There has been a lot of complaining about the complaining going on in liberal circles lately. Those of us who unabashedly call ourselves "liberal" are feeling pretty sour about how most of the last two years have gone, and we have been voicing our displeasure about it more and more. The typical response to this is
that we are whiners, or we don't understand politics, or we are unrealistically idealistic. In the comments thread of a recent diary on this very topic one member here was explaining how politics shouldn't be emotional, that is to say, it's a man's game, or heaven forbid, "Man Up". The diarist's point was that only the final score counts, and because they kept a level head and voted logically, "We won the White House".
Normally I would agree with a call for reason over emotion, but I think we are quickly approaching the point where that particular piece of logic is demonstrably false. "We" won the White House in the same way that "We" won Eastern Europe in WWII. Just because someone is putatively an ally, does not mean that they are on your team. If Leiberman had won the nomination and the Presidency, would we still feel that "We" won the White House? Would much be different? Sure, I don't harbor a desire to see this President twist his head back and forth around an axis centered on his nose to see if St. Bernardian slobber will fly every time he speaks, but that's a subtle difference based on an affectation that is likely held by relatively few other people.
In '08 I went to one of Pres. Obama's rallies. I followed his campaign closely. I signed up for his text messages (which I rarely read anymore). I know what he promised. This President and that Candidate have very little in common. Back then, health care reform WAS the public option, Gitmo was a travesty, as was Don't Ask Don't Tell, and raising other country's perspective on and opinion of the United States was critical. The score? Public Option: No. Gitmo: Still open. DADT: Still in effect. Diplomacy and Trade: Improved, but one must be concerned when a South Korea on the verge of war with its neighbors to the north, and who is thus desperate for our military assistance, still feels no qualms about telling us to go Vitter ourselves during trade discussions.
Winning the White House now seems like a pretty shallow victory to me. Pres. Obama has been both devisive (though that is primarily manufactured) AND ineffective (entirely of his own accord). This does not a winning combination make. Further, had candidate Obama announced before the '08 election that Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers would constitute the Wall Street outsiders he planned to bring in to his administration, then I would have had my great concerns about his true philosophy confirmed. Instead, I suppressed them and voted for him, both on the hope that just maybe he was the candidate that he purported to be and because it was about damn time that we had a President that was not a privileged white man. (I'm sorry, but the spouse of a former President simply does bring the gravitas of fundamental change as does a man whom, not many years earlier in many parts of the country, would not have been allowed to eat in the same restaurant as said spouse.) I voted for progressive, liberal, change. Had I known then what I know now, I may well have cast a different vote.
I know, I know, voting in your enemy or just not voting because you are unhappy with your own candidate is a brain damaged thing to do, right? I become less sure of the wisdom of that philosophy every passing day. If we forget about the fact that McCain's running mate would have probably been the most dangerously stupid VP in history, let's play "what if" about him winning the '08 election.
What would be different? DADT? Nope. Gitmo? Nope. Afghanistan? Nope. Healthcare? The public option would at least have been debated on the floor of the congressional chambers before being voted down or vetoed.
If McCain was President this past November, Democrats would likely still control the House and have picked up a super-majority in the Senate. This because the true tea-partiers hated McCain and they wouldn't have driven the narrative of the last election. Even if they had it would have been in the form of Republicans defending their President and their incumbents from TP attacks, and the movement couldn't have been co-opted so successfully.
McCain would have done 1 of 2 things: He would have swung back to being the moderate he once was and some actual bi-partisan efforts may have taken place in congress
or he (more likely) would have veered far right and we would have ended up with a super-majority in the Senate this past November. Creating the possibility that everything on the list above really could have been accomplished.
So while all of us on the left have a tendency to try to find common ground, one that makes us instinctively resist fighting and draws us to cooperation, I think the logic that winning and keeping the White House (and buried our discontent in the process) somehow makes prostituting our values a reasonable trade-off is fundamentally flawed. Because of this, I think it is not only acceptable, not even correct, but imperative that we express our displeasure at every given opportunity. Without it, change is dead.
I am an optimist, I haven't totally given up hope on President Obama. He has done some good in terms of the handling of bailouts and financial reform, though I still feel he has too many of the people who caused this economic disaster sticking their fat little fingers in the pie containing the medicine. But he is making it very difficult to keep the faith, especially since no opportunity to screw him over for his efforts to cooperate with the other side is ever squandered (see yesterday's Senate minority letter). Further, it makes him look weak, and naive, and maybe a little bit dumb. Seriously, the likes of Mitch McConnell and Agent Orange have managed to make this President look dumb.
In order to win me back, and many of the other liberals that I know, the President must start taking a firm stand. He must recognize that at some point cooperating crosses over into conspiring. I acknowledge that there is more than one side to the culture of America. But we are your base. We elected you, not the other side. And it does not matter if you run to every single Republican household in the country and shit a dozen Faberge eggs on their kitchen table for Christmas, you will never get their support. Never.
The President has an opportunity to regain our support and maybe get the other side to take him seriously right now. Both by showing the requisite leadership to get the bill providing tax cuts on the first $250,000 of every single American's income passed in the Senate (and describing it exactly that friggin' way, over and over and over again), and by issuing an executive order, as is his right and moral obligation as Commander-in-Chief, to immediately abolish the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Today. Right now. Mr. President, if you do those two things you may win back many of us that you have lost. The ones that could have kept the house in this past midterm had they felt that that candidate was in the White House today.
UPDATE:
DADT Went down. +1 Mr. President.
Tax Cuts? Well, an extension was passed. An extension of ALL of the Bush tax cuts. (-1) Negotiating this with the opposition the Dem's, in order to give the Republican's everything they wanted, had to sweeten the deal by pounding the first nail in Social Security's coffin via the Payroll Tax Holiday. (-10) If this is how it works when we have the majority, hell, I just don't see the point in voting for Democrats. Seriously. A payroll tax holiday. In addition to everything the R's wanted. I'm surprised it didn't come with a Federal ban on abortion and mandated school prayer. I guess we have the next 2 years for that though.