Yeah, you’re going to get blasted, even though you’re right. The problem is that you can’t effectively fight with someone who’s legitimately crazy, because they’re willing to do stuff that sane people won’t. Your only option is to not play at all, but in this case, the crazy people have real power, and so disengaging from them completely isn’t an option. The only ones who can marginalize the Tea Partiers are what passes for moderate Republicans, and they’re so shit-scared they’ll get primaried and lose their jobs that they won’t do it.

Excellent post, Amanda, and the analogy to worrying about your hair falling out when you have cancer is perfectly apt. The general “pox on both houses” idea that is flogged by the so-called liberal media and absorbed by way too many uninformed observers, while not completely lacking in merit, remains possibly the most pernicious development in the political discourse and the fundamental reason why we are staring disaster in the face right now.

No matter what you think of Obama, it’s utterly foolish to believe that things wouldn’t be immeasurably better if these Republican fuckwits weren’t in office. And it’s also indisputable that things would be immeasurably worse if McCain had won in the first place. Stimulus, even a too-small one? Fuck you, spending freeze. Supreme Court justices? Fuck you, the slutty sluts can forget about what remains of their basic human rights.

I’m pretty much upset with Obama for putting Geithner and Summers and other banisters in power.  I’m mad that he’s been silent at the erosion of women’s rights (though I like the stealth birth control stuff that came out this week). I’m horribly disappointed in the man for wasting his capital.

That said, would we be better off if mcCain had won?

Don’t make me laugh, I just had surgery!

I wonder if we’d even be here if McCain had won.  He’s such a rootless flip flopper.  He would have put another Scalia on the court, and Palin would be VP. 

Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize because it was such a relief to the rest of the world that the US stepped away from the crazy.

We need better Democrats, and that’s no lie, but the GOP is stark raving nuts.  Theocratic fascists right there at the gates.

Obama gets my vote.  Not going to donate again, but I’m certainly not going to let crazy assholes burn the world down if I can help it.  Maybe it’s back to voting against the worst instead of for someone I want, but there it is.  He’s not getting primaries by anyone decent, so he’s the one.

“I do think he’s failed repeatedly to present his best game in negotiations with Republicans.”

And the reason for this is Obama continues to try to negotiate with the batshit crazy Republicans as if they are serious, intelligent lawmakers with the best interest of the country at heart. He also seriously underestimates the general public. He seems to think that your average person will see that the tea bagger representatives are really the ones holding the country hostage with their angry, vengeful, culture warrior politics. Instead, he gets the media claiming their is blame on both sides and Democrats whining that he’s not liberal enough. I cannot figure out how anyone thinks he can get a liberal agenda through a Congress with this many lunatics in it. Does it suck that we have to take what we can get from Obama? Yes. But please take a moment to consider what would happen to this country (especially your civil liberties to be something other than Christian, white and straight) under president Bachmann before you vow not to vote next year.

I live in such a safe Blue state that I might protest my vote and cast it for a progressive. But that’s a huge privilege and if I lived in any state that might be a close election, I wouldn’t risk it. In high school, when Bush Sr was in office, I heard all of the lefties around me marveling “I didn’t think it could get worse than Reagan.” I was honestly amazed that it could get worse than Bush Sr.

I really do not want to see what “Worse than Bush Jr.” will look like.

One thing that is very difficult to consider is this. We *need* to control the costs of Medicare and all other forms of health care. Right now, we’re projecting ungodly amounts of spending on them. I’ve seen it said that the US government spends more on health care, per capita, than any other nation *including those that are single payer or equivalent*.

What that means is, the US government, by spending what it spends *right now* on health care, would, in any other nation that has universal health care, be able to cover its entire citizenry. All the money we (and our employers) spend on health insurance, co-pays, etc.? That would be leftover money.

Is that true? I don’t know. Is it close to true? I don’t know. But I know we’re approaching that point.

So, we have to spend less money on Medicare and Medicaid in the future, than we would, if things continue as they are. That is: we have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We were going to spend X trillion over the next Y years; we need to spend less than X trillion, by doing what other nations do to hold down total costs while getting better outcomes.

And that complicates the situation, because it means a wise plan to control our spending will include “cuts” to Medicare and Medicaid. The question is whether it will be through cost controls and elimination of care proven not to help (or harm), or whether it will be the Republican plan of “shift the cost to the individual (which, whether the Republicans like it or not, means “don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly”).”

Obama definitely recognizes this, and thinks he can use the Republicans insistence on holding the debt ceiling hostage to force them to accept a better deal than they would if it was negotiated without that pressure. So far, he *might* be right. The Republicans sure realize that if they tried to push the Ryan plan, they’d get creamed.

And I agree that this does put Obama in the category of letting the debate shift rightward, but I don’t agree that it’s his fault. There needs to be a strong grassroots movement pushing the debate leftward, so that he doesn’t have to stick his neck out, and get lambasted by every rightwing talking head in the universe. He needs better cover. He needs to know that people who support discredited right-wing ideas won’t just generate angry blog posts, but letter writing campaigns, boycotts, and so forth.

My problem with Obama is that he not only gives away the store in negotiations before the negotiations even start, but he also buys in to the terminology and debate framing used by the right.  I can either believe, then, that he is unwilling to stand up for what he believes in, or he actually believes the crap he says.  He’s a torture enabler, because he shut down investigations into Gitmo and CIA rendition sites right off the bat, in violation of our treaty obligations, even when he was newly elected President riding a wave of popular enthusiasms.  He seems to value compromise more than anything else. 

That said, the reason this country is in the shape it’s in is, in fact, because the Republican Party has let itself be held hostage by its craziest, most ignorant wing.  John Boehner simply cannot control the lunatics he’s supposed to be in charge of, who have convinced themselves that the debt ceiling is a communist plot or something.  The party created this monster and now it can’t control it anymore.  For all their flag waving, these people do not love their country—they love the version of their country in their heads, a version in which people like them have all the power and those liberal welfare-queen brown people have none, and they are willing to destroy their country because it doesn’t match the one in their deluded little brains.

Great post.  As you say, it doesn’t matter, but Theory #2 is pretty silly.  When the Dems had both houses of Congress, they passed, and Obama signed, a much larger quantity (both in volume and impact) of progressive legislation than Clinton did when he was in the same situation.

Marcotte’s point in the morning post was that an economic issue is being twisted into a cultural issue by cofeda-rethugs; Obama is one of them blacks who likes to partaaay like its 1999… on Aug 3rd.

I think that’s true and also reflects the number one conflict in US politics - the most important long game at least since FDR - where the right wing uses racism and culture wars to divide and conquer the working class vote.

But I would still say - where’s the eloquence now? Bust out some of that 2008 sweet talk, Barry. He could’ve spent the whole month flying around the US, filling up stadiums with his base (aka - us) simply stating the facts but in his inimitable way.

Instead he’s hunkering down and triangulating. As much as I didn’t like Clinton (buhbye Glass Steagull Act, hello banksters!) I think he was still better at this kind of brinksmanship.

It’s like the Democrats are a permanent ruling party in the way they behave. Yet they’re mostly a minority party in reality. Even when the rethugs are in the majority, they pose like they’re the wounded minority.

Should anyone wonder how much worse it could possibly be, I have three words for you:

President Rick Perry

If the thought of that doesn’t make you crap your pants, then nothing will convince you how much worse it can (and might) get. I have no idea what will happen next November, but assuming Obama is a shoe-in to get re-elected because the Republicans seem too far out of the mainstream is incredibly naive. Look at the number of teabagger kooks that got elected last November, people that none of us on the left thought could possibly get elected. The most frustrating thing about all of this is that I’m seriously beginning to wonder if there’s a secret coordinated effort among the Wall Street barons to keep unemployment high until the next election, because that’s the one thing that can and will cost Obama his job if it doesn’t come down.

If unemployment is still over 8% on November 6, 2012 and Rick Perry is the GOP nominee, I’m probably going to defect. If there’s anyone who could make George W. Bush appear a lot more moderate than he actually is, Rick Perry is that man.

Yes, I am most definitely afraid of the possibility that the neanderthal governor of Texas could become our 45th president in January 2013.

LHW:It’s pretty much true. The problem is that all that waste? Actually employs people with well-paying pretty cushy jobs. That’s why even the public option (which to be honest would evolve to de-facto single payer relatively quickly) was never on the table. The job losses are too harsh to sustain over a short period of time, and covering for those jobs losses in a meaningful way would simply not being passable.

In short, meaningful health care reform is a project for a boomtime. It’s actually a way to “put the brakes” on the economy, but do it in such a way where you actually get something for it. I think this was Obama’s original plan, but the investment meltdown really crimped things.

Yes, I do think that Obama was blindsided by the recession in terms of his campaign.

And Amanda, the problem is voters who keep on voting for Republicans just because. If a political party was truly punished for being extreme, extremism would be much more difficult.

What really blows my mind about the Obama as dictator (benevolent or otherwise) thing is that I’ll hear the exact same person bitching about how Obama hasn’t used his dictatorial powers to enact some policy or other and they’ll turn around and bitch about Obama taking too much power for the executive or not giving up power that Bush previously took.  You can’t have it both ways.  Either Obama should use all the (previously unheard of) powers of the presidential office to make shit happen OR he should respect our democratic-republican system of government and the constraints imposed on him by the separation of powers.

We can still argue all day over whether he’s using the bully pulpit enough or rolling over too easily in negotiations and so on, but I will not tolerate hypocrisy and unrealistic expectations from anyone, no matter which side of the aisle they’re on.

Framing the problem as the left being disenchanted with Obama’s determination to dismantle the New Deal as somehow crazy, is ignoring the facts on the ground.

Big time.

I’ve voted Democratic for 40 years—never Green, never third party—because the Republicans have always been crazier.

Never once in my life have I averred that there’s no difference between the two parties, even taken to task Democrats who did in the Bush v. Gore race.

It’s not me who sees Obama as Reagan, it’s Obama himself who dreams that dream, and has done so publicly.

Refusing to see reality is insanity, no matter how snotty it’s phrased.

Not pushing back on Obama’s Republican tendencies is ceding the ground to Republican government, insane Republican government whether led by Republicans, or Obama.

I think the problem with this is that in both of your scenarios, criticism of Obama from the left is justified by the same arguments you’re making, basically. Voting independent isn’t, mind you, but I really doubt many people are considering it that seriously.

In the benevolent Obama scenario, Obama can use the fact that he’s getting a lot of flack from the left for his compromises to shore up his position negotiating.

In the evil Obama scenario, criticism from the left can help embolden other people in the Democratic party to fight Obama and the Republicans on their agenda.

Either way, it makes good sense to criticize Obama from the left, and yes, either way, his actual motivations mostly don’t matter.

What that means is, the US government, by spending what it spends *right now* on health care, would, in any other nation that has universal health care, be able to cover its entire citizenry. All the money we (and our employers) spend on health insurance, co-pays, etc.? That would be leftover money.

Is that true? I don’t know. Is it close to true? I don’t know. But I know we’re approaching that point.

More or less, yes.  American government spending on health care by governments exceeds what Canada spends per capita, for example.

To conclude that spending/services need to be cut is goofy though.  If Canadians can get more for their dollar, why can’t Americans (I know our dollar is worth a little more than yours, but really).  But it starts with not sending airplanes full of money to health insurances companies, and they wouldn’t like that.

I guess I’m a little confused, b/c I don’t see anyone besides the Very Serious People™ arguing that the Republicans are not radical extremists bent on destroying our democracy and that isn’t a real problem. And no, you’ve never struck me as a shill for Obama or the Dems in general. But it seems that your cancer analogy is off—the problem is that we have cancer and our doctor is trying to tell us that we have diabetes and we just need to watch our sugar intake. Republicans are only acting according to their monstrous nature - Obama is to blame for not recognizing this threat and dealing with it accordingly (for whatever reason).

Oh, and Obama isn’t a “secret” conservative - he’s an out-in-the-open moderate Republican. No matter what kind of pretty speeches he makes, his actions make this clear.

Recent polling showed that Democratic voters appreciate compromise more than Republican voters. Whether this is a trend among conservatives and liberals of all countries, I don’t know. But when you have a party base that wants less compromise, the party is going to be less compromising.

I really do not want to see what “Worse than Bush Jr.” will look like.

What that would look like is Governor Goodhair getting elected President Goodhair.

We’d be pining for the good old days of Dubya within the first 6 months of Perry moving into the White House.

Amanda, I remember disagreeing with you about this in the run up to the last election and you’re still wrong. In fact I’d go further and say it’s progressives like you that are the crux of the problem. In what basically amounts to a two party system it’s necessary for both parties to pull in order to maintain a centrist political climate. The democrats aren’t bothering to pull because they have no reason to - they know there will always be prominent progressive voices such as yours who vocally support them no matter how far to the right they swing, just as long as they remain the lesser or two evils.

It’s this that the republicans, the ultra-religious and the far-right economists have realised. If a republican goes to the left looking for votes they’ll be castgated by their base, but if a democrat pushes right the base are too afraid to withhold votes in case they lose. So the democrats continue to push right looking for votes, in turn allowing the republican right to set the agenda, knowing they’ll face no resistance. After all, democratic senators and their families benefit from tax breaks to the rich as well.

Also, the “do you think we’d be better off under McCain” is a strawman argument. Nobody (who isn’t a liar or a tool) seriously believes that. To paraphrase Matt Taibbi, the realistic comparison is, does it really make a difference if we’re 20x worse off under McCain vs only 18x worse off under Obama.

If I recall correctly, we still have the majority of the Progressive Caucus in Congress.  They weren’t the ones that got savaged in 2010.

So if there were too many in 2009, there’s still too many in 2011.

To paraphrase Matt Taibbi, the realistic comparison is, does it really make a difference if we’re 20x worse off under McCain vs only 18x worse off under Obama.

Unless you believe that Sotomayor and Kagan are no better than Roberts and Alito, yes, it really does make a difference.

Heh, Rick Perry is behind Obama *in Texas*. tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/poll-perry-trails-obama-in-texas.php He must not be too popular in his home state despite the big talk about the national stage.

Recent polling showed that Democratic voters appreciate compromise more than Republican voters

Has a Democrat ever lost a primary because he was considered “not enough of a compromiser”? I strongly agree that Democrats have a temperamental problem in the political arena, but has a Democrat ever paid a political price from his voter base for not being enough of a compromiser?

But as I said, when one party runs on “I will reach across the aisle no matter what” and the other party is dedicated to “I will never compromise,” the asshole will win. It’s like an abusive marriage where divorce isn’t an option.

A possible solution might be how to get temperamental conservatives to support liberal policies.

I’m sure if you’re a wealthy straight white guy who works as a journalist for a national magazine then, sure, Obama, McCain, same thing. What’s important is being pure and self righteous (and finding a shtick that gets you more readers)!

Gee, you’re absolutely right DTG… thank the gods Sotomayor and Kagan were able to prevent the Citizens United ruling and every other anti-democratic ruling that’s taken place in the last year…

Hey, I’m roundabouts 50 and thinking Obama makes me feel like shit, but even if he’s not a Manchurian candidate, which against all evidence I agree is likely, he might as well be because the results are exactly fucking the same. Worst president ever, quite possibly. Certainly worse than Bush cause he’s accomplishing Bush’s wildest wet dreams when there’s no fucking way a nominal Republican could accomplish all that shit. Makes Nixon and Reagan seem like Marx and Engels. Worst fucking President ever. Certainly in my lifetime. Please Please Please, Howard Dean, anyone, run against the Republican scumbag (I mean that in the historical sense of the word, something like “sperm receptacle” btw). We’d be better off with Bachmann and the voices in her head because at least the Democrats would oppose the worst excesses.

Let me put in my vote for benevolent, with a side of fucking stupid. Well, fucking stupid on economic matters. The man is smart, he’s a damn good Constitutional scholar, and he’s eloquent and a good writer and speaker.

But when it comes to economics, he’s being a fucking idiot. He’s an idiot akin to Karmakin at comment 11 up there - in the middle of a recession, he believes that deficit spending is a huge problem. He seems to genuinely believe that government spending is an economic drag, when in fact (when applied correctly) it’s exactly the opposite.

And as 19 said, by giving the Republicans so much ground, he’s willfully letting the Overton window slide further and further right. It’s gotten to the point where sensible, liberal, workable economic solutions are literally not on the table. It’s either massive spending cuts and no tax increases, or massive spending cuts and tiny tax increases. Those are our choices, and both choices are supply-side nonsense.

The solutions that the government can enact to fix this recession are out there, being expressed every day by intelligent economists, and the history is there to prove that they work, and those solutions are literally not being considered by Obama.

So yeah, in all matters non-economic, I would never claim that the Democrats and Republicans are the same. But on economic matters? They’re practically indistinguishable, except that Obama is still trying to pay lip service to tax increases (and I’m pretty sure that’s not going to last).

@Ben D.: Unfortunately that works both ways. If you’re a straight white person that has a job and isn’t particularly concerned with free trade agreements and union busting, and you’re absolutely certain you’re never going to be one of those dirty poor people that depend on the very social programs he’s willing to weaken or destroy so he can claim a victory, then I guess he is awesome.

There’s absolutely no way to say “Obama is a good president and a good person, and we should vote for him because he rocks.” with a straight face. We’re now reduced to “Probably doesn’t suck quite as badly.” and when that fails we fall to hippie punching and/or accusing his critics of being racist. Racists that apparently had no problem donating to and supporting a biracial man for president.

I tend to go with Theory #3: Obama cares about Obama’s legacy. Nothing more. Anything that can be declared a victory is what will be done, even if it’s an utterly stupid definition of victory. He wants to be remembered as the Man that United America, and by gawd if old people have to starve and children have to freeze for him to be remembered as that, then that’s what’s going to happen.

If you’ re a straight white person that
has a job and isn ’t particularly concerned with free trade agreements and union
busting, and you’ re absolutely certain you’ re never going to be one of those dirty poor
people then guess what? There’s a very very good chance you’re a Republican in any event.

Those of you of the opinion that Obama is well meaning but incompetent aren’t giving the man enough credit. He’s not stupid. He knows what he’s doing. It’s just that what he wants isn’t remotely in the same ballpark as what most of the people posting here want.

This is Nixon Goes To China territory: The efforts to destroy what remains of America’s middle class have been entirely (to use Obama’s favorite word) bipartisan. He’s accomplishing what an official Republican couldn’t. That so many of you are willing to make excuses for him not matter how many times he turns around and backhands you is nothing short of depressing.

I have no idea how to get out of this mess; it seems whichever way we turn, we’re screwed. Amanda’s not wrong about the Republicans and the threat they pose. But it seems to me, there won’t be any real progress or change as long as we continue to kid ourselves about what sort of people are running the Democratic Party.

judybrowni, right on!

Those of you who think that Obama is doing something a Republican couldn’t…

...Why?

Did an Obama nominee side with the majority in Citizens United?  Did an Obama appointee approve the Deepwater Horizon’s operation plan?

What possibly could Obama have done that’s worse than a Republican?

Nope. You’re the idiot Tri. Why do you think that single payer is such a massive savings? As it stands right now hospitals and private practices require additional staffing in order to navigate all the various insurance systems. All that staffing, and all the duplicate staffing that’s needed at the insurance end, is basically gone. 

Single payer isn’t some massive spending program. It’s a massive savings program, not just for the government but the entire economy. It’s a substantial bite out of GDP, and as I said, it’s a decent number of well paying, solidly middle class jobs.

Amanda, I think you missed Theory 3, which is that Obama is a a mainstream Washington Democrat like Rahm Emanuel or Steny Hoyer and is much more interested in appeasing the Villagers that run the Mainstream media and the lobbyists that are funding his re-election campaign than doing anything for his base. The base is taken for granted period and his focus is on the daily media stream from inside the Beltway.

@Geocrackr- setting aside the fact that Kagan and Sotomayor get exactly the same number of votes as the liberal leaning judges they replaced- Kagan wasn’t even serving at the time of Citizen’s United.

Gee, you’re absolutely right DTG… thank the gods Sotomayor and Kagan were able to prevent the Citizens United ruling and every other anti-democratic ruling that’s taken place in the last year.

It’s true that Solicitor General Elena Kagan was unable to prevent SCOTUS from ruling in favor of Citizens United. My guess is that it probably had something to do with the fact that she wasn’t a Supreme Court Justice when that case was decided.

Does anyone really believe that we’d only be 20 times worse under McCain versus 18 times worse under Obama? While we’re just pulling numbers out of our asses, how about saying we’d be a thousand times worse under McCain? Would that be enough of a difference? Because it’s a virtual certainty that the fucksticks McCain put on SCOTUS would be a thousand times worse than Sotomayor and Kagan, no doubt about it.

I hope people can hold more than one idea in their heads at a time. I submit that all of the following are true:

1) Obama is better than any possible Republican. I certainly agree that this is not arguable.
2) Obama means well but has been assimilated by the plutocracy and has an extremely blinkered worldview (and a particularly poor understanding of economics).
3) Obama’s election, so seemingly hopeful at the time, is in retrospect a devastating missed opportunity because he hasn’t come close to delivering on his promise.

At what point do we say that the Democratic Party- which now officially stands for policies that are a little to the right of Reagan’s- is no longer worthy of our support, which only enables further rightward drift? I ask this as a genuine question, because it is one, a very perplexing and painful one, for me. But there has to be a point somewhere in this processat which going to hell a little more slowly is not a meaningful improvement over going to hell quickly with the Republicans. If the Democrats get much worse the country will be in the position of a drunk who has to hit bottom before he can start to clean up.

Heh, Rick Perry is behind Obama *in Texas*. tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/poll-perry-trails-obama-in-texas.php He must not be too popular in his home state despite the big talk about the national stage.

I assure you that if Rick Perry jumps in and wins the GOP nomination, he will win Texas, and by a pretty large margin.

But it’s really not going to matter who winds up getting the GOP nomination in the end. The election is going to be decided by the unemployment rate next November. If it falls below 8%, Obama gets re-elected. If it doesn’t, hello President Romney or Perry. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.6%. If it isn’t at least close to that number when people vote next year, it’s going to be real hard to convince the American public that we’re better off than we were four years prior.

It sucks, but there it is.

The good news is that in July 1983, unemployment was at 9.4%, and conventional wisdom indicated that Reagan was headed to a one-term presidency. By the time November 1984 rolled around, unemployment had fallen to 7.2% and Reagan went on to win 49 out of 50 states in the largest Electoral College landslide in American history.

No president since FDR has won re-election when the unemployment rate was over 7.2%. FDR won re-election in 1936 when unemployment was at 16.9%, but that figure represented a dramatic improvement from the roughly 25% it was at when FDR’s presidency began. I think Obama can win with a higher unemployment rate than the 7.2% Reagan had in November 1984, but I don’t think he can win if it’s over 8%, which would indicate a net increase in unemployment during his first term. There has to be some solid evidence that we are pulling out of these painful economic times. The unemployment numbers have to go down.

The good news is that in July 1983, unemployment was at 9.4%, and conventional wisdom indicated that Reagan was headed to a one-term presidency. By the time November 1984 rolled around, unemployment had fallen to 7.2% and Reagan went on to win 49 out of 50 states in the largest Electoral College landslide in American history.

We’re not even close to having the economic conditions required for such a rapid rate of job creation. Obama will be very fortunate if the UE rate isn’t even higher in Nov. 2102 than it is now. There is every reason to believe that we are in for a lost decade, or more.

If Obama wants to reduce unemployment, he has the tools at his disposal; he just doesn’t have the understanding to use them. The stimulus had me genuinely believing that he understood what needed to be done, economically. He proved me wrong.

The stimulus was way too small - and yes, a huge part of that is the fault of the Republicans - and when it didn’t produce stunning results (because it was way too small), it was allowed to fizzle out. What makes the Republicans evil, cynical assholes is that they do this year after year - sabotage any workable government plan, and then point to the failure of the sabotaged plan as proof that big gubbamint doesn’t work.

So yeah, the Republicans are largely at fault. But I’m still pretty pissed at Obama for letting the GOP get away with it, especially re: the stimulus and healthcare reform.

Speaking of health care reform, I’m sick of being told that I have to cheer for it as a “progressive” achievement. It’s modeled on the REPUBLICAN counterproposal to Hillarycare and on Romneycare. In any kind of historical perspective it’s quite a conservative scheme.

We’re not even close to having the economic conditions required for such a rapid rate of job creation. Obama will be very fortunate if the UE rate isn’t even higher in Nov. 2102 than it is now. There is every reason to believe that we are in for a lost decade, or more.

Yeah, I know.

But I’m really trying not to let myself go there, because if it works out the way you fear, with an even higher unemployment rate next November than what we have now, I just don’t think there’s any way in hell that Obama can get re-elected under those circumstances. His GOP opponent will hammer him with Reagan’s famous “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” question, and it will be all over except for the crying. The fact that the Republican Party has gone completely off the rails since the beginning of Obama’s presidency won’t be enough to make up for the amount of pain being felt by a sizable chunk of this country. He would lose not so much because a bunch of his voters would jump to the dark side, but because a bunch of his voters will have the attitude, “Why fucking bother voting?” That’s pretty much what happened last November, and if nothing’s really any better next November, it will happen again.

2012 that is. UE might also be higher in 2102, if the US still exists by then.

@43:
Most definitely. A true progressive healthcare reform would have moved us away from the profit-driven, insurance-company-enriching model of healthcare. Instead it did the opposite - it mandated that everyone sign on with those profit-driven insurance companies.

We saw the effects almost immediately: insurance companies lying out their asses about the cost of the healthcare reform, and attempting to use that as an excuse to extort higher premiums from their customers - customers who will soon be required by law to choose one of these profit-driven insurance companies. The only way to avoid that is to take the profit motive out of the equation. That’s what government is for.

That’s pretty much what happened last November, and if nothing’s really any better next November, it will happen again.

There are indications that Obama could survive if things don’t get significantly wore. He’s performing much better in polls than he “should” given the state of the economy (there was a widely circulated piece about this by somebody at Gallup the other day). We live in such abnormal times that a lot of historically based poli-sci rules of thumb don’t necessarily apply.

Is the number of presidential elections held since 1936 enough of a sample size to make predictions of the outcome based on the unemployment rate? Honest question here, I’m useless when it comes to statistics or any kind of math beyond the high school level.

Is the number of presidential elections held since 1936 enough of a sample size to make predictions of the outcome based on the unemployment rate?

Not really. I don’t think it’s ever been anything more than a rough rule of thumb.

If thing hold more or less steady economically, I will be pretty surprised if Obama loses.

Everytime I see a thread like these I am curious in-the-active-perceiving-at-a-horrible-accident-way of people who I consider ethical, moral, able to grasp the issues, rationalize being evil.

The government is your personal terrorist cell; your personal slavers; your personal crusader, colonizer, conqueror, mass murderer of epic proportions and creator of horror that break the mind.

Vote for Obama or the democrats we have, and people will still die needlessly, be killed, tortured. You chose to hold your nose and vote for them, well, then you fucking own what they do.

What makes you any different from the people our society and our government say as civilians, they own the evils of their government, such as the Afghans and the Taliban, or the Palestinians and Hamas? I’ve read argument after argument and justification and rational for expending great amounts of wrath on the civilians of governments our country disagrees with because they enable their government, so what makes a USian special and not responsible?

Maybe you should not enable your government more than you have to. Maybe just try really hard to identify vote for those who would not commit acts of evil for you even if they would not win, instead of a candidate who could win and commit evil. Then maybe you could wash the blood from your hands.

I know why I’m not going to vote beyond county level save for the pacifists if any. This lesser of two evils crap is how they get you to be evil yourself.

I’ve read argument after argument and justification and rational for expending great amounts of wrath on the civilians of governments our country disagrees with because they enable their government

You have? On this blog? Is there one commentator here that argues this? I don’t even think Stick Rool is that dumb.

I know why I’m not going to vote beyond county level save for the pacifists if any.

Well, at least your consistent. Every single government commits acts of violence, cruelty, and injustice of one kind or another and if you’re a true pacifist, you shouldn’t be voting.

I’ve read argument after argument and justification and rational for expending great amounts of wrath on the civilians of governments our country disagrees with because they enable their government

You have? On this blog? Is there one commentator here that argues this? I don’t even think Stick Rool is that dumb.

I know why I’m not going to vote beyond county level save for the pacifists if any.

Well, at least your consistent. Every single government commits acts of violence, cruelty, and injustice of one kind or another and if you’re a true pacifist, you shouldn’t be voting.

Strangely, though you probably consider yourself far-left, this makes you only a hair away from a Ron Paul or Lew Rockwell type of libertarian (government is evil and immoral because government uses force).

Is the number of presidential elections held since 1936 enough of a sample size to make predictions of the outcome based on the unemployment rate? Honest question here, I’m useless when it comes to statistics or any kind of math beyond the high school level.

I don’t have all of the figures, but the one thing that the two most recent one-term presidents (Bush41 and Carter) had in common was the fact that the country was hurting badly on the economic front at the time both of them came up for re-election. It’s certainly not etched in stone that Obama absolutely couldn’t win if unemployment is still over 8% next November, but the oddsmakers will definitely be betting against him if that’s the case.

The one ray of hope I’m seeing is the fact that Obama is still polling ahead of each of his potential GOP contenders in theoretical head-to-head matchups. What worries is that Obama is losing in the polls which have him pitted against a non-specific generic Republican candidate. My only read on all of that is that people don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about voting for Obama next year, but at the same time they’re still less than thrilled with the current field of GOP candidates.

He may indeed pull it off by simple virtue of being the least worst option available.

@Tyro in #24,
Has a Democrat ever lost a primary because he was considered “not enough of a compromiser”?
Unsure. Maybe it’s not an effect that occurs during elections, maybe it’s an effect that occurs during the lead-up to important votes?

If that was the case… right now if we piled through the calls/emails/faxes that Congresspeople are getting, the majority of feedback Democrats are receiving would be “just make a deal”, while the majority of Republican feedback would be “And get them to stop funding abortion too!”

Right, I think this is going to be like Reid vs. Angle, with the caveat that Obama is a much better campaigner than Reid (whatever you say about how Obama governs, you must admit he *is* a good political campaigner and fundraiser). Also, another thing Bush 41 and Carter had in common was a somewhat serious primary challenge. Both parties were cracking up at the time.

What worries is that Obama is losing in the polls which have him pitted against a non-specific generic Republican candidate.

I never bother even thinking about “generic candidate” polls. They’re meaningless. A guy with known weaknesses as well as strengths, against a blank slate on which respondents can write whatever they like? Tells you nothing.

I never bother even thinking about “generic candidate” polls.

Yeah, really, those might be useful in a parliamentary system like the UK but in this country generic polls are useless. Same thing with “Does X deserve reelection?”

Also, the comments above which make me facepalm remind me that the Democratic Party’s strength is in its diversity of voters. ...at the same time, this is also its weakness, as the disparate threads that make up the tapestry of the party disagree with one another and then sink the ship over small things.

In a non-two-party system, this would be an okay thing. Purity over pragmatism and all that jazz. But, as is the main point of the original post, the opposition party is ruled by people who are intentionally on the wrong side of almost every cultural, intellectual, economic, ethical, moral, and political battle imaginable, pushed to more and more extreme positions by an electorate who seems to not be smarter than a 4th grader.

Whenever the 27%ers die off and the Republican Party becomes something that Eisenhower would recognize, then I won’t feel as if each election is a choice between stasis and decay. Hopefully, by then, the country will have progressed, regardless of if our politicians chose to help that occur.

...I won’t feel as if each election is a choice between stasis and decay.

You shouldn’t feel that way now. It’s a choice between decay and fulminating decomposition. Both will get us into the Third World, just at different rates.

@ Ben D

You have? On this blog? Is there one commentator here that argues this? I don’t even think Stick Rool is that dumb.

Not here, but around the net and on television over the past 10 years.

Well, at least your consistent. Every single government commits acts of violence, cruelty, and injustice of one kind or another and if you’re a true pacifist, you shouldn’t be voting.

My nature makes me consistent. Why is this always noteworthy to people?

And, yeah, I know governments are violent.

Strangely, though you probably consider yourself far-left, this makes you only a hair away from a Ron Paul or Lew Rockwell type of libertarian (government is evil and immoral because government uses force).

No. I can say with confidence that I’m not a libertarian. I think libertarian ideology leads to the kinds of evils I’m against.

My problem is that the US government doesn’t have to be the murder machine it is, but I don’t think working within the system as it is will fix the problem unless radically different people than our ruling class run and win elections.

I also think that people are wrong and immoral, unethical, and inhumane to compromise and vote for people they know will kill just for treats, even if these treats are really, really important. It’s like you and two others are in a room. One, who you know will kill the defenseless other you don’t know and have no quarrel with, will promise you a few goodies if you give them the handgun you are in possession of, and instead of holding on to the gun, you hand it over. You get your goodies (maybe) and the other gets their head ventilated

No. I can say with confidence that I’m not a libertarian. I think libertarian ideology leads to the kinds of evils I’m against.

But you believe governments are evil and immoral because governments are at the end of the day based on violent force, yes?

What about the theory that Pres. Obama is a moderate Democrat, who, like a lot of moderate Democrats, holds to a certain weak neoliberalism, and as such isn’t a huge fan of the centrally-run social programs that more traditional liberals support? After watching the President steadfastly refuse to put the public option on the table, even a a bargaining chip, this strikes me as being a lot more compelling as a reason why he’s so willing to make cuts.

And, just to clarify, that doesn’t make him the problem, or even part of the problem. It does, however, make him not part of the solution.

Comment #61: Ben D

But you believe governments are evil and immoral because governments are at the end of the day based on violent force, yes?

No, not generic “violence” or “force” or as libertarians put it “omg men with gunz are gonna come an’ get you” but I’m against the wars for… whatever the fuck they’re for, resource acquisition, to instill terror, force projection through building bases, profit, sheer spite, making cocks fill big, and economic violence our government inflicts on USians and people around the world. I’m mostly focused on the US government as a USian but governments around the world who act similarly are not good in my book either.

I’ve some anarchist leanings which might be leading you to think I’m a libertarian, but those cute political compass tests say I’m half anarchist and half communist. Make of that what you will.

And, just to clarify, that doesn’t make him the problem, or even part of the problem. It does, however, make him not part of the solution.

Actually it does make him part of the problem; or more specifically, it makes the Democratic Party part of the problem. The fact that the GOP is about a hundred times larger a part of the problem doesn’t change that. But it does make the GOP worth voting against.

The problem is not Obama himself.  The problem is that, under current conditions, nobody better than Obama will ever get elected.  In order for that to change, the Democratic party needs to be completely restructured, if not replaced entirely.  And that won’t happen as long as they can count on the left to hold their noses and vote Dem.

The problem is not Obama himself.  The problem is that, under current conditions, nobody better than Obama will ever get elected.

I disagree. Obama is considerably worse than he needs to be. (After all, he got elected by pretending to be more progressive than he actually is.) He has gone further right than he “had” to out of what I take to be genuine conviction. In particular, he has bought Chicago “economics” hook, line and sinker and has further entrenched it in the public mind instead of combatting it. Ditto the “need” for Social Security “reform”.

Man, I knew I shouldn’t have been reading the comments.  And some of you guys, if you’ve gotta believe that Obama’s just so weak on economics, at least bother to know some of it yourselves?  Or hey, try to envision the politics and in general, walk in Obama’s shoes?

It’s the wierdest feeling, actually.  Technically speaking, Obama and his team been pulling off some of the flashiest moves a politician has ever done as president, and he gets no credit for it, really.  Of course, part of that is because the ship’s going down.  However, that ain’t his fault.

**shrug**  Doesn’t matter really if things are FUBAR, and if you guys want to carp, do it as self-righteously as you like.  Just don’t expect power, or expect respect from anyone with power, either.

I just can’t figure out why he extended the Bush tax cuts. Was that as a sop to try to get the Republicans in the House to pass his judicial nominations? How is he not seeing the same patterns the rest of us are?

What about the theory that Pres. Obama is a moderate Democrat, who, like a lot of moderate Democrats, holds to a certain weak neoliberalism, and as such isn’t a huge fan of the centrally-run social programs that more traditional liberals support? After watching the President steadfastly refuse to put the public option on the table, even a a bargaining chip, this strikes me as being a lot more compelling as a reason why he’s so willing to make cuts.

And, just to clarify, that doesn’t make him the problem, or even part of the problem. It does, however, make him not part of the solution.
Comment #62: Sherm on 07/21 at 09:11 PM

The public option too.

I remember when the Republicans were more liberal than today’s Democrats. And I’m not that old.

Just don’t expect power, or expect respect from anyone with power, either.

Well it isn’t as though we’ve ever gotten power or respect before, and lost it somewhere along the way. At least not in my lifetime.

And some of you guys, if you’ve gotta believe that Obama’s just so weak on economics, at least bother to know some of it yourselves?

Oh, do regale us with your profound knowledge of the subject. You could start with your brilliant theoretical demonstration that spending cuts under depression-type conditions create jobs.

It’s possible to acknowledge that the Democrats are better than the Republicans while still acknowledging that both are, to use the Marxist label, bourgeois parties who will act in the interests of the majority only to the point that it is electorally productive for them. If you’re ready to throw in the towel and side with the Dems as a matter of course, it’s not because you’ve realised that organising outside of the two-party system is useless, it’s because you haven’t realised that organising outside of the two-party system isn’t worth a damn unless you outside of the bourgeois political establishment altogether. It has, however sceptical we may choose to be, been done, and it’s done a lot more for the world than reluctantly trailing whatever donkey-buttoned cretin they role out come election time.

I agree that the Republicans are the problem in the short term. The problem in the long term is opening up the playbook, so to speak, to make more progressive/left-liberal/whatever options more available then they are right now.

@52: “Strangely, though you probably consider yourself far-left, this makes you only a hair away from a Ron Paul or Lew Rockwell type of libertarian (government is evil and immoral because government uses force).”

So did Buenaventura Durruti, but I doubt you’d accuse him of being a borderline Paulite. I think you need a bit of perspective.

mr_subjunctive, I wonder…  Back when *I* was a college tyke exploring the internet in its youth, I emailed President Clinton about all the things I thought needed done, and I got a letter in the mail, back—never saw my Granddad be so impressed.  Lily Ledbetter seems to get a response from the political system, too.  But then, neither of us are acting out the sort of relationship an insouciant teenager who feels both needy and resentful of her mother (Obama) might have.  The sort of power we peons might have is small, very small, but we can still play Katamari Damancy, can’t we?

Steve LaBonne, was mostly talking about Triplanetary, but you know?  Obama *did* try to stave off spending cuts at the local and state level (succeeded for a little while), and there is ever indication that he would have done more on the federal level if he could.  Just a no-win situation, and I don’t feel like explaining to a rageaholic the political and economic map.

The odd thing is, even for people who don’t read political history, you’d expect more people to readily be able to compare Obama to Buchanan or A. Johnson and be able grasp that he is well more than bad at being president…

You know what, I’m gonna be honest, I mostly just parrot Paul Krugman, who’s a hell of a lot smarter than you are.

Also, being coolly logical folks, I’m sure we have all seen austerity policies being put in place, hook or crook, from the Baltic States to Ireland.  Are we to believe that all politicians are as “stupid” as Obama?  That they were all suckers?  Or how about we check out what austerity *really* means, say Cuba in 1994.  Orrrr, hmmm, why do all those SE and E Asian countries have such high dollar reserves?

Vampire Squid gotta get dead of starvation before they’re off the body public, guys…

Well, no, that’s the trouble.  Paul Krugman doesn’t actually believe Obama’s an idiot or that he doesn’t understand basic economics.  So you’re not parroting that.  What you are doing is parroting stuff out of your own subconscious.

I agree with you, Amanda. I’d also probably be more critical of Obama if McCain, Kyl, and Jan Fucking Brewer didn’t make him look like Bobby Kennedy.

I wouldn’t accuse him of being borderline Paulite, that’s a little too close, but he’s closer to Rothbardian Libertarianism than he is to American Liberalism. Just like Stalinism is closer to Fascism than it is to, say, western European Social Democracy. If you go that far in one direction you’ll end up one space away from the other extreme, even if you scream that the other extreme is anathema.

A good example in the American context of what I mean is Lysander Spooner. He was a radical abolitionist and a Confederate sympathizer at the same time, while being entirely consistent in his philosophy!

@Ben D.

Just out of curiosity and I’m asking in good faith; why were you trying to pin down my political/social ideology?

And for fairness: what do you describe yourself as being.

I’m interested in finding out what are the real differences between left-anarchism and right-anarchism, and I’m also bored and stuck at home since I have a bad case of the flu.

On domestic policy I’m a social liberal at all times, in fiscal policy a free-spending FDR/LBJ liberal during recessions and a fiscal conservative during boom times.

With regard to foreign policy I believe the best option is a real world federal government but since even a whiff of that makes 90% of people shit their pants, the more realistic option is to work for a world where the US transitions to being one of a half-dozen or so Great Powers rather than the only Superpower. It would be good for the world and good for the US. Something like the Iraq War would be, if not impossible, then much less likely to happen under that system.

Also, being coolly logical folks, I’m sure we have all seen austerity policies being put in place, hook or crook, from the Baltic States to Ireland.  Are we to believe that all politicians are as “stupid” as Obama?  That they were all suckers?

Your idea of “cool logic” is to appeal to the authority of the European Union? For what it’s worth, yes, I think the austerity policies that are being enacted throughout Europe are a massive mistake, and you’ve seen how the Greek people feel about the way those policies are being forced on Greece due to its borderline insolvency. It’s beginning to look like signing on with the euro wasn’t such a great choice for countries like Greece.

Austerity does not create economic growth, and austerity has never in history helped an economy recover from a recession. But the ultra-rich favor austerity, and that’s basically why both European policymakers are favoring it, and why Obama is favoring it. It’s pretty simple.

The Euro was a wonderful idea for Germany, and nobody else.

Well, no, that’s the trouble.  Paul Krugman doesn’t actually believe Obama’s an idiot or that he doesn’t understand basic economics.

I gather you haven’t actually been reading Krugman lately.

Also, being coolly logical folks, I’m sure we have all seen austerity policies being put in place, hook or crook, from the Baltic States to Ireland.  Are we to believe that all politicians are as “stupid” as Obama?  That they were all suckers?

This is an argument that is so stupid that I’ve seen Dana use it.  Consider that for a moment.

shah8, Krugman most definitely does claim that Obama is clueless about economics, comparing him to Hoover.  That he’s associated this cluelessness with a larger level of ignorance amongst the elite doesn’t mean he’s giving Obama a pass.

I’m pretty much with judibrowni and Steve on this:  The only way to stop the decline is to demand better choices, which means organizing, and convincing as many of our fellow citizens as we can to join us.

It’s clear that most of our natural allies think Obama’s doing great, so there’s no chance a primary will do anything in 2012, which means we have three years to get more progressives into the legislature, and five years to get a progressive into the White House.  Will it work?  Maybe, maybe not, but if it doesn’t, we’ll keep trying *without* apology.

Because that’s how change occurs in this country.  DDay has a couple of great posts, with links to things like the fight to *expand* Social Security, using Obama’s fetishising of compromise as a jumping off point:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/17/obamas-last-lecture/

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/18/and-another-thing-on-obamas-last-lecture/

Apologies if this double posts:

shah8, Krugman most definitely does claim that Obama is clueless about economics, comparing him to Hoover.  That he’s associated this cluelessness with a larger level of ignorance amongst the elite doesn’t mean he’s giving Obama a pass.

I’m pretty much with judibrowni and Steve on this:  The only way to stop the decline is to demand better choices, which means organizing, and convincing as many of our fellow citizens as we can to join us.

It’s clear that most of our natural allies think Obama’s doing great, so there’s no chance a primary will do anything in 2012, which means we have three years to get more progressives into the legislature, and five years to get a progressive into the White House.  Will it work?  Maybe, maybe not, but if it doesn’t, we’ll keep trying *without* apology.

Because that’s how change occurs in this country.  DDay has a couple of great posts, with links to things lie the fight to *expand* Social Security, in these two posts, using Obama’s fetishising of compromise as a jumping off point:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/17/obamas-last-lecture/

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/18/and-another-thing-on-obamas-last-lecture/

The question isn’t whether there’s any difference between Obama and the Republicans. The question is whether Obama is using the Republicans for political cover in order to slash the welfare state. I think he is. He seems poised to accept a much worse deal than he could easily get if he wanted to stand up for progressive principles.

The so-called “11-dimensional chess theory” of Obama’s behavior is even less believable than the political cover theory. That’s asking us to take on faith that there’s a brilliant strategic plan that none of us figure out but that the president must have. That’s like saying that the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

The Republicans are ultimately responsible because they’ve been gunning for the demise of the welfare since its inception and Obama would never have gone down this road without massive pressure, whether he liked the idea or not.

Ah, I see, triplanetary… hmmmm I do have to think for a bit.  I don’t take what people in power say on face, and I’m not quite sure where Krugman is coming from.

As far as the austerity from sea to shining sea thing, I’d have thought that people could infer that I was saying that all of our Western governments are captured by rent-seeking agencies, not that austerity was good or desirable.  If Obama *didn’t* say stuff like that, he’d be signalling that he’s prepared to actually fight on more liberal grounds.  And I’m quite prepared to not believe that the silliness Obama said is not representative of his actual beliefs or knowlege, because other people, most notably Ben Bernanke (who wrote the fucking book on what should be done), all of a sudden starts spouting the Vampire Squid line, even though they have explicit discretion to use monetary means for actual and reasonable policies.  We’ve all of a sudden stopped criticizing Japan for not doing all it could to end it’s Bright Depression, and started doing the exact same thing that the Japanese do.  People in power don’t want to lose it, and they are prepared to ruin the country if they can’t rule it.

And Lindsay, the 11D thing has only ever been cooked up by people who have issues with Obama.  Nobody who’s actually rational has ever *strongly* advocated the idea that he had a defined plan.  Politicians don’t have plans, they can’t.  Things happen too fast for anything but reaction. 

Who takes firebaggers seriously?  Who takes people who think Hillary Clinton, of all people, would be a) more liberal she damned well isn’t, or b) more of a backbone/competent she’s proven that she isn’t, in the election and in her time as First Lady.  Who takes people that babble about 11D chess seriously.  It’s a red flag for insecure and paranoid ignorance.

ah, and double-negative issue in line 7 of comment 90, sorry.  Getting late.

Look, it’s really time to face the facts…

Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

and the winner of the ORWELL PRIZE is…

http://sue-du-jour.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/AhOh-Studio-Scent-Stories-Orwell-500x483.jpg

for randi and his army of robot zombie atheists at TAM9

@theorwellprize

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigasus_Award

http://www.unfacts.org/factsforum/viewtopic.php?t=4706

Man, I knew I shouldn’t have been reading the comments.

Word.

I completely agree that the core problem in this country is Republicans: their control of political narrative, their unholy alliance of the ignorant, sociopathic, and otherwise venal, their skill at corrupting even the well-intentioned by forcing adherence to lousy assumptions in the public square.

I’d say the Democrats’ biggest problem is that its rank-and-file, politically-engaged types are often quite bright but have the corresponding social understanding generally associated with the more unfortunate breed of non-tenured academics.  What I assume are attempts to inflame and outrage fellow travelers into political action a la modern wingnuttery comes across more like being painfully cornered at a social event by a person who stares too long & stands too close.  The right, probably because they tend to intuitively understand social grouping and hierarchies IME, manages to make their nutburger ideology organic, propped up by social solidarity and a broader, warmer kind of self-flattery (we’re Good People™!) than the more individualistic-yet-overbearing, one-upsmanship-loving virtues of the left.  Paradoxically, the wingnut tribe is relatively inclusive, with the only real membership dues being bland conformity, while the left constantly splinters into passionate—and completely annoying—mini-sects that neither want nor know how to use political power. 

What Obama did right in 2007-08 was to temporarily make being a lefty/liberal/Dem a welcoming and positive thing; pity it couldn’t last.

Obama’s been a disappointment. Clinton was a disappointment. So was Carter. Johnson was wonderful and a disaster. Likewise Kennedy. See also Truman and Roosevelt.

Look at the 2010 elections, though. We didn’t get tougher liberals, we got batshit crazy rightwingers, people who wouldn’t recognize reality if it flew through their windows at night and fastened its fangs in their necks.

Sure, everything Obama has done has sucked, but the last one who had to deal with a comparable situation was FDR, and check out what a weak dripping sack of poop Social Security was to begin with. Most of you are too young to remember what a monster LBJ was, but before that criminal warmongerer we didn’t have Medicare.

The other side of this conversation is the rest of the country that doubles up on the crazy whenever anything goes the least bit sideways. “God Bless America” at the seventh inning. Look at the gold price and tell me that Americans are sane. At the same time gays are winning general acceptance (thanks, Hollywood?) we’re losing access to contraception and abortion.

Sometimes, and this time is one of those, you have to decide which side you’re on.

I agree that the Republicans are the problem in the short term. The problem in the long term is opening up the playbook, so to speak, to make more progressive/left-liberal/whatever options more available then they are right now.

Yeah, Linneaus, but that seems to me to be the extrapolation of the “if you did X you wouldn’t be so damn poor” argument into electoral politics. The severity of the short term problems right now make planning for the long term difficult to silly to impossible.

In order for that to change, the Democratic party needs to be completely restructured, if not replaced entirely.  And that won’t happen as long as they can count on the left to hold their noses and vote Dem.

No… see, this is the big mistake I’ve been seeing all over. No.

What needs to change is the liberal grass roots. You can’t ask a *politician* to be your leader. Politicians are risk averse. The reason Republican politicians are “bold” (scare quotes intentional) is not because they’re actually bold; it’s because they have people who will praise them as brave and principled and oh-so-fucking-noble for saying that we have to make old people pay a shitload more for health care.

No, the leadership in ideas must come from the grass roots, and the same way that the rightwing put together their support. By finding touchstone ideas and repeating them, and demanding that others accept them. By being big, noisy, pains in the ass. By making it so that their ideas penetrated the common wisdom, *or*, at least made it common wisdom that they *had* to be a certain way, to support their base.

*Then* you can demand that Democrats have to help push the ideas.

Asking elected officials to push the window to the right is stupid, and punishing them for failing to push the window is even stupider. No, other people have to push that window. And I don’t mean to say this like folks here aren’t trying to… but the effort has to spread, and become bigger, and more effective. Then, when it’s safe, the politicians will test the waters and see if it’s safe.

That’s how the Republicans did it, after all… they used polls and focus groups and multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, to figure out the best way to pretend that they ignore polls and focus groups and their own marketing campaigns.

And while liberal folks can’t and won’t fight the way the rightwing will, the same kind of organizing and window pushing can be done, and more effectively. But it has to be a long term project.

It’s clear that most of our natural allies think Obama’s doing great, so there’s no chance a primary will do anything in 2012

One of the unfortunate truths about the system we have (rather than the one we wish we had) is the fact that launching a primary challenge against a sitting president has always been a suicide mission. Usually the goal is to replace that president with someone more true to the party’s core values, but what always winds up happening is that the sitting president survives the primary but he/she enters the general election campaign greatly weakened by the apparent lack of confidence in his/her own base, and he/she loses the general election.

There have been 56 presidential elections in American history. There has only been one instance in all of those elections in which a sitting president who was running for re-election was defeated by a primary challenger, and then that challenger went on to win the presidency.

1856. Democrat James Buchanan defeated incumbent Democratic President Franklin Pierce for the party nomination, and then went on to defeat Republican John Fremont and Know Nothing Millard Fillmore in the general election. And then the one man who did something no one had ever done before or since - successfully primarying a sitting president and then getting elected president - went on to become arguably one of the two or three worst presidents in U.S. history. Like worse than George W. Bush bad.

The reality we face in 2012 is this - either President Obama will get re-elected and serve a second term, or he will be defeated by his Republican challenger who almost certainly be quite a bit to his right. It’s frightening to think that Mitt Romney is probably the least awful Republican who could actually win the presidency (Huntsman has no prayer, not that he would have necessarily been a lot better) in 2012. What I truly fear the most is the possibility of Rick Perry getting elected - with the teabagging kooks already on the edge, the last thing this country needs is a guy who speaks of secession as if it were an honorable thing.

I’m not surprised this discussion is still rearing its ugly head, and I’m certainly not surprised that as it is it’s being framed as ‘D v. R and don’t you dirty hippies tell us there’s anything better than D. (Also, Nader sucks.)’  Yes, instead of making better choices, let us (the ostensible majority) continue to lambaste the minority for our consistently ineffectual and pusillanimous choices.

...what good can actually be done with the tools that are actually at hand…

Get better tools, or kiss it goodbye.  It isn’t much more complicated than that.

Politicians are risk averse.

  Apparently, so are most voters.

Matty, #97:

Yeah, Linneaus, but that seems to me to be the extrapolation of the “if you did X you wouldn’t be so damn poor” argument into electoral politics. The severity of the short term problems right now make planning for the long term difficult to silly to impossible.

I definitely agree that we have to prioritize dealing with what’s going on now, but if we want more progressive policies at some point in the future - even if that point is undefined - we need to at least start thinking about how to bring that about. That’s what I’m trying to get at.

Congrats, you just got a shout out from Paul Krugman, who agrees with you: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/conceder-in-chief/

I hate how the Left eats its own, and the reality is that President Obama is one of our own.

I’m sorry, that’s complete crap. He is a mildly center-right politician whose policy views would have been right at home in the moderate wing of the Republican Party, when such a thing still existed. In fact he’s to the right of most of the 1970s Republican Party. You must be very young and totally lacking in historical perspective to think he is in any way a man of the left. And he is actively collaborating in the process of moving the Beltway “center” (as opposed to the real center of public opinion, which hasn’t changed very much over the years) even farther to the right.

And he has a disastrous gift for uniting the right against him (even as he pursues center-right policies) while dividing the left (as we see in discussions like this).

Steve @41 - Was that a conscious reference to the last major depression in Japan?

106- Yes. We have made much the same mistakes and are in much the same boat. Except that Japanese society, with its much better developed sense of social cohesion, has weathered economic stagnation far more gracefully than we can hope to do.

So, I wasn’t the only one who has made that connection.  Nice to know.

Ben @ 84 - I really think you mean France (or France and Germany), but in general, your point stands.

I think Stuart Zechman on Virtually Speaking has the right of this.

Neither view is true. Obama is not a liberal OR a conservative. But he’s not “moderate” in the sense of being where the center of the country is either. Instead he’s a part of a different ideology, the “centrist” ideology, and he’s a RADICAL member of that ideology.

I’m not an expert on “centrist” ideology, but here’s what I gather from observation they are coming from.

“Centrists” want to change medicare and social security from social insurance programs that benefit everyone to programs that primarily are focused on helping the very poor, i.e. welfare. They also believe in gay rights and although they are pro-choice they have no problem with extreme restrictions on it. They are hawks when it comes to military/defense policy. They believe in increasing global competitiveness through trade agreements and lower taxes. They aren’t big on the war of drugs but they also poo poo the idea of legalization. They are pro-immigration reform but are strongly against pure amnesty. They are pretty anti-union in the sense that they just don’t care about union priorities that much, again because supposed competitiveness matters more to them. 

What they believe in most of all is getting “things” done and “healing” the partisan divide that they see as destroying the country. They are against “class warfare”. They believe that we can have a kumbaya moment where corporations, unions, republicans, democrats and everybody can get along and agree on what’s best for the country. What they DON’T believe in, is checks and balances and an adversarial relationship between corporation and government or between the populace and the elites. They are largely pro-technocrat solutions designed by high ranking members of the intellectual class, but only those designed by people who “play ball” and align themselves with common Washington group think. In other words this is the ideology of what Digby terms “the village” mentality.

So as for Obama, he’s doing exactly what his ideology requires and nor has he lied about it (except a little during the campaign).  He’s just not doing what *I* and the many many people who are like me who are actually Liberal want him to do. Nor is he fighting to do those things. At all. And that’s because he doesn’t WANT to do them. He doesn’t believe in them. That’s not evil or good, it’s just different. He has a different belief system.

So the problem is not JUST “the republicans”. The problem is that when Democrats are in charge, these “centrists” are in leadership position and so only about 10% of what I want gets done. And when Republicans are in charge either their “establishment” wing is in charge in which case maybe 2% of what I want gets done, or if their “movement” wing is in charge like 0-1% of what I want gets done. But their movement wing might actually even be better for me when they are in the minority since they more effectively oppose the consensus policies between establishment right and left which are things that are anathema to my point of view like warrant-less wiretaps, assassinations, and rewriting the social contract to be something totally different.

And yeah 2% is much worse than 10%, so I’d definitely PREFER Obama to Bush, but it’s still not GOOD by any stretch of the imagination.

So as much as it is important to stop Republicans… we have to ALSO think about ways to get people in power who actually reflect our ideals. I don’t know how to do that, but blindly putting our blind faith in the current leadership of the Democratic party isn’t going to work not just because of conservative opposition but ALSO because they DON’T BELIEVE in our (liberal’s) priorities.

If Republicans had free reign to do whatever they wanted there would be NO medicare or social security at all. But if Obama had free reign to do exactly what he wanted he’d change these programs so that they are all subsidized mandates to buy policies from private companies on online exchanges. And yes that’s better than them not existing at all, but it would still suck utterly to me compared to the system we *currently* have. It would also make it much easier for Republicans to demolish those programs when they regain control.

But what movement liberals like me would do if they were in charge is make medicare, medicaid, and social security bigger and stronger and kick in earlier and apply to more people. And we’d make it so they would use hard bargaining and a stronger negotiation stance to force private institutions they deal with to lower rates on behalf of the people. And we’d fund them with a more progressive tax scheme and put in place strong regulations on any private institutions they interact with. Obama wants nothing to do with that. It would be as much anathema to him as it would be to Republicans just for different reasons.

helen- I didn’t think it up myself; Paul Krugman, among others, has had written a number of columns about the resemblance.

It’s hard to be a “shill” for Obama when you contemplate the possibility that he might be a secret conservative. Yeah, I guess that explains the addition of mandated health care for tens of millions, major increases in spending on green energy, new controls on Wall Street, repeal of DADT, etc. I realize that each of these and other achievements are less than what was needed, but hey, these are progressive steps better than we’ve seen in 40 years.
Obama has been disappointing to those of us who hoped for more based on his rhetoric, but he’s been largely true to his specific campaign pledges (with a gaping exception for real action on climate change).
And his past suggests he really does believe in bringing disagreeing groups together (even when they don’t want to work nicely together). Not realistic in today’s political environment, but hardly evil.
The debt negotiations have been deeply disturbing for all progressives, but we’ll see what emerges. Then you might be able to more accurately Obama’s role.

Let’s move this learning curve forward.  Are Obama supporters the same people who believed in the WMDs in Iraq and allowed us to spend our fortune on war?

Clearly we are not perfect, I voted for Reagan once, Clinton once and Obama once.  But please, let’s learn from our mistakes and primary this obvious Republican trojan-horse.  He could call himself a lion; but, we know he is merely lyin’.  I believe that an actual Republican would be better; look how active Wisconsin has become for Dems with a Republican in place.  Obama is a trojan-horse designed to nullify Democratic action.  If he doesn’t go, the Democratic party does.

tmginnova, few of us (certainly not I) dispute that Obama is better than any imaginable Republican alternative. The question is, is he as good as he had the political space to be at the time of his election? The answer seems to me to be an obvious “no”. And given the serious crisis that faces the country, that’s a lot worse than merely disappointing; it’s very damaging. Worse, if the Congressional Dems don’t find their backbones and stand up to him in these debt negotiations, he risks seriously damaging the Democratic brand by neutralizing potentially potent issues like protecting Social Security and Medicare. And that could lead to Republican control of both Senate and House, a scary thing to contemplate in the current state of that party.

The point of the entire thread is that it’s hard to understand why one should focus animus on Obama, aside from sheer passive-aggressiveness.  He’s not the only, or even the main, cook in this mess, and I really fail to see how anyone could do better.  Is it that much easier to blame a person for not being a superhero instead of appreciating the social and structural forces that cause the situation to be what it is?  You can’t spare any of that animus to *any* Senator?  They *do* deserve it more, you know.  Why if it wasn’t for Joe Lieberman, the Medicare Option would have been signed (I was like, bubble-moist-dew eyes, when that was floated…“really?  you’ll lower the age of medicare?  I like that better than the public option, to a point”...and *crash* comes Lieberman popping my warm dreams….

Steve—You raise (in comment #114) a really good question, constantly debated among my friends: Could Obama have gotten more in his first two years?
I fault him for (1) not using the bully pulpit to better educate voters and push for progressive reforms, (2) continually reaching out to the GOP for votes long after it was clear that they weren’t interested, and (3) following his neo liberal economic advisors in not pushing Wall Street and calling them out.
That said, he faced Blue Dog Democrats in the House and namby pamby centrist Dems in the Senate, who made those huge majorities shakier than they appeared. I don’t think LBJ could have gotten a whole lot more given today’s environment.
Agree with you that we don’t want to lose the issue (or the substance) of protecting Social Security and Medicare.
While the Dem base may be shaken, I believe the prospect of a Pres Bachmann or Perry and more tea party control in the Congress will focus people’s attention and get our folks to the polls (unlike 2010).

Batshit Republicans wouldn’t be nearly as successful if their opposition wasn’t conceding nearly every debate they enter into with them.  Obama is the embodiment of this timeworn Democratic miscalculation.  Dems think if they come into the debate willing to give ground to Batshit Republicans that Americans will perceive them as The Adults, but Americans show time and again they place a much higher value on leaders who are less willing to compromise on their core principles (see Reagan Democrats, post 9/11 Bush.)  The opportunity to undo twenty five years of right wing damage was never better than it was when this President was elected, and his failure to act then, coupled with adoption of failed Democratic strategies of yore, pretty much doomed this President’s chances of achieving anything significant.  I suppose being the first black President is noteworthy, but in the end, so what?

Obama was always, and always honestly so, a negotiator and a compromiser. He believes in politics; he believes in the public (peoples’) will, he believes the over use of law, and the courts, and executive power has undercut popular support for progressive ideals and programs. That’s why he became a community organizer, not a public interest lawyer. He ran, and gained the nomination, because of that belief, and the belief by many progressives and Democrats that he could be a uniting, not polarizing figure.

A couple of things went wrong. Well, more than a couple.

Just as Obama gained the nomination, weeks before the convention, the effects of the collapse of the monetary bubble created by the mortgage banking industry, derivatives, and credit obligations suddenly made the stupid economy issue number one. Obama was unprepared, inexperienced, and had all the wrong instincts in that area of public policy. Yet he was, suddenly, and roughly simultaneously, the nominee. At that time - the very week, as I recall - he met with Bill Clinton, the godfather of the stupid economy and of the Lawrence Summers approach to economic destruction.  Clinton came out of that meeting high on Obama, to hear him tell it. He said it thusly: “The man knows how to listen.” I knew at that moment that we were in trouble; I had supported Obama in part because he was a way to escape the worst of the Clinton stupid economy policy and Lawrence Summers. Instead we were saddled anew with it. By now our vision of what is possible, our public opinion, and our politics are controlled by Summers’ and his brand of Washington Consensus neo liberal economics ideology. We cannot see or think clearly about economics, finance, and budget policy as a result.

Second, Obama’s belief in politics was based on the assumption that we all, including the Republicans, believe in politics, as a root value in American society. The Koch’s do not. The neo Christian Dominionists do not. The followers of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, the neo conservatives, do not. They believe in that the public is an animal to be coralled and controlled by whatever means - electionf fraud, deceit, terror, threats, surveillance, police action, etc. - available. These are dog in the manger, anti democracy, authoritarian, neo medievalist feudalists - in a literal, historical, sense. Their methods and objectives have nothing to do with the basis of America’s constitution, its traditions, or its ideals as we generally think of them. So it is easy, natural, and a liberating experience from their point of view to attack and threaten to destroy four centuries of political and social progress in European & North Atlantic, and world, civilization. These people do not represent Republicanism as the generations before Nixon understood it, at all. But the do control the Republican Party, its agenda, and its legislators now. Obama does not understand this change in context; he has no awareness of this historical transformation of the character of the political fight in the US; he is likely incapable, temperamentally, of admitting to consciousness and converting to action the fact and consequences of the true enmity toward our traditional values and civilization which motivates his opponents.

He, and his people, have made other mistakes - hubris among them. But he has never been guilty of either a secret agenda, or a lack of courage in defense of his values. Instead, I believe his disappointing performance is almost entirely the result of blindness to the situation he faces in governing and the existential threat to our society that it entails.

BTW - Your evil Obama poster looks just like an old friend from Marin.

You are wrong about Obama.

“I seriously don’t think he has as much power, due to the constitutional republic thing, as his angry critics are attributing to him”

Look at what Obama has done that is completely within his power:  he has escalated the war in Afghanistan and increased drone strikes in countries like Yemen, for no good purpose; his treasury department has formulated a HAMP program that has helped a fraction of the people it promised to help, which is a fraction of the people who need help;  he has claimed the power to kill any American citizen he wants, with no oversight or due process of any kind; he has claimed even broader executive secrecy priviledge than Bush ever did; he has agreed to continue holding prisoners at places like Guantanamo indefinitely without proper trials; and so on.

That’s why “his critics think he can do whatever he wants” is a distraction and a strawman argument.

“And because I’m going to be accused of being a partisan shill for Obama, I just want to say that I’m really not. “

Of course you are.  You are excusing his deeply bad conduct.

And what’s this “secret conservative” canard?  Obama is an out in the open conservative.  Fact:  he is against gay marriage, for religious reasons.  Fact:  He is against decriminalizing any drugs, even marijuana, and against toning down the war on drugs.  Fact:  he has praised Ronald Reagan repeatedly and villified Franklin Roosevelt.  Fact:  he believes tax cuts for the rich create jobs and stimulate the economy.  These are all facts that can be easily found on Google.

“But at the end of the day, I’m unconvinced that the greatest negotiator on the planet could beat people who are willing to pull the trigger on the entire world economy.  “

Right. he’s just a bad negotiator who can’t get a clean debt ceiling raise from those evil Republicans—

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/14/reid-and-mcconnell-hybrid-plan_n_898278.html

“The plan, which is being hatched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would ensure that over $1.5 trillion in cuts over ten years be passed into law. It would also grant President Obama the authority to extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 election season while requiring him to propose—but allowing him to ultimately veto—cuts beyond those initial $1.5 trillion. “

Obama could raise the debt ceiling now, today, this minute—without any spending cuts.  But he still insists on cutting Medicare, cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare.

“Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize because it was such a relief to the rest of the world that the US stepped away from the crazy.”

Yes, and he’s sure earned that, hasn’t he?

>>a detailed examination by the Bureau of 116 CIA ‘secret’ drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2010 has uncovered at least 10 individual attacks in which 45 or more civilians appear to have died<<

http://thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/07/18/washingtons-untrue-claims-no-civilian-deaths-in-pakistan-drone-strikes/

So why are Republicans responsible for drone strikes committed in the past two years?

“I’ll hear the exact same person bitching about how Obama hasn’t used his dictatorial powers to enact some policy or other and they’ll turn around and bitch about Obama taking too much power for the executive or not giving up power that Bush previously took. “

What “dictatorial power” do Obama’s critics wish he would use?  I hope you aren’t referring to an executive order telling the military not to enforce Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during a war, because that’s a fallacious example.

http://www.palmcenter.org/press/dadt/releases/New+Study+Says+Obama+Can+Halt+Gay+Discharges+With+Executive+Order

Steve @111 -
Interesting.  I don’t read Krugman (or any econ much) and did, sort of, come up with it myself.  As in - this is just what was happening when S finished training to be an engineer and ended up having to leave Japan to get a job (S is a friend of my spouse).  S came back to Japan, but is often considered very much an outsider, even after more than a decade, due to having worked in SE Asian countries for long periods - he is no longer Japanese enough. 
Does Krugman compair our current situation to the banking/manufacturing debacle of Sweden at all?
My current job does not allow for much out of area serious studying, which econ really requires for me.

Stubborn Kind of Fellow wrote:

“In fact I’d go further and say it’s progressives like you that are the crux of the problem. “

I couldn’t agree more.  In fact I couldn’t agree more with your whole post.  To expand upon what you wrote:  how has the Tea Party come to dominate their party?  By throwing out people who disagree with them, they put the fear of deity into the rest and force them to to their line.  Meanwhile, liberals say “let’s vote for Obama and the Democrats no matter what they do, and hope they do what we want some day out of the goodness of their heart.”

Not all liberals are Buddhist pacifists you know…I opposed the war in Iraq because it was incredibly stupid and unnecessary. I do support targeted strikes against terrorists wherever they are. Of course civilians die in war. We didn’t start it. And I balance it out against all the civilians who would die if the murderous, right wing religious fanatics were allowed to live and carry out their insane, nihilistic plans. You weep for the civilians in Afghanistan and Yemen, how about some compassion for the people who were just blown apart in Mumbai? Was that America’s fault too?

“Yeah, I guess that explains the addition of mandated health care for tens of millions, major increases in spending on green energy, new controls on Wall Street, repeal of DADT, etc. “

Forcing someone to buy health coverage that they can’t use because the co-payments are beyond their means is not doing them a favor.  And please don’t use Obama’s health care reform as evidence that he isn’t a conservative when his reform plan IS a conservative plan.  Haven’t you heard of Mitt Romney? 

Look at this quote:

“We thought that if we shaped a bill that wasn’t that different from bills that had previously been introduced by Republicans, including a Republican governor in Massachusetts who’s now running for president. That we would be able to find some common ground there.”

You know who that is?  Barack Obama.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/04/60minutes/main7021844_page3.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

The “new controls on Wall Street” don’t have anyone on Wall Street quaking in their boots.  No one has identified a single practice they will have to tone down to comply with them.  Obama’s green energy funding has been overstated—he wants to cut funding for hydropower, for instance.  Meanwhile look what his MMS has done:  vastly increased offshore oil drilling, vastly increased coal mining.  And Obama didn’t end DADT—people who sued the government did that.  After they won their suit, the Pentagon realized if they wanted to handle it their way they’d have to get Congress to repeal it.  Meanwhile people are *still* being discharged under DADT.

“I do support targeted strikes against terrorists wherever they are.”

Do you think the only means the US has to strike terrorists are indiscriminate bomb or missile blasts that, even IF they only hit their intended target, create blast waves that destroy the brick/stra/mud huts that innocent people nearby live in, crushing them to death in their sleep?  I seem to recall our mission to get bin Laden came off well enough without indiscriminate drone blasts. 

“Of course civilians die in war. We didn’t start it.”

What utter crap.  Even if we don’t start a war, if we keep fighting it it’s our war.  All the wars we’re in now are “our” wars.

“how about some compassion for the people who were just blown apart in Mumbai? Was that America’s fault too?”

Was the Mumbai attack carried out by American drones, flown by Americans, in missions ordered by Americans?  No?  Then why compare it?  Seriously, why?

“They believe in that the public is an animal to be coralled and controlled by whatever means - election fraud, deceit, terror, threats, surveillance, police action, etc. - available. “

It’s a good thing Obama doesn’t believe in any of those things.  Otherwise we’d be groped in our private areas at airports by the TSA, we’d have the president saying if his debt ceiling proposal isn’t passed he can’t mail out Social Security checks (which isn’t true, those payments must go out by law), we’d have the Commander in Chief saying that we aren’t fighting in Libya to overthrow Khaddafy only to turn around and bomb Khaddafy’s residences and offices a week later, we’d have the Dept of Justice planning to arrest and prosecute medical marijuana users even when they use it legally under their own state’s laws, and so on.

Peterman, if you think that Obama is within a country mile of the abuse we suffered under Bush, not to speak of what we may expect to suffer under any Republican candidate out except Huntsman, you are simply unhinged. I don’t know what kind of game you think you are playing here. You will say your are not playing a game, and may believe it. But you are so far out of reality that I believe you are.

I need not believe that Obama is perfect, I might even believe his performance is unacceptable in many areas. But converting a plausible discontent with Obama into an attack that equates him or his actions in office with the actions of a Nixon, Reagan, or either of the Bushes, especially GW, is pathetic. Implying that he is not, and will not remain vastly superior to any plausible Republican nominee in 2012 is irresponsible to the point of pathology.

* It was a fairly useless point of view, but it made me feel self-righteous, and at 21, that felt really fucking good*

Just can’t resist crotch-kicking anyone who disagrees, eh?  If you think that the DFHs who are garnering liberal opposition to Obama in advance of 2012 are threatening his reelection then that’s a fair argument to make, but maligning/marginalizing them with this kind of lame bullying kind of reinforces the perception that you’re not interested in any serious discourse about Obama’s shortcomings.  Over at Cole’s place they’re calling them Obots.

Ever notice that people always accuse others of being self-righteous right before they start spouting their own self-righteous screeds?  Damn, humans are so predictable.  The internet only magnifies this.

@ Ben D.

I’m interested in finding out what are the real differences between left-anarchism and right-anarchism, and I’m also bored and stuck at home since I have a bad case of the flu.

On domestic policy I’m a social liberal at all times, in fiscal policy a free-spending FDR/LBJ liberal during recessions and a fiscal conservative during boom times.

With regard to foreign policy I believe the best option is a real world federal government but since even a whiff of that makes 90% of people shit their pants, the more realistic option is to work for a world where the US transitions to being one of a half-dozen or so Great Powers rather than the only Superpower. It would be good for the world and good for the US. Something like the Iraq War would be, if not impossible, then much less likely to happen under that system.

I understand.

I guess to go into more detail with a hypothetical society that would reflect my views.

I believe government can work, that it is a tool that a society uses to control itself and help itself, government isn’t supposed to become a agent aside from the people to rule them, like we increasingly see the US government doing, with only certain social classes and even cliques being allowed to run for or be appointed to positions at the very top.

People in this society are provided by the government food, water, shelter, clothing, access to communications, an education, and the ability to travel. And though the government could be considered in a way a gigantic corporation that can out compete anything in its field, there will be niches where people can have a form of private industry to fill needs or wants of people for profit, but these private companies would remain regulated to be diverse and competitive amongst themselves and would never be allowed to control a society like companies and corporations today.

Work would be voluntary, but you can get more and better, and be able to buy things in exchange for work. People who work in jobs that a society needs to keep running, like farmers, sanitary workers, heath care workers, construction workers, etc would be highly compensated instead of those who suck up the wealth and energies of a society and become a drag on it like today.

Militarily everyone in the society who is able to use them, will be trained to use a automatic rifle of the assault/or battle kind or for some, marksperson and sniper weapons. They will be allowed to keep these weapons at their home. Some people who show an aptitude for weapons will also be trained and given large automatic machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, shoulder fired anti-air and anti-armor weapons and other special weapons. The point of all this is to scare off any invasion force as the insurgency would be well equipped in the things that make invading hell, There will also be a professional, modern, all volunteer military for defense only.

This society may use an alternate money system, something based on food and water production maybe. I need to do more research in this area.

When it comes to foreign policy this society would aid who it can after disasters and such, but would limit trade to things it couldn’t get or make on its own, as to not benefit heavily from near slavery so many around the world find themselves in. Maybe in exchange for buying power this society could negotiate better conditions from who it does business with.

I could write a lot but I’ll leave it at this.

Was the Mumbai attack carried out by American drones, flown by Americans, in missions ordered by Americans?  No?  Then why compare it?  Seriously, why?

Because it was carried out by the confederates of the people America is killing and it’s a damn shame we didn’t get them before they got to blow up a bunch of innocent Indians.

One of the most poisonous legacies of the Bush years was the unitary executive theory. I have to ask people on numerous blogs whether they’ve come to subconsciously accept the authoritarian ravings of John Yoo when they post their expectations with respect to the current President, given the poisonous assholes elected in the midterm.

If Obama wants to reduce unemployment, he has the tools at his disposal; he just doesn’t have the understanding to use them. The stimulus had me genuinely believing that he understood what needed to be done, economically. He proved me wrong.
Comment #42: Triplanetary  on  07/21  at  07:11 PM

What tools?

Hello?  He’s the President, not a dictator.  What tools isn’t he using?

Are you saying he should dismiss the Supreme Court?  FDR couldn’t do that.

Are you saying he should restack the Fed?  FDR also couldn’t do that - and we’re talking about a President who still is missing 1/3rd of his appointees because of Republican intransigence.

What are you saying?

If there’s anything he should do, is sue Congress for not doing their jobs.  But I’m not entirely sure how or what precedence that would set.

How is fighting against the Minority party going to hurt the Majority?

Please, tell me.  I’m all ears.  But it just sounds like a bunch of whining losers who don’t care.  And ow is that going to mobilize the silenced majority?

What new, exciting thing can Obama do?  The media doesn’t care to give him fireside chats, and you are busy giving them something to criticize him with.  Which is good and bad… But mostly bad.

Criticize the Republicans.  The ones who refuse to govern.  The ones who refuse to give 1/3rd of Obama’s appointees votes.  The ones who refuse to pass or write a budget.  The ones who refuse to do anything about jobs.  The ones who pulled the funding for prosecuting/processing Gitmo inmates.

Obama can’t make them do any of that.  And yet the whiners seem to imply ‘he has tools’ without ever mentioning how or what these tools are.

Obama could’ve veto’d the tax cut continuation.  Would that have helped us in 2010?  How?
Obama could pardon all the Gitmo inmates.  Would that help us regain the majority?  How?
Obama could force more speeches in primetime.  Would that help his popularity?  How?

I really have no idea what tools you tools are talking about.

debt ceiling proposal isn’t passed he can’t mail out Social Security checks (which isn’t true, those payments must go out by law)

But who’ll send them out?  There will be no money to pay people to write the checks.  There will be no money to pay people to process taxes.

How would it happen?  You can’t just say ‘It must happen’ as though it will.  It won’t.  Someone has to get paid to do it.  And the whole point of this vote is that the government isn’t allowed to owe more money.  So they can’t even promise to pay someone later!

...And I can’t find evidence of any US federal arrests of medical marijuana users since the Bush admin; and the TSA groping is a Bush plan, Bush appointees; so basically Comment #130 by elpathos is probably just filled with ignorant tripe.

Grr.

Re: http://www.palmcenter.org/press/dadt/releases/New+Study+Says+Obama+Can+Halt+Gay+Discharges+With+Executive+Order

I mean, certainly, if you want to embroil DADT into years of lawsuits and injunctions, you can go with an executive order which pits one law against another.  It’s not like DADT was an executive order, though :  It was an actual law.  So the odds of defeat in court were not good.  And courts move slower.

Guess what, though?  DADT is gone now and we still have people saying that we should’ve gone the executive order + lawsuit route.  You know what other lawsuit started in 2009?  Repealing the ACA.  You know what lawsuit is still going on?  Repealing the ACA.

Bah.

Dems think if they come into the debate willing to give ground to Batshit Republicans that Americans will perceive them as The Adults, but Americans show time and again they place a much higher value on leaders who are less willing to compromise on their core principles (see Reagan Democrats, post 9/11 Bush.)

Bill Clinton had a phrase that epitomizes this sentiment: “Strong and wrong always beats weak and right.”

The current Republican Party is pretty much wrong on every single issue out there, but I have to tip my cap to them for the tenacity they demonstrate in defending their beliefs, despite how wrong those beliefs are. For most of my life there’s been a stereotype that Republicans are rigid and uncompromising and that Democrats are spineless and overly conciliatory. Unfortunately, it’s hard right now to argue that the stereotype isn’t accurate.

I see Obama as a mix of benevolent fool and arrogant condescender.  I think he believes he is crafting some great, lofty legacy as the great negotiator; the one who goes beyond partisan politics, blah, blah, blah.  Of course, for this to work, it would require that all parties be in full possession of their sanity, which, as we know, rethugs, aren’t.  And Obama can’t seem to see that.  He’s like Charlie Brown, and the rethugs are Lucy with the football.  Kick; ball get pulled away; fall on ass. Over and over.

At the same time, he think progressive like me are the noisy rabble who should be consigned to the kids’ table and ignored.  He pats us on the head and says, “Hush. The grownups are talking.”

No, I don’t think McCain would be better.  And don’t think it’s all Obama’s fault.  (The corporate media being one of our most significant problems.)  But I don’t think the problem is entirely “because the Republicans are crazy” either. Until we get some Dems with a spine, this lunacy will continue.

Of course civilians die in war. We didn’t start it. And I balance it out against all the civilians who would die if the murderous, right wing religious fanatics were allowed to live and carry out their insane, nihilistic plans.

America kills far more civilians than al-Qaeda could dream of doing. Because America has hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military hardware with which to do it.

And yes, we did start these wars. 9/11 was not an act of war, it was a criminal act. By responding to it as an act of war, America has killed far, far more than the 3000 innocent civilians who died on 9/11.

and the TSA groping is a Bush plan, Bush appointees

A plan which the Obama administration openly endorsed.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully blame the GOP for that one. Disingenuous pundits like Krauthammer have the right-wing sheep convinced that the pat-downs are an Obama thing, when they are most definitely a Bush thing and nothing more than a continuation of Bush’s authoritarian practices.

But that does tend to beg the question of why Bush’s authoritarian practices were allowed to continue into the next administration. Those “tools” you profess ignorance of were two years of a Democratic president who had a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. All of this playing dumb and acting like the president has his hands tied when his party had (and squandered) a majority in Congress is getting irritating. If the president sets strong priorities, his fellow party members in Congress will support him, including via legislation. Unfortunately, Obama never set strong priorities beyond populism and an incredibly misplaced devotion to bipartisanship.

So you’re saying that the White House shouldn’t defend the TSA?  Why or why not?

Personally, I don’t think the White House calling it deplorable would gain much traction from detractors.  They’d just say, ‘he should end it’ at the same time as saying ‘see, he’s soft on terrorists’.  Because that gets airwaves.

Are you saying that random pat-downs are a violation or your rights?  Or whether scanning every passenger is or isn’t?  Do you think the current Supreme Court - the one that ruled that probable cause for breaking and entering was the sound of a flushing toilet - would side with you?

And how does criticizing the White house - specifically Obama - for condoning searches of travelers help or hinder the popular sentiment that Democrats are just like Republicans?

I know I won’t get answers to these questions.  Because complainers don’t have a plan beyond complaining.

DTGslu2K @ 99 (BTW, are you formerly DTG_STL?):  Sorry, I should have explained myself better.  My motivation for primarying Obama isn’t to replace him in 2012, it’s to:

- Compel him to govern more to the left, if for a brief while

- Establish a more progressive platform for 2014 and 2016

I fully expect Obama to win a primary challenge, and due to the incredibly weak and frightening GOP field (and the lesson of 2000 that elections have consequences), not suffer any sort of enthusiasm fatigue from progressives that voted against him in a primary.

helen w. h.:  As someone who also wants to know more about economics, but feels anxious about the vastness of the subject, I can’t recommend Krugman’s blog enough.  It’s a quick read (two or three posts a day), and he has a real knack for explaining the most important parts of economic theory in a way that’s relatively easy to understand.  For example: google “Krugman babysitting club”, and you’ll find a great demonstration of why the amount of money in an economy can have a greater effect on unemployment than the desire of people to take a job, or regulation, or anything else.  If that sounds complicated, just read his example; he explains it better than I do.

As an added bonus, he now has a set of links of some of his past posts on the right hand side of the page that act as an Econ 101 for laypeople.  Well worth the read, and about as brief as something that illuminating can be (an hour or two in total, I’d say).

Triplanetary, could you please explain to me how this tool would have been effective against any of the methods by which Crissa explained President Obama’s hands were tied, other than simply repeating that he should have used the tools at his disposal?  Thanks.

Btw, shah8, at comment 90, I’m not surprised that no one seems to be willing to address the crux of the issue, now that you have clarified what your (and what I thought your) actual position was.

One question, why must everything be black and white, liberal and conservative, for the complainers on this board?  I consider myself as far removed from either end of the spectrum (Social Democrat) as I consider Obama to be removed from them AND myself.  Someone provided an excellent explanation on that regard, in this thread, that I think others should read before proceeding further.

I fully expect Obama to win a primary challenge, and due to the incredibly weak and frightening GOP field (and the lesson of 2000 that elections have consequences), not suffer any sort of enthusiasm fatigue from progressives that voted against him in a primary.

It’s possible, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. None of the last four sitting presidents who faced serious primary challenges were re-elected. Bush41, Carter, and Ford all faced serious intraparty challenges (from Buchanan, Kennedy, and Reagan respectively) and survived their primaries only to lose the general election. LBJ wasn’t defeated in his primary, but he very likely would have been had he not withdrawn first. Much of the Democratic base was (justifiably) angry at him for escalating the Vietnam War. The end result was the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, getting elected as our 37th president.

My main point is that it’s possible Obama could survive a primary challenge and still win the general, but it would be an unprecedented feat, at least in any of our lifetimes. The historical pattern suggests that a Republican will win the White House in 2012 if Obama faces a serious primary threat.

It sucks, and honestly I wish the system we had was one in which presidential primary challenges were healthy for the party in power, but it just hasn’t worked out that way. The end result has always been that the other party takes back the White House, and it’s worked this way for and against both parties.

And to answer your other question, yes, I am the current incarnation of DTGinSTL/MurrowFan.

Great post.  I have been very frustrated with what’s going on. I feel your post pretty much expresses the way I feel. I am sure a lot of people feel this way.  Living in Ohio I see what the alternative can be.

On the one hand it’s true, it is the Republicans, however if I understood correctly when offered a “pass” in a Mitch McConnell deal Obama responded:

What I emphasized to the broader group of congressional leaders yesterday is now is the time to deal with these issues. If not now, when? I’ve been hearing from my Republican friends for quite some time that it is a moral imperative for us to tackle our debt and our deficits in a serious way. I’ve been hearing from them that this is one of the things that’s creating uncertainty and holding back investment on the part of the business community. And so what I’ve said to them is, let’s go. And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors, but make sure those programs were there for not just this generation but for the next generation; that it is possible for us to bring in revenues in a way that does not impede our current recovery, but is fair and balanced.

That to me strikes me as not only a voluntary effort to continue the so-called “Debt Crisis”, but worse cut Social Security and Medicaid, both of which are arguably not part of the current deficit and neither of which have solvency problems for decades even in the worst estimates.

He continues:

So I continue to push congressional leaders for the largest possible deal.

So here he’s saying he doesn’t just want some piddling compromise, he wants massive cuts to social programs, cuts that will hurt not people in the ruling class strata he now inhabits, but rather the 99% of the rest of us (most heavily of course, the poor). Granted it might include taxes too, but recent indications from Pelosi is it’ll only be cuts (leaving tax “increases” to some future date where they can be properly excised and forgotten).

He goes on:

I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension.

I understand - he doesn’t want this to go into the election season where he probably expects it will be to the Republicans’ advantage, however here he is again voluntarily keeping the (faux) “crisis” going. Worse he’s a fool if he thinks acceding to Republicans here won’t hurt him anyway, scroll down on this Digby post:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/shared-sacrifice-village-style.html

So they’re already crafting messages about Obama cutting Social Security.

All that said, if he’s truly playing “11-dimensional chess” (the problem of course of which, is it’s hard to see when you’re losing) where this is all “theater” to show how he exercised every option and ultimately he follows what Krugman says:

More and more, I think this will end up with the constitutional option: just saying that the 14th amendment and the debt ceiling are incompatible, and ignoring the limit. Let the GOP go ahead and try to impeach: the whole world knows who’s intransigent here.

then I’ll happily (an understatement) recant.

So far I haven’t seen any sign of this in Obama’s preemptive bargaining style, but I will gladly eat my words and say so.

On the one hand it’s true, it is the Republicans, however if I understood correctly when offered a “pass” in a Mitch McConnell deal Obama responded:

What I emphasized to the broader group of congressional leaders yesterday is now is the time to deal with these issues. If not now, when? I’ve been hearing from my Republican friends for quite some time that it is a moral imperative for us to tackle our debt and our deficits in a serious way. I’ve been hearing from them that this is one of the things that’s creating uncertainty and holding back investment on the part of the business community. And so what I’ve said to them is, let’s go. And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors, but make sure those programs were there for not just this generation but for the next generation; that it is possible for us to bring in revenues in a way that does not impede our current recovery, but is fair and balanced.

That to me strikes me as not only a voluntary effort to continue the so-called “Debt Crisis”, but worse cut Social Security and Medicaid, both of which are arguably not part of the current deficit and neither of which have solvency problems for decades even in the worst estimates.

He continues:

So I continue to push congressional leaders for the largest possible deal.

So here he’s saying he doesn’t just want some piddling compromise, he wants massive cuts to social programs, cuts that will hurt not people in the ruling class strata he now inhabits, but rather the 99% of the rest of us (most heavily of course, the poor). Granted it might include taxes too, but recent indications from Pelosi is it’ll only be cuts (leaving tax “increases” to some future date where they can be properly excised and forgotten).

He goes on:

I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension.

I understand - he doesn’t want this to go into the election season where he probably expects it will be to the Republicans’ advantage, however here he is again voluntarily keeping the (faux) “crisis” going. Worse he’s a fool if he thinks acceding to Republicans here won’t hurt him anyway, scroll down on this Digby post:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/shared-sacrifice-village-style.html

So they’re already crafting messages about Obama cutting Social Security.

All that said, if he’s truly playing “11-dimensional chess” (the problem of course of which, is it’s hard to see when you’re losing) where this is all “theater” to show how he exercised every option and ultimately he follows what Krugman says:

More and more, I think this will end up with the constitutional option: just saying that the 14th amendment and the debt ceiling are incompatible, and ignoring the limit. Let the GOP go ahead and try to impeach: the whole world knows who’s intransigent here.

then I’ll happily (an understatement) recant.

So far I haven’t seen any sign of this in Obama’s preemptive bargaining style, but I will gladly eat my words and say so.

Sorry for the double post…

I think your cancer analogy is faulty.  It isn’t that you have cancer and you are blaming your problems on your hair falling out.  Rather, you have cancer and your doctor is accepting the cancer’s perspective as completely valid. That is, you have too many healthy cells freeloading off the system, you need to lose that weight and cancer has a good plan, you need to allow the cancer to metastasize for your own good.  People that say your doctor is doing more harm than good haven’t come to the conclusion that the cancer is less of a problem than your doctor. However, if he has completely convinced you that following any course of treatment that has proven successful in the past would make you worse, he comes in a close second.

The Republicans should be reduced to a tiny rump, ridiculed by children, and urinated on by small pets by now.  Instead Obama not only accepts their framing, and takes their failed prescriptions seriously, but ignores progressive prescriptions that have proven successful historically.  I think in the last congress, Obama was glad to have a turncoat like Lieberman that denied him the 60 vote majority, otherwise he would have had no excuse for capitulating on all the Republican economic demands.

And people like you make such intellectually dishonest claims about his critics.

And yes, we did start these wars. 9/11 was not an act of war, it was a criminal act. By responding to it as an act of war, America has killed far, far more than the 3000 innocent civilians who died on 9/11.

Ain’t about the numbers, and 9/11 was just the most spectacular of the attacks against us, there’ve been lots of others.

Look, morality is a lovely notion, but it’s not real. At the end of the day human beings are killers. We kill each other for resources and other advantages. Liberal, pluralistic civilization is indeed at war with a nihilistic death cult. I hate to sound like a neocon (I’m really not) but even stopped clocks are right twice a day. I think we should do everything we can do to minimize civilian casualties (we pay a lot more attention to that than we used to) but the fact that more of them are dying than us is a good thing.

And we may view 9/11 as a criminal act rather than an act of war but its perpetrators sure as hell didn’t.

Personally, I don’t think the White House calling it deplorable would gain much traction from detractors.  They’d just say, ‘he should end it’ at the same time as saying ‘see, he’s soft on terrorists’.  Because that gets airwaves.

And the fact that Obama is willing to kill civilians in Pakistan and violate the rights of American citizens in order to avoid appearing “soft on terror” is part of that populism I mentioned. The fact that a segment of the population is going to accuse him of being soft on terror no matter what he does doesn’t seem to deter him.

And how does criticizing the White house - specifically Obama - for condoning searches of travelers help or hinder the popular sentiment that Democrats are just like Republicans?

I’m… are you joking?

Liberal, pluralistic civilization is indeed at war with a nihilistic death cult.

If I accepted that as true (I don’t), I’d have no choice but to conclude that the GOP is part of said nihilistic death cult. I mean, America’s foreign policies since WW2 have killed far more people and done far more damage than any one terrorist group. How else do you define a “nihilistic death cult”?

(1) Obama is a one-term president.  Hint: It’s the
economy.  Yes, that’s the Republican’s fault, but
when has that mattered?

(2) If we do not have a successful primary challenge,
we will end up with a Republican president.

(3) So who can challenge Obama?  Answer: the fate of
the Republic is in the hands of Hillary.

(4) Continuing to make excuses for Obama’s wishy-washy
behavior and impressive record of broken promises is
probably as useless as supporting Nader in 2000.

The GOP and Al Qaeda are in fact mirror images of each other. I’m not in favor of indiscriminate slaughter or global warfare but if we have decent intelligence on the whereabouts of someone who is actively planning to kill Americans and our allies and there’s no way to safely apprehend him, I think it’s absolutely morally acceptable to have that person killed. And if some innocent men, women and children in his immediate vicinity get killed too that’s the game.

I’m not joking.  I’m just pointing out that at no point would you be satisfied, Triplanetary, and at no point do you hold a voting block large enough to swing an election Leftwards as long as you’re demoralizing the low information voter which inhabits the silences majority.

You never did answer my questions, you know, aside from saying that he shouldn’t fear being called soft on terror - so for some reason, he should be soft on terror.  The pat-downs are annoying, but they’re not illegal or any more invasive than anything put down in the last administration.

In fact, I find it rather insulting that you think a pat-down is more important than the ID-checking, bag-rifling, book-and-wrench stealing, not to mention a couple policies this administration ended:  No permanent passports for transgendered and shipping civilians to military prisons.  But you never seem to give credit for doing these things which actually improve people’s lives.

And what about ending DADT?  I pointed out that someone, in this very thread, said we should have been in court this very day instead of cheering on the actual, legislated end of DADT.

Of course those who did not vote bear some responsibility for these wackos getting into power.

I’ve already made it quite clear what would have satisfied me. A sufficiently large stimulus, with genuine investment in jobs and infrastructure, a single-payer healthcare system, no expansions of overseas wars, justice for Guantanamo inmates. That kind of stuff. Now, you can argue that these things weren’t politically possible, and we can amicably disagree on that point, but I won’t be told that I’m just looking for reasons to be dissatisfied.

Because for all his socially-kinda-liberal accomplishments, he’s very much an economic conservative, economic conservatism perpetuates economic injustice.

(1) Obama is a one-term president.  Hint: It’s the economy.  Yes, that’s the Republican’s fault, but when has that mattered?

Obama might be a one-term president. If he winds up losing next year, yes, it will be because of the economy.

(2) If we do not have a successful primary challenge, we will end up with a Republican president.

Quite the opposite. As noted above, only once in America’s 235 year history has someone defeated a sitting president in the primaries and gone on to win the presidency. It happened 155 years ago. The one thing most likely to guarantee that a Republican becomes president next year is if a rift develops in the Democratic Party through a messy primary. In the last 80 years, the only presidents who lost their re-election campaigns were the ones who were primaried. Conversely, every single first-term president in the same timespan has been re-elected when they weren’t challenged in a primary fight.

(3) So who can challenge Obama?  Answer: the fate of the Republic is in the hands of Hillary.

There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. Hillary Clinton has said so herself on numerous occasions. The fact that she has remained one of the most loyal members of Obama’s Cabinet for the past 2.5 years would undermine her in a primary fight. The question that would destroy her candidacy is, “If Obama is such a lousy president, why did you stay in his Cabinet for so long?”

In any case, it’s moot. She’s not going to run in 2012. I’ll be shocked if anybody with real clout challenges Obama from within the Democratic Party next year.

(4) Continuing to make excuses for Obama’s wishy-washy behavior and impressive record of broken promises is probably as useless as supporting Nader in 2000.

Only if you are delusional. Ralph Nader never had any realistic chance of becoming president, and everyone who had a clue about our electoral system recognized this fact. The excuse making does get tiresome and I agree that Obama’s re-election is in a precarious spot right now, but only a fool believes that he’s already lost the election next year. He’s still beating every single GOP contender in head-to-head polling, which is probably not so much a reflection of staunch support for Obama as it is staunch rejection of the available alternatives.

It’s hard to imagine Obama winning next year based on enthusiasm from the base, because so much of that 2008 enthusiasm has evaporated since he became president. But… even as vulnerable as President Obama is right now, the GOP may yet fuck up what could have been an easy path to taking back the White House. If Obama wins, it will be less about the public giving him a thumbs up than it will be about the public giving the GOP the thumbs down.

The most likely outcome might be Obama getting re-elected by virtue of being perceived as the lesser of two evils.

@Triplanetary: Please explain how Obama’s hands were NOT tied.

@Crissa: Are you seriously saying that a pat-down would be less traumatic to a rape survivor than any of the things you mentioned on your list?  I find that rather… vomit-inducing….

I don’t fucking care about your victim-than-thou.  I’ve been through extended patdowns, sniffs, swabs, pokes and prods for the last ten fucking years.  Of course it upsets rape victims.  Geez.  It upsets lots of people!

My point was that there is nothing unconstitutional about it and no way to get the current court system to side that way - and no way to pass law making it illegal or unconstitutional.

Grr.

All this focus on the presidency is stupid anyway, let’s fucking take Congress back. Sadly, I feel like we won’t get a Democratic Congress again until we have a Republican President, but let’s at least give it a shot.

Look, here’s where you’re wrong, Amanda.

In order to fight the lunatic Republicans, we need to back someone who is WILLING to fight the lunatic Republicans.

The problem here can be explained by analogy.  The Republicans are Nazis.  Obama and the Obama-style sellout Democrats, unfortunately, are the Centre Party of Weimar Germany.  Go look them up and what they’re famous for if you don’t know already.

Given our dysfunctional first-past-the-post electoral system, our best chance is to force the Obama-style sellouts out of the Democratic Party so that it can be run by people who are willing to fight against the Republicans.  If this proves *impossible*, then the only thing left is to back other options, whether a third party or an outside-the-system operation.  But I think it *is* possible based on Wisconsin.

The key, however, is that in order to deal with the *primary* problem—the Republicans—we must deal with the *secondary* problem—Obama and his ilk—*FIRST*.

Put another way, voting for the Centre Party was no better than voting for the Nazi Party—even though it may have appeared better—because the Centre Party *let the Nazis run things*.  In our system, voting for some Democrats is better than voting for Republicans, but voting for Blue Dogs, DLC types, and Obama types, is likewise no better than voting for the Republicans, because they *let the Republicans run things* for some addled reason.  We need elected Democrats who don’t offer the lunatic Republicans 99% of what they want on a silver platter, ones who don’t stab their own constituents in the back just for “bipartisanship”—we need people who don’t do this, because people who do do this are *useless*.

” But at the end of the day, I’m unconvinced that the greatest negotiator on the planet could beat people who are willing to pull the trigger on the entire world economy.  “

That’s because it’s not a job for a negotiator.  It’s a job for someone who’s willing to threaten, bully, and imprison his or her enemies.  FDR did it.  Wilson knew exactly how to do it (and Wilson was not a good man, having done some of the most evil things in this country’s history, but he was at least deploying his nasty for the side of good *some* of the time).  Grant dealt with the KKK types by kicking the KKK representatives out of Congress, implementing martial law, and forcing honest elections; that didn’t stick under later Presidencies, but it’s another example of the necessary attitude when dealing with this sort of evil lunatic.

We need De Gaulle and we have Petain.  I could reel off many more such analogies.