A reflection, in light of these words, on those who have characterized Barack Obama as "weak" or a "sell-out":
Ahem.
Wake the hell up, you craven, tactically clueless fools.
This man has principles, and character, and spine. Today he put everything on the line to protect the American people from the disastrous delusion of Republican economic theory. He said it out loud: Maybe this'll help you beat me in 16 months, but for right now, you can't make me move. I'm not going to let you kill the United States of America so you can keep shoveling money at the rich. I shall not be moved.
Obama is more moderate than I am, but to be honest, I'm sure he's a lot more INFORMED than I am on the issues he's making decisions on, and so his decisions are probably better ones than I imagine making in my abstract theorizing from the comfort of my computer chair. That applies to all you armchair quarterbacks here at DKos, too, much as I loveya.
Undermining this President with nitpicking and fault-finding and paranoid conspiracy theories has zero effect but to hamstring the only damned horse we've got to ride. He's doing the hardest job in the world at the absolute hardest time to do it, with a phalanx of certifiably insane opponents ready to render our money worthless and our families homeless for the sake of advancing an economic theory that has been proven false.
More below.
And he has delivered: far more than I expected, because I had no idea just how good a tactician he was. The fact that there was an HCR bill at all, for example,
is a miracle. Just ending the preexisting condition horror, all by itself, is something I never thought could survive the lobbying juggernaut in Congress.
So to those of you who get off on trashing the man because he didn't do what you imagine you would have done in his place--not knowing in the least what that place is like--I say, to hell with the little thrill of smugness you feel when you congratulate yourself for being so much smarter and purer and more moral than those nasty compromising politicians.
Get over yourself. We don’t have the luxury of that kind of self-indulgence at this time. Pull up your knickers and deal with the fact that we have to get our hands dirty. When genuinely deranged—and evil, let’s actually say the world—people are trying to take us back to robber barons and sweatshops and child labor and coat hanger abortions and Jim Crow and environmental devastation and a free pass to assault gay people, this guy has held the line, and has actually moved the ball FORWARD on most of those issues.
Partial victory is still victory, folks. It’s still progress, and if you’re a “progressive”, that’s what you’re supposed to be about, not bitching about everything that isn’t as perfect as the imaginary world in your mind.
Barack Obama is a man of character, and thought, and tremendous political skill, and values genuinely committed to the interests of the ordinary people of this country, and its future. We are unbelievably lucky to have him, because a leader like him hasn’t been seen in this country for a generation.
Give him a goddamned break, and get his back. He deserves no less.
/rant