So first off, I want to say fuck you Mr. Aravosis.
As I've said before, I think having this accusation come from friends on the left does not position Obama to the middle, as some in the White House might hope. No president is helped when pundits start, and keep, discussing whether or not he's afraid to do his job.
He wrote that from this.
But it's another thing entirely when Ms. Thomas herself says that Mr. Obama "lacks courage."
There was a gasp in the crowd when the veteran reporter, who's covered and stuck her thumb in the eye of 10 presidents from her front row White House briefing room seat, made that comment yesterday at a San Francisco Commonwealth Club Q&A.
I was the interviewer and it rocked me a little, even though I'd read that Ms. Thomas' close friend, Abigail Van Buren ("Dear Abby") had once said, "No one is to the left of Helen Thomas."
We all know the Left is pissed at the President these days for everything from warmongering in Afghanistan to great gay rights speeches without action.
So I went looking and found the quotes.
Shortly after that, she offers her take on our nation’s 44th president.
"He’s disappointing me. He has a conscience, but he doesn’t have the courage to do the things that he should have - which is single-payer, on medicine," Helen says of Barack Obama. "Nobody in this country should lack for medical care. We have 47 million people who don’t have any insurance and medicine. And that’s shocking."
(Single-payer health care is an approach to health-care financing with only one source of money for paying health-care providers. On Wednesday, President Obama rejected the single-payer model, citing instead one that would preserve private insurance companies, while offering a government-run option.)
I want to add this clafification: Someone asked below why I'm taking this personally and I want to emphasize that I had no problems with Ms. Thomas' quotes and actually think it's an important discussion to have. I didn't have a problem b/c it was clearly about policy and political issues and differences; political cowardice. The Americablog quote is about the man and that pisses me off. He can do his job. And no one is calling him a coward reasonably for how he's going about it. Frankly, it's Liz Cheney rehtoric and it pissed me off hence this post.
Okay. So Obama is a coward and lacks courage for not going to bat for single payer; despite having said during the campaign that while he supports it and thinks that's best he doesn't feel it's in any way viable politically.
From there, Aravosis talks about how people are calling Obama a coward. How this is something that keeps coming up with him. Do you know why? Because motherfuckers like you activily push this meme. So what? President Obama is going to be a coward until he ends DADT? DOMA?
Listen.
The President has continued many of President Bush's power grabs and we saw that coming with FISA. And DADT and DOMA is something every progressive should be screaming about; not only to Obama but Pelosi and Reid (who has an election in 2010 and is someone progressives have actual possible leverage over). But this coward bullshit has to stop.
Why?
Because he's not a coward; he's a fucking politico and I don't remember progressives, liberals, democrats or what the fuck ever calling Bill Clinton a coward for signing DOMA.
I always feel like I shouldn't say anything in comments b/c I don't post frequently on this board and I'm not an activist. I send $20 through ActBlue when I see something at KOS and I phone banked for Obama. That's pretty much it for me. But you know what - when the progressive community lost Prop 8 in California it was on the campaign that was chosen. But you know what happened, some went casting about for someone to blame and they blamed blacks.
Now, there's a smarter fight in Maine. I bet it's a win. It feels like things are clicking. But let's not forget, progressives has been losing a hella lot of fights for a long time on LGBT issues and hell across the board during Bush years. And in 2004, LGBT issues were a wedge issue just as black civil rights was a wedge issue for a long time. This is a minefield that the President has pledged to cross over b/c he stands with this community. I read on Americablog that DADT reversal is in the works.
But still, the president is a coward?
Instead of pushing back on this, Aravosis reaffirms it in his post. And you know what, bullshit. Because a coward would not stand up and give that speech at HRC. A coward wouldn't have gone farther than ANY president since Roosevelt in fundamental progressive reform of health care. (As folks demanded he give specifics or send legislaton he followed his plan and now Congress has bought into reform so it's a congressional defeat too providing greater leverage that something will get done.) A coward would not have pulled us back from the brink of a great depression. A coward would not have called out Israel for their settlements. A coward would fear looking weak at all costs and would have hammered Lieberman.
Barack Obama and his team have made mistakes. But they've been mistakes he's recovered from fairly easily. Agree or not, he's made the hard decisions: the automakers, the stimulus, the bankers, the pirates, and now here he is doing a complete review of Afghanistan which Ms. Thomas is pissed over too.
"He’s going into Afghanistan, and he’s broadened the war. He has not learned the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq," says the veteran journalist, who currently writes a column for the Hearst Newspapers syndicate, and whose new book, Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do, will be published in the fall.
"We should not be there. To put U.N. peacekeeper forces there would be fine. But to get involved in another no-win war?
"Afghans know every cave, they know every stream, they know every mountain. It’s their country."
So, I fundamentally disagree. Iraq made us take our eye off a country that had hit us on 9/11 and we're starting from jump again. We have to make the decision all over on what to do and it's a complicated issue.
I appreciate the president and his team for working through this issue.
This post isn't about asking folks to clap louder. It's not about defending the president. I guess at the heart, it's about the netroots. We need to exert pressure to accomplish our goals; but that is best done targeting Congress, not the White House. The most successful effort I've seen is Firedoglake targeting House progressives. That moves votes, legislation, and affects change. And best of all, it's all toward helping achieve what the president camapigned for, what he wants, and what corporate interests that have captured Democrats are standing against.
Tearing down President Barack Obama and using a third party to do it is not helpful. It doesn't furthur gay rights, constitutional rights, any legislative goals. Calling him out for breaking promises, doing what folks like Greenwald do IMO is great. But this bullshit just makes me see red.
It's petty. It's wrong. And god damn it, it's giving the village a quick and dirty hit on a president they're gunning to take down. From the right, or the left.
It makes me furious.
This president is what we've got folks. Breaking him locks the door to progressive policy.
Why the fuck else did the right try to break Clinton? They're doing it to Obama now too, and some liberals/progressives/what the fuck ever are just echoing the attacks. I don't know why.