DallasDoc, (one of the great, great contributors on this site) as many of you do here, pushed me into yet another moral dilemma the other day that started my wheels turning again, seeking answers as to President Obama's real agenda, vs. his rhetoric and actions to date.
Doc said, (I'm para-phasing) that President Obama is not going to lead, and he doubted that President Obama could even be dragged into leading, and I could not agree more. The question for me is why, and what will that cost be to our nation and our party in the long run. What are the repercussions of allowing President Obama to play out his continued duplicity, that he somehow honestly believes, no one is noticing?
BTW Doc, I hope it is A-OK, if I used your phrase here. You really (as we Southerners like to say:) Whopped me up side the head, and I for one love that kind of dissent and debate.
Doc made me realize that there is a deep blind spot we are all refusing to see as a party, and I believe that blind spot is staring us right in the face, and many of us, who are watching this national economic catastrophe (the Shock Doctrine) take place in front of our very eyes, are still in deep denial as to who President Obama really is and who he is working for and what he truly represents. I know others here are saying 'they always saw it coming,' but I for one, was willing to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt over and over again, until it became exceeding clear to me that he is in fact enabling the Republicrat/Corporate agenda to continue in the dismantling of the New Deal, and the final destruction of what is left of the working poor and the Middle Class of this nation.
First and foremost: I refuse to believe the President Obama does not understand the full significance and power that he holds of having the Bully Pulpit in the White House. That is total bullshit. He certainly understood it when he ran for perhaps the longest campaign (18 months) in our nation's history. He certain understood exactly the words and promises he was making and he certainly understood when he gave the following speeches:
http://www.barackobamaquotations.com/
I refuse to believe anymore that President Obama is capitulating; I refuse to believe anymore that President Obama is caving; I refuse to believe anymore that the 'fake filibuster' is anything more than a tool being used by both parties to concede our Middle Class to a state of deep destruction; I refuse to believe that when President Obama put the Cat Food Commission front and center, instead of a real Job's Commission, that it was anything more than his real agenda to begin with; I refuse to believe that when President Obama, Timothy Geithner, Larry Summer's and Ben Bernanke's plans have been all along to 'above all costs protect the Banks' when millions of people are being throw out of their jobs and homes at the expense of what Bush/Paulson/Rubin/Greenspan and Wall St/the Banks have done (ruined the national and international economies of the World) and that the laws of this land, are being ignored and disobeyed, as Wall St/the Banks and the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate America continue to loot our treasury with little, if any true over site, transparency or accountability.
To continue to believe the President Obama does not know exactly what he is doing is a delusion, and worse than that, it is to ignore how much this is going to cost our party and our nation in the end. President Obama knows exactly what he is doing, and it's high time for all of us to face up to that ugly brutal truth. And I am most certainly not the only Democrat that feels this way, I can assure you.
Nearly half of Democrats, according to a recent Associated Press poll, would like Obama to face a primary challenger in 2012. By a count of roughly two to one, Obama supporters do not believe he'll deliver on his promise to bring change to Washington. A third of Democrats do not think the president will be re-elected. Few expected the political climate to change so drastically, or for Obama to be facing a revolt within his own ranks, in just two years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Americans across the board (regardless of party affiliation) are furious, and they are furious for good reasons. The laws of our nation have become meaningless, but it is now taking on a much sinister and deep reactionary quality, and this is where the rubber meets the road, because in the end, when the Democrat Party Platform was trashed, and thrown out (the Working Man and Woman's Party...as close as we would ever get to a Labor Progressive Movement) then all bets were off.
When 75 percent of the entire population wanted a Public Option, and a return to Glass-Steagall on Wall St., and were literally spit in their faces by both parties, all that tells me is that we have reached a level of such deep critical corruption, (which Obama refuses to acknowledge) that in the end, President Obama is in fact yet another a wolf in wolf's clothing, trying to pass himself on as the new 'Hero of the Middle Class' when that was a lie to begin with...a lie.
So stop this bullshit meme...that President Obama is caving or capitulating. If we can get to that 'space' in our brains, then perhaps we can move forward again, and understand the real truth: Our government is in a deep deep state of chaos and the last person we can depend upon is President Obama to use the 'bully pulpit' because in fact, he simply does has no intention of doing so, nor will he be dragged kicking and screaming to that same bully pulpit. Holding his feet to the fire is a delusion, that just ain't gonna happen folks.
In recent days several center-left blogger/columnists have suggested that progressives should be happy to cut a deal now on Social Security and other issues related to the budget. The argument is that the cuts being put forward by the commissions are not that onerous, they don't involve privatization, and we could be facing much worse in the future.
While politics always requires compromise, this position misreads the economic and political landscape in four important ways.
1) The problem of the moment is unemployment. This really is a disaster for large segments of the population. That is not just a talking point.
- The bad guy in this story is Wall Street. The financial sector is a cancer on the economy. This is precisely the moment when we should be on the attack, not running for shelter.
- Health care costs are the real problem. This is not cheap rhetoric; health care is what needs to be fixed.
- The overwhelming majority of the non-pundit population agrees with us.
The current economic situation really is a disaster for tens of millions of people across the country. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. For most of these people, every day is a struggle to support their family and hold onto their home. The projections do not show any substantial improvement in this situation for years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
To honestly believe that both parties are not aware of these 4 points that Dean Baker presents, is again, another delusion. To honestly believe the President Obama and the Democrats, are not being emailed, written letters or being called on the phone daily one these 4 points for the past several months is another delusion.
In a brilliant op-ed published in the LA Times immediately after the midterm elections, longtime educator and organizer Marshall Ganz observed that Barack Obama "entered office wrapped in a mantle of moral leadership. His call for change was rooted in values that had long been eclipsed in our public life: a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity. Those values inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement. Now, eighteen months and an 'enthusiasm gap' later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form." Borrowing categorical distinctions conceived by political scientist James MacGregor Burns in the late 1970s, Ganz (who played a role in mapping out the original organizing strategy for the Obama campaign) assessed that immediately upon becoming president, Obama abandoned the "transformational" model promised by his presidential campaign in favor of a "transactional" model. "'Transformational' leadership," Ganz explained, "engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. 'Transactional' leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo."
The nation was ready for change, but Obama picked the status quo. And so "much of the public's anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead." Ganz identified "three crucial choices that undermined the president's transformational mission": "First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. By shifting focus from a public ready to drive change—as in 'yes we can'—he shifted the focus to himself and attempted to negotiate change from the inside, as in 'yes I can.'"
As a result of these choices, Obama not only failed to convince the public that he can turn the economy around—the central axis upon which judgment of the success or failure of his presidency will turn—but also lost the confidence of many of his original supporters. Yet in his refusal to adapt the inspirational rhetoric of his campaign to his presidency, he allowed the forces of right-wing reaction to claim the mantle of the common man. They even managed to make it appear to most people as if the Democrats, rather than the Republicans, were the party in the pocket of Wall Street and the big-spending fat cats. That's a given. But the disappearance of the heroic narrative of the campaign and its replacement with an ongoing series of back-room dealings of exactly the kind Candidate Obama so eloquently condemned must be apportioned the lion's share of the blame. Imagine if young people and first-time voters heard their president sounding like the candidate who told his audience, upon securing the Democratic nomination for president, "We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. "A few days after the midterm elections, Van Jones spoke to a progressive gathering in Washington. After recalling the pageant of progressive performers who came to DC to celebrate Obama's inauguration at the Lincoln Memorial—which featured, among many others, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder, Pete Seeger and the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington—Jones reminded his listeners, "You had the full beauty of the American people, the full force of our culture on display.... None of those people quit the movement and joined the Tea Party. All that creativity, all that power, all that spirit, all that soul—it's still here. We went from We Are One to We Are Done.... Well, guess what? The days are now over when any of us can afford to wait for a politician in Washington, DC, to set the tone and the tenor and the face of our movement."
http://www.thenation.com/...
I cannot remember when another candidate in our party, was given, on a silver platter the most astounding mandate to carry out his 'Candidate Obama' agenda in the entire history of our party. President Obama has not simply squandered this once in a life time opportunity, but he has knowingly and willingly caused a huge chasm in own deeply fractured party, and he has also knowingly allowed the Republicans to steal the narrative (while hiding in the shadows of creating the horrifying Cat Food Commission, and not daring to draw even one single line in the sand against the Bush extension of the tax cuts for the same 'elite classes' that all have 'money in the rigged stock markets' as millions now face being cut off from Food Stamps and unemployment insurance.
Obama Wooing "Economic Royalists"
Friday 19 November 2010
by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
In his first term, President Franklin Roosevelt denounced "the economic royalists." He drew the line against the heartless rich: "They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred." What a different Democratic president we have today. For two years - from putting Wall Street operatives at the top of his economic team to signaling that he'll go along with extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy - Barack Obama has increasingly made a mockery of hopes for a green New Deal.
The news from the White House keeps getting grimmer. Since the midterm election, we're told, Obama has concluded that he must be more conciliatory toward the ascendant Republican leadership in Congress - and must do more to appease big business. Fifteen days after the election, The Washington Post reported that Obama - seeking a replacement for departing top economic adviser Lawrence Summers - "is eager to recruit someone from the business community for the job to help repair the president's frayed relationship with corporate America."
The last thing we need is further acquiescence to the economic royalists. What we need is exactly the opposite: leadership to push back against the Republican Party's right-wing ideologues and the forces they represent. We need principled backbones in high places - and much stronger progressive activism at the grassroots. In moral and electoral terms, the status quo is indefensible. Economic realities include high unemployment, routine home foreclosures, huge tax breaks for large corporations and widening gaps between the wealthy and the rest of us - in tandem with endless war and runaway military spending. Escalation of warfare in Afghanistan is running parallel to escalation of class war - waged from the top down - in Washington. The presidentially appointed co-chairs of the deficit commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, are pushing scenarios that would undermine Social Security. Let's get a grip on matters of principle. More and more warfare in Afghanistan? Extending massive tax cuts for the wealthy? Promoting plans to slash Social Security and Medicare? Pretending that "clean coal" is not an oxymoron? Failing to uphold habeas corpus and other precious civil liberties? ...The best way to fight the Republican Party is to stop giving ground to it. The best way to defeat right-wing xenophobic "populism" is to build genuine progressive populism. In the process, we can draw on the spirit of the New Deal. Back in the 1930s, millions of progressive activists - under all sorts of names - fought for economic equity, while FDR became willing to make common cause with them. Today, our scope of understanding has grown to include more dimensions of social justice and ecological imperatives. These days, progressives have plenty of reasons to feel discouraged. But we have a lot more good reasons to rededicate ourselves to the vital tasks ahead.
http://www.truth-out.org/...
DallasDoc talked about depending upon Nancy Pelosi, and other progressives to lead us out of the fray, but I fear it is way to late for this 'Hail Mary Pass' at all.
I suppose the false equivalency argument I hate most of all is this: At least we didn't get John McCain or Sarah Palin, but the truth is we are going to get wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy worse than that in the end. Now that Orange Tan Man Drunk Cry Baby (Wheeper of the House) is going to be in charge, there are going to be 'LOTS OF INVESTIGATIONS' and this is the lesson that we Democrats just keep fucking up over and over again. The Rules of Engagement have changed and they changed a very long time ago, but what we refuse to see coming (after Bill Clinton got blackmailed by the Savage Blackmailing Republicans and the Save Right Wing Supreme Court) was this which only proves to me again and again, not only have we been sold out by the Whores in our Senate, but by our entire government:
This is the best article I have ever read in my life, and I hope you have the courage to read the entire thing, before you start flaming me. Know this about me: regardless of who is in the White House, I have always been a deep, abiding loyal Democrat, and I always will be until I know, without a doubt, that our own party has been swallowed up and there is no other hope for the Middle Class of this nation, and that is the place I've finally found myself. Call it 'Mutiny on the Bounty' as a matter of fact, call it anything you want, but nothing is working anymore in our nation, and to keep pretending that President Obama and Clinton were not part and parcel of that entire event, is to lie to yourselves. Who is destroying our party? It was not me, and I know it was not you. Wake up and smell the coffee people, before it is way to late. I get you to read this great article and truth telling. The longer we refuse to face the truth, of the total Oligarchy madness that has overtaken our nation, and why: President Obama refuses to lead, the longer our pain will be. I suppose that is up to you, but I'm at least going to go to my own grave knowing I spoke out about it in the end.
There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal and the absurd. Universities prostitute themselves for corporate dollars. Labor unions are marginal and ineffectual forces. The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators. And the public, enchanted by electronic hallucinations, remains passive and supine. We have no tools left within the power structure in our fight to halt unchecked corporate pillage. The liberal class, which Barack Obama represents, was never endowed with much vision or courage, but it did occasionally respond when pressured by popular democratic movements. This was how we got the New Deal, civil rights legislation and the array of consumer legislation pushed through by Ralph Nader and his allies in the Democratic Party. The complete surrendering of power, however, to corporate interests means that those of us who seek nonviolent yet profound change have no one within the power elite we can trust for support. The corporate coup has ossified the structures of power. It has obliterated all checks on corporate malfeasance. It has left us stripped of the tools of mass organization that once nudged the system forward toward justice.
Obama knows where power lies and serves these centers of power. The tragedy—if tragedy is the right word—is that Obama, after selling his soul to corporations, has been discarded. Corporate power doesn’t need brand Obama anymore. They have found new brands in the tea party, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Obama has been abandoned by those who once bundled contributions for him by the millions of dollars. Obama and the Democratic Party will, I expect, spend the next two years being even more obsequious to corporate power. Obama clearly loves the pomp and privilege of statecraft that much. But I am not sure it will work. In Manuel de Lope’s novel "The Wrong Blood," set during the first rumblings that led to the Spanish Civil War, he writes "... nobody knew this at the time and those who had premonitions wouldn’t go so far as to believe them, because fear rejects what intuition accepts."
But the signs are now so palpable that even fear is not working. Our worst premonitions are becoming reality. Our intuition has proved correct. We are reaching the breaking point. An explosion, unless we halt the increased pressure, seems inevitable. And what is left for those of us who cannot embrace the contaminants of violence? If the system shuts us out how can we influence it through nonviolent mechanisms of popular protest? How can we restore a civil society? How can we battle back against those who will mobilize hatred to cement into place an American fascism? I do not know if we can win this battle. I suspect we cannot. But I do know that if we stop resisting, if we stop rebelling, something fundamental will die within us. As the corporate vise tightens, as the vast corporate system begins to break down with fossil fuel decline, extreme climate change and the expansion of global poverty, even mundane and ordinary acts to assert our common humanity and justice will be condemned as subversive. It is time to think of resistance in a new way, something that is no longer carried out to reform a system but as an end in itself. African-Americans understood this during the long night of slavery. German opposition leaders understood it under the Nazis. Dissidents in the former Soviet Union knew this during the nightmare of communism. Resistance in these closed systems was local and often solitary. It was done with the understanding that evil must always be defied. The tiny acts of rebellion—day after day, month after month, year after year and decade after decade—exposed to everyone who witnessed them the heartlessness, cruelty and inhumanity of the oppressor. They were acts of truth and beauty. We must take to the street. We must jam as many wrenches into the corporate system as we can. We must not make it easy for them. But we also must no longer live in self-delusion. This is a battle that will outlive us. And if we fight, even with this tragic vision, we will lead lives worth living and keep alive another way of being.
http://www.truthdig.com/...
Wow....thanks Chris Hedges for putting into words of truth that dare not be spoken, and thanks to anyone on this site that recognizes my own angst for the party I've loved all my life.
And BTW, thanks, DallasDoc for whopping me up side the head, and making me think deeply, and that is what I love most about my own party.....as I said in another post recently, that Bill Clinton said: 'When Democrats think, they win.
I had said in the same post that what I hated most about the Republicans is how they all walk in the 'Goose Step' and have one thing in mind no matter what the cost: Bring the Democrats down, get the power back, get the money back, and get the fascist, Karl Rove/Goebbels fake Christian perverts gay bashing misogonists back in charge.
The moral cost to our nation and our party by President Obama refusing to lead, will be felt for decades to come, regardless of how you want to spin it or deny it. The Corruption was allowed to continue in all aspects of our government, and regardless of what you wish to think, this point to deny that is utterly incomprehensible. The Clinton's never left the White House, and they never will, and that is why Howard Dean was destroyed by the MSM.
That is the exact same reason, that Congressman Alan Grayson was destroyed by both parties. He was the one person, that was smart enough, brave enough and the guts and courage, to not only stand up for President Obama, but went after Wall St./the Banks like a crazed Ferret on Acid.
Which of course reminds me of how Robert Kennedy had the courage to go after Jimmy Hoffa. You get it yet?
My questions are many. Most of all, I ask you as my fellow Democrats, if all we have left is to 'cower in our beds at night' hoping they do not come after 'us' next, when you are sure to lose your jobs, which are never coming back, and which will probably lead you to an illegal 'foreclosure mill' that probably will not be upheld by our own Government, then what do we have left?
It is time to think of resistance in a new way, something that is no longer carried out to reform a system but as an end in itself. African-Americans understood this during the long night of slavery. German opposition leaders understood it under the Nazis. Dissidents in the former Soviet Union knew this during the nightmare of communism. Resistance in these closed systems was local and often solitary. It was done with the understanding that evil must always be defied. The tiny acts of rebellion—day after day, month after month, year after year and decade after decade—exposed to everyone who witnessed them the heartlessness, cruelty and inhumanity of the oppressor. They were acts of truth and beauty. We must take to the street. We must jam as many wrenches into the corporate system as we can. We must not make it easy for them. But we also must no longer live in self-delusion. This is a battle that will outlive us. And if we fight, even with this tragic vision, we will lead lives worth living and keep alive another way of being.
http://www.truthdig.com/...
An act of truth and beauty. That is how I've always thought and believed my own party was all about in the end. My party, was filled with diversity, and truth telling, that big tent that included and welcomed all Americans who were willing to fight for the 'golden city on the hill'....who believed in one true dictum:
We would stand by the party of the Working Man's/Woman's party, the party of the Unions that built this nation, and where, I ask you has that gone?
Before you start, immediately flaming me, I want to all take a long deep breath, and think about what I have said in this diary, to know this: Like you, I took a 6 month leave off of my regular job, to elect President Obama, OK? Let me remind you of this...I'm not the only one:
Nearly half of Democrats, according to a recent Associated Press poll, would like Obama to face a primary challenger in 2012. By a count of roughly two to one, Obama supporters do not believe he'll deliver on his promise to bring change to Washington. A third of Democrats do not think the president will be re-elected. Few expected the political climate to change so drastically, or for Obama to be facing a revolt within his own ranks, in just two years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The real truth of what is going on in our nation, is like going out to a frozen tundra of Siberia....it makes us cold in our hearts, we want to turn away from it, we do not want to believe this is happening in our nation, but it is.
Why isn't President Obama leading, and why is it that we cannot face this horrifying truth that is staring us in the eyes? Believe me, I wish it were not so, more than you know.
At the heart of what is going on in our entire International and national destruction is being played out all across the world: How Wall St./the Banks corrupted and got away with stealing trillions of dollars, and no one................................no one, is being held accountable. And in the end, all that did was to hold off the pain, that 'we the people' are all now paying for over and over and over again.
You can, I suppose dress it up anyway you want to: It was legal, it was both parties fault, it was an accident, no one knew, but everyone in our nation who is suffering knows different.
Dare to know the truth? Where all our money is going, the only place where our youngest and brightest can get a job? The Silent Draft...The Military Industrial Complex, and how many have died to date, the Oil for Money battle?
"EVERY morning I wake up and go looking for dead people," says Michael White, a computer programmer from Stone Mountain, Ga., who publishes the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths and injuries among coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is grim work of trolling through news sites and official releases about each episode, assessing the reliability of those accounts and then entering the details about the wounded and killed into a database.
Mr. White, 54, has done so since the 2003 invasion of Iraq — "when everything was flowers and chocolate," he said. Yet he had a hunch that events might not continue so smoothly.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
We, as a party are in for the fight of our lives. Are we up to it? Can we admit the truth? Can we admit that President Obama is not leading and why he is not leading? Do you believe that we can 'drag him kicking and screaming' into not dismantling the New Deal that FDR put into place? Do you actually, I mean really think, based on his actions to date, what is now coming down the pike?
Again, no one in this history of our party was given the mandate he was given, and now, we are going to faced with 'Clinton on Steroids.' It wasn't that President Obama was not up to the job, or that he didn't understand the job, in my view, he knew what the job was going to be in the first place and he kept 'hiding in the shadows and smoke and mirrors...sending out trial balloons over and over again' hoping that no one noticed in the end, that he never meant what he said in the first place. Go ahead, blame it on the bullshit 'Filibuster' are the crap-o-la Nuclear Option. There are no excuses left.
I want to ask you this honest question. What do you think that will cost our nation in the end, let alone our fragmented party?
Because in my honest opinion, I think President Obama's actions only prove one thing to me: He never wanted to be a real player or leader, he never expected to be a two term President, and now what we are facing is the worst possible reactionary politics of all:
President Mitt Romney, the Rev. Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, or the Dancing with the Stars Gizzley Momma of them all: that fucking idiot from hell: Sarah Palin.
I'd like to end this diary by saying a great Happy Holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) to all the Americans that went to the polls, that are now living on the streets, and their cars, that are about to have their food stamps and unemployment benefits cut off at the knees. The feckless Whores of the Senate, would not even vote on that issue before they took off on their Gulf Stream Jets, for the Cayman Island, where all their money is hidden.
Corruption always hold a great price in any nation, and now we are living that lie, and until we are a people stop letting 'them' divide us, and destroy us, with the 'DECOYS' we will never get it, and they will continue to destroy a great nation, the great experiment that has been allowed to turn into just another third world dump of the fully and critical globalisation, that President Obama refuses to lead, but I think we all get that by now, don't we?
Thanks as always. I welcome this debate, and I would like to remind you of a great idiom my own Union believing Irish Dad taught me, that brought me down to civility every night at our dinner table, when he insisted that we all have, what he called a 'Moot Court'...to take both sides of the argument. I learned a lot from that one lesson. He said, remember this: "Be an advocate for your country, never take it personally, think about how the people of this nation will pay in the end when our leaders refuse to do so, and be prepared to say these magical words: 'We can agree to disagree.' Years and years later, I finally have learned that single lesson by dad taught me: That is what the Democratic Party has always been about, which is the exact opposite of what the Republican Party has been about.
Ms. B.