Old friend ED has a long post up at Forbes about what he aptly describes as Democrats’ long ideological retreat on economic matters. He writes:
The cheering of ‘historic cuts’ by Democrats in the depths of one of the worst economic downturns in the history of this nation should be viewed as a defeat in and of itself, the beginning of a long ideological retreat.
[…..]At what point do we hold our elected officials accountable for their bad compromises? At what point do we ask a president who campaigned against the legacy of his predecessor why he has continued so many of the last administration’s worst practices, from war in the Middle East to education reform? And at what point do we ask Democrats to stop running from every fight, to stop meeting the GOP in the middle time and time again, while Republicans constantly work to shift the middle further and further to the right?
Except I don’t think it’s the beginning of a retreat, the retreat has been going on for 30 years. A Democratic House passed both rounds of Reagan tax cuts. Clinton signed welfare reform, made Bob Rubin the Secretary of Treasury, and declared the era of big government over.
I’m not saying that was all bad, by the way, the Clinton boom did great things for working people in this country, not just low unemployment but solid wage increases. Heeding the Siren call of Ryanomics would be all bad, though.
Democrats can’t retreat on economic issues forever. Maybe it’s smart to dodge the incoming fire until the demographic cavalry arrives, but I’m getting nervous.
DonkeyKong
Many Congressional Democrats found out about Obama’s surprise speech by watching the Sunday shows, as top Obama aide David Plouffe made the rounds to note that the president would lay out a plan for long-term deficit reduction this week. “Plouffe’s announcement yesterday morning did leave us scrambling, that’s something we’re working on right now,” the House aide said on Monday.
They can’t even retreat in good order.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The only time political conditions have ever been right for doing the kind of change we need was the beginning of a war after we had been in a Depression for over a decade. I don’t really hold out much hope until 50% of the country is in pain.
Just Some Fuckhead
We are all supply-siders now.
Elia Isquire
If wages have flatlined since the late ’70s and inequality has increased throughout — and if the Clinton deregulation led substantially to the clusterfuck of the past 3 years (which wiped out basically all of the “gains”) — how is Clinton’s economic record a positive one? Because it’s not Ayn Randenomics? Well — not completely; you’ve just got to overlook the whole Greenspan thing.
Really don’t get where you’re coming from on this one, my comrade.
Elia Isquire
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Wait–the New Deal passed AFTER Pearl Harbor?
Martin
Well, the obvious political play is to wait for the GOP to vote for Ryan’s plan and then hang it around their necks for the next 18 months. Will they do it? Don’t know. We’re in campaign season again. But I think that makes it more likely that the Dems will fight that out.
Comrade DougJ
@Elia Isquire:
The 90s were the one good period for wages.
EDIT: I consider real wage increases (median, relative to inflation) to be the most important thing.
Elia Isquire
And I really don’t think you can just skip over welfare “reform”…
I’ll shut up now.
Joe Beese
When do we hold Obama accountable for [insert outrage-of-choice here]?
What? And let a Republican get elected?
They’re likely to cut Social Security or start another war!
General Stuck
I’m sorry, but ED Kain has turned out to be a pandering fool. And it is not the retreat of anything, but a tactical deployment for the moment. A moment that is momentous imo.
It is the wingnuts last stand, more likely, than any dem retreat. A series of bright burns of ideology for the remaining fuel in their hallowed, now hollowed conservative movement. Think of it as a flanking maneuver, the Obama faux counter budget. That is just as inoperable as Ryan’s budget to the wingnuts. It is a bait in switch that is classic Obama, on econ matters, something like triangulation, but with the twist of triangulating with only a single mark, the GOP et al. Bluff calling, or, you want to soak the poor to balance the budget, then let’s soak the rich, who actually have money to be soaked.
It is the best weapon dems have against these greedy pol urchins, and they are arranging the battlefield for a full deployment of our best weapons.
Of course, I am but a humble Obot, that always looks at the sunny side of the Unicorn.
Joe Beese
And I wouldn’t count on the demographic cavalry when no one in their 20s is able to find a damned job.
Elia Isquire
@Comrade DougJ: But isn’t that off-set when inequality is such that a modest wage increase is worth less than at first blush? Or no? I’m not great at the maths, so this ain’t rhetorical.
(But I really think you have to look at Clinton’s record in light of 2007-2010; otherwise Calvin Coolidge would’ve been a pretty good Preznit.)
Joe Beese
@General Stuck:
Just call it “11-dimensional chess” and get it over with.
NR
You all do realize that the budget battle was lost last December, when Obama made the Bush tax cuts effectively permanent, right?
Everything since then has basically been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Comrade DougJ
@Elia Isquire:
The increase in inequality was problematic, but wages growing 1-2% above CPI is the real deal, as is 3.8% unemployment.
Comrade DougJ
@Joe Beese:
That’s what I worry too.
Just Some Fuckhead
@NR:
Sure, the ship may go down but the captain will never be tarred as a “tax and spend liberal”.
DonkeyKong
The President and the Democrats keeps bringing an 11th dimensional chess set to a head butting contest.
schrodinger's cat
Question for the doomsdayers on both right and the left
If the US economy is so bad why does the world still want to buy our debt (US Treasuries and Long term bonds)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Elia Isquire:
A somewhat more nuanced take would be that in macroeconomic terms FDR gave back part of the New Deal with his post-1936 election budget cuts which triggered the 1937 recession (a scenario which we may live thru yet again in the next year or two), and that govt spending levels necessary to boost the economy back to pre-1930 levels of employment did not happen until the US ramped up armarments production to 11 in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
The real trick was maintaining employment after the war was over. IIRC it was driven by a number of factors, including the strength of organized labor in the late 1940s, the overwhelming position of the US as a manufacturing center after much of the rest of the world’s industrial base was devastated by WW2, and the stimulus created by renewed defense spending with the outbreak of the Korean War. But my reading on late 1940s macroeconomics is thin at best and if anybody can point me to some good sources on that era, I’d be thankful.
Maude
@Elia Isquire:
Don’t forget NAFTA and the offset on Social Security. What a wonderful prez, Clinton was. I am biased 100% against him.
He is responsible for too big to fail and the unregulated credit default swaps amongst other things.
Clinton is worth over $110 mil.
OzoneR
when the American people stop asking for bad compromises.
joe from Lowell
@Elia Isquire:
Wages didn’t flatline under Clinton. They actually improved in real terms, for a change. The reason we can say that wages have flatlined since the early 70s is because we gave those gains back under Bush.
Comrade DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think this is the end of the world. But you can see it from here.
Elia Isquire
@Comrade DougJ: OK. I wouldn’t argue it was all bad, but I dunno if mostly bad = good.
I just feel very willing to say everything is terrible, we’re all doomed, so let’s have a drink and watch the Big Lebowski (or whatever).
General Stuck
@Joe Beese:
how many dimensions do you count? Two? maybe three if you split the GOP from the tea tards. It is just simply thoughtful, calm and smart. Or everything you are not.
Citizen Alan
I could forgive a lot of Obama’s caving if he would at least give some sign of public anger and/or frustration over a compromise that had been forced on him by a mendacious and borderline treasonous opposition. But he doesn’t. At every stop of the way, he takes what the Right will allow him and then proudly claims credit for it while dismissing any of the concerns of anyone on his Left.
My worst nightmare is Obama losing in 2012 and some Republican lunatic taking over and destroying the country. My SECOND worst nightmare is Obama eking out a narrow victory while losing the House and the Senate, and then spending the next four years cheerfully dismantling Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while making the Bush tax cuts permanent and all in the name of “bipartisanship” … and still letting himself be painted as a liberal socialist!
Elia Isquire
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: That’s not really the point this person was making, though. S/he was saying the political climate was only right the once, when that’s clearly not true. Whether or not FDR fucked it up in ’37 (which he did, although mainly ’cause he felt he had to) is beside the point, no?
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Kudos to you. Even for a man of your considerable talents, this was some garbledy goop of supremely flexible fellating.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade DougJ: I agree, we need a course correction soon. We are our own worst enemy.
P.S. The current economic policies make sense if we were worried about inflation, but with inflation being negligible the policy focus of the government needs to be job creation. Since monetary policies haven’t worked we need to try fiscal policies.
JGabriel
DougJ:
… beginning of a long retreat is obviously an oxymoron — if it’s just the beginning, it can’t have been going on very long. Erik probably meant something other than beginnning but pulled that word out accidentally.
It happens. I’m wondering where his editor was though. Aren’t they supposed to catch that kind of thing?
Anyway, yeah, I’m with you DougJ. I’d have used a phrase like the most recent nadir of a three decade long and counting ideological retreat.
.
.
Sly
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I don’t think the Military Keynesianism that resulted from WWII can be called the high water mark of modern liberal orthodoxy. MIC and all that jazz.
Ditto New Deal. The New Deal was chaotic and ad hoc, not ideologically driven, and the left hate quited a few of the various policy phases that the Roosevelt administration went through. NIRA was probably the best example, since it basically (and briefly) enshrined cartelism into law. Big business, however, adored NIRA. This is not something generally observed by the left or right in their drive to deify/vilify FDR as the most leftist President in American history.
jl
The economy is slowly getting better, with high profits being earned from a smaller base of economic production of goods and services and good productivity numbers. The labor market may be on a permanent upswing, lagging other indicators by a long way, like the last recession.
So far the unwise fiscal concessions to the GOP, and high oil prices have not bumped us totally off a weak and sluggish economy.
We forget that there are still a lot of very rich people and organizations engaged in a huge fight over money, there are still hot debt potatoes that people are tossing around. And bad debt that holders still hope somehow can be made good.
If you are one of those people holding debt, and are still hoping to get as much as possible for it, you do not want high inflation. You want zero inflation.
An economy wide inflation is one way to improve the recovery. It is a way of reducing the overhang or nominal debt.
While they are fighting over who gets left with the irrecoverably bad debt, and who can keep their claim on debt that might be made good somehow, low inflation may be better for these folks that a robust economic recovery.
Optimizing behavior that is the fetish of modern economics is individual optimization, not social optimization (for which most economists do not believe there is a theory, or doubt that it means anything, which would be OK, except the story of how individual optimization leads to social optimization is supposed to be one of the neat tricks of economic theory, but I think many economists implicitly assume that the former is just by definition the result of the latter, which is wrong).
Anyway, the kind of ‘realistic practical business advice’ that Obama is listening to, has reasons to prefer policies that ensure very low inflation over economic growth right now, though I am sure they do not describe it that way, or even are completely aware of the conflict.
Elia Isquire
@joe from Lowell: OK thanks. And you’re right I got my stats mixed up: flatlined since early 70s/inequality took off in late 70s.
But I’m not trying to “checkmate” people more inclined to defend Clinton when I ask what you do with the financial meltdown. Honestly curious.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Speaking of fellating, Your Beese and fuckhead sockpuppets need servicing there mr deepthroat.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: This is basically what I was implying, especially the US spending for the war. And this was done by taxing the upper class at 90%. Which, somehow, didn’t make anyone up there poor.
I would settle for a 40% bracket. Ain’t gonna happen right now.
JGabriel
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because we’ve never defaulted on it, in 220 years plus, and, presumably, there are few stocks, bonds, or other instruments expected to be equally stable and profitable.
.
Master of Karate and Friendship
“until the demographic cavalry arrives”
We’d damn well better do something about peak oil, environmental degradation, poor health care, and crumbling infrastructure before that happens, or there sure won’t be much of a country left for any cavalry to save.
Corner Stone
@NR:
It doesn’t seem to have been very brightly lit for some folks here. Where they imagine future revenue for needed programs will come from is beyond me. We’ll be fighting a rear guard defensive action for another 20 years, til absolutely nothing of the New Deal is left.
General Stuck
It was 11 dimensional snark and way more above your pinhead.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: You know Obama just put another gold star under Stuck’s name in the war room.
The Raven
At this point, it seems that the Democratic leadership is ready to surrender.
We corvids are delighted.
schrodinger's cat
Help! My comment is stuck in moderation because I edited it twice.
The Raven
@schrodinger’s cat: “If the US economy is so bad why does the world still want to buy our debt.”
@JGabriel: “Because we’ve never defaulted on it, in 220 years plus,”
The Tea Party Republicans are working on that.
Observer
@General Stuck:
Can we just call you General Baghad Bob Stuck from now on?
DonkeyKong
“I believe this budget debate is about two very different futures for America: About whether we will continue to go forward under our motto, E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one; whether we will continue to unite and grow; or whether we will become a more divided, winner-take-all society.” -Bill Clinton 1995 after vetoing the republican budget with the pen Lyndon Johnson used to sign Medicare into law.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Joe Beese:
“What? And let a Republican get elected? They’re likely to cut Social Security or start another war!”
Or approve more offshore oil-drilling that leads to an environmental catastrophe, or put Wall Street puppets like Tim Geithner in vital positions, or extend tax cuts for the rich, or try terrorism suspects in secret military tribunals, or…
joe from Lowell
@Elia Isquire:
Hey, don’t ask me. I think Clinton sucked on financial regulation, and I count the passage of Dodd-Frank as one of the most significant events of the last four years specifically because it repudiates that ideology and reverses course.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Observer:
haha!
General Stuck
@Observer:
I thought it had some pretty cool rhetorical flourish that I doubt Bahgdad Bob could muster. I mean after reading a days worth of drek from PUMA dead enders and firebaggers on how we are all going to die and it’s Obama’s fault, it was time for a little down home O propaganda catapulting. I observed this, yes i did.
General Stuck
Man o Man Dougj, you sounded the right notes on the tribal drum to call out the anti obamba braintrust with this post.
Kudos, you deserve a Moore Award.
John O
I like ED, but “the beginning of a long ideological retreat” is just plain young and stupid.
Elia Isquire
@joe from Lowell: yeah i was thinking about this the other day actually. it seems pretty clear that we’ll have another crisis sooner or later (and more sooner), but hopefully it won’t be quite as bad and the response will be to strengthen dodd-frank. i guess the worry is that people will blame it on dodd-frank…but i dunno, i feel optimistic on this one.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: You know damn well Obama doesn’t have a war room. It wouldn’t be bipartisan in any way to put your political opponents as some how “on the other side” of a debate.
I would say “ideological opponents” but, meh.
Sly
@The Raven:
Considering the difficulty with which the U.S. government would have to go through in order to default on its debt obligations (debt interest would have to exceed tax revenues and the Federal Reserve would basically have to cease to exist), I think they might find better success if they devoted their energy to something less Sisyphean. Like cold fusion, world peace, or keeping Barney Rubble from eating Fred Flintstone’s Cocoa Pebbles.
Dennis SGMM
@General Stuck:
I’m not sorry. I’m pissed. Since when is incrementally surrendering years of hard fought legislation anything like a clever strategy? The Republicans will take a pound of flesh in the debt ceiling debate, another pound of flesh in the budget debate and still another when long term unemployment benefits come up for a vote in 2012.
George Armstrong Custer made a tactical deployment at the Battle of the Greasy Grass. That worked out well too.
Comrade Luke
@NR:
Actually, it was lost last August, then Dems running for reelection asked to put off the budget talks for fear of having negative ads run against them.
Chickenshits, all of them.
Corner Stone
BTW, congrats DougJ. You and Cole have trolled the absolute hell outta the blog today. Now if mistermix will come by and do an Apple post, and then round it out with another schtick by ABL this place will have been trolled to within an inch of its life in under 24 hours.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes.
My take is that the Keynesian stimulus under FDR, whether via the pre-war New Deal, or via the wartime spending, was only half of the solution to our macroeconomic problem. That problem was that too much of our national wealth had accumulated at the top of the income scale where it was stagnant. Getting that money back into circulation amongst the spending (rather than saving) classes required confiscatory levels of taxation on a sustained basis to move it down the income chain. That’s exactly what we got, thanks not only to FDR but to the continuation of his tax policies under Truman and Eisenhower.
But with benefit of hindsight I don’t know if the political will for initiating that tax policy could have happened without the twin crises of the Great Depression and WW2. When discussing macroeconomics we tend to discount the cultural environment created by the two early to mid-20th Cen. total wars, but WW1 and WW2 both influenced our tax policy (amongst other things) a great deal and I think the way in which those wars were fought in that era both reflects and was a driving influence behind that period being the high-water mark for collectivist thinking in our culture.
joe from Lowell
@Elia Isquire: A whole lot is going to depend on implementation. Elizabeth Warren is kicking butt on Capitol Hill, and the Democrats did pretty well beating up on the Republicans when they tried to block the bill from passing, so I’m hopeful about this, too.
Zifnab
@DonkeyKong:
I’ll say this about Obama. He’s been incredibly veto-shy.
By putting himself in the middle of the debate, he’s compromised some of his executive authority. What’s the point of having a veto if you’re just working hand-in-glove with the Democratic Senate? Anything they pass, you’ll sign. Obama isn’t a final hurdle for the GOP. He’s another Senator at the bargaining table beside Harry Reid.
Perhaps this is a facet of Obama’s stint as US Senator, but he doesn’t seem able to separate his own goals from the general caucus goals. That makes it difficult for him to extract concessions from the GOP. You’re not going to barter with Obama twice on the same issue if he’s the mediator in the mix.
General Stuck
@Dennis SGMM:
What hard fought legislation has been surrendered by Obama to the wingers? Be specific. This isn’t really a head butting contest, it actually is similar to a game of standard chess. With 3 dimensions, not 11. and the fact you don’t have a clue about understanding it, is no Little Big Horn.
joe from Lowell
@Dennis SGMM:
You mean that the party that controls the House of Representatives is going to influence the budget?
No kidding. The notion that there isn’t going to be any movement to the right – that any such movement is Obama “surrendering” – is silly. Of course the Republicans are going to get a pound of flesh; they control the House of Representatives!
You’re right about one thing, though – the difference between what happened under the last Congress and what is happening under this one (for instance, the $38.5 billion in budget cuts) is large, and painful, and tastes like a shit taco.
E.D. Kain
@General Stuck: Who am I pandering to?
joe from Lowell
@General Stuck:
UR not doin it rite!
;-)
E.D. Kain
@John O: So the “beginning” of the retreat was in reference to this particular administration. I don’t think Obama has been running from the GOP until now. But with the recent comments made over “historic cuts” – yeah, I think he’s beginning to retreat into the language of austerity, etc. Obviously liberals in general have been on the defensive since the early 80’s.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@OzoneR:
“At what point do we hold our elected officials accountable for their bad compromises?
when the American people stop asking for bad compromises.”
I actually agree with this assessment. Pretty much everyone here isn’t wild (to say the least) about the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the caviar-for-breakfast crowd, but this compromise didn’t hinder an upswing of public support for Congressional Dems and Obama after the lame duck session.
As well, weekend polling shows the Dems and Obama reaping policital gain from the budget compromise.
Unless you’re Dictator for Life (TM), you have to make your mmoves with an eye toward the optics. As someone who identifies as what passes for a soc1alist in this country, I’d love for Obama’s calculations to give weight to my views and tell the Boehner-lead House to go jump into a lake of fire. But the fact is, on a wider basis, these moves played well. But if the public can be convinced to give the gavel back to Pelosi, so much the better.
Dennis SGMM
@Zifnab:
Someone on another thread (And I apologize for not remembering your nick) observed that Obama spent several years of his early political career as a legislator. The fact that he was dealing with occasionally-sane Republicans back then may be hobbling him now.
Elia Isquire
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Smart post. I think you’re right both on how important taxation was and, more interestingly, on how central the great wars–and the general collectivist/nationalistic ethos of the time–were towards creating an environment like that. But I’d also add having a long, long period of significant poverty and more open class tension.
The whole New Deal Era really is a bizarre blip in western history, and in many ways we’ve since returned to normalcy (and are continuing to do so at a breakneck speed). But the only thing that I think makes it a bit more complicated is the fact that unlike any time prior, people of this era remember (if not personally than culturally) that bizarre New Deal blip; and even many people who are nominally conservative actually buy into it on the whole. So I suppose there’s reason to believe we won’t end up back at 0…probably more like 3. Yay!
Joe Beese
@E.D. Kain: .
He formed the Catfood Commission in January 2010.
He’s not retreating. He’s emerging.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Zifnab:
Help me out, here: you want Obama to wield the veto – on general principles?
Edited to add: The counter argument can be made that Obama hasn’t had to veto anything because he’s been effective (so far) at letting Congress know what it can and can’t deliver to him.
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM:
No, no, no. Zifnab isn’t Nick. That’s OzoneR. But I can see how that could become confusing.
/\
Dennis SGMM
@joe from Lowell:
They sure do. But how does that mean that Obama’s rhetoric should shift from jobs to austerity? It seems to me that the Democrats, starting at the top, have once again relinquished the narrative to the GOP.
OzoneR
@Dennis SGMM:
No they didn’t, they never HAD the narrative to begin with.
Dennis SGMM
@Corner Stone:
That’s mean. Just because I’m old doesn’t mean that I should be the butt of jokes. :)
Maude
@E.D. Kain:
Ever hear the phrase kill them with kindness?
It is a good politian that compliments the opposition. It doesn’t give the opposition a club to beat you with.
The Repubs can’t call Obama a taz and spender.
Obama is not talking about austerity. He is talking about the parts of the budget that have been funded for years and are a total waste.
There, and I don’t mean you, seems to be a real problem that the US people don’t understand that Obama is polite.
A lot of times, polite people are taken for doormats.
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM: I agree completely. It means you should die destitute and with no dignity left under some crumbling bridge somewhere outside the view of decent Americans, you old goat.
Now git! I said git!
joe from Lowell
@Dennis SGMM:
The comment of yours I was responding to was
This wasn’t a comment about rhetoric, but about policy – or at least, I read it as such.
On the subject of rhetoric, I think we’ll still have to wait and see what Obama’s strategy is. So far, we’re talking about one late-night speech that was a response to a specific deal. We’ll see where he goes in the debt limit and 2012 budget fights.
That said, there really is a long-term deficit problem, and the solution really will include some spending restraints. (The ACA efforts to bend the curve of Medicare spending, Pentagon spending, corporate welfare, especially of the oil and agricultural varieties). Obama can’t just push straight back against spending restraint – he needs to be a credible deficit hawk in order to sell his own budget plan. Which we’ll be seeing Wednesday.
Bob Loblaw
I question why it is that we’re supposed to just extrapolate current voting patterns forward and assume it will all work out demographically?
What if conservatism, not reactionary sentiment but actual conservatism, is what we get after so many decades of fucking people over? What if, after having so much debt and so much shit laid on their doorsteps by our previous and current leaderships, the upcoming generations embrace a far more modest form of government instead? What if there’s resentment for the frailties and poor decisions of their elders? What does the economic/political environment look like then?
General Stuck
@E.D. Kain:
The ideologues of the left. The fringe of the left. However you want to state it. Your article is nothing much more than an aggregation of about every vacuous talking point we have read here at BJ, or about any where else from the netroots the past two years.
The pandering charge I make, is made simply comparing the distance traveled from the ideological starting point you made here from your first post, now to the fringe left. And they are the fringe. And it is too far to go under an honest examination, imo.
That is not a knock on them, the left, as I agree mostly with them on issues, but certainly not on factoring in the politics of our sausage making, and the glaring realities of the cold cruel numbers of making that sausage. Nor the other glaring omission of the fact we are in a democracy, and the wingnuts one man one vote, is equal to yours and mine.
And I won’t even go into the third dimension of political universe, likely the most important, and that is the always watching voters, that don’t agree with us on the left and send their reps to DC make it a contest, rather than an exercise of passing liberal leg. Your take is one dimensional the way red meat is made.
Mitch Guthman
@General Stuck: But of course! This seeming moment of triumph is really the wingnuts last stand. This would be kind of like the Barbarians who made their “last stand” at the gates of Rome, just prior to sacking the city?
And, of course, who could forget those foolish Indians gloating over their seeming victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Now, at first glance, Custer may have looked like a complete moron who was in over his head and about to be massacred but that’s only because some foolish people couldn’t perceive that he was only waiting for the Sioux to get overconfident before launching his brilliant, devastating counterattack. And that is why, today, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is also know as Sitting Bull’s Last Stand.
“Meep, meep”
E.D. Kain
@Maude: they can and will continue to call him a socialist tax and spender.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Elia Isquire:
Yes, I agree. Certainly compared with the 19th Cen. US, FDR’s era is starting to look increasingly like an exception to the rule.
I also think that both the Left and the Right have their own sets of blinders on when they look back selectively at that era and see what they like about it while ignoring the rest. Collectivism has both good and bad sides. From the Left we admire the sense of economic class solidarity amongst the poor and middle class, while forgeting that it was also an era of cultural domination by the male WASP elite to a degree we would find unacceptable today. The breakdown in collectivism has been accompanied by a loosening up of cultural authority which we tend to discount, not seeing it as another aspect of the collectivist ethos of that period.
The Right looks at that period and sees precisely the opposite: they hark back to that era with nostalgia because of that cultural hegemony (which they view as a feature, not a bug) while ignoring the economic aspects. Ironically both sides look back to that era as a golden age, but from opposite sides of the fence. But from the standpoint of a student of cultural history, I think those aspects of the period which the Left and the Right respectively fetishize were too tightly interwoven with each other to be selectively edited out as a basis for constructing a new utopia, from either end of the political spectrum.
General Stuck
@Mitch Guthman:
By Golly Man. I thinks you get it. Though more like a last stand at the gates of Hooters. You won’t find many wingnuts abreast of action at the real front. With all that actual fighting and dieing silliness. That is for the National Guard they will send instead.
Elia Isquire
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yeah I agree. You know how Real Men Go to Tehran? Well Real Libtards Fetishize The First Decade of the 20th Century.
Brachiator
Yeah, Custer was expecting reinforcements, too. Didn’t work out too well.
This idea seems to be, “We’re the Democrats. We don’t do shit. But save us because we’re the only game in town.”
I’m still not seeing what’s in it for the demographic calvary, especially if the GOP starts making mischief over immigration reform and the Democrats continue to “compromise” by doing nothing.
But damn, some liberals are stubborn. “We got no fight in us anymore. Please, demographic calvary, come save us.”
It’s getting sad. It’s less a Big Tent than a Big Intensive Care Unit with feeble liberals hoping that someone arrives with a miracle cure. Maybe it’s time to just pull the freaking plug.
E.D. Kain
@General Stuck: you obviously did not read the whole post. Nor have you followed my writing for the past two years to see the exact ideological journey I have made.
Elia Isquire
Obama can talk about austerity as much as he damn wants. I’d love if he didn’t, and I think the President sometimes CAN effect how ppl view these things…but the chance to do that was in the first year of his presidency and it’s certainly not now.
And he can make some cuts to medicare, too, if he absolutely has to in order to get a bunch of good shit. B/c it is a bloated program that needs some reform. I’d rather we just raised taxes and cut military spending and left it alone, but people in Hell want ice water etc.
All those Reasonable Caveats aside, however, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react positively to a Democratic president proposing cuts to medicare and social security. He hasn’t done it yet so I’ll try not to be too emo…but I really hope he doesn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain: Or he has and he thinks you are pandering. You might not be, but that does not stop other people from having their own opinions.
Bob Loblaw
@General Stuck:
There it is. If I was going to pick one sentence to sum up Stuck’s entirety as a person and a thinker, that’d be the one.
You’re like a real life Little Carmine from The Sopranos.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh gimme a fucking break. Are you new here? Stuck doesn’t care about anything except someone might say something ever so slightly negative about Obama. Everything he writes is constructed around that truth. If he feels compelled to offer up his own criticism, it’s delivered in passive voice and qualified seven ways to Sunday.
But no, suddenly Stuck is a motherfucking internet scholar. Geez.
Elia Isquire
@Omnes Omnibus:
Disagree.
General Stuck
@E.D. Kain:
I did read your whole article.
Well, admittedly, “pandering” is a highly subjective term, but that is just how it struck me. When the article begins with and uses such terms as “retreat” and “capitulation” those are the magic words from the liberal blogs crowd. It is red meat to them, concerning Obama. But that is just my first impression reading your article. I have a lot of problems with it otherwise, most of which I’ve covered with my comments here the past couple of weeks on the budget issues. I don’t really want to rehash those point by point right now, because Wednesday, we are going to get a fuller picture of what Obama is up to in facing off with the wingers and Ryan’s budget.
General Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
.
Oh piss off, it’s only the fact your are a fulminating idiot, that couldn’t make a cogent argument if your life depended on it, and that is why I seem to you an internet scholar. Though I could be, if I wanted to take the courses.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
Someday loblaw, we can only hope you grow a sense of humor, and not a blog gadfly that flits from one thread to the next looking for the shit. Or causing it. It seems to be your only purpose on this blog, and so far the only aptitude shown.
General Stuck
@General Stuck:
Impressive, parroting the blog owner. You little toady you.
Bob Loblaw
@Mitch Guthman:
Yes, I think we all can appreciate the unique beauty and skill of the Native Americans’ victory in the long war. Wait, what?
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
Jesus Christ, not this again. This is like Homer Simpson banging the TV and saying “Stupid TV, be more funny!”
joe from Lowell
The Republicans’ Incredible Shrinking Budget Cuts.
They sure did eat Obama’s lunch, getting those
$100 billion $74 billion $58 billion $52 billion$38.5 billion in budget cuts.Hermione Granger-Weasley
Nice.
DougJ and EDK gang up to concern troll Obama and the dems with a Forbes.
EDK already link whored this post on Cole’s Pissed Off post.
If we lose, this is the reason. DougJ just wants to be liked.
May I remind you, Obama and the dems FUCKING PASSED HCR.
The GOP threw everthing they had against it.
And it passed, just like civil rights passed, against the same oppo team.
Are you still trying to make up for trolling the LoOGies, DougJ?
Is this part of your penance?
I for one forgive you.
It was epic.
;)
johnny walker
@General Stuck:
@General Stuck:
I love it. Let’s be frank: you are constitutionally incapable of acknowledging that anyone could ever have a legitimate complaint about Obama or the Dems. In your mind, people are either praising the Dems or working to tear them down, either secretly or overtly. What is so hard about granting that your opinion isn’t the only one out there and you don’t necessarily know everything? Are you so full of despair and self-doubt that you can’t ever allow yourself to say something like, “You know what? You might be right.” You can even qualify it, ie. “…though I doubt it,” or etc. It’s really not that hard– you might think the patronizing, overbearing know-it-all routine represents some show of strength; it doesn’t.
Have the Dems made mistakes? You’ll admit that if pressed under the right context but then you’ll turn around and say anyone else who points out those mistakes is ‘pandering.’ Get a grip Captain Obsequious; sometimes people are just noticing facts. Your almighty Pandering Charge is powerless in the face of the actual, real-life, verifiable facts of the things the Dems have screwed up, promises they’ve broken, and regressive/conservative/etc. policies they’ve continued over the last couple years.
And btw, just in case you’re readying your I Require Citations Ray, spare me. The screwups, shortcomings and broken promises I’m referring to are all things you’ve acknowledged the existence of in other threads in the form of explaining why they were wise and proper. You might even be right! (See how that works?) But the thing is that despite your secret identity as Captain Obsequious, your Reasonable Pragmatic Explanation of Why This Was The Only Possible Course of Action still isn’t actually potent enough to explain things out of existence entirely.
General Stuck
@johnny walker:
Does this mean you’re cancelling my newsletter? Well, now I will just have to go have a good cry, and find a way to go on. Would you like a purple plastic Unicorn?, they are free for 99 dollars shipping and handling.
OzoneR
@Citizen Alan:
yeah…I’d rather he act like an adult and not get bogged down in childish divisive bullshit. Someone needs to be the head of state. He’s not there to make me cum my pants with excitement because he yells at mean people on the teevee.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain:
who ever you are talking to at the moment.
Right now you here to pander to the firebaggers and Obamabashers and link whore. You are concern trolling Obama, just like Larison and Douthat do.
You pandered to the organized labor people like Kay.
You pander to the LoOGies and your fellow free market fucktards.
I have seen you pander to the birthers and socons too.
That is what i got banned for, membah?
For calling you out on that?
You said you cant persuade people by telling them they are wrong, you have to befriend them.
You may be DougJ’s old friend.
But you aren’t mine.
arguingwithsignposts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Not that you’d ever try that strat, m_c – you bottom-feeding threadjacking stalker.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@arguingwithsignposts:
muwahahahaha
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: hawhawhaw
there is no “ideological journey”. You turn on a dime like a fucking weathervane.
The only consistant position I have seen you hold in FOUR years is freemarket fucktard and panderer.
Yeah DougJ, I get it. ABT.
Won’t you feel a teeny bit of remorse if baiting me like this gets me banned again?
General Stuck
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Dontcha think you kind of made your point. It looks like blog stalking when you cut and paste the same comment over and over at the end of threads. This could be a moment of maturity for you Matoko, if you so decide to take the mission.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@General Stuck: lawl, i thought that AWS comment was epic.
oh….did you mean this one?
and no it isn’t stalking. Pardon me, but I have been stalked.
it is TROLLING.
ABT, liek the Master said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: No, not new here, but thanks for noticing me.
@Elia Isquire: I see what you did there.
Joel
I think I’m going to cite Stillwater’s post from the other thread for the forseeable future. Not happy about the outcome, but can’t see how I would have done better.
Suck It Up!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2010/12/07/presidential-press-conference-tax-cuts-and-unemployment-extension
Here ya go. Start at 25:00
dogwood
@Joel:
Yeah. You know people people are frustrated and hating Obama is a natural reaction for some Democrats. Liberals around here are a pretty intelligent group, but I wonder sometimes if we buy into that “most powerful man in the world” crap that feeds some type of nationalistic ego gratification, but has no meaning in the real world. The White House is hard to come by for Democrats. To win we have to have great candidates, and then we expect a lot because who knows how long before we’ll get another chance. Think about it; to win we need charismatic, articulate, charming Rhodes Scholars and Presidents of the Harvard Law Review, and then we hold our breath and hope it works. Republicans run one lumpy sack of potatoes after another and that’s acceptable to the American people. When your party’s most beloved president is an aging actor with dementia, the bar is pretty low.
Mitch Guthman
@General Stuck: Interesting, possibly very deep but somewhat difficult to decode. Is this your clever way of saying that my criticism of Obama is foolish because I am limited by my linear logic and so I just don’t understand that he truly groks that the way forward is not through conflict? That because he can hear the sound of one hand clapping he knows that he can achieve ultimate victory by continually losing?
I mean, are you being like totally zen or maybe you just didn’t notice that a small animal was walking on your keyboard as you were typing?
General Stuck
@Mitch Guthman:
Mostly totally Zen. Sometimes in politics you have to lose a little to win big. And there is a difference between what is said and what ends up happening. Compromise is not evil, nor unusual in a democracy. If you kneejerk that it is losing, then you are trapped and controlled by linear logic. Just like someone earlier in the thread bleating out that long hardfought liberal legislation was being destroyed by Obama. Of course none has been. This is the problem with the netroots borg reflex, and terms and words mean everything. Some news is reported that Obama said something positive about compromise with the wingers, and before the day is over, he has sold out SS and medicare, and gawd knows what else.
There is nothing about that, that is honest criticism.
dogwood
@General Stuck:
It isn’t just the netroots, Sullivan does the same thing. Within hours of Ryan releasing his budget, Sully was demanding a response from Obama and calling him a coward for his unwillingness to tell Americans he too wanted to screw poor people. Math and the bell curve demand it, you know. Since Sullivan didn’t show much interest in the budget negotiations, I guess he assumed the president wasn’t busy. With Sullivan and the netroots, the madness is different but the method is the same.
General Stuck
@dogwood:
Sully is a republican. He’s supposed to oppose Obama and dems. Just because he voted for Obama and claims to want him to succeed doesn’t change that fact. It does make him sound a little weirder than most, however.
General Stuck
@General Stuck: @dogwood:
I will give Sully credit. He did a little mea culpa when it was announced that Obama was going to propose new tax cuts for the rich, and by acknowledging that, made himself more of a loyal democrat than many of our progressive friends who haven’t and didn’t acknowledge it.
E.D. Kain
@General Stuck: I think I took pains to say that I disagreed with many of the harsher critiques of Obama, and that the primary challenge would be political suicide. My main concern – one that I repeatedly write about – is surrender of narrative. Not compromise in and of itself.
Church Lady
@schrodinger’s cat: But doesn’t the CPI exclude both energy and food costs? Been to the grocery store or filled up your gas tank lately? Those puppies have shot through the roof in the last year and other consumer prices are starting to follow.
dogwood
@General Stuck:
Sully’s not a citizen; he doesn’t vote. Sheesh. Go back and read his shit on DADT and how the president was selling out. He can teach the netroots a few things about how to overreact to Obama’s every word. Good grief, he a charter member of the OBOT society. “Know Hope”
General Stuck
@dogwood:
he certainly is a spaz on Obama, and about everything else. He sure gets on teevee a lot for a foreigner. It is easy to forget he is a British Tory light wingnut. But he’s no Jane Hamsher. Okay, I just blew my own mind. Time for bed.
El Cid
The Los Angeles Times has a very significant article on this matter for tomorrow’s paper.
It suggests that much of Obama’s speech will in fact be on distinguishing Democrats’ approach from a Republican approach.
What actually happens is a different thing, as it always would be. But if the article is correct, it seems like a positive turn. A strong turn, if it happens.
I don’t see how something like ending the Bush Jr. tax cuts on $250K and up can happen now or soon versus the inability to let them lapse so far. So I am concerned that such a call is more about a popular call than an actual policy to be pressed.
But the post here was on the rhetoric, so it’s more relevant.
General Stuck
@El Cid:
I would suspect these are the official pre leaks of speeches from the WH. It is and will be all rhetoric, or near that until the election. We are in full campaign mode, and the only thing this is meant for is triangulating with the voting public over what the nihilistic wingers are planning for the debt ceiling and next years budget. Which all of it has a singular bullseye on the ACA, when the curtain is pulled back.
El Cid
@Church Lady: A big difference between such inflation is that CPI represents stable and longer term trends — trends based on actual spending habits by Americans as revealed by large sample size research.
Such a use of the term “inflation” is not the same thing as a more casual use of the term.
Still, certain fuel expenses are in fact included in the CPI.
El Cid
@General Stuck: Of course these are the official pre-leaks from the WH. That’s how the story exists. These releases are also intended to serve as a gauge for public & elite reaction, since a particularly negative reaction can be dismissed as being based on a misunderstood or draft program discussion.
dogwood
@E.D. Kain:
I understand your point, but the narrative was surrendered long ago. I think you’d get less criticism if you understood that what Democrats need to do is “recapture” the narrative. Rhetorically, Obama tells a great story about this nation. He repeats those themes over and over, but it doesn’t get reinforced among the rank and file. Great politicians are great storytellers. The netroots and Democrats in general think you win elections by having detailed policy plans and convincing voters how those plans will help them. This is fine , but it won’t work unless it can be tied to some positive narrative that people can feel good about. I’m actually one of the more optimistic people around here because I think the Republicans are losing their own narrative as well. It’s going to be hard to turn the Paul Ryan budget into an uplifting story about who we are as a nation,
johnny walker
@General Stuck: Yeah, that’s about what I expected. Seems your go-to response to any substantive criticism these days is nonsensical, inscrutable snark. You aren’t even trying.
You aren’t gonna let m_c continue her reign as the board’s resident supertroll/thread derailer supreme are you? She’s cutting in on your gig.
General Stuck
@johnny walker:
You are nothing more than a drive by troll, that flaps it’s gums and says nothing. I been dealing with that kind of bullshit for years now here, and you just aren’t very good at it. But you do get some kudos for typing comments while giving yourself a a reach around. That is something at least. Otherwise, yawn. Crawl back under the bridge you lurk in. you are booring.
edit – and go read ABL’s newer thread on just how idiotic you firebagging fools are always wrong, and were on the recent budget deal. Obama capitulate, my ass. morons.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@johnny walker: I’m not the resident supertroll.
DougJ is.
/makes respectful obeiance to the Master
Mandramas
Homo homini trollus
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: i lurve how EDK thinks MasterTroll DougJ is promoting him and agreeing with him when its really just a kill box.
What a maroon.
If EDK had any nads he’d go comment on ABL’s post.
ATTENTION JUICERS
Now why do y’all suppose Official Obama Concern Troll EDK has not made an appearance on ABL’s thread to scold us about the undignified ideological rout and crushing humiliation that we liberal surrender monkies just experienced?
Because ABL would be wearing his guts for garters in 10 sec flat.
buk buk buk
chicken!
/hermione flaps her elbows while prancing around EDK
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain:
srsly?
Allow meh.
You sound just the same.
G’wan, go comment on ABL’s thread.
I double dawg dare you.
;)
BombIranForChrist
I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but one day, one day someone will listen.
As long as you keep rewarding these compromising fools with votes, they will see no reason to stay the course.
This is what happens when you base your entire voting strategy for 30 years on “Well, at least DEMOCRAT X is not CURRENT GOP BOGEYMAN Y”.
But I guess I’m just spitting in the wind.