” et al, but you have to admit they care and that this deal is somewhat dispiriting, however necessary. I for one will feel a little better about it if they can get the START treaty ratified and/or DADT repealed, but given the last 2 years I’m not holding my breath.
DonkeyKong
This this this a million times stenciled backward on the Presidents forehead so he reads it in the morning and before he goes to bed THIS!
Hal
So much fail in this post, it’s not even funny. This is the voice of someone who probably wrote this while thinking; “This is what black people sound like! Ha!”
PS. No ones used the word Homey anymore.
MikeMc
Screw@Suthrnboy: Did you just use the term “homey”? Seriously? Your not gonna like this, but NWA broke up.
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
Now, I think we can both agree that the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts is by no means a favorable policy outcome. But are you really calling a 13 month extension of unemployment benefits (after all of the protracted battles to just get a month here and a few months there this year) nothing more than “a bandage around a dude’s bloody forearm?” I mean, fuck, I get it. The optimal thing for the unemployed is to get them a fucking job, no duh. But there’s just no way I can get down with dismissing real, legitimate, stimulative economic benefits to people who have incredibly little and are barely clinging onto that.
I think the problem with the scenario you’ve constructed is that, somehow, there is only one tank rumbling down the street, as opposed to an entire army of tanks threatening to flatten the whole fucking city.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Okay, since nobody will answer my question about what this post even means I’ll try to drill into a few specifics and maybe become enlightened.
Katrina van den Heuvel wrote something John didn’t like so he told her to “just go fuck [herself].” That part I think I get.
Next sentence: “I don’t care what they have to say.” Since this is obviously inconsistent with telling someone to “go fuck [herself]” I’m back to square one. What is he saying here? That he’s crabby? Is what she has to say important or is it not?
Next paragraph: “BTW- when the Democrats lose the black vote because of what has gone on during this administration, don’t act all surprised.” Because of what that has gone on? Katrina van den Heuvel allegedly turning on Obama, which you don’t care about? Really? Or is it the cumulative weight of all the betrayals by all the white progressives and their media penetration that can be measured in the tenths of one percent? Are you really telling me that African-Americans didn’t notice until just now that their concerns are being taken for granted? But that doesn’t make any sense and can’t possibly be what was meant, so I’m back to square one.
Moving on: “[African-Americans are] being blamed for everything.” By Katrina van den Heuvel? And they’re going to stop voting Democrat because of this? If there were a square before one I’d be in that one now.
The rest carries on in much the same vein.
So if someone could explain John’s point to me I’d love to read it. And then if someone could explain how this fits in with John’s serial tut-tutting of the LGBT community I’d love to read that too. Because a cursory reading suggests that John is warning us not to take African-Americans for granted or the Dems will be in trouble, as opposed to LGBTs who need to realize that when their concerns are taken for granted they need to vote for Dems anyway.
El Tiburon
@stuckinred:
sorry, not picking up on your snark at this time.
Kenneth
It was appropriate this was done on Pearl Harbor Day.
This was nothing more than a dastardly sneak attack on his own base, as bad as what the Japanese did to this country in Hawaii.
FlipYrWhig
@Big City Mary:
Seems like that would make a very small wedge of the Democratic party extremely happy — for a while; that type of feeling tends to subside quickly — and make a larger wedge of the Democratic party, the one that thinks of itself as “moderate” and open to compromises (DKos polled that question, and very high numbers of Democrats said they preferred Democrats who compromise when they can’t get what they want), very shut out and silenced. It’s a strategy that shows “strength” and pleases the people who have complained the loudest, but does it do anything for the rest of the party? Not Republicans, who are essentially a lost cause, but middle-of-the-road Democrats, the kind who think Obama was too _liberal_ over his first two years?
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
No, he hasn’t.
WE have failed to change the trajectory of this country. It’s not all on him, and it never has been.
WyldPirate
@Lysana:
I realize that racism is endemic to American culture. It’s endemic in multiple American subcultures as well against different races.
I’ve seen some of the virulent racist crap from the Right–the card from the Cali legislator with the watermelons on the WH lawn, etc, etc. There is a difference in this and other, legitimate criticism. This is an entirely different issue, however, than finding racism in legitimate criticism of Obama and his policies or dropping the “racist card” when you get your ass in a crack with your arguments like ABL did.
Some people here and elsewhere default to the “racist” smear when they hear ANY criticism of Obama. That’s intellectually lazy. IMO.
shortstop
@Kenneth: Hell, why didn’t you say you were a parody when you came in?
News Reference
“placing liberal justices on the (uber-conservative) Supreme Court”
There is NO record to support such an assertion.
“Hopefully” there will eventually be a liberal record to point to, but for now, that’s not a supportable assertion.
Kagan’s available record puts her clearly far-right-of-center.
Sotomayor’s record puts her at modestly right-of-center.
It’s true that “far-right-of-center” is technically to ‘the left’ of the extreme-right-wing activist Justices currently sitting on the bench.
But let’s not pretend the ‘far-right’ is the new left.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Kenneth: Yes, because going off on the manic progressives like Shatner on Trekkies is equal to thousands of dead servicemen and the start of a world war. Go fuck yourself, asshole.
Mnemosyne
@News Reference:
Weird how the ACA is such a massive giveaway to the insurance companies that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get Republicans elected this cycle so they can get it repealed.
It’s almost like it’s not quite the giveaway that Jane keeps telling you it is and that they’re terrified that it’s going to go into effect. Nah, that can’t be right — they must want to repeal it because they love it so much, they just can’t stand it.
I forget, at which point did you decide to leave the reality-based community and head off to your own planet?
ETA: Ah, I see your “far-right” Kagan claim. Yep, you’ve definitely left the orbit of this planet and headed off to your own.
Midnight Marauder
@Joe Beese:
Ahem. From the actual post:
Democrats. As in, the Democratic Party. As in, an administrative entity that is not President Obama.
Learn to read for once, you fucking illiterate clown.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: You mean like when someone say this president hasn’t done anything, he was just standing there when it happened?
Kenneth
@shortstop:
The only parody is Hopey Changey. He’s a walking parody.
shortstop
@Hal: It’s so bad I suspect it’s a black person pretending to be a white person humiliating himself. Is that too meta?
Nick
@Kenneth:
you picked two people who couldn’t even get reelected in blue areas, and someone who isn’t even a Democrat. I’m going to pretty much say you don’t care about actually winning anything
JWL
I credit your abiding points, Cole.
I also believe Obama is a legislative bungler and politically strategic incompetent.
FlipYrWhig
@shortstop: My read is identical to yours. I was trying to devil’s-advocate a different scenario, and that’s the best I could come up with. Sad. I can imagine a Democratic coalition linked by economic populism, which gains a few beachheads in “red state” territory, but that coalition wouldn’t be great for social issues.
The best would be to reenact the 1950s-’60s paradigm where there was a working-class party and a wealthy-people party, and some of the wealthy people voted with some of the working-class people on civil rights and liberties. But to get that you have to undo the whole Southern strategy and reinvent the rara avis of the liberal Republican. Ugh.
Chris
I’m confused: is it good or bad to say, “Yeah, but who else are they going to vote for?”
Nick
@El Tiburon:
Wow, the man hasn’t been able to dramatically change conventional wisdom of the past half century and suddenly get the entire country to agree with Rachel Maddow. Burn him!
Hal
What is the base of the Democratic Party? For Republicans, I think it’s safe to say the base is largely older, white, more working class with a dollop at the top of upper class. The upper classing being where all the Republican leaders come from, but when you share the same language [Taxes, abortion, ethnic minorities, gays, marriage etc], it’s easy to be on the same page.
Now, what’s the base for Democrats? Strictly progressives? What about blacks who have voted Dem overwhelmingly for decades now? Gays and Lesbians? Unionized working class? Northeastern and west coasters?
There is far more diversity in the Democratic party than the Republican party, and that makes appealing to the base much harder. Not that it can’t be done. Obviously, Obama responding to the tax cut issue with the all powerful line in the sand would have thrilled many, but are they strictly the base, and as I said before, how would many of those people have felt if months from now there still was no extension of UI benefits?
I honestly really don’t know at this point.
mr. whipple
I walked away when he called Hillary likeable enough.
I walked away when he called the flight attendant ‘sweetie’.
I walked away when he didn’t choose HRC as VP.
I walked away when he invited Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration.
I walked away when he didn’t nationalize the banks.
I walked away when he named Summers and not Stiglitz.
I walked away blahblahblah…
4tehlulz
@Kenneth: ‘sup Sarah?
RinaX
I’m still laughing about Mary Landrieu trying to call someone out. Mary Fucking Landrieu? Really?
As for the rest of any congressman out there complaining today? Hey, if the president let you down, then block the vote, do whatever, but Mary Landrieu and the 40, 50, 60 senators that she totally has in her back pocket on this issue better actually do what they failed to do before and actually stand together on this and get a coherent message out other than “OMG why did/didn’t the President do this/that/the other?!?!?”.
And please just get the PACs together and actually start the primarying of the Trojan Candidate instead of talking about it. Seriously, let’s really get this shit poppin’.
SIA
Via The Daily Dish, conservative reaction to the tax deal. They’re a bit confused and suspicious.
I found this oddly comforting.
Tom65
Whats all this bullshit about “progressives” being Obama’s base? Where the hell were you whiny ass motherfuckers a month ago? Oh right, staying home and pouting.
Fuck. You.
MikeMc
@mr. whipple: Are actually this fucking stupid?
Midnight Marauder
@News Reference:
I’ve always thought you were something of a joke, so thanks for the definitive proof.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: God Almighty, if he only said “have you ever kissed a girl” I wouldn’t have stop laughing this decade.
WyldPirate
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Wow, passion from Obama three times in one year. Two of them punching his own base.
Nice. He is an equal opportunity sort of guy.
Let me see if I got this right:
He punches his base and says “maybe I didn’t reach across the aisle enough” and then gives in to Rethugs in a way to bludgeon him and the Dems in ’12 that blows another trillion dollar hole in the deficit over 2 years and gives them a tool to decrease SS funding by 1/3 in perpetuity (Catfood Commission is happy I suppose).
It must be Quantum Eleventy-dimensional chess beyond the understanding of mere humans…
FlipYrWhig
@Tom65: They didn’t actually even do that! I think liberals turned out, grudgingly as usual, the way they always do in the off-year elections. At least I haven’t seen any indication that they didn’t. It’s just that Big Whitey turned out in droves. Liberals, youth, and African-Americans always decline in these off-year elections — which was one of the things that made old DC hands suspicious of Obama’s prospects for continued success. Lo and behold…
Mike Kay (Team America)
@SIA:
like the ole song..
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you..
Angry Black Lady
@Martin: are you fucking mental?
Southern Beale
Which explains why I just saw Jesse Jackson on the Ed Show tonight bemoaning how Obama has caved on the tax cuts to millionaires issue.
Riiight.
Suthrnboy
Hal,
So you know how black people speak, huh? They don’t say homey anymore? Could have fooled me since I was in inner city Chicago today and was called, wait for it, “homey” by my daughter’s black teacher as she hugged me up. Fuck you, racist!
Big City Mary
Angry Black Lady,
Are you old enought to even remember the Clinton years, from Lieberman’s sanctamonius speeches during the IMPEACHMENT hearings to the Al Gore 2000 election bid, dissing Bill Clinton was like the sun coming up in the morning.
mr. whipple
@MikeMc:
?
Angry Black Lady
the pie filter is fucking brilliant by the way:
“While my wife was out of town, our rabbi’s wife borrowed a fancy pie pan. It was returned a few days later filled with an apple pie. When my wife asked where the pie came from, I told her it was baked by our rabbi’s wife, who said she never returns something without filling it up.
“Good, you should let her borrow our checkbook,” she replied.””
HA! what a fun evening this is shaping up to be.
SIA
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Try to make some sense of it all
But I can see it makes no sense at all
Is it cruel to go to sleep on the floor
Yeah I don’t think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.
stuckinred
@Southern Beale: Fuck Jesse Jackson!
Ice Cube
beergoggles
Because what? They’re all going to vote for the Republicans? Blacks are like the socialists, environmentalists, atheists, progressives, gays, pro-choicers and all the other coalition groups out there; they have nowhere else to go.
Do you think if the Democrats bashed black folks the way Obama hippie punches, that blacks would be more motivated to vote for Democrats come 2012?
Nick
@Southern Beale:
Because Jesse Jackson is the oracle of Black America?
Sly
@El Tiburon:
I’d be extremely concerned if the President of the United States knows who Jane Hamsher is.
@WyldPirate:
Got it wrong in under five words.
beergoggles
And you really need to stop treating socialism like it’s a bad thing – yes I know just by using socialism, this will go into moderation, but really..
Suthrnboy
Oh and BTW, Hal,
You may think its racist, but most of my male black friends in Chicago listen to hip-hop, play spades, smoke blunts, battle in circles and drink 40oz. Thats just fine with me. They are my peeps. Yes, they say that too asshole!
maskling
obama is not LBJ, a rough mean SOB who will shake you down for what he wants. he is not LBJ. i get it, ultra-left, i get it.
but the ultra-left hated LBJ even worse, after he delivered medicare, medicaid and the great society programs. the war on poverty. the civil rights act. they hated LBJ. yes vietnam was a most excellent good reason to go hard against johnson, but still…
it is politically incorrect to this day to praise LBJ. he is our most important post-war democratic president. he is my favorite president. he looms over the current political landscape, a dark shakespearian tragedy of a president.
LBJ quotes:
“Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”
“I’m the only president you’ve got.”
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
Obama is not the black Jimmy Carter. He is more LBJ. Obama is under appreciated for what are certainly good reasons. he has backslid in the face of some daunting challenges and ruthless opposition. unlike LBJ, he did not have reasonable republicans to deal with, nor has he got LBJ’s toughness and appetite for confrontation and manipulation. but Obama’s failings are not enough reason to tear up the caucus and hand the show to Gingrich/Romney/Palin.
the ultra-left wants to primary Obama? fuck the ultra left. they can tell their story walking as far as i am concerned.
Angry Black Lady
@Big City Mary: yes i am. i was working in dc from 96-98.
as i recall, the reaction of most folks at the time was, “So the fuck what?” elected officials are still questioning obama’s blackness, his religion, whether he’s a terrorist. there has been a 400% increase in death threats. democrats, progressives, libertarians, republicans, tea partiers– they all are piling on.
i don’t think the jizz on the blue dress even comes close.
the vince foster crap was out of the right-wing playbook. the gore business occurred towards the tale end of clinton’s 8 year presidency.
apples and roast beef, as someone said.
Bob Loblaw
@Angry Black Lady:
I, on the other hand, seem to recall some guy named Ralph Nader skewing an election in 2000, running directly against the chosen Clintonian successor. I assume the two are related. Or maybe the Green Party just fell out of the sky that year or something.
@Nick:
To be fair, if we were to hold firm on this standard, then there’d be no President Obama in the first place. Because he got his ass straight kicked by Bobby Rush in 2000.
On the other hand, Alan Grayson? Wtf. What goes through the minds of these people?
Mike Kay (Team America)
s@Southern Beale: in 2008, Jesse went on Fox news (of all places) and called Obama a nig@er.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/13/193831/532
Angry Black Lady
@Bob Loblaw: we’re two years in to obama’s presidency. if i recall correctly, the nader shenanigans hadn’t even been conceived at this point in clinton’s presidency.
apples and roast beef.
WyldPirate
@News Reference:
No, News Reference, that clearly makes you a racist to some here.
Wise up and get with the program, NR. Get on the Obama Cult of Personality train before it leaves the station.
stuckinred
@Suthrnboy: You sound like Tim Roth in GRIDLOCK’d .
News Reference
“I don’t recall Clinton being incessantly attacked by his own party.”
There were many Democratic critics of Clinton (go read Democratic criticisms of Clinton’s hard right-wing turns with: NAFTA, Telecommunications Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, CALEA, welfare-“reform”, school-uniform nonsense, and “triangulation”, just to name a few things).
Perhaps if you had known (or been listening to) any of those Democratic critics of the then Democratic President you wouldn’t be so obscenely oversensitive to substantive criticisms of the current Democratic President.
All you would have had to do was pick up an occasional copy of The Nation back then to read long lists of
‘incessant attacks’substantive criticisms of Democratic President Clinton’s many right-wing policies.Apparently it takes having The Nation‘s editor get published in The Washington Post before anyone notices such substantive criticism (and Katrina’s entire editorial was profoundly SUBSTANTIVE criticism).
stuckinred
@maskling: He was a fucking pig, fuck him.
Angry Black Lady
@Southern Beale: jesse fucking jackson?! seriously!? good grief.
Angry Black Lady
@News Reference: jesus fucking christ. stop calling me oversensitive. it’s a derailing tactic used to belittle my points. (as is implying that i’m uninformed.)
some of you are right assholes.
WyldPirate
@Sly:
Right. This from one of the Obama Cult of Personality leaders.
Back slowly away from the meth pipe, Sly…
beergoggles
And after saying this, I’m going +2
Do you think if the Democrats bashed black folks the way Obama hippie punches, that blacks would be more motivated to vote for Democrats come 2012?
junebug
@Southern Beale:
So you’ve bought into the Republican talk radio lie that Jessie Jackson speaks for all of “his” people’?
Nice.
MikeMc
@mr. whipple: Sorry, Mr. whipple. People talk about drinking and commenting on this sight all the time. I’ve been drinking wine out of a box for 40 min and am useless! It took me twenty minutes to write that one sentence! And yeah, I just wrote out 20! This shit is not cool! Writing drunk rubs!
venona
@Suthrnboy: What’s next? “Sho’ good eatin’, boss?”
And, no, “Homey” is not a diminutive of “Homer.”
Angry Black Lady
i love this pie filter so hard.
it’s marvelous.
stuckinred
@junebug: All he said was that he was disappointed in this decision and that it was the duty of the base to push him in the right direction.
Midnight Marauder
@Southern Beale:
You know how, during moments like this, someone will make the obligatory “Jesse Jackson does not speak for all black people, and hasn’t even been close to doing so in decades” comment?
Yeah, Jesse Jackson is a poor fucking example to hang your hat on.
Hal
Was it an attractive white female teacher there to teach inner city kids the value of education, or maybe to play the violin?
I mean, it’s all so precious. You were in inner city Chicago, and your kids black teacher called you Homey? Did he chest bump you, too?
RinaX
@Southern Beale:
That’s almost as funny as Mary Landrieu’s whining.
Seriously, do white people still think Jessie Jackson is the voice of Black America? Hint: Al Sharpton isn’t, either, and I think actually favors the President’s proposal.
Same goes for Steve Harvey. I don’t know how he feels about the whole thing, but he sure does like to speak for black folks a lot. Anyways.
Kenneth
This time it’s different, the entire base is DONE with BO.
If there’s no primary, we’ll take our time, money, and votes to the Green Party!
Fuck corporatism.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@beergoggles: what are you talking about, the hippie left bashes obama all day and night.
As I said earlier, why is “hippie punching” wrong, but obama punching okay? There should be a two way street.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
Roger that. LBJ was fucking around with tactics in Vietnam like it was a big game of Risk, pushing the stupid domino theory and got a lot of good people killed and maimed for life both inside and out.
He does deserve credit for the Civil Rights act and Medicare, though.
Time will give us perspective on Obama. He is certainly not perfect–no one is- and he is not above criticism either now or in the future.
Kenneth
Daily Kos is in full-blown revolt, btw. Hope the President is happy.
junebug
This post is much like the post about business students cheating — commenters show their true colors and it is ey-opening.
chaseyourtail
Thanks, John. I’m not black but I’m thoroughly disgusted by what I’m seeing…and most of it is coming from the left. Markos Moulitsas has completely lost control of his website and he should be ashamed to have his name attached to it. Everyone from the main pagers to the vile swine in the comment threads are spewing the most vile, hateful garbage. And yes, the vile garbage has racist undertones. That website is in an absolute rabid fury simply because the President made a decision to say fuck it and help struggling Americans. This is his big crime? I seriously want to push the red button and nuke the Daily Kos.
mr. whipple
@Kenneth:
LOL.
MikeMc
@Kenneth: Take your money over there…and ignorance.
RinaX
@Hal:
Or maybe it was a lounge singer hiding out from the mob by pretending to be a nun at a run-down inner city Catholic school. Showed them how to fight the power by singing!
Kenneth
@chaseyourtail:
Give ONE example of racism from the RecList on Kos.
SIA
@SIA: The Hot Air commenters think the Left is much smarter/more organized than they really are. This is a hoot.
__
stuckinred
KO is rippin the man a new asshole.
RinaX
@SIA:
I wish the left in general was that organized. I wish. Hilarious to read that, though.
Sly
@WyldPirate:
Brush up on your Progressivology. I can’t be a leader if I’m not on TV.
SIA
@stuckinred: Ripping who? Obama?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Kenneth: why would anybody care? They’ve been in operation now for 8.5 years, and they’ve never won anything.
Dean, Edwards, Lamont, Halter — the poured millions into these campaigns and they all lost badly.
Admiral_Komack
@shilohsmama:
Um…I think that is going to leave a mark.
Sweet!
beergoggles
@Mike Kay (Team America): Those with power punching those without power.
Oh I guess those powerless hippies only have power when they vote for Nader instead. If the GOP wants to win in 2012, they just need to make sure Nader is on the ballot.
chaseyourtail
@Kenneth:
Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be up all night crying on his pillow over it.
WyldPirate
@Big City Mary:
Yep. This.
The buck stops somewhere. At least it used to….
News Reference
“I think liberals turned out, grudgingly as usual, the way they always do in the off-year elections. “
You are correct, Sir.
Liberals represent, on a good day, 20% of the population.
CNN’s exit polls for House members had 20% of 2010’s November electorate identifying themselves as “liberal” of which 90% voted for Democratic Representatives.
Obama’s pissing on the Democratic base. Again.
stuckinred
@SIA: Yup, as bad as anything he ever did on W.
Mike Kay (Team America)
aaaa
stuckinred
@Mike Kay (Team America): There is only one The Man, the prez dudes.
Kenneth
Wow, Keith Olbermann is done, too.
srv
@News Reference: Certain folks who apparently can’t remember anything about the 90’s aside, progressives really only hated Clinton because he was The First Black President.
mr. whipple
@stuckinred:
Well, that’s verrrrrry smart, because as we know, they are exactly the same.
stuckinred
@Kenneth: Irrational and childish decision.
stuckinred
@mr. whipple: Listen to it before you decide.
mr. whipple
@Kenneth:
Shocking! Next up to rant, Rachel! It’s the msnbc all-stars!
Kenneth
Keith is done with Obama, and I bet Rachel is, too.
The primary challenge is not a question of “if”, but “when”.
Odie Hugh Manatee
No they don’t, but their real ‘base’ is comprised of the wealthy and corporations who fund them. This is so they use it to sucker the stupid voters into voting for them, or to get the Democrats to stay home in disgust, so they can stay in office and rake in more cash. No, they don’t go pissing off their ‘base’ because they are bought and paid for by that ‘base’.
Democratic and Republican bases are two completely different things, like apples and golf balls. The so-called base on the left who are howling so loudly are not the base, they just like to think they are.
Midnight Marauder
@Kenneth:
We’ve had a lot of serious disagreements around here, but I think most of us will accept that President Obama is not concerned in the least with what is happening on Daily Kos.
I do not think it is possible for him to care less about the emofest that is Daily Kos. And I think we’re all better off that the POTUS isn’t sitting in the Oval Office, flipping the fuck out, because Daily Kos has gone apopletic.
Again, over a deal that may not even have the votes to pass.
Angry Black Lady
@Kenneth: http://tiny.cc/igotyerbase
you’re just wrong.
mr. whipple
@Kenneth:
You forgot the most important thing: Who?
Maybe they can find Ned Lamont.
chaseyourtail
@tomvox1:
NAIL HIT HEAD. He doesn’t do their bidding and it burns them up to no end. Losers.
WyldPirate
@Sly:
I said “Obama Cult of Personality and clearly meant on this board.
Pay attention, Sly.
Moreover, we here on this blog are not “leaders” of the Progressive movement or anything else political most likely. That’s probably a good thing, too. And that is why criticism of President
Immaculate PerfectionObama isn’t disloyalty. we don’t have to fall in line like little automatons.O/T–Olbermann just went off on Obama, bigtime.
stuckinred
@mr. whipple: you’re a shithead
Angry Black Lady
@Kenneth: i am one of the “leave msnbc on from the minute i get home until the daily show” kind of people. whenever i’m out and about among other liberals (both colored and not) and i start excitedly talking about rachel maddow, i’m immediately stopped: “rachel who?”
“all your base are belong to us” is getting old.
Bullsmith
Republicans=tax cuts. Saying I got my tax cut and they got their tax cut is nonsensical. All tax cuts are political wins for Republicans. unguided ones by Democrats are full on capitulation.
Bob Loblaw
@Angry Black Lady:
I think the syndrome gets more aggressive during unprosperous times. I also think some people never got over the 2008 primary, and that some are acting out due to racist motives.
I can’t tell you how much each one contributes respectively or to what intensity.
I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have much love for Obama. Never have. Nor any for his predecessors. In a contest between Democrat and Republican, I often find myself pulling for the meteor.
But as much as I find his administration’s actions complacent, or wrongheaded, or naive, or full blown destructive, I see no reason to believe anybody would be any more effective at operating during this reactionary spiral we find ourselves in.
SIA
@RinaX: Exactly! They think we are evil geniuses. BWWAAAHHHAAAAHAAAA!
Seriously though, I had to stop after a few minutes of those comments. Those folks are a craven lot.
chaseyourtail
@Kenneth:
Wow, what a coincidence. I’ve been done with Olbermann for a while now.
Kenneth
@Angry Black Lady:
That was before TODAY, the turning point is TODAY everyone can feel it.
mr. whipple
@stuckinred:
Ah, we’ll fish together some day and have a good time.
Nanette
@Southern Beale:
Just a quick update, Southern Beale: Jesse Jackson is no longer “The Black Community.” He’s just Jesse Jackson.
People have discovered that there are lots more of us now! Black folks, that is. And that we have mouths and brains and opinions and all kinds of cool stuff.
billgerat
I read the first 100 posts at work, and now I’m home, well over 400! This thread must be popular or somethin’.
My 2 cents: I hope the deal falls apart. True, Obama tried to do right by the unemployed and the others suffering in this economy, and I applaud him for that. His mistake though was negotiating with hostage takers – you NEVER do that. Sure, hostages may get harmed, but more will be harmed in the long run by doing so.
KOS put it exactly as I thought it would happen:
“Here’s why it’s a trap: the deal calls for the payroll tax holiday to last for just one year. That means on January 1, 2012, payroll taxes would go back up to 6.2%.
Put another way, the Republican message in 2011 will be this: “If Congress doesn’t extend the payroll tax holiday, everybody’s taxes are going up on January 1, 2012.”
If you don’t think Republicans that’s exactly what Republicans will say, then you haven’t been paying attention. Not only will they demand an extension of the payroll tax holiday, they’ll make extending it permanently the centerpiece of their 2012 Presidential campaign.”
The GOP will take up hostages again. That’s what hostage takers do. Believe me, the Republicans would never have given up what they did in this deal unless they had a future ulterior motive to do so.
SIA
@stuckinred: Sumpin’ told me not to turn on the teevee.
stuckinred
@mr. whipple: I hope so. I’m a shithead too.
Kerry Reid
Hey, Self-Righteous White Lefties Who Think Obama Is the One Who Has a Problem With Messaging:
You’ve had many, many decades to sell your version of “progressive” values to voters in red states (who, after all, stand to gain the most from more equitable fiscal policies, right?)
So riddle me this: why the fuck haven’t you done it after all these years? Why do you suck so much at messaging? Why are you so spineless and incapable of delivering? Maybe if you just FOUGHT harder and screamed louder, people would realize how right you are and fall under your magic powers of persuasion!
Let me guess what your excuses are: “Wah wah wah — the media has it in for us! People are too stupid to realize how awesome our ideas are! It’s not our fault — we never asked to be born! Besides, we worked SO HARD for Obama!” (Golly, who knew phone-banking and giving a few bucks was EXACTLY the same as having your head split open on the Edmund Pettus Bridge?)
So then: Where are your grassroots organizations delivering actual, honest-to-god services that matter to people in need who might vote for you — the way that those progressive organizations who have actually managed to get points on the board do?
Feminism in theory leads to Planned Parenthood, women’s shelters, Rape Victim Advocates, etc., in practice.
Gay Rights activism leads to Gay Mens’ Health Service, for just one example. Disability rights leads to a host of organizations fighting here and now to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
So — instead of telling the unemployed to suck eggs so you can have a vicarious “Stick it to the RICH!” victory, maybe think of getting off your arses and working in poor rural communities in red states, showing them in practice AND theory why your values are better and building long-term coalitions.
Too much like work? Great. I’ll send you a bumpersticker — “I’d rather be whining.”
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Kenneth:
Nah, Olbermann is a media whore asshole. His first thought on every important story is “How quickly and how loudly can I make sure everyone knows what I think about this?”
Besides, he is done with Obama in the sense that when he is faced with a choice between Obama and Palin or Pawlenty or Thune or any of the other empty suit fuckheads who might run against Obama, all of a sudden he won’t be done any more.
Keith Olbermann couldn’t organize and run a bridge game. As far as I am concerned he couldn’t shine Obama’s shoes, or for that matter, Wasserman Schultz’s shoes either.
Angry Black Lady
@Kenneth: who the hell is everyone?
the people who were are now going to get UI? do you have a job? are you putting food on the table for your family? if you are, then can it. seriously. you want people to fight your political fights, but fuck poor people, right?
revenge is a dish best served cold, but it has no nutritional value.
my lord. no one is feeling anything but the same old fools (me included) sitting around hammering it out in blogistan. other people are living their lives.
you think the poll i posted is going to change based on a bill that hasn’t even passed?
ninja, please.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
You can’t tell me that the White House doesn’t have asshole repair kits stocked in their inventory, stuckinred.
Angry Black Lady
@billgerat: all that post shows is that those kossacks care about political points. what happens in a year is of no comfort to people who are being evicted THIS WEEK.
Angry Black Lady
how does your pie taste, jackass?
jl
@FlipYrWhig: Thanks for that depressing information, I guess. Are the Democrats that self destructively meffed up? Looks like it.
The Raven
Oh, there’s no question that blacks are getting screwed by this Congress and the political elite. But then, so are women, Afghanis, Iraqis, and, well, pretty much everyone to a lesser or greater extent, except for banks, insurance companies, and porn-scanner manufacturers.
Line forms on the right.
Croak!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Marc:
Well, then the Congressional Leadership should have done their fucking job and put something on his desk.
Kenneth
@Angry Black Lady:
For the past 30 years the top two percent and their lackeys in Congress, the Banksters, the American/Israeli military-industrial complex, Wall St. prostitutes and others have LOOTED this country fucking us over and taken money from the other 98%. We had a CHANCE to fuck them back after they fucked us, but Obama caved in like a little p*ssy.
The rich are laughing. The Banksters own us now,.
Triassic Sands
President Obama:
I think this reveals at least part of the problem. Obama’s goal, it turns out, was not the end to tax cuts for the wealthy, it was not making them permanent. So, as long as Congress votes for the next 200 years to extend the tax cuts, Obama has won!!! That’s a victory without any substance.
Who really believes that when the tax cuts come up for a vote again in 2012 that Democrats (or Obama) are going to kill them? I have no idea what the Republicans will hold hostage to force Obama to redraw his line in the sand yet again, but there most certainly will be something. And Obama has told them — explicitly — that he will redraw the line.
Surely, anyone can see that tactic doesn’t and can’t work.
mr. whipple
The only thing this will do is raise Obama’s approvals amongst indies by 5%, while ‘losing’ a fraction of a % of ‘online progressive liberal activists with keyboards’ vote, while also getting the gratitude of millions whose UI was set to run out and were weeks away from living in a cardboard box.
That’s why he was elected, to make the tough calls.
News Reference
“I don’t quite understand why the progressive wing is making this particular deal Armageddon for Obama.”
It’s basic math.
Obama’s Republican “deal” means an massive increase in the deficit which overwhelmingly serves the ultra-ultra-wealthy even while he’s demanding that the least amongst US must ‘tighten our belts’ and ‘sacrifice’.
That massive increase in the deficit will be used by Republicans to extract further concessions from progressive safety-nets.
Obama is giving gifts to millionaires and billionaires while essentially telling the poorest that they “can just go fuck themselves. I don’t care what they have to say.”
WyldPirate
@srv:
hehe. Damned racist progressives. Disloyal motherfuckers.
angee
Well this BLACK woman is glad that the John Cole that I’ve grown to love and respect is back.
You sound like you have been visiting the afrosphere. More white progressive (?) bloggers need to do the same thing so they can see what is really UP. As you said, if they don’t they are in for a rude awakening.
Angry Black Lady
@The Raven: luckily for me
i’m not a porn scanner manufacturer.
Lineman52
To all the Democrats complaining about how the President is negotiating never mention how they would do different. Of course they complain about not having the public option, and how pissed they are about the rich getting a 2 year extension on tax cuts. But how would they accomplish the goal of getting UI extended for 13 months. Payroll tax cut etc. without giving anything up.
The Liberals want want a Democratic President to ram bills down like a Republican, but the big difference is all Republicans stand together no matter what.
I want the left to stop yelling about what they didn’t get until they can give a detail description on how they would strategically negotiate better.
4tehlulz
@mr. whipple: I thought he was elected for optics; what are these “calls” ?
The Raven
Now that I’ve croaked that out, well, yes: blacks don’t have anyone to vote for who represents their interests. I don’t think Obama, even. Just because you’re on they’re side doesn’t mean they’re on your side. That’s what progressives have been croaking about for years now. Women, ditto, and they’re a majority. So, now what? Do you all take your marbles & go home, leaving the Koch Party in control? Do you all form separate political parties and all loose separately?
We corvids have a better idea: organize.
Croak!
Angry Black Lady
@Kenneth: again, you are missing my point. folks trying to put food on the table aren’t concerned about the banksters. they are concerned about whether or not their children are going to starve. yes, the rich are laughing. they’ve always been laughing. “sticking it to them” by returning them to clinton-level tax rates wasn’t going to somber them up at all. come on, now.
and pie is still delicious.
i’m out for a while. i have shit to do.
Keith G
@Kerry Reid: Who are you and where does that anger come from? You paint with a broad brush. Some of us have worked with the poor in the South. I have done voluntary tutoring, and helped the elderly poor in my community. I am sure that I am not unusual as a liberal.
What is your point? In a sentence, what is the argument that you want to make? Discussion and understanding can only occur when there is clarity.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Kenneth:
Dkos is in full marginalization. The sizzle they once had over there is long gone, and all they have left is either maudlin victimhood, or bitter “provocation.” In quotes, because they only thing they can provoke is their own choir. They couldn’t sell a book of matches in a fart lighting contest these days.
What I see as the major differences between the right and left today, besides the obvious ideology things like whether the earth is 6000 years old or whether Jesus is due back before the next election … is that the right can form a base around which a party can build a machine, while the left forms a base around which a stench arises that would choke a den of skunks. The base on the left is incapable of building .. or even recognizing a coalition when it sees one.
|Barack Obama ignores the power of his base because that base ignores its own power. It is entirely dysfunctional.
Mike in NC
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
On the subject of empty suit fuckheads, I read today that Rick Santorum is making his seventh visit to S.C. this week to see if there are enough deranged assholes out there to back his run in 2012.
Didn’t get the memo that his 15 minutes were up a long time ago…
A L
On the one hand, Kerry Reid accurately recognizes that American liberals are too enthralled by the political process to take any action on their own, thus rendering them woefully incompetent and useless.
On the other hand, the aparatuses he describes are already in place and have had an effect on swaying people’s opinions, so he’s talking out of his ass. He also fails to recognize that opposition at the federal level effectively limits the amount of good any of these things can do (for instance, Planned Parenthood hasn’t done shit for leveling the playing field for women in the corporate field, nor will it ever).
Kerry Reid must live in the city or something because he doesn’t really understand that grassroots stuff is limited in achieving major goals. The United States will not turn into Europe just because some liberals actually get off their asses and make themselves useful.
The real truth is that this country must be destroyed before it can stand the chance at being reformed. This is the bed Americans are making for themselves whether they know it or not. It’s really too late to vote.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mike Kay (Team America):
It’s because they can dish it out but can’t take it when it’s dished back at them? They think Obama has to stand there and take their shit and not to respond unless it’s to agree with them.
They are missing one positive development in this whole brouhaha; they whine incessantly that Obama is ignoring them, right? Well here’s your attention…lol! He has heard you and has responded.
Now you can’t claim that Obama isn’t listening to you!
News Reference
“You can’t tell me that the White House doesn’t have asshole repair kits stocked in their inventory, stuckinred. “
Yup, Goldman Sachs bought it for Obama.
And it was Made in China.
(’cause Obama serves the Banksters and their International money games… get it?)
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Bingo. And fuck them, fuck them very much. Let them eat shit and go home late for the holidays, which I hope are miserable for them.
News Reference
“what happens in a year is of no comfort to people who are being evicted THIS WEEK.”
Obama’s pretense to protect home-buyers from predatory Banksters was another in a long line of charades.
Instead of holding the Bankster Frauds accountable for the crimes Obama bragged he was protecting them from “pitchforks”.
Big City Mary
Angry Black Lady,
I am sure there are lots of racist people in this country. But they are the same kind of people that “hate on” just about anybody, Mexicans, Native American Indians, Muslims, Eskimos, and their favorite-WOMEN and 200 hundred years ago-the Chinese and the Irish. And the reality is they have absolutely no power, the fact that Obama was elected demonstrates that. We are not fighting race, country of origin or gender or sexual preference here, we are fighting for the “utopia” we dream about against the corporatists that think serfdom is a viable economic system.
Don’t let the “Oh if he wasn’t black, liberals would not be abandoning him meme” suck you in. The fact is, the man has sold us out, bottom line.
Sly
@WyldPirate:
My fault. Everything you write reflects tremendous clarity, after all.
We agree on something!
Now just extend it to FDL, GOS, MSNBC, and the rest of the echo-chamber and we’ll have ourselves a genuine kumbaya moment.
The President’s approval rating has been around 80% among Democrats since last summer. After HCR, after FinReg, after Gitmo wasn’t closed and after DADT repeal was filibustered. After all those betrayals… 80%. So here’s a serious question, in respect to our recent breakthrough. How much do you think the remaining 20% are actually the progressives you presume are the Democratic base?
Edit: 500 Goddamn. I’m betting this thread was Cole’s attempt to show ABL who really runs shit around here.
parsimon
Forgive me, I have not read the entire thread, and probably some of this has been said.
With respect to van den Heuvel’s WaPo column, it sounds as though it was written before the Obama-GOP tax cut proposal was released. She writes:
The “one hopes” suggests that she hadn’t read the final proposal — it hadn’t been released yet. I’m a bit curious what she might have to say now.
On this:
@John Cole:
Yeah, well, it’s a tough call. On the one hand, the Washington Post is quite a right-leaning paper, so there’s an argument to be made that left-liberal voices there are a very good idea. I assume that was van den Heuvel’s thinking in accepting the gig.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable telling her what she’s allowed to say. I’d like to see her publish a follow-up column to that one, providing a more sober view of the actually existing tax-cut compromise proposal. She complains in that column, for example, that the feared (not-yet-existing at the time of her writing, it seems) compromise doesn’t sound job-creating or stimulative. But there’s a colorable argument that the now-actually-existing proposal is, in effect, a second stimulus.
The Raven
@Angry Black Lady: And your point is what, exactly? If you take this failure only as an attack on you and yours, personally, and respond as a faction your faction will lose.
Gotta organize. Or you got nothing.
mr. whipple
Well, what was left for them? Remember that for years they pimped people for $ to elect Democrats, with the goal of getting a majority so some shit could get done. Never mind that the easy seats were all ready to be had and that these new seats would be owned by blue doggies and conservative Democrats.
So, they help to get that done only to find that (gasp!) all these people they raised money for weren’t as progressive as they were. I mean, really, the nerve of these pols. So, they bitch about them nonstop for two years and lots of them lose their seats. Man, that sucks!
Except it doesn’t! Not in Kos world. In Kos world it’s a great thing all these not progressive enough dems they helped elect lost their seats because that means the remaining progressive caucus has a greater proportion of power in the congressional minority so that very progressive things will never get done.
Ain’t it great in Kosworld?
Cacti
Maybe my memory’s just bad, but after Bill Clinton had folded on healthcare, expanded the death penalty, signed NAFTA and DOMA into law, and lost both houses of congress…
I don’t remember any white liberals shouting in 1996 that Bubba needed to be primaried for not being left enough. Hmmm…I wonder what changed between now and then?
The Raven
@Big City Mary: “I am sure there are lots of racist people in this country.”
Ma’am, if you were black, I think you’d just write, “There are a lot of racists in this country.
The Raven
@Cacti: “I don’t remember any white liberals shouting in 1996 that Bubba needed to be primaried for not being left enough. Hmmm…I wonder what changed between now and then?”
A depression, perhaps? The lines are a lot more sharply drawn, these days.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
After reading about the sorry display that Senate Democrats are making today, it is clear to me that they are doing a round of arm waving and foot stamping whose main purpose is to deflect attention from their own pathetic cowardice and failures the last two years. These assholes are incapable of doing anything in the face of organized opposition, so completely do they cower in their own feces on a daily basis.
Now they stride to the microphones to announce how outraged they are that the president has exposed their pathetic record of cowardice and crafted a deal out of the debris they have left behind. Where were these lying assholes when the president needed them? Standing over in the corner and playing with themselves while reading David Broder columns.
Left Coast Tom
@Cacti: V-Chips. Maybe white “liberals” are looking for a 2010 equivalent of V-Chips.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@mr. whipple:
I think you have it just about right.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
When you assume, you make an ass out of — yourself, really. (Meaning — I’m a woman, moron.)
But I’m sure that’s a common position for you, given that you apparently typed this with a straight face:
Change begins at home! Kill yourself for the sake of America!
And I’m also going to assume that at the first sign of “revolution,” you’d lose your fudge and start screaming for Mommy to save you.
hoyt
you are suggesting criticism of Obama is racist. Obama is afailure, you just dont want to hear it. loser loser loser
jaywillie
@Sarcastro: For being a bunch of sanctimonious ideologues who are more interested in political show than actually accomplishing something. That’s what the hard left is being blamed for, because NOTHING will ever be good enough for them.
Just look at the rhetoric they have to resort to get attention: Greenwald attacking an anonymous blogger by comparing that person to Leni Riefenstahl; Kos calling Obama Chamberlain; using phrases to describe the President’s supporters as cult-like, messianic, Caesar worshippers. When you’re using rhetoric like this, why not just sign up for a RedState or Free Republic account so you can take a giant dump on the President along with the rightwing ideologues the hard left is parroting?
I get it – you folks don’t actually want to accomplish anything because then you couldn’t bludgeon everyone on Internet forums with your pumped-up, chest-thumping, self-righteous, unhinged, indignation and ad nauseum statements about how superior and holier-than-thou you are to everyone who doesn’t agree with you 100%.
@NR: Obama has not lost his coalition. Look at the latest survey data that ABL posted last night:
You folks are completely off when you a) claim that you are the base of the party or his supporters and b) that he’s lost those people. You represent the screaming, shrieking, hysterical, myopic lefty ideologues that helped make liberal a dirty word in this country, who were more interested in losing their shit over the issue du jour while Reagan wiped up the floor with your asses.
You’re clowns. Where were y’all before the elections, imploring Dems in Congress to make a stand on the tax cuts??? Or were you too busy screaming on an internet forum about how Pres. Obama took your unicorn out back and de-horned it with a rusty file? Oh but now that the elections are over and we’re in a lame duck session, they’ll take a stand – how courageous of them!
And if he hadn’t made this deal, what was your alternative? Let benefits expire, taxes increase on the middle class (even Krugman says this is bad), and then scream at him to make a Republican House do it after January? Were you busy putting pressure on conservative Dems in the Senate that were going to side with Republicans on the taxes? Or, much like HCR, would you have spent all your energy screaming at the President to force those Dems to do his bidding? Or would you have been much happier as people lost their benefits but you were able to feel smug and ideologically superior?
Or maybe you would have whined about how he should be more like FDR, completing ignoring the political deals he made (like not pushing for federal anti-lynching legislation) and the abominable things he did (like interning Japanese Americans)? Or how we need someone like Howard Dean leading the party, ignoring the fact that his 50 state strategy was premised on the idea of recruiting and electing Dems who fit their districts, who were pro-life and pro-gun?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
LOVE the handle.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Also, you don’t seem to understand that leveling the corporate playing field for women isn’t what Planned Parenthood is about.
Therefore, using your Waffle o’ Twat brand of logic, they are an utter failure at improving the lives of women. Except for all those women whose lives they’ve saved (including mine, fwiw). But hey, they didn’t bring about the Grand and Glorious People’s Revolution and Rebirth, so fuck them.
Seriously. Kill yourself. We’ll compost your remains and feed starving children in Darfur, I promise.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@chaseyourtail:
The two times Obama posted at Kos were enough for him. He saw how little they liked him then and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he really doesn’t care that much about them right now. Hell, the more they get pissed at him the more depressed the right becomes because they think this will look good to people in the middle.
If the manic progressives yowling and howling builds support for Obama then I guess I could live with that. ;)
Left Coast Tom
@jaywillie:
This is why I put “liberals” in scare quotes in my reply to Cacti…I think terms like “liberal” and “progressive” refer to those who actively seek progressive change, not those who look at change like the passage of HCR and complain about the lack of unicorns.
Similarly, I’m pretty sure the term “hippie” has almost nothing to do with most of the people complaining about being “punched”.
Kerry Reid
@Keith G:
My point is that those who condemn Obama for not working miracles have not, themselves, managed to enshrine progressive values through consistent messaging and hard work. Yet somehow he is to blame for the failures of progressives to get points on the board in red states. Why is that, do you suppose?
And it’s not “anger.” It’s “bemusement at crybaby do-nothings.” Fortunately, the leftie bloggers provide me plenty of opportunity for such bemusement of late. If you’re doing community organizing, then it’s not directed at you. If your notion of belonging to “the base” comes from “I type things on the internet and vote,” then it just might be!
mr. whipple
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
This is the self-titled ‘reality-based community’, too.
(rolls eyes)
WyldPirate
@jaywillie:
You got one problem, jaywillie. Obama can’t get re-elected without a lot of independent’s votes. Those poll numbers don’t mean shit right now, either.
He is possibly in serious trouble with independents, especially in states that are going to be electorally contentious. Additionally, he can’t run against Bush again. This is his economy now. It is his war in Afghanistan.
He hasn’t had a good day today. Neither has Obama been on a roll since the election.
Big City Mary
The Raven,
We were not trying to primary Clinton because we were “ALL” to busy living well.
The fact of the matter is for so many reasons, the same is not true now. We do not have the economy of 1995. We knew, or should have known, that the economy was going to be a seriously problem post the election. And Obama just did not really focus on the middle class and that was a major mistake. Focusing so much energy on HC reform is not that important when you have no job and no income.
Kerry Reid
@Keith G:
Also, “discussion and clarity” don’t happen in one sound-bite sentence. Sorry. The world is a wee bit more complex than that.
aamom
God bless you Mr. Cole. This was exactly the point I have been trying to make over at Kos for weeks now and today…boy have they really blown a gasket. I tried to tell them how blacks felt about “progressives”…er…white progressives feel about all the yelling at the Prez coming from our side. We can understand racist Teabaggers but
Democrats???? I just don’t get it.
oondioline
If anyone loses the black vote, it’ll be Obama himself. They’ll just not show up.
But that’s what’s possible when your hero opens his mouth wide for every Southern asshole with an accent to take a shit in and doesn’t seem to have a single testicular orb.
This guy could get rolled by Dukakis, for fuck’s sake.
Mothra
Good post, John. Very good.
Kenneth
Still waiting for even ONE example of racism from ANY comments in the RecList diaries over at Kos.
Of course, there are none. Just whining from Obama cultists.
Suck It Up!
@Kerry Reid:
DYUM! Love it. every word.
parsimon
@jaywillie:
You folks are completely off
You’re clowns. Where were y’all before the elections, imploring Dems in Congress to make a stand on the tax cuts?
You know, I just have to say that it’s tough to read this place when its readers and commentariat are assumed to be of one mind.
rikyrah
this was righteous.
thanks Cole.
like my friend said, Just cause Black folk aren’t in someone’s tv screen screeching like the Teabaggers, doesn’t mean we don’t notice EVERYTHING
News Reference
“folks trying to put food on the table aren’t concerned about the banksters.”
They sure do when those Banksters are stealing their homes.
They sure do when those Banksters are selling out their jobs to foreigners.
They sure do when those Banksters are destroying their retirement accounts.
Obama is protecting those thieving Banksters.
Cacti
@oondioline:
Keep telling yourself that.
amk
Hear, hear. Well done, cole.
Sammy
Anytime i want to know how the ” African-American community” feels about things, I go to John Cole.
WyldPirate
@Sly:
It doesn’t really matter that Obama has that approval rating in his base. His base isn’t going to win shit for him which is why I imagine he is shitting on them even though they do do much of the GOTV for him.
Obama has to win over independents in key states: Ohio, PA, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, etc. Unless the economy improves, he’s going to have a damned hard time winning those states unless the Rethug nominate a total loon.
There is a reason why Presidential candidates cater to the center when they are in trouble. The hard corp of the “progressive base”, the liberals and the DFH–whatever they’re called–are not going to leave him unless there is a third party alternative or a primary challenge weakens him.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Thanks, I like it too. Funny how some people completely miss it and ask why I chose the nym…lol
amk
@Kerry Reid: Excellent post.
Keith G
@Kerry Reid: There is no law decreeing that one must communicate solely with a one sound-bite sentence format.
But yes, the world sure can be complex.
ChrisWWW
@Kenneth:
Plus, if you say anything bad about Israel, you’re an anti-Semite.
iriedc
I’m late to the thread, so I’m sure stuff like this has been said. John C is right to pick up on a growing undercurrent in the Af-Am community. My husband is perplexed by so many Dems in the pundit class turning on Obama. His reaction is “did they really think the Brother could fix in 2 years what’s been broken for 8?” I’ve learned that he’s a good bellwether for your typical Af-Am voter (solid Dem, occasional “other”). He doesn’t agree with everything Obama does but then, he didn’t expect to. I also know him well enough to know that he generally goes from perplexed to pissed when pushed hard enough. A pissed-off Af-Am electorate will not help Dem activists in 2012.
Left Coast Tom
@WyldPirate:
That poll is being offered in response to claims that Obama is Losing His Base! If that approval doesn’t matter then your dispute should be with the original Losing His Base claims because that’d make those claims irrelevant. If it does matter…then the claims are false.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Hey John, Hamsher is on with Lawrence O’Donnell. ;p
And she’s shrill. Also. Too.
Cacti
Sometimes I just have to remind myself that it was the white liberal vote that put Obama over the top in states like Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida.
Or something like that.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
This!
Kenneth
@Cacti:
Funny, considering you also most likely simultaneously whine about how Nader “cost” Gore the election in Florida in 2000.
Guess who voted for Nader?
I like how the “professional left” is powerless yet powerful at the same time.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Cacti: you couldn’t be more wrong. it was the white leftist bloggers from berkeley and the upper east side who put obama over the top in Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida.
fasteddie9318
This deal sticks in my craw something awful–the tax cut extension, obviously, but also no help for the 99ers plus what may be a poison pill for Social Security. That said, if I wasn’t in the “hold your nose and vote for it” camp before, the fact that Mary Landrieu is demagoguing on it, pretending to be something other than the corporate shill con artist she is, pushes me over the hump.
Cacti
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Forgot about Nevada.
The white liberal vote won the day for him there, also too.
SIA
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
OH. MY. GOD. YES.
It’s just that simple.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Handle of the Year, by a mile.
Nick
@Kenneth:
Seriously, has DailyKos EVER won an election?
Cacti
@Nick:
Don’t you remember how they ran George W. Bush out of town on a rail in 2004?
Oh…nevermind.
Kerry Reid
@Keith G:
My apologies — you asked me to tell you what I meant in one sentence. Not really possible.
And my original comment was partially tongue-in-cheek — but only partially. I have been continually struck by how quick white progressives in particular have been to lay all the faults of the last 30 years at Obama’s feet after only two years in office. It’s as if they don’t believe they have any agency or responsibility for articulating their beliefs and acting out their ideals on a daily basis in such a way that they might actually build long-term support for progressive ideas. (Again, I think most of the profound positive changes I’ve seen in my lifetime have come from women’s rights groups, civil-rights organizations, immigrants’ rights activism, disability rights — which generally meld political advocacy with hands-on services to some degree, making it patently clear WHY their ideas matter and how they can be made to work in the real world.)
This “the president is the one to deliver the message and save us” notion is one of the more aggravating tendencies of the left as a whole that I’ve seen in my 30some years of activism (most of it, as you might have guessed, in women’s organizations and pro-choice groups). The GOP doesn’t put all its electoral eggs in one presidential basket, with the occasional detour for a high-profile Senate race. During their years in the congressional wilderness, they ran candidates for virtually every race you can imagine — including quite a few school boards, which is how the whole “intelligent design” malarkey got traction in the first place.
Yet despite the fact that one would assume the left has less of an appetite for top-down hierarchical management, they cede power over and over to the idea that “We elected the president and he’ll be our vicarious ass-kicker and he’ll do it all by tomorrow!” And inevitably, when it turns out that governing a nation of 300 million short-attention-span drama-queen idiots requires a lot of unpalatable compromises (ask FDR about that), then a certain percentage of lefties discover their Inner Nihilist and scream that all is lost, we have to destroy the village/country in order to save it, etc.
I certainly sympathize with people who feel that the situation is more dire now and stronger medicine is required. But a “symbolic” victory doesn’t put food in anyone’s belly.
Nick
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Interesting that CNN had suddenly decided to pay attention to Bernie Sanders.
Johannes
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): This. Again and again.
amk
@Cacti:
Did you also “remind yourself” that it was “always” the black vote that put many dem presidents over the top, repeatedly ?
Karen
Call me crazy but I’m beginning to wonder that the ones shouting “Obama SUX0rs” and “Primary or death” the loudest aren’t really GOP ringers. After all, Hamsher hopped into bed with Nordquist to take Obama down, why would this be any different?
Oh, and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild was on board with McCain/Palin or should we say, Palin the moment Hillary Clinton lost. And sorry Corner Stone but SHE was one of the founders of PUMA.
Nick
@A L:
no, but Larimer County, Colorado might, then Colorado, then the Rocky Mountain States, then the United States.
Or Wake County, North Carolina, North Carolina, Upper South, then the United States
that’s how it works
Suck It Up!
I can’t find the transcript so I’m going to paraphrase what obama told brian williams in an interview. Obama was asked if he watched cable news and Obama said not really. He says he doesn’t really learn anything new and that pundits like Chris Matthews and KO (yes he used their names) all have a role that they always play so he knows what they are going to say on any given issue. He basically said the same thing about DailyKos in an interview years ago in New York magazine. He found nothing new and surprising about what was posted there.
So I don’t think the president is the least bit surprised and not all that fearful at the outrage and overall behavior of the professional left and its followers because he knows it well.
fraught
@Angry Black Lady: Thank You, Madam. The jizz on the blue dress was a big joke and boosted Clinton’s dude cred. It was white jizz after all. Nothin wrong with it.
Clinton went through nothing in his 8 years compared to what Obama will go through in his 8.
Yes, I said 8.
goblue72
@maskling: Whatever. I’m a liberal and I have no problem saying LBJ is one of my top 5 favorite Presidents (prolly #3 behind Lincoln and FDR). Even with Vietnam, he was a rockstar. So whatever.
Obama is no LBJ. LBJ has balls. Balls big enough to have been the most powerful Senate Majority leader in Congressional history before becoming Kennedy’s VP. And he wasn’t afraid to get in the gutter with the good ole boys and kick their asses. If you opposed Johnson, you knew – you knew – your district was going to get the shaft.
Yes, you are right – he didn’t have the kind of Republican jerkwads Obama has to deal with – that’s because back when LBJ was President, THEY WERE DEMOCRATS. LBJ had the same dickwads to fight – they were just Dixiecrats. The Civil Rights Act was passed by the liberal Northern Dems and the GOP who were at that time still somewhat the Party of Lincoln. Didn’t change the fact that Johnson had jerkoffs to fight.
But he fought. And he won. And he won because he fought.
valdivia
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
this. exactly how I have been feeling all day.
and the thought of anyone caring what the MSNBC gang thinks of President Obama? ha, ha , ha.
Martin
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Yep. Remember when Democrats were all worried about a unitary executive and Congress not holding the WH accountable by, you know, actually doing their fucking jobs? Yeah, they forgot all about that.
GOP is now blowing up the deal. My prediction: Tax cuts are going to expire entirely. No debt ceiling vote before the next Congress. No START. No DADT. No unemployment extension.
Dems are deciding to stop protecting voters from the pain the GOP wants to dish out – and since 1/3 of the House got voted out, they have nothing to lose. GOP is gambling that control of the House will give them something to work from and that they can hold the debt ceiling vote hostage in exchange for getting their tax cuts back. We’ve got two parties playing chicken and we’re all standing in the road between them. May we live in interesting times.
Suck It Up!
@goblue72:
at what point is the left going to acknowledge that this “fighting” often involves backroom deals and compromises that would send them over the edge (more than this tax deal)?
Nick
@goblue72:
That’s wrong. He won because Republicans drafted a compromise bill which weakened regulations over conduct in private businesses. It got enough GOP votes to cancel out Dixiecrats, who refused to vote for it no matter how LBJ pressured them. He threatened Pat Robertson’s father and he STILL voted no. LBJ then pressured liberals in the House to pass the weaker Senate version. Quite a few civil rights activists called it a sellout. How do people not know this?
News Reference
“I like how the “professional left” is powerless yet powerful at the same time. “
See: Cognitive dissonance,
See also: Right-wing Authoritarianism.
amk
@goblue72: LOL. LBJ decided not to run exactly because of librul fuckwads of nam era, which wrought tricky dick. See how stoopid the left is.
WyldPirate
@Left Coast Tom:
That wasn’t really the way I was trying to frame my argument. I was making the point in my response to jaywillie that the polls of his “base”–which were what he posted–were not as important as winning swing voters in key states.
Also, I had this in the third paragraph of that post:
I can see the point of your argument, though. I should have added that disillusioning his base could be a problem for him IF it depresses turnout two years from now.
I have an idea that he isn’t worried about pissing off his base because he knows those same numbers that were posted. Democrats seem to have a totally different philosophy regarding treatment of their “base” than the Rethugs do. The latter rarely will go out and insult their base and they frequently will throw them scraps of meat to keep them quite (Stem cell bn, Terri Schiavo, Abstinence ed, etc.)
Obama just took a shit on his “base” today. Clinton did the same at times. That’s the difference. Ther Rethugs at least pretend to placate their base.
I think it’s dangerous for Obama to do this. If you beat some dogs enough, they’ll turn on you and bite your ass.
goblue72
@Nick: Jon Tester. Jim Webb. Jerry McNerney. Tim Walz. And a bunch of guys who came in during the 2006/2008 waves (Ciro Rodriguez, Joe Sestak, Paul Hodes, Patrick Murphy) who got swept out in the 2010 GOP wave, some of whom (Hodes, Sestak) ran for Senate in 2010. So next time you open your mouth, do your homework.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Thanks!
@Martin: “May we live in interesting times.”
I think have heard a similar phrase that is used to curse someone.
Yup.
Nick
@goblue72:
ah yes, all guys they later called sellouts.
Triscula
@NR:
Let’s try to imagine how the administration would be attacked if they allow 2 million people to lose their UI benefits and tax rates for the majority of workers to rise, all in the name of “holding the line” against ideological opponents.
Nick
@WyldPirate:
they would have to actually come outside the doghouse first.
Martin
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Oh, I’m well aware of the context. The ideologues are out in force now. The GOP has always had theirs out, so no surprise, but the Dems in Congress are letting theirs out now as well, as demanded by the base.
We’re now caught between an irresistible force and an immovable object. I’m pretty sure no matter the outcome, this is going to hurt.
WyldPirate
@iriedc:
So what you’re saying is that the Af-am community will cut off its nose to spite its face, right?
That is different from the progressives that are threatening “abandonment” of Obama in what way?
Do you think that the Rethugs are going to be the champions of Af-Am concerns moreso than the Dems? If so, can you hook me up with whatever it is you’re puffin’ on?
Nick
@Triscula:
Well of course while the unemployed are lining up at soup kitchens in the freezing cold, they’ll say “Thank God Obama stood on principle!”
D. Aristophanes
@Angry Black Lady: ABL, I think the point, though, is not whether Obama’s treatment by his political opponents is more or less noxious than Clinton’s by his … but whether either suffered more or less ‘friendly fire’ from political allies than the other. I am convinced that the birther/deather/socialist/racist shit Obama’s been hammered with from the Tea Party crowd is worse even than the crap Clinton had to endure. But I’m not convinced yet that liberals/progressives/Dems have been any more (or less) tough on him than they were on Clinton.
This is not a very scientific observation, of course. And your and Cole’s arguments in recent days have caused me to consider whether my position is the correct one. For now, I think there’s merit in judging whether a given criticism of Obama has a conscious or unconscious race angle to it, but I also remain wary of the dangers of conflating racial motivation with much or most criticism of Obama.
And this capitulation to the GOP on the tax cuts still blows.
A L
@Kerry Reid:
Hmm yes, feminism has made planned parenthood centers. Oh wait, they’re probably going to be closed down soon because modern feminists are too far up their own asses to adequately defend what they fought for.
Oh wait, you’re still being paid like second-class citizens? Where’s the push to rectify this? Oh yeah it doesn’t exist. Your comrades in arms have what they want and left your dick swinging in the wind. So now all you have left are Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.
You should take your own advice and shut up and do something productive.
@Nick:
I think it’s a bit late for that now, but you should try anyway.
goblue72
@Nick: Following a 54 day plus filibuster by the Dixiecrats and a compromise on the Senate side negotiated between liberal Democrat leaders and Republican leadership. If Obama structured a compromise between the progressive caucus and Northeastern Republicans, I might agree.
But since he didn’t, I’ll have to go with its completely not the same thing as pre-emptive surrender to what is effectively the old Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic party. Actually, completely NOT the same thing.
Throw your punches buddy – I’ll throw them right back.
News Reference
“Wlinton went through nothing in his 8 years compared to what Obama will go through in his 8.”
Clinton was accused of murder, rape, drug dealing, fraud, financial crimes, and was impeached for lying about a private, consensual affair.
Comparatively, Obama has had it very, very easy.
goblue72
@Nick: Let’s see – your argument (more like snark), was DK never won an election. You were completely wrong and your response is now that some folks at DK are now being critical?
Weak sauce. Weak sauce. Weak sauce.
goblue72
@Suck It Up!: I have no problem with compromise – nor does almost every member of the “left” I know. What we object to is not putting up a fight to change to the dynamic so that you walk away from the table with more than scraps.
And this deal is scraps. Actually, its more than scraps, because it contains a poison pill (a 33% reduction in the payroll tax for a year) that will be impossible to undo and drastically increases the risk of the future gutting of social security. But that’s the kind of deal pussies get.
I negotiate multimillion dollar deals for a living. And what the Obama administration has been negotiating lately with the GOP is a shit sandwich. He needs to learn the power of walking away.
Nick
@goblue72:
Since the progressive caucus has no interest in negotiating with any Republicans, that couldn’t be done. The first reaction liberals had when the President sought a HCR with Olympia Snowe (a Northeastern Republican) after HCR sat in the Finance Committee for THREE MONTHS was “sellout.” The first reaction the left had when Obama negotiated with Scott Brown (a Northeastern Republican) over FinReg was “sellout,” so now, I’d be willing to bet blood that you wouldn’t agree and you’re blowing smoke up my ass because I called you out on your uneducated recollection of history.
But at least you admitted that LBJ didn’t win by “fighting,” he won by “compromising”
Church Lady
@Kenneth: Thanks. I just spit coffee all over my screen. I hope you were joking. If not, you are an idiot.
Nick
@goblue72:
He doesn’t have the power to walk away, if he walks away, people suffer, if he walks away, liberals complain he didn’t fight hard enough.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Nick: “But at least you admitted that LBJ didn’t win by “fighting,” he won by “compromising” “
Hey, that’s progress!
WyldPirate
@Nick:
Well, it appears that Obama’s progressive “dogs”–at least some–are pretty fired up right now.
I know that the blogosphere is an anecdotal sampling, but I can’t ever recall in my 8 years of reading progressive blogs seeing folks quite this fired up up about something.
Personally, I don’t believe it was a good idea for Obama to say “I didn’t reach out enough to the Republicans enough”, “publically and needlessly cede a raise for civilian Fed employees and then turn around and publically chastize his base with more fury than he did the “hostage takers”.
I don’t see how that was a good idea at all. Moreover, it seems that the WH’s political calculations and timing have sucked recently.
Just Some Fuckhead
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Oh jesus, you were carrying on about mine years ago. Could you be a bigger slut?
Kerry Reid
@goblue72:
And all those dead gooks admire the big swingin’ balls of LBJ! To say nothing of the tens of thousands of dead American military personnel.
But neither category encompasses White Progressives, The Most Important People in the Whole Wide World, so fuck’ em, amirite?
fraught
@amk: Only because Bobby Kennedy was killed and Hubert Humphrey was a fifties liberal waaay out of his time. LBJ Never would have been reelected.
Kerry Reid
@goblue72:
P.S. If LBJ Had The Magical Balls ‘o Death — why didn’t he pass universal healthcare instead of pussying out with “just Medicare?” Just wondering.
Elie
@Martin:
Interesting analysis — as usual…
We havent lived in times as interesting as this in quite a while. Unfortunately, too many are interpreting only the top most and obvious layers of events. You highlight and remind us of the more complex underpinnings and strategies.
Geez — I can remember reading about strategy in my poli sci and history books and appreciating the nuance — how long it would take for the impact of leadership decisions to play out. Of course, it is different to live through real time and two to three decades of stupid, celebrity driven, corporatist superficial MSM and related political illiterates have left us with a limited ability to do anything except think of life as a big reality show where at any time, everyone is angry and someone is always voted off the island.
News Reference
“Obama just took a shit on his “base” today. Clinton did the same at times. “
Except:
Clinton was willing to demand the ultra-rich pay a more reasonable share in taxes and that directly decreased the deficit and thus strengthened Social Security.
Obama is caving to ultra-rich which will increase the deficit which will be used by Republicans as an excuse to further gut Social Security.
Nick
@WyldPirate:
oh please
Suck It Up!
@Nick:
yes, liberals have that mastered. that’s why they are where they are.
oondioline
Yeah, pardon me for not feeling great about watching another Democratic President — a black one, at that — kneel and huff the dongs of white neo-Confederates.
Signed,
Just Another Silly Progressive!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Awwww… you’re jealous! Isn’t that just the mostest cutest thing ever?! Aren’t you just precious!
Don’t worry, I am sure that your nym is just fine. No need to feel slighted or lash out at anyone.
goblue72
@Nick: Whatever dude. What I recall – and what actually was happening at the time – was that NONE of the GOP were interested in an actual compromise – not even Northeastern Republicans. Olympia Snowe was playing the role of Lucy to Charlie Brown at the time – constantly moving the goalposts in a naked attempt to run out the clock as much as possible. Which is why an HCR bill that was basically every Republican idea about healthcare reform for the past 20 years passed with not a single Republican vote.
When FinReg rolled around, it was Scott Brown’s turn to play the role of “reasonable moderate” to run out the clock. They’ve been dragging things out for the last 2 years to limit Democratic legislation until the 2010 elections could roll around. Brown briefly played the same dickish role on DADT recently.
Feel free to misremember and rewrite history – but some of us were paying attention too.
Suck It Up!
I
pop that bubble sometimes and you’d see what a teeny tiny world you live in. take it slow, it can be overwhelming.
Elie
LBJ is one of my favorite Presidents. He wore the responsibility of the office with dignity and great pain and anguish.
May I recommend to anyone who wants a sense of the man, to go to the LBJ library in Austin and spend some time reading his letters. He wrote letters a lot to a lot of different people, regular folks, dignitaries, his congresspeople and all kinds. He was a good writer who wrote from his gut and his pain and his values are evident.
Our judgement of him was harsh. He wanted his time to be different and he tried to make it different but he failed. He went to his grave wearing that. To me, he did not deserve that, but there it is.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Wow, I’m going to assume you have a dick and that you’d be tripping over it all the time if it wasn’t so short.
Got any proof for your assertion that Planned Parenthood is ready to close any second? Look up your bunghole — since your head is already lodged there, it shouldn’t be hard to take a gander around.
I’m sorry you’re an ugly misogynist pseudo-nihilist loser troll and women won’t fuck you, but that’s not actually the fault of feminism. We’ve been busy transforming the world while you’ve been beating off in the corner of the bus station screaming “LOOKIT WHAT I JUST DID!”
Lady Gaga? How about “Sonia Sotomayor?”
As for the push to rectify wages — there’s a thing called “Lily Ledbetter.” Obama signed it. Just as he overturned the Mexico City policy. But you’re right — we stupid feminist whores should totes listen to a revolutionary wannabe like you (tell me what you’ve achieved, again?)
Jewish Steel
@Nick:
Yeah, slap that on a T-shirt and write “Slactivisim” in a typewriter font underneath. I’d buy one.
ETA: EFF YEAH! 600 BITCHES!
Sly
@WyldPirate:
He’s not shitting on his base. That’s the whole point.
Internet progressives and cable news hosts are not the base of the Democratic Party. Why? Because they can’t deliver votes. Their ineffectiveness is built in. It’s institutional. A web site is not a viable, dissectable constituency. Neither is Rachel Maddow’s time-slot, or a march on Washington for that matter.
You know what would happen if a member of Congress read a heavily rec’d diary on GOS? They’d ask themselves “I wonder how many people of this site live in my district?” Then they’d assume the answer is “not many” (and be right), so they won’t give two shits what complaints are being bandied about. Then every year at Netroots Nation the same fucking people, all teary-eyed and jilted, wonder why no one keeps their promises. They wonder why Keith Olbermann’s regular audience of (maybe) 300,000 spread across fifty states isn’t having a bigger impact.
You know what would make a primary challenge possible? If at least two viable and reliable constituencies became fed up with Obama. Blacks, Hispanics (who just got added to the list), women, union workers, etc. Then and only then will some other Democrat have the capability to give him a run for his money. And if politics over the past three decades has been any indicator, Republican and Democratic constituencies have become more and more aligned with one another. We haven’t had a major political realignment in fifty years, and we’re not having one now. No one is going to bolt the parties on a massive scale, so the threat to bolt is laughable. And the threat to bolt is the only thing that makes a primary challenge credible.
If you want to toss out someone like Grayson or Kucinich, they’d get 10% in Iowa and New Hampshire, and that is being incredibly generous, before being ignored.
goblue72
@Kerry Reid: Go screw yourself. My fiance’s parents had to literally hide out in caves from the bombs dropped on them during the war – her grandmother still has shrapnel in her back.
Don’t presume to know the assfuck what you are talking about.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@oondioline:
Let me guess… you think you’re not a racist, right?
JMY
@Big City Mary:
But if he didn’t focus on HCR now, it would be decades before the issue was tackled again. The Left wanted him to focus on health care.
Left Coast Tom
@WyldPirate:
I don’t think everybody claiming to be part of “the base” is actually part of “the base” – I think that was part of the point of the people who posted those poll numbers. I also thought that was part of Cole’s point in referring to “‘Lady’ … de Rothschild”. Some of the louder screamers might be disillusioned, some probably are PUMAs (aka Republican ratfuckers).
In one of the threads yesterday I noted that the “enthusiasm gap” doesn’t seem to be equally distributed around the country – the Great Lakes region really sucked for Democrats, the Pacific Time Zone looked pretty good – here in CA Democrats picked up a governorship and an assembly seat without losing anything, that’d be worthy of celebration if it wasn’t for the rest of the country… :-) . Since the nation’s highest unemployment rate is in the Pacific Time Zone (NV), and since CA has a very high unemployment rate, I don’t think the economy is a very persuasive answer to this discrepancy. Since the election losses were geographically concentrated, I don’t think general overall Democratic suckage is very persuasive either. One answer offered in response was mass insanity among…Wisconsinites? Badgers? Not sure what Obama’s supposed to do about that.
It’d be nice to see election-related commentary that deals with the above noted facts.
goblue72
@Sly: Well, the base stayed home this year and Obama just lost control of the House and almost the Senate.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I was talking to the other guy. Sorry you missed that.
Elie
@oondioline:
You are ignorant.
Go read some history. Go read some letters from Presidents and other leaders who actually wore the mantle of leadership.
People like you have the right to come here and shoot your ignorant bullshit because other folks did the heavy lifting for you. You have no respect for what that takes or for the weight of real responsibility and history.
You are damned lucky. And we are lucky that you will be nowhere near anything even remotely important to most of our lives.
Kerry Reid
@News Reference:
And he kicked poor kids off Medicaid as part of “welfare reform.” But details, schmetails, right?
nancydarling
Wow. Just wow. I listened to Pres. Obama’s press conference, thought he did a really good job of explaining the compromise, didn’t feel like he crapped on the base at all; I shut down the computer to do other things and come back to this shit storm. I’m starting to think the far left is as fringey as the far right. I think our president thinks we are adults with reasoning abilities. If we don’t take this deal, do you think we can get a better one in January? I don’t. I don’t see a lot of blocking and tackling going on so our guy can carry the ball. I am so sick of all the pissing and moaning going on in this thread—I couldn’t read it all and I won’t even think about going to FDL or GOS. A lot of you folks need to grow up. Politics is about the art of the possible—sometimes if you don’t accept a half loaf, you don’t get anything at all. I feel like we got more than half a loaf in this deal.
hildebrand
A number of folks have mentioned LBJ in relationship to Obama – this is usually used as a way in which to pine for Obama to ‘fight’ for what he wants, twist arms, etc, etc. Of course, LBJ had two rather important bits helping his cause – First, MLK was doing a decent bit of work to help push Civil Rights along, no? Second, there was a decent bit of sympathy for getting a few things passed due to the death of JFK.
Do not these two issues create a slightly different context for LBJ as opposed to Obama?
Hal
@New Reference
And supported de-regulation that made the ultra-rich, mega-ultra-rich. Dems as a whole sided with Republicans, so it’s hardly just Clinton’s fault, but I wouldn’t give him too much credit for standing up to the ultra-rich.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Go fuck yourself. Again.
Handle of the Year is only good for the year in which the handle is discovered. Did you think that your little handle was an award winner forever? Like if you won an Oscar, then the awards would be closed and they’d erect a big Oscar with your name on it in New York harbor?
Your handle was good once. Edison’s light bulb was a pretty radical idea in its day. But that was then, and now we have the LED.
Get it? YOU NEED SOME NEW FUCKING MATERIAL, man.
WyldPirate
@Nick:
What event do you think people on progressive blogs were more fired up over?
I’ll consider your “opinion” and remind you that I clarified mine as such. Nothing really sticks out in my mind other than the CBS 60 mins Rather scandal.
Kerry Reid
@Elie:
I agree with you, Elie.
Every president that we now regard as good-to-great had to make some decisions that could be spun as questionable. Abe Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR threw American citizens into internment camps. LBJ escalated Vietnam. I don’t think any of them did it without great regrets and without realizing that they were in a “lesser of several evils” situation, at least as it seemed to them at the time. We have the luxury of hindsight denied to them in the heat of the crisis.
And by comparison to those things, Obama making a deal to keep unemployment benefits going in a recession by continuing a temporary tax sop to the rich doesn’t seem like the Greatest Outrage Ever Endured. My unemployed friends also don’t seem willing to be the collateral damage in Purity Wars 2010.
News Reference
“the progressive caucus has no interest in negotiating”
False.
Government health care, similar to what Veterans get, was negotiated away by the Progressive Caucus.
Mixed private care with a public payment for health care, similar to what Medicare is, was negotiated away by the Progressive Caucus.
Some of the Progressive Caucus stood firm on the Public Option, which would have kept the current private care but added the “option” to buy into something like Medicare.
Obama negotiated that away behind closed doors.
Then Obama handed predatory Corporate insurers 30 million+ new customers. Obama added regressive taxes and then took away women’s freedom to use their insurance to pay for abortions.
And then Obama went gunning for any Progressive Caucus member that opposed his caving.
Then Obama LIED when he claimed that he never supported the creation of a Public Option (something that was EXPLICITLY written into his campaign material).
Obama’s been pushing far right-wing ideological nonsense for two straight years.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
For the most part I agree with John Cole @top, except that I don’t think that Obama’s treatment at the hands of the Dem Congressional leadership has been much worse than what the Dem presidents before him got. The Senate especially has treated every Dem president from Truman on like they were the hired help, with the glaring exception of LBJ (it sort of helps to have been a kick-ass Senate Majority Leader before reaching the WH). JFK, Carter, and Clinton all got kicked around in the Senate, and the Senate wouldn’t give Truman the time of day. Even FDR didn’t get much truck from the Senate after 1937 as a result of his miscalculation over the court packing scheme. I have a feeling that Obama understands this history a lot better than many of his critics, and perhaps better than some of his defenders as well.
JMY
@hildebrand:
Didn’t he have 75 Democrats in the Senate or was that FDR?
Stillwater
Gonna go meta on all ya’lls asses: Reading through this thread clearly demonstrates why we can’t have nice things. Christ, it seems like no one on this thread agrees with anyone else.
And props to Kerry Reid, way to bring the heat. Shake up these white people – me included. We fucking need it.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@WyldPirate: hmmmm, I know you’re an asshole, but I’m sure you hear about the invasion of iraq in 2003.
oh, how soon they forget. No wonder no one takes the hippies seriously.
A L
@Kerry Reid:
Yeah see? “We” did this. “We” did that. No, basically the only feminists who’re actually attempting to do anything today are Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman. What have you done? Donate to planned parenthood? Well la de da we got a regular Thomas Paine here.
How utterly pathetic that you can only cite Sonia Sotomayor as proof that you’ve made it. You haven’t made it yet, honey, so you really have nothing to show for it. You’re at the cusp of having all your shit rolled back to the 1910s, but you want to sit on your Lily Ledbetter act and call it a day like the rest of your crew. Oh no wait, you want to call men limp-dicked like any retarded New Jersey goomba can do.
This is the modern feminist. A pair of names, some vague sense of accomplishment and dick jokes 30 years behind the times. You haven’t won yet, sister, and it really won’t be my problem when all your shit gets rolled back because you were too busy flinging epithets instead of doing something productive. If you’re the face of modern feminism (hint: you are), then you don’t deserve anything but to fall in line with the rest of America in its coming collective failure.
Elie
@ruemara:
Well said, well said, rue…
Kerry Reid
@goblue72:
And my uncle committed suicide after returning from Vietnam. Oooh — wanna keep this round of “My pain can beat up your pain!” going for a little bit longer? Or do you a need a break to get a hanky and blow your nose?
“Go screw yourself.” Wow, with tough nuanced thoughtful rhetoric like that, I can see why you win all those multi-million-dollar negotiations — in your own mind.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
JSF is the Norma Desmond of Balloon Juice.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
mommie!
obama said mean things about me!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
he said, I stink and should take a bath and get a hair cut!
sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle,
sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, sniffle,
jiffypop
I think I’ll hang out here rather than DKos…I’ve been there for 6 years now but it is nuts there now…
Great post Mr. Cole….
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Oh I didn’t miss a thing. My name may not have “Fuckhead” in it but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that I can be one at times. Mind you, only at times though.
I will admit that when it comes to being a fuckhead I bow to your superior fuckheadedness. I won’t even waste time arguing about that, it’s a given.
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
lol!
Sly
@goblue72:
The percentage of self-identified Liberal Democrats voting did not change between 2008 and 2010: 20% both times. In fact, slightly more Liberal Democrats voted for Democratic Representatives in 2010 than they did in 2008. What happened is more conservatives voted (34% in 2008 to 42% in 2010) and self-identified moderates didn’t vote as much as they did in 2008.
2010 wasn’t a depressed year for liberals. It just seems that way because 2008 was a depressed year for conservatives.
billgerat
@Angry Black Lady: That’s great and find to save all those this week. But if the deal you make today keeps you from saving the rest in the weeks to come, what good have you done? The Republicans need everything they can to help their candidate win in 2012, and this deal just plays into their hand. Look, the Republicans destroyed the economy, yet a majority of those suffering voted their persecutors back into office this last election! Imagine that! Obama and the Democrats didn’t give them the hope they promised, so they voted against them. It’s time to quit this quest to be “bipartisan”, because to the GOP that means doing what they want you to do. It’s time for the Democrats to grow a spine and just say “NO!” back to the Teapublicans. Put the onus on them for once.
goblue72
@Kerry Reid: You’re the dick throwing around “gook”, asswipe. I’m not talking about a “my pain is worse than your pain” piece of crap – rather, that your claim that my thinking well of LBJ’s progressive legislative legacy was somehow wrong b/c in your opinion Vietnam outweighed was, indeed, the kind of jumping to conclusions BS you seem so good at.
And if you think its ok to use the term “gook”, you have no clue.
Elie
@Kerry Reid:
Thank you, Kerry —
I wish we could have more wisdom and that things moved a bit slower..
I also wish that we understood real accomplishment produced by a humans with flaws instead of 2 dimensional heroes in comic book story boards…
I wish we knew how to be citizens again… to put our shoulders to the wheel and expect hard work and a long haul…to enjoy our national community and experience what we have done over the last two centuries…
My grandmother died remembering what it felt to be owned. She cried as she ironed when the civil rights bill of the 60’s was passed and I remember that afternoon and how she thought it would never happen in her lifetime…
It is important to know and remember history.
WyldPirate
@Sly:
Right, sly. It’s always good political practice to insult people that work for and voted for you and donated to you for nothing. Yep. That’s really sound strategy, there boy. You’re just a regular,
Further, your reasoning about a an primary or third party challenge falls apart on two fronts.
One, I remember the 1980 primary pretty well. It was brutal as hell and quite contentious. It was the last one I remember when it wasn’t a complete foregone conclusion who the nominee was goingg to be going in. Now I’m not going to bother looking up the returns, but do you really think the divisiveness of that squabble helped Carter with liberals that supported Teddy Kennedy?
And how’s about 2000 and Ralph fucking Nader? Do you seriously think Bush would have even been close in Florida or some other close states if not for Nader?
Then we have the effect of Ross Perot in 1992. He split the Republican vote and Clinton won.
Obama is vulnerable from a third party candidate from the center (like Bloomberg) or someone from the far left (I can’t imagine who, but if a crank like Nader could get on enough ballots, someone else can as well)
Your “theory” doesn’t hold water. Nice try though. Try a little history next time, buddy. Maybe you’ll come across as knowing what you’re talking about instead of just being an apologist for Obama.
fraught
@hildebrand: What you said. Plus the fact that LBJ was a vulgar pig who was drafting black guys to go and kill yellow people and was giving deferments to assholes like Dick Cheney and people hated him and they hated lady Bird and fucking Lynda Bird and Lucy Baines and no one really felt that civil rights legislation was anyone’s but JFK’s and MLK’s in the first place. Context, people.
News Reference
Kerry Reid, I acknowledge your point and I’ll raise it by an SCHIP.
SCHIP under Clinton helped poverty stricken kids get government paid for health care.
Obama’s plan forces relatively-poor families to pay ransoms to predatory Corporate insurers.
“But details, schmetails, right?”
Kerry Reid
@A L:
So — no proof that Planned Parenthood is on the verge of closing, as you asserted? No precis of your great balls-out activism?
Sorry “honey,” but no matter how much you try to sweet-talk us, no one here is going to suck your flaccid half-incher. I’m sorry the prom queen made fun of you, but that’s not my fucking problem, you psycho woman-hating Che wannabe sack of puke.
Sonia Sotomayor wasn’t the “only” example, you brain-damaged wanker. But how interesting that the examples you choose (all two of them! What diligent research!) are off-the-shelf proggie media celebs.
Now, if you’d mentioned Kathy Kelly or Zainab Salbi or Betty Chinn or Helen Prejean or Nomy Lamm or Nawaal El Saadawi, I might have figured you actually knew something about contemporary feminism. But alas — just another angry impotent little boy with puerile Guy Fawkes fantasies of “blowing shit up” — by using misogynist rhetoric under cover of anonymity on the internet.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
‘Kew
D. Aristophanes
@Kerry Reid: How about this, Kerry – let’s consider whether every lefty opposed to the Obama-GOP compromise is really engaged in a ‘Purity War’ for no purpose but to thumb our noses at the wingnuts and/or rich people, or whether some of us are actually concerned about the long-term negative impact that extending the Bush tax cuts will have on safety net features above and beyond (and perhaps even including) UI.
For the record, I’m on UI and I’ve got two kids to support and I damn well want it extended. But I’m also deeply worried about this compromise and the path towards peak fiscal insanity that we seem to careening down. This circular firing squad with-us-or-against-us shit on every fucking new policy issue that comes down the pike is madness and it’s obviously not working.
Ija
@A L:
Do you even know what kind of work Planned Parenthood does?
Whitney
@shilohsmama:
I’ve gotten pretty sick of GOS, but I gotta tell you, that was the best GBCW I’ve read in a while.
And the poll was EPIC!
Thanks for sharing it here, too.
Elie
@WyldPirate:
You have been downright measured and intelligent tonight. Mr Wyld Thang…(may I call you that with humor, not derision?)
Not that I agree with everything you comment, but that is not important.
I like your intelligent tone and welcome a good conversation with you instead of the polemics that have characterized the past
Angry Black Lady
@Suthrnboy: you are nutters, son. i didn’t write this post.
News Reference
re: Clinton “supported de-regulation that made the ultra-rich, mega-ultra-rich.”
I acknowledge that.
Will you acknowledge that Obama failed to reinstate the crucial regulations that Clinton dismantled?
valdivia
@Kerry Reid:
I am so enjoying what you are doing in this thread!
woot, woot
Kerry Reid
@goblue72:
Jesus, to call you stupid is an insult to stupid people. I used the term “gook” to reference just how dismissive people who suck the cock of LBJ as the Great Progressive Dickswinger are to the real human costs his actions had. Sorry if that went over your head. It’s called “irony” and “sarcasm,” and yeah, sometimes it doesn’t translate as well as a juvenile “go screw yourself!” (Though I’m of course DYING to know if you stamped your widdle foot in outrage as you typed that. I bet it was adorable!)
And if you had reading comprehension skills (which would seem like a necessary prerequisite for your alleged high-powered negotiating career), you would see that I told Elie that I still think LBJ was a good president under the circumstances he was handed. Unfortunately, those circumstances led to the deaths of a lot of innocent people — Vietnamese and American.
But somehow, “progressives” write that carnage off even as they jump on the “bash Obama for not taxing the rich sufficiently” bandwagon. Curious!
Elie
@shilohsmama:
Amen sista
Angry Black Lady
@Hal: but, but, he’s cool! some of his daughter’s best teachers are black!
pie pie pie to my new best friend.
Martin
@Angry Black Lady: Several of us observed that quite unexpectedly Cole stopped sounding like Cole and started sounding like you. We joke. Relax, mclaren isn’t here to call us all Nazis. Good times!
oondioline
@Odie Hugh Manatee: If thinking that I’m a racist helps to ameliorate the image of “Dukes of Hazzard” extras’ balls slapping Obama’s eager chin, go right ahead.
Angry Black Lady
@Kenneth: so let me get this straight. you want the people who are expressing outrage at being marginalized to go to the epicenter of the fuckery and point out the racism, so you can tell us how the racism is really candy corn or some other
target-shifting bullshit?
Angry Black Lady
@Martin: i’m just being “oversensitive” again, i guess.
Buggy Ding Dong
I’m going to guess that Oliver is a little more in tune with the feelings of African Americans than you.
Clap louder you ungrateful liberal assholes!!!
Kerry Reid
@News Reference:
And I’ll trump you with the $10 billion in funding for public-health clinics in the Affordable Care Act, which the National Association of Community Health Centers estimates will help 20 million more poor Americans access care.
And what was the Firebagger reaction to Bernie Sanders getting this in there? “Primary him!” because he wouldn’t kill the Senate bill because it didn’t include the weak-tea House version of the public option.
Being progressive would be so much easier if one didn’t have to expend energy actually worrying about money and services in the here-and-now for those pesky poor people and one could just get on with the business of punishing corporations.
Hal
Sure. Hell, I’ll go further than that and acknowledge deregulation has been ongoing since Carter. Obama didn’t undo deregulation under Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II. And?
A L
Loofa “anonymity of the internet.” Really. So now we’re regressing to the level of 12-year-old boys.
P.S. Those “who’s who” of feminism names you looked up in your big book of feminisms, ummmm, while they are all admirable, none of them have actually made any significant breakthroughs so I’d hold off on the champagne.
Of course, you haven’t actually helped any of them I imagine, because if you did, you’d have come right out and said that, and then you could offer suggestions on how to actually accomplish shit. But, but no. You didn’t do that. Because you haven’t done anything. You just rode in on what other people did. And then you claimed credit for it, as if you had anything to do with it.
AND THEN you excoriate others for doing nothing.
So you’re a welcher and a lazy bum. If you’re the face of modern feminism, then planned parenthood and libby ledbetter are as good as dead already.
Angry Black Lady
@The Raven: i was addressing your conflation of black people with every other potentially marginalized group you could think of as a derailing tactic. that is all.
Angry Black Lady
@oondioline: the point is, that black people are getting pissed off NOT at obama, but at this ::waves hands around:: and the rancor from self-defined “base”.
SIA
Obama made the best of a bad situation. A Trojan Horse second stimulus disguised as a giveaway?? Hmmm. Lemonade out of lemons, people.
__
Go ahead, flame away.
Martin
@Angry Black Lady: Didn’t you get the memo? Only white males are allowed to not be single-issue voters.
valdivia
@SIA:
what you said.
Angry Black Lady
@D. Aristophanes: i’ll buy this. thanks for a measured comment. it’s a rare thing around here. (hypocrisy noted.)
Angry Black Lady
@Martin: was it attached to the memo about TPS reports? i never read that one.
Kerry Reid
@D. Aristophanes:
Well, I’d argue that the firing squad is coming primarily from one direction: the disgruntled lefties who have NEVER operated with any assumption of good faith where Obama is concerned and have been looking from Day One to paint him as “weak” and “worse than Bush” (because he dared to choose people HE wanted in his administration and didn’t consult the Self-Elected Council of Leftie Elites and make Krugman Secretary of the Treasury, for example).
You want a better safety net? Then get out and network and organize and TALK to people about why it matters. Put that human face on it. Remind people that “entitlements” aren’t just something those shiftless people of color use (to my exasperation, I have relatives who think exactly this — even though they have been helped by unemployment, food stamps, and any number of government-sponsored programs in hard times).
Again, that’s the crux of my argument — lefties have been failing to make their case for their ideals as part of the mainstream fabric of American society for a long time. Yet somehow Obama was supposed to use his “bully pulpit” (a term which we can retire any old time now) and suddenly, magically, make conservative white politicians and voters in the South fall in love with progressivism. In two years. With two wars. And a recession. And global warming. And a fraught international situation.
I’m not frustrated with Obama. I’m frustrated that lefties always manage to stumble over their own dicks and spend more time vilifying the people on our side who are trying to make things better (perhaps too incrementally — but better a baby step than no step) than going after the real villains.
If you think Obama and his administration suck at messaging, which is more helpful — pointing that out and feeding the right-wing “he’s weak! He sucks!” machine? Or stepping up and filling the void and pointing out that this last Congress did, in fact, accomplish a fuck of a lot more than most, given the fact that most of our legislators across the board are allergic to actual legislating on social issues.
Stillwater
I’m kinda speachless here. This is like performance art, but with facts and stuff.
ABL, Kerry Reid: let the beatings continue until moral improves.
A L
@Kerry Reid:
Hahahahah You don’t know anything about American politics. You’re no better than the people you’re criticizing. YOU are just as clueless as they are.
Duhhhh Americans don’t believe in liberal causes!!! :ignores rafts of polling that indicate the exact opposite:
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Eat my fuck, you sad little loser.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Also, “Libby” Ledbetter? Yeah, you’re a real finger-on-the-pulse dude, aren’t you?
And we’re still waiting for your proof that Planned Parenthood is on the verge of implosion. Any day now.
P.S. I just talked to Naomi and Amy, and they will get restraining orders if you don’t stop sending them jpegs of your chancre-covered excuse of a shlong.
shilohsmama
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Excellent.
Joe Buck
The deal has to be defeated. The worst part isn’t giving millionaires their full tax rate. The worst part is taking away 1/6 of Social Security’s funding for a year, setting up a situation where restoring that funding would be a tax increase. It’s the beginning of the end for Social Security as we know it.
John, you’re trying to make this about race, but it’s about policy. This deal can’t stand.
oondioline
@Angry Black Lady: That’s an assertion that I’d like to see backed with something other than anecdotal evidence.
Meanwhile, we’re supposed to be pleased that Our Leader accomplished something by convincing Republicans to accept…tax cuts?
Yeah, man, he’s great. Distended anus from abuse great, if you know what I mean.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
It’s time for your medication, honey. Then you can drift off into those pleasant dreams where you are the meat in a Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman sandwich screaming “I don’t care if it RIPS ME IN HALF! PUT IT IN ME!”
And we await your precis of political activism and successes.
The thousands of women who have been helped by Women for Women International would, I’m sure, be astounded that an internet wanker thinks the founder of the organization has achieved “nothing.”
So – what great revolutionary feminist achievements have Goodman and Klein brought forth, by the way?
Hal
By the way, despite the acrimony and disagreement on this and other threads, I really have no doubt that 99% of us want the same things in the end. We disagree on how to get their, or if we’ll ever get there, or what exactly there is, but that’s what I love about Dems/Libs/Progressives etc.
Republican unity is built from a foundation of hatred towards minorities, love of money, and ignorance of the masses.
I’d rather spend my days arguing/agreeing/being pissed off with/in love with the lot of you or any Dkoser or Firebagger than be someone who says; “Why yes, I did vote for McCain/Palin” or “I like that Bristol. She’s really gotten better over the past few weeks. I hope she wins because she’s just like me.”
No thanks. Unity is overrated.
A L
@Kerry Reid:
I asked you for your credentials. I.e. something you’ve done to actually advance the cause of feminism. So far I note the following accomplishments:
Acting like a child
Posting on the Internet
Is that it? Is that the best you can do?
So now we’ve established you as a fraud. What else are you lying about? Hmmm, judging by your over-reliance on emasculation, let’s see, you’re not even a woman? That’s an interesting troll you’ve got going on here.
Because you see if you actually were a feminist, as in you actually did something, then you’d come right out and say it. But you didn’t. You had to hide behind some random women. You had to take credit for things they did. Which means you’re a loser. Like everyone else here.
Angry Black Lady
@oondioline: use the googlez. visit some blogs in the black part of the internet. (spoiler alert!) the black part is in the back. it’s not my job to educate you.
i am not, nor have i ever suggested we should applaud obama for this. but i know some folks who are going to be happy they aren’t in the streets during the upcoming recess. unforch, they don’t have broadband or the time to wile away on the intertrons, what with trying to feed their families and all.
SIA
@valdivia: @valdivia: And what you said #150. Also, too. Little Ms Mary is a piece of work. I think she must be insane.
Angry Black Lady
fixd.
it really is that easy.
Rhoda
This thread is like the awesome sauce to top what has been an excellent day personally and really cool blogospherically.
So, thanks.
My two cents: The progressive freakout looks weak and amateurish. The President flipped the script on EVERYONE today and came out looking like the man that runs the town. He did a deal, he called out the Republicans as hostages and tied them dead to rights as only worrying about the rich like the motherfuckers caught in their daddies’ beds. NBC ran his answers and he sounded smart, clear, and basically split the difference.
America is with him on this issue and after crying and pitifully punching back; the house and senate’ll pass this fucker. And if they DON’T POTUS has done his part to separate himself from the Congress completely.
President Obama did what he needed to do politically and he got the best deal he could in the senate. At the end of the day, he’s coming out smelling like a rose and everyone hates on Congress. And frankly, that looks like the dynamic going forward the next two years.
If I were Cantor or Boehner I’d be freaked myself; they won’t have Democratic shields anymore or excuses.
I am in an excellent mood and Cole, this was great post.
Angry Black Lady
@A L: oldest technique in the book. having nothing to add, the Privileged attempts to tear down the Marginalized Person in order to proclaim himself king of fuck mountain.
hilarious and textbook.
ETA: I hope Kerry has her credentials handy. I hear they are laminated and pocket-sized now!
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Well, your idea of advancing the cause of feminism is insulting women on the internet (after first assuming that the person kicking your ass must be a man). I’m sorry you’ve never dealt with your anger about your mother. Maybe a good therapist could help?
Again — where is your proof for your assertion that Planned Parenthood is going down the drain because all of us stupid bitches are too busy watching Lady Gaga videos on YouTube? You seemed so sure of yourself — I’d love to see you back that up!
And I don’t have to show a misogynist self-loathing internet loser my resume — for one thing, this is under my real name and you can google (it’s that thing you do when you’re stalking Naomi Klein — you remember). You’re the one who came in swinging your pathetic excuse of a dick about what we stupid feminists need to do. So show us what you got, Big Boy!
Kerry Reid
@Angry Black Lady:
But ABL — I bet he’s single! Oh ladies!
A L
@Rhoda:
You seem way more invested in how Obama looks than what’s good for the country.
SIA
@Rhoda: Great comment Rhoda, I agree with it all,
And with that I’m done. Was kinda hanging around to see if we’d get to 700, but I’m for bed.
Suffern ACE
@oondioline: Well, O.K. then, you can be disappointed today. But from what I can tell, the “disappointment” with the president reached the shrill position in some sectors back in May 2009. Or did they give him until March 2009 before they started blowing their bubble. I can see how that might be interpreted by some people as not giving the president much of a chance.
Also, they might note the dehumanizing language with which he is dismissed when liberals are upset with him and wonder if the President would be depicted in those ways by members of his own party were he actually a member of the liberal club. What is rather intolerable when done by the other side isn’t any less tolerable when it is done by your own side. A few times, I suppose it could pass, but when it becomes part of the act one might wonder how any binding alliances are going to form.
Angry Black Lady
@Kerry Reid: if he likes it, then he better put a ring on it. that’s all i’m saying. conflict-free diamonds only!
T.F. Gumby
@Rhoda:
I think the next two years of the Boehner Administration will leave you true blues wanting.
oondioline
@Angry Black Lady: You’re the one making the argument. If it’s only anecdotal, it’s weak. So come up with support that isn’t some blog somewhere.
I’m just not convinced that white progressive blog-angst is alienating the black community.
Obama on his knees, continuously, for four years, might do it though. It’s at least plausible.
FlipYrWhig
@Sly: Thank you thank you thank you I’ve been trying to find numbers like that for a month.
A L
@Angry Black Lady:
Hi ABL. Has Obama rewarded you for your sterling work yet? Of course not.
@Kerry Reid:
“Google” you. So you’re just that damn good? Wow you sure showed everyone at Balloon Juice.com. Hey everyone, we got a real-live person on Google. Google her name, everyone. She’s famous. She did something. We’re not cool enough to hear though.
Okay, so now we have:
A child
Not a woman
Possibly delusional
Anything else?
WyldPirate
@Mike Kay (Team America):
The blogosphere was a fraction of the size it is now. That’s what I was referring to you dumb motherfucker. Try reading the next ime.
But you keep on excusing President
Immaculate PerfectionObama from any responsibility for anything that goes on in his administration. We certainly can’t have the country’s leader and the Democratic Party’s leader being held responsible for anything. As you and the members of his Cult of Personality that post here have noisily assured all of us, he is incapable of making a mistake, much less being held responsible for guiding and setting the nation’s policies and priorities and their outcomes.Fucking douchebag. You and your ilk missed being born at the right time and on the right continent. You Obots would have been obedient little Hitler Youth. No brain-washing required.
FlipYrWhig
@Kerry Reid:
To True Progressives, all corporations are evil! Except for Apple, and Sony, and the brewery that makes PBR, and the one that pays Daddy’s checks.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@hildebrand:
LBJ was an interesting character, but WRT Vietnam, I have a hard time thinking of him as anything but a sociopath.
Props for Civil and Voting Rights measures. Death penalty for killing zillions in order to preserve his narcissistic view of himself as a tough guy who wasn’t going to see a war “lost” on his watch.
The Vietnam Memorial has two “wings”, the first half and the second half of the wall. I call them Johnson’s Wall and Nixon’s Wall. With a serious nod to McNamara and to Kissinger, two Angels of Death in a class all their own.
WyldPirate
@Rhoda:
Goddamned, but you are fucking delusional.
Angry Black Lady
@oondioline: while i do enjoy a homework assignment from someone in my computer, i fear i must politely
decline your invitation.
@A L: oooh, rhetorical questions! i love this game. here’s one: what’s the view like from inside your own ass?
it’s been fun, people, but i’m off!
cheers.
Kerry Reid
@A L:
Okay, you’ve really crossed the line. I’m willing to concede that Basil Rathbone brought some old-school charm to his Sherlock Holmes, but to think that Robert Downey Jr. was better than Jeremy Brett? What the fuck are you smoking?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Rhoda:
Thread winner.
oondioline
@Angry Black Lady: Yeah, your homework was to find something to prove your position. Tuff assignment, I know. I don’t blame you for declining.
Until you do, maybe you should STFU?
oondioline
@Suffern ACE: As you wring your hands and pearl-clutch about my naughty mouth, the rich are gonna ca$$$$$$h their check$$$$$$.
Sorry, but one’s more important than the other. Stop wasting our time, please.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Kerry Reid:
Sorry but Benedict Cumberbatch, in the new Masterpiece Mystery Sherlock Holmes episodes … the most enjoyable Sherlock I have seen.
Downy is good but I would not put him in the top ranks of Sherlocks yet. I do not like that voice thing that he does.
Generally I like Downey, though.
Uriel
@Big City Mary:
I’m sorry, but at the sake of being rude- this is simply wildly absurd. And the elections we just held demonstrate that.
I mean, fuck lets put the ridiculous notion that Blacks have now somehow reached parity just because Obama got elected, regardless of how ludicrous it is-
You’re saying people who hate Muslims are disenfranchised and powerless? People who hate Latinos? In this fucking country?
You really need to reconsider your argument here. It makes you seem really unaware of what’s going on in the world.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Did I make it into the 700 Club?
Much better than the one on TV…lol!
SIA
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Absolutely. I thought the 3 episodes were the best TV or film I’ve seen in ages. When I heard about the contemporary setting I didn’t like the idea, but the show was perfect. And oddly enough, it’s the character of John Watson that makes it really click. LOVED IT.
(and…will I be # 700?) Now I really am outta here.
ETA: @ Odie, yes you did! I missed it by one.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Caveat, passage is not a sure thing. And it would serve the assholes in the Senate right to get themselves stuck in DC for the holidays, fighting like rats, and not getting anything useful done while the country goes to hell.
Those pissants have only themselves to thank for the shitpile they made of this Congress. If they go out on a trainwreck note, well, they deserve it. And Obama has placed himself above that fray. Where he should be, and deserves to be. The idea that he can wrangle that no kill shelter for weasels and hyenas is just ludicrous. They all deserve to be killed and eaten by their fellow members.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@hildebrand: Of course they never mention what all of LBJ’s legislative success ultimately led to.
D. Aristophanes
@Kerry Reid: For starters, I think that all your points about getting out and getting real shit done are not just valid but needed more than ever. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, etc. Deeds not words on that, though, so there’s not much use in me saying any more on it.
But I also think ‘disgruntled lefties’ are not a monolithic group. Or more precisely, that being pissed at Obama for this or that makes you a Firebagger or whatever. I do think any lefty that wants to primary Obama and has just completely written him off is a specific kind of animal that we have no use for at this point.
But that leaves a lot of people like me who like HRC (and to your point, tell it to the world) but are pissed about the extension of the Bush tax cut for the rich. Or maybe who like the new Consumer Protection Bureau but are still waiting for more teeth on real financial reform. Or like the auto industry bailout but want to see more done on job creation. And like cash-for-clunkers but didn’t like ACORN getting left to twist in the wind, etc.
My point on the circular firing squad is that whatever it is, the hyper-partisanship of our times or something, it seems to make everybody retreat to their base camp at the first sign of an argument over a new policy objective. So if you defend Obama or the Dems on some specific thing I don’t like, maybe my first reaction is to think you’re a Kool Aid drinker, and if I criticize Obama or the Dems on something, maybe your first reaction is, oh, he’s a Firebagger purity troll.
But really, neither of us is those things, nor I would guess are most people on this thread. And while it’s obviously possible to go on to have a level-headed discussion with an opponent or proponent of a particular Obama/Dem policy, it’s made more difficult when everybody’s default position is to be really, really suspicious of their natural political allies.
On messaging – my big problem on the compromise on tax cuts isn’t that Obama and the Dems are terrible at it, but that they WON the messaging! And still couldn’t get the tax break for rich people snuffed! That’s just incredible to me.
On the 11th commandment stuff – have to just flat-out disagree with you on that. That’s for Republicans. I’ll admit there are very real drawbacks to the liberal penchant for being cats that need herding, but it’s also one of our strengths. Perhaps what we really are is the cats we’ve been waiting for …
D. Aristophanes
@Rhoda: Alternatively, if he can’t corral the House Dems to pass the compromise, he’s going to look doubly weak – first for caving to the GOP and then for not having the support of his fellow Dems.
He better be begging Nancy to call in all her favors right about now. Just sayin’.
Kerry Reid
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: I just saw Cumberbitch and he is, as the kids say, “fine.” (Do the kids say that? I never listen to them because, hello, they’re kids!)
Buggy Ding Dong
In what fucking universe does Obama look like he is running things? He just pre-compromised away a core issue and kicked the decision further down the road. Oh, I’m sure we are going to be much more likely to finally get rid of the Bush tax cuts for Paris Hilton in a presidential election year and with the Republicans controlling the House and a razor-thin margin in the Senate.
Yep, more victories are going pile up over the next two years with this type of negotiating.
Kerry Reid
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: I meant “Cumberbatch.” Somehow (oh however how, one wonders in this thread?), that came out “bitch.”
A L
@Buggy Ding Dong:
Stalinists have nothing on Obamatars, frankly.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Buggy Ding Dong:
In the universe where reality is not defined by the narratives scripted by the fuckstains at Main Scream Media Inc. You know, the place where stories are invented so that us little children can be made to understand the big important things that are too complicated for us.
Stories about how Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton will be our presidential candidates (you do remember 2007, yes?) and how Richard Jewell bombed the Olympics and how Big Scary Deficits are the boogeyman in politics and how Barack Obama campaigned on the Public Option in healthcare in 2008 .. you remember that, right?
Sure, I would love, as much as the next guy, for Pat Buchanan and David Gergen and Monica Crowley and Dana Bash and John King to be the Great Truthtellers and to believe the horseshit stories they make up for us to put us to bed at naptime. I love their stories. I really do.
But they are all bullshit.
News Reference
Obama’s shrillest supporters demand fealty. Think through what that means.
Fealty to Obama means:
Torturers given free passes while whistleblowers are hunted down.
Wars that don’t increase our security.
Bankster thieves given free passes while even now they are allowed to steal homes.
Billionaires given millions in tax cuts while the poorest are told to ‘tighten their belts’.
Shredded civil liberties that don’t increase our security.
Assassination of American citizens from robot drones without Judicial review.
Naked photos and groping without warrants if you have the ‘audacity’ to fly while poor.
Thuggish authoritarian supporters that are just as bad as any thuggish authoritarian supporter of Republicans.
Hooray Team Obama!?
Kerry Reid
@D. Aristophanes:
I believe it was Mr. Tom Hilton who made the very cogent point here sometime ago that Dems are ALWAYS going to have the tougher job when it comes to messaging. If you’re even semi-serious about governing and passing legislation, them’s the breaks. Bush got war (unfortunately, never a very tough sell for Americans and not at all a tough sell after 9/11) and tax cuts (also never a tough sell). The war, after a time, didn’t feel like it affected most Americans on a daily level. BUT most Americans DO worry about their health insurance, so tinkering/overhauling that is easy to demagogue as “radical.”
I’m fine with people saying that they don’t think the Dems in Congress and Obama went far enough given the scope of problems. But when I hear someone say that “Obama is worse than Bush!” or “They haven’t done anything!,” then I feel justified tuning them out because they are simply wrong. Either from fecklessness or ignorance, they are lying.
At a certain level, I think that there are people on the left who don’t have the same lifelong zest for battle that, say, fundie Christians do. They LIVE for that shit, in my experience. I think a lot of progressives I know would rather not have to be spending time arguing that there are, in fact, no death panels in the healthcare bill. And at a certain level, that’s a sign of sanity. Who wouldn’t rather be gardening or doing yoga or playing with your kids or reading a good or even not-good book than arguing over reprehensible lies like that?
But — that’s our lot. We want to transform things (which is the opposite of “conservative,” right?), so we are always going to have a harder row to hoe.
D. Aristophanes
@Kerry Reid: Agree on all counts.
A L
@Kerry Reid:
Instead of arguing whether or not an awful bill has death panels, how about agitating for actual health care delivered to citizens? How about that?
You’ve been sucked into the media narrative, and no wonder people who actually have liberal convictions don’t want to participate, because they (correctly) perceive that they have been locked out of the discussion.
There is no argument over what to do with health care, nor taxes, nor anything else at the federal level. The discussion has occurred and is finished. Now they’re just putting the plan into motion.
And you’re standing outside wondering what happened.
News Reference
Obama’s authoritarian follower’s disdain for concerns like TORTURE and WAR and CRIMES and unwarranted SURVEILLANCE is abhorrent.
That’s not a “messaging” problem, that’s a morals problem.
oondioline
@News Reference: Hey man, you better shut up or Obama’s black base won’t vote for him.
Mnemosyne
@News Reference:
So, just out of curiosity, who was your perfect president who never did any of those things? Please name one.
Oh, I forgot — Obama was your Magic Negro who was going to be completely different than every other president in American history because shut up, that’s why.
Mnemosyne
Here, I’ll start News Reference off with a list:
Bush II: I think we all remember
Clinton: Rendition
Bush I: Iran-Contra
Reagan: Iran-Contra, supporting lots of murderous regimes
Carter: Started us off in Afghanistan
Nixon: Bombing Cambodia
LBJ: Vietnam
Kennedy: Bay of Pigs
Hmm, I can’t think of anything off the top of my head for Eisenhower. Looks like your perfect ideal of a president is a moderate Republican.
ETA: That’s right, Eisenhower presided over McCarthyism. Sorry, Newsie. You’ll have to keep searching for that perfect model of a president that you’re pissed off Obama didn’t follow in the footsteps of.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mnemosyne:
I made the mistake of checking the link out in their name and just about died laughing at it.
Whoever built that site should be clubbed like a baby seal. Holy shit, what. a. mess.
Mnemosyne
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Hey, I’m sure that if you weren’t taking your anti-psychotics, it would all make perfect sense.
Weird how all crank websites look alike, whether they’re from the right or the left. Is there a template they all use?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, the voices in their head tell them how to do it. Thus the clusterfucked-looking result.
Can you imagine the arguments over formatting?
Chuck Butcher
I kind of thought that after 2 weeks of this stuff that 700 comments might have something new. Nah. I have some distinct issues with the President but I’ll be damned if I can see how the malpractice in the Senate lands on him. I see a man trying to deal with one hell of a mess trying to do some good for the nation faced with one bunch that would rather burn the place down than let anything good happen and another handful of so-called Party members who seem to agree with the fucking arsonists.
The President has managed some good things, some mixed things, some mediocre things, and a couple of really fucked up things. Jeeze, about par for someone who isn’t in the GWB catagory. I’ll damn good and well criticize the fucked up stuff and push on the mediocre. Katrina’s OpEd is a push article not a FOAD one. Read it. I’ll give the President the respect of considering him a full grown man with a REAL job who should be praised or criticized on the basis of facts.
He is pretty much just what he campaigned on being, not what I really wanted but by far the best of the bunch and he will be again in two years. I worked for that, not what I would rather have had and what I wanted won’t run and wouldn’t win if that mythical person were to.
I can’t believe I read over 700 comments like this…
News Reference
Obama’s negotiations give Republicans 90% of what they demand and Dems get 10%.
Obama and his authoritarians defense: ‘Hey, nobody got 100% of what they wanted.’
Obama “is pretty much just what he campaigned on being”, a huge fan of Republican Ronald Reagan.
And Obama’s got a cult-like Reagan following that dismisses torture, war-crimes, abusive civil liberty violations, bankster’s frauds, and gifts to billionaires while the poorest are told to ‘tighten their belts’.
Mnemosyne
@News Reference:
Funny, you didn’t answer my question. Which president with a perfect civil rights record is Obama supposed to model himself on?
News Reference
“I have some distinct issues with the President but I’ll be damned if I can see how the malpractice in the Senate lands on him.”
Obama is accountable for HIS CHOICES.
Nobody forced Obama to appoint Republicans to run the DOD, the Fed, the DOT, and the Commerce Department.
Nobody forced Obama to expand Republican Bush’s reckless wars or expand Bush’s egregious violations of civil liberties.
Nobody forced Obama to prosecute whistleblowers while giving torturers and war-criminals free-passes.
Nobody forced Obama to censor evidence of torture crimes.
Nobody forced Obama to appoint right-wing ideologues like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.
Nobody forced Obama to hire right-wing predators like Liz Fowler.
Nobody forced Obama to sell out to dirty-energy corporations and make ridiculously false claims about oil-drilling off the coast being “safe”.
And nobody forced Obama’s authoritarian followers to accept any of Obama’s right-wing ideologically motivated actions.
Mnemosyne
@News Reference:
Still waiting. Which president with a perfect civil rights record was Obama supposed to model himself after?
News Reference
“Mnemosyne”, since you’ve given me homework, here’s your homework:
Name the logical fallacy to describe your specious argumentation style.
Then tell me who on earth is “perfect”.
Don’t excuse criminality with absurd, ‘well name me someone who’s perfect’.
Karen
Obama is a pragmatist which seems to be a huge crime now. He cares more about getting the country afloat rather than political posturing. He wants to govern. Hamsher’s acolytes here just want to follow their Queen.
By the way, long ago and far away, I used to read FDL. But the first time Jane Hamsher said that it didn’t matter if the Congress and President were Republican because liberals were at their best as underdogs and moving the Overton Window to the left, I was done with that mess.
She has money, what does she care about starving people or people who have no insurance.
Why don’t you all LINOS just get Obama impeached already so you can get Hillary back where she belongs.
By the way, to the person who said they looked the other way when Obama said “sweetie”, etc. I’d think the dog whistle Hillary Clinton blew about how Obama “might” be assasinated like Kennedy was, or how unelectable he was because honest working Americans (white people) would never vote for him is a lot worse.
But I forgot, Obama had to kiss your ring then apologize for his existence. I also notice how Clinton’s failings as a person and the hell he put his wife through mean nothing to you. Or that he sold the gay people down the river because he created DADT. And that Hillary Clinton is no liberal doesn’t matter to you because hey, she’s perfect.
Mnemosyne
@News Reference:
I’m not saying “name someone who’s perfect.” I’m saying name ONE SINGLE PRESIDENT who has not done the same things Obama has done, and done worse things on top of it.
Just one. Because otherwise you are holding Obama to a standard that you’re not holding any other president to, and it makes one wonder what’s so different about Obama that it drives you to the brink of insanity to have him do the same things every other president has done.
News Reference
“Mnemosyne”: “who was your perfect president”
“Mnemosyne”: “I’m not saying “name someone who’s perfect.”
Just because you don’t read what you write don’t assume others aren’t.
You make a great authoritarian, by the way.
Is there any criminality you aren’t willing to excuse by saying ‘well someone else did bad things too’!
News Reference
Karen, who’s defending former Republican Hillary Clinton?
Most commenters are defending the closet right-wing ideologue Barack Obama.
I keep voting for Democratic Presidents but keep getting Republicans, right-wingers, and apologists making absurd excuses for them.
Sleeper
…NOBODY expects the —
[lights go out]
— oh, bugger.
nancydarling
On Eisenhower’s watch: the overthrow of Mossadeq(sp) in Iran at the behest of the oil giants, both Dulles brothers who were attorneys for big oil before heading up the CIA and State, and stopping the Truman administration’s anti-trust investigation into big oil.
Rhoda
@A L: I love this. Yes. I am deeply invested solely in Barack Obama. That is why I’m unwilling to give the 2 million who will get extended unemployment benefits a thought, why I have no regard for the tax benefits to the middle class and working poor, and why I hope that the ensuing freakout on the left will help those 99ers.
Obviously, I am simply caught up in the need for Barack Obama to be fine and good. I can’t possibly think that he smacked the left AND right around today and they needed to be bitch-slapped.
Rhoda
@D. Aristophanes: No he won’t. CONGRESS will look like sad motherfuckers; but the President has established his position completely and he can run against all of them.
Basically, Obama is doing what to Democrats in Congress what they did to him in 2010. He’s cutting the cord and he’s signaling that he’ll run against THEM and the Republicans. He’s not tying himself to Congress; he’s pushing away and setting up HIS priorities and saying he’ll do what he can to get the best for the American people that he can get.
shortstop
@D. Aristophanes: Nicely put.
racker
If Obama was white he would not have 90% black support like he does now. You can whine all you want but it won’t change the fact that blacks support him so much because he IS black.
Racism sucks in all forms.
chopper
lol, ‘the base’. the democratic party doesn’t have a base. it has a loose coalition. the GOP, those guys have a base.
D. Aristophanes
@Rhoda: Can you clarify if you mean just the Senate or all of Congress looking like sad motherfuckers? Because if it’s true that Obama has been held to a ridiculous standard by the ‘professional left’ then it’s also true that Nancy’s crew hasn’t been given half the credit they deserve by liberals for all the heavy-lifting they’ve done to get so much of Obama’s agenda actually enacted.
Shit, the only party that actually did what it was supposed to do – pass a bill that continued the middle class tax cuts while expiring the ones for rich people – is the goddamn House Dems. And Nancy herself deserves at least as much credit for the passage of HCR as Obama, if not a helluva lot more.
Even bagging on the Senate, like we all love to do all the time, is a dubious endeavour when you consider that it’s the arcane, anti-democratic cloture rules (not to mention disproportionate representation of small red states) that’s the real villain in most cases, because a majority of Dem senators almost always do the right thing.
So look, let’s get some perspective. People need to ratchet down the over-the-top Obama hate. But another group of people also needs to ratchet down the Congress bashing. Obama’s doing the best he can under trying circumstances? So are a helluva lot of other people. So let’s all help each other out rather than snipe at each other all the time.
That said, it still seems really risky for me for the White House to have trotted out the tax cut compromise in public yesterday without – it seems – really knowing if it had the votes on the Hill to get it done. And it’d be really nice if instead of bashing Nancy & Co. if they manage to whip it through anyway, you actually thanked them.
D. Aristophanes
@racker: Your speculation is dubious given historical black support for Dem presidents. At any rate, affinity is not racism so you’re wrong on that too.
Mrs. Polly
@D. Aristophanes:
Seconded! But it feels so good to pound the keyboard.
Don’t even remember if I’ve been in this thread before or not. Just wanted to point out to A L, if A L ever gets around to googling Kerry, that she isn’t the Kerry Reid who writes “Heartblankies.” Astonishingly enough.
Hi Mom! Look, I’m a part of history in the Balloon Juice Progressive Meltdown 2010 thread!
Reasonable Women
I so agree with you on this point.
mclaren
Cole, just about every sentence in your post is provably false.
Bullshit. Angry Black Lady is raising hell in Obama’s defense on this forum and tons of other people are rising mucho hell in Obama’s defense, including yourself. The horizon darkens with hordes of people roaring like lions in Obama’s defense. The entire blogosphere is up in arms just about daily shouting about the Fox News lies and the Sarah Palin smears and the Tea Party character assassinations that get hurled at Obama.
Keith Olbermann is “NO ONE”?
Jane Maddow is “NO ONE”?
Colin Powell is “NO ONE”?
Fareed Zakaria is “NO ONE”?
Arnold Scwarzenegger is “NO ONE”?
The Swedish Nobel Prize Committee is “NO ONE”?
Austan Goolsbee is “NO ONE”?
Notre Dame University is “NO ONE”?
Chris Wallace is “NO ONE”?
Jon Stewart is “NO ONE”?
Matthew Yglesias is “NO ONE”?
Google the phrase “defends Obama” and you’ll find literally millions of hits. Whole armies of people have risen up to defend Obama — and you know it.
You’re just lying out your ass on this one, Cole. You’re making shit up. You’ve gone full-on Fox News, you’re just spewing made-up bullshit when you say “NO ONE is defending Obama.”
Accomplishments of the last couple of years?
What accomplishments?
What has Obama accomplished?
TARP isn’t something we can credit Obama for. TARP was dreamed up by the previous criminal maladministration. It probably saved the world economy, but it’s not Obama’s accomplishment.
Obama bungled the financial bailout. How did he bungle it? By staffing his goddamn administration with former Goldman Sachs vampires and Wall Street asskissers who refused to extract massive penalties from Wall Street in return for saving their asses financially. Obama hungled the financial bailout by refusing to unleash his DOJ on Wall Street and refusing to send hundreds of banksters to assrape prison for their financial crimes. NOT ONE GODDAMN BANKSTER HAS GONE TO JAIL for their role in destroying the world economy, NOT. ONE.
Obama is completely responsible for fucking that up. Obama could’ve instructed Eric Holder, his Attorney General, to do a goddamn Sherman’s March to the Sea on fucking Wall Street. Obama could’ve indicted everyone in Goldman Sachs, all the major players on Wall Street, chain the bastards all together in a row and perp walk ’em through a goddamn rocket docket in criminal court with no bail. That would’ve sent a fucking message.
Obama bungled the health care reform. Instead of reform, we got corrupt greedy cartels handed 330 million victims ready to financially rape with infinite health insurance premium increases and infinite rises in medical cost by greedy doctors and greedy hospitals and greedy bribe-giving scamming medical devicemakers who manufacture 40 cent disposable plastic surgical instruments and charge hospitals $1200 for ’em.
Obama bungled the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires. But I’m not going to criticize him for that, because he announced beforehand during his campaign that he was going to bungle those failed lost military disasters, and anyway he inherited all that evil shite from the drunk-driving C student and his torturer sidekick.
Obama bungled the military commissions. Obama bungled torture. Obama bungled the “war on terror.” He should’ve shut down all the military shite and eliminated all the insane unconstitutional security theater and instead turned it back into a police operation. Obama bungled warrantless wiretapping. Obama bungled DADT — simple executive order, done, over, next issue. Obama bungled the Bush tax cuts.
Obama has bungled just about everything he’s laid his hands on, and it’s due to lack of intelligence and it’s not because he’s black and it’s not because he didn’t have the full resources of the presidency with the DOJ and the IRS and vast aramamentarium of bureaucrats who can make life into hell on earth for corrupt thieving banksters and corrupt collusive medical cartels if Obama really wanted to.
No, Obama bungled all these crises because of his temperament. The guy just doesn’t want to get down and dirty. He brings a wet noodle to a gunfight.
“Don’t mess with me,” Obama says, “I’ll hit you with this wet noodle!” Meanwhile, the Republicans are shooting him with double-ought buckshot.
Let’s be clear here. Katrina van den Heuvel is right. She’s exactly correct. Obama will have a failed presidency if he doesn’t start fighting back and do what he was elected to do. Obama wasn’t elected to turn every sick person in America into a giant captive monopoly for predatory doctors and hospitals and medical devicemakers to gouge with limitless cost increases. Obama wasn’t elected to make Wall Street’s obscene bonuses safe ‘n secure while the rest of us go broke. Obama wasn’t elected to extend Bush’s tax cuts.
Obama was elected to clean this goddamn mess up. Obama famously told the Republicans, “Grab a mop.” Well, right now Obama isn’t using a mop, he’s pissing all over the floor and adding to the Republican mess. Obama is making things worse.
That’s not what Obama was elected to do, and everyone knows it.
The only part of Katrina van den Heuvel’s article I disagree with is her criticism of Obama’s failed and futile Afghanistan blunder. Yes, it’s failed and stupid and futile — but Obama told us in advance he was going to plunge America into an endless quagmire Vietnam Part Deux in Afghanistan. We knew that when we voted for him, so we can’t criticize him for not telling us he was going to do that. It’s reasonable to criticize Obama’s failed and futile Afghanistan quagmire, but it’s not fair to claim Obama betrayed anyone or went back on his word with regard to Afghanistan — he told everyone during the campaign he was going to screw up and get us deeper into the Afghanistan mess.
John
@Corey:
Oh no, the poor babies. did the president hurt their feelings?
Plantsmantx
@Midnight Marauder:
If you are reading this blog, you most likely know who is responsible for blaming black Americans for the aforementioned examples.
Well, I know who is responsible, and I didn’t have to read this blog to find out. The question is…does John Cole know who is responsible? He goes from warning Democrats that they could lose the black vote, and segues right into those “aforementioned examples” without identifying who was responsible for them. If I didn’t know any better, I might think he’s hoping that any black people who happen to read this (or just black people in general) really do blame Democrats for the “aforementioned examples” because..well, you know…they’re just ignorant like that, right?
Whitney
@Kerry Reid:
um…i know i’m a straight married woman…but damn if wasn’t i’d be trying to marry you.
and abl, too.
i love ya’ll. truly.
Whitney
@racker:
bullshit. we backed clinton in the same numbers.
we’re the fuckin’ reliable base whether you like it or not.
Black-Ron-Paul-Democrat
When the chips are down you get to see who your real allies are.
Kerry Reid
@Whitney:
But that’s because Clinton was the REAL first black president! /snark
Lisa
I love you John Cole. Thanks for saying this. They ignore it when a black blogger says it. The fealty to the Democratic Party by black Americans is coming to a close. I actually get more angry watching that deformed bitch, Jane Hamsher than the Orange guy. Because the white people on my side assume I am fucking stupid and will always pull the lever for them no matter what they do to me, because I am their political trained monkey.
Lisa
@Cat: Yes. But it can be caught. Those of us who live with the lowered expectations of our supposed “allies” in the white left are used to spotting it.
Lisa
@SIA: That guy is a sexy motherfucker.
Angry Black Lady
@oondioline: all you need to do is read the comment section of this blog over the past couple of days. have you seen black people thanking john for writing the post? have you seen black people expressing dismay that folks don’t believe what i’m saying, or want proof of what i’m saying? have you seen people accusing cole of “backing me up” when he says it, instead of thinking maybe that i have a point? that he has a point? that lisa right above me has a point? the evidence is all around you. you want me to compile a list of aggrieved people and if i won’t find proof of what is in front of your face, i should shut up?
i don’t know if you’re a real person or a troll. i hope you’re getting a kick out of this. i know i am.
Angry Black Lady
@oondioline: all you need to do is read the comment section of this blog over the past couple of days. have you seen black people thanking john for writing the post? have you seen black people expressing dismay that folks don’t believe what i’m saying, or want proof of what i’m saying? have you seen people accusing cole of “backing me up” when he says it, instead of thinking maybe that i have a point? that he has a point? that lisa right above me has a point? the evidence is all around you. you want me to compile a list of aggrieved people and if i won’t find proof of what is in front of your face, i should shut up?
i don’t know if you’re a real person or a troll. i hope you’re getting a kick out of this. i know i am.