I think it is way past time to have this civil and honest debate in our own party. We can do this, we know how to do this without destroying each other on this subject.
Let's all stop pretending at this point in time that finally President Obama has drawn a line in the sand, but it's not exactly the line in the sand we thought it would be, is it?
As we come down to the wire, there is a great deal of posturing going on, by the 'very good soldiers of the Democratic party,' that are all doing their their all time best Kabuki Tango to 'Sand Bag' the fully cracked and broken levees before the great deluge and total destruction of what we will soon be calling, The Former Democratic Platform.
God bless Senator Bernie Sanders for coming out and saying that what is going on by the President is a 'crappy deal,' but that is the least of it. It is not just a crappy deal, it is in fact the destruction of our own party, our principles, and who we have always stood for in this nation. In fact, what is going on is nothing less than Grand Larceny on an epic scale, government style.
David Dayen had a fantastic article up recently about what is really going on here and unfortunately, I could not agree more with him:
This is really the President pushing his own party into the trenches to be shot.
David goes onto talk about how he received an urgent notice from the the DCCC, the campaign arm for House Democrats:
I need your urgent help. Republicans are gearing up to enact their radical plan to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, women and people with disabilities.
At this moment, Speaker Boehner is crafting a deficit deal that would gut Medicare and Social Security, while slashing benefits for seniors and the middle class in order to make sure he protects tax breaks for millionaires. This is unacceptable and House Democrats will not stand for this.
We need to show our strength on this issue with one, unified voice — and time is critical.
Sign our petition right now and join me in telling Republicans that Social Security and Medicare cuts are off the table. We refuse to let Republicans balance the budget on the backs of seniors, women and people with disabilities while supporting tax breaks for millionaires.
http://news.firedoglake.com/...
Excussssssssssssssssssse me, while I try to reach over and take the newest knife out of my back from the DCCC. Past is prologue as they say, and this to me is nothing more than the crappiest CYA effort of all time.
If there is one thing we have certainly learned about this President is it this: He knew he was lying and he did it anyway.
Drum roll, and cue for the apologists: 'But you knew he wasn't a progressive, or, the GOP 'MADE' him do it, or he inherited a mess, or you don't understand how politics work, or the President does not have a magic wand, etc...etc...etc and of course the most ridiculous of all, that is the only fucking thing left at this point: But what about the future of the Supreme Court? When we know damn well that President Obama appointed William Daley, formerly of JP Morgan as his Chief of Staff. Yes, the excuses are running very, very thin and know we know where we stand, don't we?
But the good news is this, believe it or not: President Obama has finally, finally drawn a line in the sand, and we know exactly who he is and what he stands for now without a doubt.
One of the very best diaries I have read in a long time is brooklynbadboy diary: http://www.dailykos.com/...
2. President Obama has no political ideology.
Seriously. There isn't anything President Obama believes in so rigidly that he's willing to murder someone over it. No deep core beliefs. He has no political ideology. He's said so himself on multiple occasions. People close to him say so. President Obama has no dogs in the hunt. He is flexible, malleable, and seeks consensus wherever consensus can be found.
He believes that ideology is unhealthy. That doesn't mean he's a robot, of course. He has values, many of which we share. It's just he isn't willing to hold fast to those values when an opportunity for consensus arises. This fits neatly into his "post-partisan" schtick. President Obama is a Democrat, but only because he has no choice. You can't get elected without a major party and he has no chance in the Republican Party because he isn't a right wing nutcase. But he seriously sees himself as separate from ideological politics. That's why he doesn't engage in things like being a party builder. Obama Party is his party. A party of non-ideological, non-partisan, consensus builders who are in favor of things getting done in an orderly non-political process. Technocrats.
Obama is not a public executive type leader, out front of the issues and storming the country. He's a consensus building legislator, deep in the smoke filled back rooms, negotiating deals and slapping backs. He doesn't like public discussion about government policy. He likes private discussions that lead to public announcements, which is why he's been harder on leaks than any president in recent memory. You wont find him storming around the country, stemwinding and barn burning. You'll find him in the White House, inviting all interested parties for private meetings and negotiation sessions. So using public pressure and rallies are futile. He doesn't respond to the passions of the populace. That wouldn't be responsible. That we be called "sticking your finger in the wind" and he hates that sort of thing.
And btw, thanks so much bbb, you rock !!!!!
But in fact, the very last thing that we needed in this nation, and in our party needed was a 'consensus builder, or a President that believes in secret back rooms deals (that do not even include many in our own party) and most of all a President that truly believes as I do now, that as bbb states:
That's why he doesn't engage in things like being a party builder. Obama Party is his party.
And that, is incredibility dangerous and should be the only thing 'on our table' as far as I'm concerned as a loyal Democrat for over 45 years.
I am way over people telling me, giving me excuses for this President. I am way over people that make statements like: 'Well, he's a politician, what did you expect?'
And let me tell you why I'm over that:
We all know who destroyed our nation from Reagan, to Clinton to Bush, there is certainly enough blame to go around. What I will not accept is for any Democrat on this site to tell me that President Obama did not run on the back of the Middle Class and Poor, who he is now willingly and has always been willingly to ignore and now is about to destroy.
But in that destruction, let us remember this: The American people have already paid the greatest price: Because there has been absolutely NO ACCOUNTABILITY for the destruction that the Bankers and Wall Street people are still getting away with, because there has been absolutely NO ACCOUNTABILITY for the illegal and continuous wars (oh what? You really thought we are going to leave Iraq?) There are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, their homes, their pension funds, their retirements and the equity in their homes, and what?
Now you as a Democrat are going to willingly stand by and watch a Democratic President destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?
Once that bell has been rung, it cannot be unrung, ever. And the ever loving truth is that as bbb says: 'the Obama Party is his own party.'
Don't confuse the two, ever. Because if he takes our party down, and it's platform, then he will take the rest of the Democratic Senators and House down with him. Make no mistake about that. Apparently nothing at all was learned from the 2010 elections, and indeed we now have right in our face as to the most profoundly Democratic reactionary president to date, only guess what? Surprise, surprise, he keeps caving, and we keep making excuses for that.
How is that working out for you? Just read another great diary, and dare to call it 'despair porn,' by laurustina: http://www.dailykos.com/...
This diary just broke my heart, but this is happening all over our nation. To deny it is simply unforgivable.
And in my own opinion I am sick and tired of anyone daring to call out the clear fear and despair in our party and all over this nation as hyperbole. How fucking dare you? Making excuses for this President or our party, is absolutely disgusting, disgraceful and should no longer be allowed at this point.
What is now going on by our President is nothing more than absolute Oligarchy/Plutocrats coming after the final tiny bit of money left for the Middle Class and poor.
It is nothing more and nothing less than the final end of the Shock Doctrine and Grand Larceny on an epic scale, and it is in fact, the very end of our own party.
The good cop/bad cop crap that is going on in Washington DC has played out to the max, because regardless of what the American people are demanding, no one gives a shit anymore. We want JOBS.....crickets....We want the endless wars to end...crickets, We want President Obama to stand up for the Unions, DADT and DOMA....crickets. We want Wall St./the Bankers to be prosecuted....crickets....We refuse to allow Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table....crickets....We demand financial reform that matters....crickets....We demand that our Senators vote for the endless Corporate funding to their own campaigns....crickets, We demand the return to the end of the Imperial Presidency and to stop the Patriot Act....crickets... We demand that this fucking feckless President stand up for the final destruction of our own party platform.................crickets.
The point of this diary is not to cause a new epic pie fight, but to open up a new dialogue that we should be considering and not be closed down to: case in point:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview this week that President Barack Obama facing a primary challenge from the left could serve to "enliven" the race for the White House in 2012.
In an interview on New York-based radio station WNYC, Sanders tamped down speculation that he might be considering challenging Obama himself. However, he then went on to endorse the idea of the president having to defend himself on Democratic turf.
"But if a progressive Democrat wants to run, I think it would enliven the debate, raise some issues and people have a right to do that," Sanders said. "I've been asked whether I am going to do that. I'm not. I don't know who is, but in a democracy, it's not a bad idea to have different voices out there."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And what is so wrong with that idea to you, as a Kossack? To as Senator Sanders says:
'Enliven the debate, raise some issues and people have a right to do that.'
I fail to understand why, we as a party are so afraid of welcoming that debate, and worse, to not understand what we are about to lose if we do not do that. Again case in point:
In a provocative essay, James Poulos lays out another possible future. It's deeply counterintuitive. He argues that the existing tea party can appeal to the whole political spectrum if its leaders and rank-and-file have the will to make it happen:
Democrats have not been so disillusioned with a sitting president of their party since Robert F. Kennedy ran in 1968 to unseat Lyndon Johnson. Liberal confidence in the most basic principles of Democratic rule have been shaken to the core by Barack Obama's intensification of Bush-era policies that even divide the right. The left cannot field a challenge to what increasingly strikes good-faith liberals as the rule of a corporatist police state. The Green Party is a husk. The radicals are a rump. Outside the right, there is now no viable political alternative to Obamaism -- the greatest partisan disappointment in generations.
But until Republicans make some fundamental changes to their party platform, the left is prepared to accept from the Democratic Party many generations of abuse and depression. This is why liberal elites are deep into a crash program to hardwire the public mind with their caricature of Tea Partiers as a virulent, violent fringe peddling moral hatred and social suffering. At the present moment, it sounds farfetched to say that only the Tea Party can address this concern in a way that can attract liberal voters to Republican candidates. But does it sound any less farfetched to say that establishment Republicanism can gain the support of any liberals worthy of the name?
http://www.theatlantic.com/...
Yes, indeedy 'There Will Be Bamboozling As President Obama had said' and I believe most of us, have finally gotten that message. The real question here is who the hell is really getting Bamboozled, isn't it?
The time for so called 'tough love,' has passed. This President has been fully proven to be a tool for the Corporate elite, the Neo-Con, and Neo-Liberals who are knowingly and willingly destroying our nation and now our Party Platform.
The so called, 'keep your powder dry,' and 'he's got it covered,' and 'he's playing 11th dimensional chess,' is all full of shit, and you know it.
So I would like to offer up my own Primary challenges, to President Obama, and of course none of them are perfect, but that is not the point: The point is that President Obama had very little experience, and so why should we not offer up a better candidate at this point in time to push him way back into the Democratic Platform? Why abandon that at this point in time? Or don't you get that?
1. Al Gore (the former, put a Lock Box on Social Security, Inconvenient Truth about Climate Change Candidate who the Right Wing Supreme Court Stole the Election from).
2. Russ Feingold
3. Howard Dean
4. Alan Grayson
5. Bernie Sanders
6. Jack Reed
7. Sheldon Whitehouse
8. Elizabeth Warren
9. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
10. That last choice is up to YOU.
Again, the point of this diary is not to start a epic pie fight, that is your choice, my choice is to have an honest and open, and way over due debate that we need to have.
In my own opinion, it is incomprehensible and unforgivable to not let this honest debate happen in our own party. It it way past time having it, and if you dare to call me a 'pie fighter' than take a look at what you are about to lose with this President:
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and then dare to tell me what is not on the table.
The point of a primary for any President is to move him back to his own parties roots and to let him now, without equivocation where we expect him to go, and what we expect him to adhere to in our own party platform. Otherwise, how in the hell do you expect that is going to happen?
As my old Uncle Jack used to say: You lay down with dogs, you will get up with fleas. And now that we have been fully infested with the Rethugs fleas, we can pretend we have not, or we can get up and fight for the final Shock Doctrine, that this President has signed on to.
No more happy talk, no more pretty pictures, no more, pretty speeches. President Obama has finally, and I mean finally drawn a line in the sand, only we know very well, where than line has been drawn.
Only now it is time for us to draw our own line in the sand, isn't it?
What do we have to lose? Everything, our Party Platform, our new Banana Republic and worse than that, our ability to even allow dissent and a civil discussion in our own party, and that is simply unacceptable to me as a Democrat or an American. That is where you, if you will not refuse to be open to this debate is who you are going to look at in the morning in the mirror to be cowardly enough to say:
'Not only did I shut down this debate, I shut down other Democrats in this debate, and I still dare to call myself a Democrat, and protect this President who is knowing destroying the New Deal, of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, on the back of the weakest: the poor, the disabled, the children, the unemployed, the Unions, and all for the sake of keeping the endless wars going, and to keep the corporations and Banks/Wall St. robbing us blind.'
That is your choice, but it is not mine.
I can see very, very clearly what is going on in our nation, and by this President. It is all coming down very soon from more 'back slapping bullshit behind the scenes deals,' which is exactly what this so called bullshit, so called transparency Presidency has always been about.
I know exactly who the hell is getting Bamboozled. The real question, is do you care about it? How much more fucked are you willing to get? Because here it comes.
We can see clearly now, because this President has finally drawn a line in the sand. He is the King of all the Blue Dogs, and we got it now, don't we?
In final summation I extend these two great quotes by my fellow Democrats:
This is really the President pushing his own party into the trenches to be shot.
David Dayen
and from bbb:
That's why he doesn't engage in things like being a party builder. Obama Party is his party.
What are you going to do now? Put them on the new 'enemies list,' or can we all pretend to be real Democrats, and not let this new amazing Transformational President be held accountable for where he is leading us?
Yes, I love to believe and think we are all 'serious adults here, and reality based community,' but not when we can see who the hell is pushing us off the cliff, and calling it politics as usual. If you can give me one decent reason why we should not primary President Obama, at this point, I welcome that honest, civil debate. I am not looking for a fucking pie fight. What do we have to lose? Everything. I think we all finally got that memo.
Thanks as always.
Ms. B.