Over the past couple of weeks it's been getting worse. Everyday it seems like there's a new pair of competing diaries from the usual suspects doing the rhetorical equivalent of beating each other about the head and shoulders with an inflated bladder and pouring whitewash down unsuspecting trousers. They seem to range from the hyperbolic disaffected to the outright condescending. We all need to calm the f*ck down, stop beating our chests and think for a d@mn minute.
It is disingenuous to suggest that Obama is a Republican.
It's clear that our lives would be measurably worse if we still had Bush or had been saddled with McCain. A Bachmann presidency should scare us. A Romney presidency should worry us. A Perry presidency should do both. If Republican intransigence and stupidity is overwhelming now, imagine having a president that wouldn't even insist on the distant possibility of eventually closing tax-loopholes or letting some of the Bush rates expire. Where would we be on DADT, DOMA, ACA and a host of other issues? Obama is not a closet Republican.
It is just as disingenuous to think anyone who's disappointed is a Republican. Or a racist.
See, at the same time that Obama isn't a Republican, he isn't a Progressive either. He's actually downright dismissive of progressive ideas. You may think that his stance is pragmatic, but there is plenty of room to be disappointed both in the rate of progress and plenty of reason to be fearful that there won't be any progress at all. Obama himself has said that he regrets not selling his successes well enough, and I'm not going to contradict him. But you have to understand that there are many who feel completely ignored after buying into the lofty rhetoric of 2008. You can't tell people that , yes they can, then expect them do be happy when your new answer is either 'but not now' or 'never mind.'
Both positions are flawed.
It is patently clear that Obama feels he cannot support populist progressive positions because of the intractable opposition of moneyed interests. He wasn't about to do single payer and collapse the existing health-care market, ok? But it's more than that. Corporate controlled media wouldn't even mention Grijalva's budget but treated Ryan like a hero. We all know about how Weiner compares to Vitter, Ensign et al and how IOKIYAR. We all know that the minute Obama is for it, the Republicans hate it. We all know that there are Blue Dogs in this world of ours that are more beholden to principal than principles. So what's the deal? He's weak. He's a pragmatist. An institutionalist. He's playing fourteenth-dimensional chess. Give me a break.
Obama is trying to do the best he can for the greatest number he can while having to keep the real movers of power from collapsing our society like they did to Greece. He's trying to keep the leaking, listing ship of state from sinking due to economic downturn while avoiding the icebergs of multinational corporations, world banking and opportunistic political brinksmanship. We need to stop b!tching at each other and calling each other names (I don't care if you think Hamsher is hamfisted and ill-spoken, but Krugman hates Obama because he's Black? Really?). We need to stop being surprised that a politician is beholden to money, media and the credit rating agencies (and stop pretending that we're going to just cave when we don't get all we want).
If we want to have a better deal from our government from this debt ceiling fiasco, we've got to stop this bull. FDR had to be forced, remember? What are we doing to force Obama? Ad-hominen attacks on our fellows? Suggesting that we're all going to sit this one out? We may not have the time to quit the crap and avoid a bad deal on the debt, for now, but we don't have to just give in either. We need to rally together, rise up and fight--not Obama or each other--but against the established elite (interests like Koch, ALEC, and NI) that make it impossible for our preferred solution to be the pragmatic one.