If the rational goal is to make sure the interests of concentrated wealth are happy, then Obama is a smashing success.  The voters have corralled themselves into choosing between the party that services the wealthy while displaying open contempt for most of the population (including much of its own base) and the party that (usually) glad-hands most of the population while prioritizing servicing the wealthy.  They’re two different parties, to be sure, but by limiting ourselves to those two options we all guarantee that we’ll be fucking ourselves just the same.

I had somehow gotten over the failure to do something truly progressive on health care, but this… I just don’t understand this.

At this rate, I’m not even sure he’ll survive a primary in ‘12.

This could very well mean that Mitt Romney will be elected President of the United States in 2012.  Or worse, Sarah Palin.

I keep hoping that he’ll get up there and describe this whole scenario and then say “Psych!”

If you want to be really depressed, read Krugman’s blog entry about it. Is there literally no one in the White House who was able to stand up and say: “this is a stupid idea.”?

I was reading an article about how everyone is now antiRahm on the left for the obvious reasons and the writer has Rahm cast as a someone who is only interested in getting a majority vote and keep the democrats in power.

With that in mind what’s the upside to this? The base will hate it. They don’t care about the base, fine. Independents will see Obama caving into crazies and Wall Street. Republicans will love it even if it makes no sense because its a win for them. Maybe it makes blue dogs chill out but what other possible advantages does this move buy them. Presumably he thinks he can make up the lost ground in the years left over but how is he going to do that without spending? You have to spend money to make money and that means deficit spending or tax hikes and are those really so unpalatable?

Nobody even knows what it means yet, and basing things on politico scoops tends to be dicey. He had already proposed a whole lot of cutting in certain areas so it wouldn’t shock me if there’s really nothing new here. An across the board freeze with no thought like McCain proposed is not the same as adjusting levels of funding without increasing the budget.

Also, it tends to be difficult to defend things on two fronts, something Obama has had to do since…oh… 30 days into his term.  JUST WORDS!

To paraphrase BSG, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

First is the spending freeze. Next will be the cuts. Something similar to “I don’t think it is very social democratic to leave crippling debt to our children or our children’s children” (Parti Quebecois, 1995) will be said as justification (though in the USA I’m guessing “liberal” or “progressive” will substitute for “social democrat”). Creeping privatization will also occur, though with the Dems I’m guessing they will simply silently expand some government contractors’ responsabilities instead of going willy-nilly selling away chunks of government, like under the GOP.

He just told a lot of us that our votes are not wanted. He’ll get his wish.

I think Steve Benen has it right:  the problem isn’t in the plan itself (it seems to be a fairly ordinary round of budget-cutting, not an across-the-board freeze), the problem is that using the word “freeze” to describe it is once again buying into the Republican frame of government=bad.

Is this coming from anything but fucking Politico and “sources”?! Seriously. Why would you trust them to get anything like that right? I’m not saying Obama won’t make a dumbass decision, but what’s the point of reacting to this whisper-down-the-lane game?

Hob, pay attention. No, it’s not just from Politico, not by a fucking long shot. It’s completely real, just leaked a bit sooner than they probably wanted (or then again, maybe not.) They even sent Jared Bernstein to have his ass kicked by Maddow trying to defend this stupidity.

Hob, I thought the same thing, that Rahm was floating a balloon and trying to get this into the speech. Then Biden’s economic adviser went on Maddow to defend it (and endure a major tongue-lashing).

At this point, if they drop it, it will be seen as caving in to the DFHs. It is a possibility, but I won’t waste a moment hoping for it.

It’s crushing.  When Obama spoke about Reagan being a “transformative” President I understood full well what he was saying, and when he said he wanted to be transformative too, I took that to mean he wanted to do what Reagan did: launch a proactive defense of your ideaology, and institute the policies to carry it out, while at the same time, attacking the opposition’s ideology as being a big shit bomb.

I thought Obama had the intellectual chops to mount a years-long case for liberalism, and against conservatism.  Considering the country and the globe were nearly destroyed by the bush years, this should have been easy.

Instead he ran away screaming like a little baby as soon as the republicans won one.  One seat.  One lousy seat, and he became a conservative.

The republicans asked; who’s your daddy and Obama and most of the democrats answered; you are.

Is it any wonder to anyone of any fair mind that the American people oftne seem to believe that Democrats are weak on national defense?  I mean, they are weak.  Let’s be honest.  I don’t happen to believe that our best interests lie in being tough on other countries, but if I were a pissy pants little fraidy cat, I can see why I’d vote Republican, I can tell you that.

Also, it tends to be difficult to defend things on two fronts, something Obama has had to do since…oh… 30 days into his term.  JUST WORDS!

Indeed.  You can walk on the left side of the road or you can walk on the right side of the road.  When you steadfastly try walking down the middle of the road, eventually you’ll get squished by a big truck.

The lesson to President Obama should be this… quit trying to appease your opponents and stop assuming that they are working with you in good faith.  They aren’t.  One of them specifically said to the media that he wanted healthcare reform to be your Waterloo, that he wanted to “break you”.

If the goal is to get more Republicans elected and to jeopardize your own re-election chances in 2012, then by all means… continue doing what you are doing, President Obama.  Michael Steele couldn’t ask for a better ally than you in his efforts to remain employed.

Is this coming from anything but fucking Politico and “sources”?! Seriously.

Immediately after this hit the news wires last night, Jared Bernstein (VP Biden’s Chief Economic Advisor) appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, and she confronted him point blank about it - he confirmed that yes, the WH is planning on announcing budget cuts in the SOTU this week.

The White House has confirmed that this isn’t just POLITICO rumor-mongering.

Got to give major props to Adolph Reed Jr. for knowing way back when who this guy really was. I wish I’d been paying more attention last year. Here’s Reed from The Nation’s look at Obama’s first year:

Adolph Reed Jr.

Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

In January 1996 I wrote the following about Barack Obama in my Village Voice column: “In Chicago, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program—the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics.”

In 2007 Matt Taibbi described him as “an ingeniously crafted human cipher, a man without race, ideology, geographic allegiances, or, indeed, sharp edges of any kind. You can’t run against him on the issues because you can’t even find him on the ideological spectrum.”

In 2006 Ken Silverstein noted Obama’s deep financial industry connections. Glen Ford, Paul Street and many others have stressed those and other disturbing connections, including his penchant for supporting more conservative Democratic candidates against more liberal ones.

Obama indicated no later than the summer of 2007 that he intended, if elected, to extend the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan.

The only surprise about his presidency is how many ersatz leftists cling to the fiction that he’s anything other than a superficially articulate neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton mold and that his administration would act in any other way.

Obama is a fiscal conservative who knows how to talk to liberals.  It isn’t that he is weak or that he lacks courage, it is that he is not inclined to do what some of his words make liberals think he really would rather do.  Don’t forget that what gets left out of the thumbnail bio of Reagan (apparently by liberals, too) is that he was a hard-core right winger, and he was a fucking bloodthirsty liar when it suited his purposes.  Reagan’s ideology was bankrupt, and even he backed off it a bit when he knew it was political suicide.

This isn’t about Democrats kowtowing to Republicans and Republican philosophy.  It is about Democrats embracing the same corporatism and imperialism as the Republicans, and thinking they can manage these things and still govern effectively.  This isn’t possible, as corporatism and imperialism are poisonous to republican government. It results in Democrats spreading themselves too thin and being unable to solidify support for their policies, which are often populist concepts that get watered down and compromised—for the sake of appeasing concentrated wealth—to the point of being effectively useless (except to concentrated wealth).

If the rational goal is to make sure the interests of concentrated wealth are happy, then Obama is a smashing success.

The man is too smart to just be fucking this up.

He is not, and has never been, a progressive liberal.  I just never expected this pandering to the Republicans.

He deserves to have his ass kicked.  He had so much political capital…center left and left people dying for any representation.  He’s proven to be Republican-lite.

Why should Republicans vote for a Democrat who acts like a Republican when they can vote for a real Republican?  Why should Democrats vote for a Democrat who acts like a Republican, unless it’s to prevent a teabagger?  And even then, many of them consider it teaching a lesson to the Democrats that they will not support Republican-lite.

Coakley loss b/c she ran a bad campaign and the Democrats have not followed through on their promises.  They tacked to the right immediately and they’ve lost support because of it.

So what are they going to do?  Tack harder to the right.

Their futures are as highly paid lobbyist and consultants.  They serve those interests, not those of the people who elected them.  I really think the current Dems are happier being a minority b/c they can make promises and not worry about action.  Now that they are expected to act, what have they done?

Sold out every progressive campaign promise.

Rahm is an idiot—if you think enacting the Democratic platform is a priority.  If you want to elect Democrats that promise to support the people but actually support the rich/corporations, his strategy of electing Blue Dogs makes perfect sense.  Dean was wrong, b/c he elected too many Dems, and now they were expected to accomplish something that the candidates never want to do. 

They are never regulating big business again.  Cutting government stimulus now is going to tank the economy just like in 1937.  But military spending will increase and keep those in the money in the money.

On a broader scale, has this been just about the shittiest January imagineable or what?

- One of the most liberal states in the country elects a teabagger conservative to replace the Lion of the Senate, one day prior to the one year anniversary of President Obama’s historic inauguration.

- SCOTUS hands down one of its most disasterous rulings since Dred Scott, effectively giving total control over election campaigns to corporations.

- President Obama announces that he’s going to show us his best Herbert Hoover impersonation, cutting the budget in the midst of the worst economic climate since The Great Depression.

Has there been any good news at all this month?

I might add that in a country such as ours, we can’t expect courage from our elected officials.  We are supposed to be the boss, and the courage has to come from us.  I know that sounds cheesy, but what Steve LaBonne just shared makes me think that we (the voters) are the ones lacking courage, and we’re getting just the government that we deserve.

http://www.thebaffler.com/viewArticle/46/pop_goes_the_weasel/1/

Dont despair!

Look at he bigger picture. When Cap-and-Trade is passed, there will be $800 billion flowing to the treasury from the evil corporations. I’m not sure where they get the money, but whatever! And the extra few dollars a gallon gas taxes will produce another $100 billion or so.
And when amnesty gets passed, the “instant citizen voter registration fee” will produce at least $50 billion, fully equal to two years expenses in the freeze.

The only surprise about his presidency is how many ersatz leftists cling to the fiction that he’s anything other than a superficially articulate neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton mold and that his administration would act in any other way.

If anybody ever wondered what a theoretical third term for President William Jefferson Clinton would have looked like, I think we’re witnessing it right now.  The only difference is that unlike the real Clinton, Obama lacks the 8 years of presidential experience to understand how the other side truly works and he still naively assumes good faith on the part of his opponents.

Caren,

I legitimately thought the Dems had learned their lessons about being Repub-lite.  They kept getting their asses handed to them before Howard Dean slapped them across the back of the head and said, “Be Democrats again and we’ll win.”  So much for that.

Maybe Obama will pull his head out before it’s too late, but at this rate, it certainly appears he’s actively trying to be a one-term president.

Any real chance at health care reform is dead, Obama has embraced indefinite detention w/o trial and warrantless surveillance, half his “stimulus” bill was tax cuts, he’s leading the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, he’s coddling the bankers, etc.  Now he’s going to freeze spending?  Really?  At this point we’ve basically elected John McCain (though w/o Sarah Palin, thank gawd!).

If not for the Sotomayor nomination I’d be seriously considering staying home in 2012.

God, I wish Hillary Clinton was the President.

We need a Progressive Party.

Pronto.

You guys are just now figuring out what an empty suit
Obama is???? He, like Clinton is another chameleon who can make whatever audience is listening that he is just like them.  He is going to do a lot of damage before he is replaced.  The good news is it looks like that damage is going to be limited by the coming election storm in November.  I can hardly wait.

Hell, I almost wish Mike Gravel was president…

He is going to do a lot of damage before he is replaced.

Of course, he’ll get replaced by a Republican, and then we’ll be back into pedal-to-the-metal-to-Armageddon time…

I wish Eugene Debbs was president.

You know, as long as we’re fantasizing and all.

Everything the Obama administration is doing was anticipated by leftists. Although everyone had to vote for the not-Republican, Obama should have been regarded as a conservative moderate who prefers institutional power over people. One point often missing in analysis is the finance industry crisis was not made public until after the primary season. This was probably planned so Democrats would not select anyone with economic experience. There was only one Democratic candidate that had ever stood up to bankers, but because he did not meet the needs of persons who had achieved the third level of sexual liberation he was deemed un-electable. Perhaps the little feller from Ohio should have asked his spouse to run in his place so voters motivated by appearances could have had a real liberal to vote for.

Of course, he’ll get replaced by a Republican, and then we’ll be back into pedal-to-the-metal-to-Armageddon time…

Yeah, we can either take the freeway (GOP) or the scenic route (Dem) on our way to Armageddon. 

It’s a somewhat less inspiring message than we had in 2008…

“He is going to do a lot of damage before he is replaced.”

With Obama we got one (less than big enough, but still) stimulus and we haven’t nuked Iran yet. 

OTOH, President McCain would have vetoed the stimulus, appointed Bill Kristol or Chuck Krauthammer to the SCOTUS, and then, after he was declared unfit by the same SCOTUS in late 2009, President Palin would bomb Iran, threaten North Korea, break every treaty we ever signed, personally shoot war prisoners, and finish outsourcing the federal government to Haliburton and Blackwater just before announcing she was bored and leaving POTUS to return to the wingnut welfare circuit, starting with the National Review cruise, and then announcing she had a radio deal to replace “Dr.” Laura SchlessSwinger.  The rest of the world would get together to stage an intervention to take out the US government and prevent further lunacy…

Meanwhile, no matter who is POTUS, America’s decline into irrelevance continues to accelerate…

Color me absolutely puzzled by the Obama White House’s absolute capitulation to Republican talking points.

You really can’t be at this point, it’s the same thing he’s been doing since he got elected. Before that, if you count his assorted fuck-yous to gay people.

I wish Eugene Debbs was president.

I imagine that whole “being a corpse for the last 83 years” thing might present an elegibility issue.

“I imagine that whole “being a corpse for the last 83 years” thing might present an elegibility issue.”

...if we’re talking about digging up people to be POTUS, I vote for Franklin Roosevelt.  Even as a corpse he’d have to be more progressive than McCain, and most likely Obama too…

I’m more worried about the politics and framing on this than it’s economic impact.

It’s real impact, both on the economy and the deficit, will be nil. It’s too small with too many loopholes to either be “Hooverism” or actually reduce the deficit. It’s for show. But it’s the wrong show to put on right now. It not only pisses off the PUMAs and revolutionary Marxists (who don’t matter in the offline world), but it makes actual Democrats mad. And it won’t help him with Republicans, who will hate him no matter what. And it makes him look like he’s panicking given the timing of this, after Massachusetts. It’s beyond stupid for that reason.

And also talking about how he is a “one-term President” is beyond premature. In 1983, Reagan’s approval was at 32%, in early 1995 Clinton was seen as The Next Carter (tm). They both went on to win re-election rather handily.

Meanwhile Poppy Bush was seen as “invincible” in 1991, so much so that all the big name Democrats sat out 1992, allowing the governor of a small, southern state to win the nomination as they figured he would be a sacrificial lamb.

The politics of it is what I don’t get.  I’ve accepted that he’s going to be a massive disappointment as President, other than keeping us from launching nuclear weapons at Iran and/or North Korea like McCain would have.  What I can’t quite figure out is how he can be so profoundly dedicated to turning control of the country back to the Republicans.  It doesn’t make any sense at all, no matter how you look at it.

‘might as well port what I said over at Yglesias here…

The audience is not us.  The audience is for international finance.  It’s about showing a willingness and ability to pay off those bonds we keep issueing.  It’s being sold as a political move because bending to the demands of foreign bankers is even less appetizing to the american public.

Perhaps it is time for us Progressives to start actively supporting 3rd or 4th party candidates -especially LOCAL politics- and Nationally.  Let’s get more Independents and/or Greens into the House of Reps, and maybe one or two in the Senate.  They’d be a minority AT FIRST, but like Loathsome Lieberman and Sneaky Snow, they could end up have the final deciding vote often enough to do the Country some good.

Perhaps it is time for us Progressives to start actively supporting 3rd or 4th party candidates -especially LOCAL politics- and Nationally.  Let’s get more Independents and/or Greens into the House of Reps, and maybe one or two in the Senate.  They’d be a minority AT FIRST, but like Loathsome Lieberman and Sneaky Snow, they could end up have the final deciding vote often enough to do the Country some good.

You’ll just end up splitting votes with the Dems and, therefore, electing whatever regressive moron the Republicans put up.

If you think you’re able to organize a critical mass of progressives to vote for a third party candidate, then why not organize them to vote in the Democratic primary instead?

Libdevil, it makes sense from only one angle, and that is that his political advisors are deeply stupid.  We know his economic advisors are deeply conservative, but what about Axelrod and whoever else is advising him politically?  You know, people said Rove was a genius, but I never believed he was.  And it ends up, he really wasn’t.  I think that oftentimes, white men with the right connections, can go pretty far JUST BY telling their bosses what their bosses already believe and want to hear affirmed.

I mean, what else explains Bob Shrum?  I really think a lot of these political strategists are straight-up dumb.  Some are dumb and unbelievably vicious, (rove) and so they can kill off enough opponents to look smart, for a time.  But Democrats appear to be just plain old dumbasses, with no killer instinct to get them through for even a short time.  Some may think that Obama’s campaign advisors are pretty smart because they won.  Well, you’d have to be some fucking stupid, borderline mentally deficient, barely functioning moron to have lost that election, against that opponent, after 8 years of that shit.

I have to wonder why y’all are so upset about a non-defense discretionary spending freeze when you don’t even know what’s going to be frozen.  The stories said that there would be an overall freeze, but some programs would still see increases, while others saw cuts; do you think that every discretionary program is a good one?

Dana, how about fucking reading the comment thread for some clues. Not that you’d get one even if you were hit over the head repeatedly with a lead-weighted clue bat.

And also talking about how he is a “one-term President” is beyond premature. In 1983, Reagan’s approval was at 32%, in early 1995 Clinton was seen as The Next Carter (tm). They both went on to win re-election rather handily.

While I do think it’s probably premature to prognosticate (don’t you love my consonance?) about where the electorate will be in November 2012, it isn’t alarmist to be gravely concerned about how this will affect this year’s midterm elections.  Obama truly is setting us up for a repeat of 1994 right now.  While I doubt that the GOP will be able to pull off a majority takeover in the Senate this year (they would need to win 78% of all 36 Senate races this fall - something no party has ever done in my lifetime), I do think Nancy Pelosi’s position as SOTH is very much in jeopardy at this point.  It isn’t crazy to acknowledge that John Boehner could very realistically be holding the gavel once the midterm bloodbath is over.

As for the Senate, here’s what I can see likely happening:

We will lose:

North Dakota (Thune retirement, no viable Democratic replacement, popular GOP governor running)
Delaware (Beau Biden not running, Mike Castle more popular than every other Dem in the state)
Nevada (Reid is so obviously finished, 2/3 of his own state rates him as “unfavorable”)
Arkansas (Lincoln is toast)

We could lose:

Illinois (IL isn’t as solidly blue as MA - Obama’s immediate predecessor was a Republican)
Indiana (Bayh sucks and won’t attract the base)
Colorado (Bennett is a milquetoast, and appointed seantors have a lousy electoral record)
Pennsylvania (Specter is 900 years old and isn’t well liked by progressives, who won’t vote)

The GOP will hold all 12 of the seats where they have incumbents running, and the only realistically possible Senate pickups for the Democrats are Missouri, Ohio, and New Hampshire.  And the best that can be said is that they are toss-ups - Democrats don’t have a real clear edge in any of those races.

My guess is that when all is said and done, we’ll wake up on November 3, 2010 and John Boehner will be the presumptive Speaker of the House starting in January 2011, with Republicans holding a 5-10 seat majority, and the Democratic majority in the Senate will be whittled down to 54 seats.

I think the only good thing we’ll get out of this November is probably a new Senate Majority Leader, hopefully one that is known to be a vertebrate.

God, I wish Hillary Clinton was the President.

Do you really think Hillary would not be bending over for corporate interests just as much as Obama?  Why?  Because she’s female? No one can say, but back during the campaign I got the impression she was *more* conservative, more corporatist than Obama.

Heh.  A year ago on Shakesville, before they banned me (and others) for dissenting with the MobGroupThink, there was an entry with Obama kissing a couple of children.  I made this following comment:

They’re as cute as hell, and I can understand why you have such hopes for the man.

But don’t let your emotions overcome your reason. You’re progressives; you’re still going to need to hold his feet to the fire when he’s President, especially when he starts running up against the limitations of what any person can do in the office. Deal with Obama-the-politician as well as Obama-the-historical-moment.

That said, I hope he stomps the living shit out of McCain, Palin and the entire Republican Party when the polls are counted.

and was promptly the subject of a giant hissy fit.

Yeah, well done there, guys…

No, but I think Obama using the language that John McCain used during his campaign a little over a year ago is stupid, especially since it sends a rather mixed message, at best, to the public after Obama spent the virtually all of 2009 touting stimulus spending as the solution to the recession.  Besides, how do push for a $1 trillion dollar health care overhaul on the one hand and then talk about how we need a spending freeze on the other?  It’s ridiculous.

Someone from the admin was on Maddow’s program last night explaining that the “freeze” that it only affects a very small portion of the budget, and it wouldn’t count stimulus money, nor TARP money, nor the health care bill, nor would it preclude further stimulus spending.  Ohhh, so you’re just trying to mislead voters then?  Yeah, I’m sure they’ll appreciate that a bunch and wear out the damned lever voting for you.  Because Republicans would never exploit the difference between what the Dems call a “freeze” and what most people would actually consider a “freeze” to mean.

”...do you think that every discretionary program is a good one?”

Dana, do you think that every discretionary program is a bad one?

Do you think every “non-discretionary” program is worthy?

Is “Defense” (btw, imho, they should change the name of the “Defense Department” back to Department of War, since that’s a far more accurate description of its function in the world…) entirely “non-discretionary”?  Or are there items in the “defense” budget that represent a total waste of tax money?...

As I think has been pointed out over at LGM many, many times, we seem to be the only developed country that sees military spending as inviolable. Witness, for example, the debates over the UK’s carrier program and ask yourself if anything like that would happen in the US.

God, I wish Hillary Clinton was the President.

When I voted for her in the primary I didn’t think she was *better* than Obama, per say, just more willing to tell the psychos on the right to eff off. I would prefer to have someone who stuck to their stated goals, even if those goals aren’t as lofty sounding, compared to someone who slides weakly rightward on everything. I thought she had a better chance of standing up for herself, and she seemed more take-no-prisoners.

In short, everyone was telling me that Clinton was a ball-busting, emasculating bitch and I was hoping it was true! :p

God, I wish Hillary Clinton was the President.

Do you really think Hillary would not be bending over for corporate interests just as much as Obama?  Why?  Because she’s female? No one can say, but back during the campaign I got the impression she was *more* conservative, more corporatist than Obama.

Truthfully, the only real difference between Obama and Clinton that I can see is that Clinton didn’t hide her DLC leanings during the campaign, and Obama did.  I don’t believe we would be substantively better or worse off had she become POTUS instead of Obama - I think we would probably be in virtually the exact same spot.  We just wouldn’t be as surprised to be here.

I really believe that the progressives lost in January 2008 once Obama and Clinton emerged as the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination, even though many of us didn’t realize it at that point.  And no, I don’t think John Edwards would have been much better either.  While he arguably ran on the most progressive platform of the three, I think the man is entirely full of shit and was never really in it for the people but rather to fulfill his own narcissistic aspirations.  The fact that he remained in the race after getting involved in an extramarital affair and fathering a love child which he KNEW would destroy his candidacy if it leaked after being nominated tells me that the man was more concerned with his own ambitions than he was with doing what was best for the people.

Dennis Kucinich was probably the only Democratic candidate that could remotely be considered progressive… and his candidacy was over before it even started.  The system will simply never allow someone with his ideology to become President of the United States.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that Barack Obama probably was the best candidate we could have hoped for, which isn’t so much high praise for Obama as it is condemnation of our electoral reality.  I just don’t believe a true progressive can win the presidency in 21st Century America.

I just don’t believe a true progressive can win the presidency in 21st Century America.

It’s a lot worse than just that. I don’t think this country is capable of even beginning to deal with its many and severe problems in an even remotely serious manner. Hard times are settling in for the long haul.

“We need a Progressive Party.
Pronto.
Comment #26: Mighty Ponygirl”
For serious x 10.
“If you think you’re able to organize a critical mass of progressives to vote for a third party candidate, then why not organize them to vote in the Democratic primary instead?
Comment #42: robelanator “
Formerly I totally agreed. But isn’t that what we have already been doing? It hasn’t worked other then helping to elect people who don’t share our agenda.
Increasingly I see no point in electing Democrats at all. Voting because the other guy is so much worse is not a winning strategy for progressive change in my opinion.

If prognostications about 2012 are silly, than so is predicting the country is doomed in the long term (something that pops up about once every 25-30 years on both the left AND the right, albeit in different forms).

Americans are too optimistic when times are good (remember 10 years ago when people said we had ended the business cycle, we’d have prosperity forever, and we’d pay off the debt by 2011? Go read Clinton’s last SOTU) and too gloomy when they’re bad.

It’s a lot worse than just that. I don’t think this country is capable of even beginning to deal with its many and severe problems in an even remotely serious manner. Hard times are settling in for the long haul.

Beat you by a day on this, Steve.

Phoenician, I think your points stand, but the Gilded Age was between the end of the US Civil War and just into the beginning of the 20th Century.  It corresponds with the industrial age ushered in by nascent mass production techniques related to war production and expanded into other areas, the availability of the telegraph and later the telephone for greatly increased communication speed, and widespread availability of railroads (finally linking the US from coast to coast) providing greatly enhanced transportation capability (both capacity and speed)... 

(...sorry, I’m not a historian, but I am somewhat of a history geek…)

You’re progressives; you’re still going to need to hold his feet to the fire when he’s President, especially when he starts running up against the limitations of what any person can do in the office. Deal with Obama-the-politician as well as Obama-the-historical-moment.

and was promptly the subject of a giant hissy fit.
Comment #47: Phoenician in a time of Romans on 01/26 at 02:38

Lemme guess: did someone get the vapors over the saying holding his feet to the fire? :D Being Shakesville it wouldn’t surprise me. They must own stock in smelling salts and fainting couches.

Oh, I don’t think Hillary would have been so wonderful and terrific and awesome, Phoenician.

I just think she would have been telling me the truth about what she believed instead of running as this big liberal savior and then turning out to be centrist turd sandwich. I’d still be hating the policies but I wouldn’t feel betrayed and angry at the same time.

Secretary Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton would have governed just as poorly as Obama. Neither have any experience standing up to the banks or any knowledge of economics, which is why the finance crisis was kept under wraps until the primary season was over. Both know where the $100M the Clenis earned the past eight years came from, though.

“Secretary Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton would have governed just as poorly as Obama. Neither have any experience standing up to the banks or any knowledge of economics, which is why the finance crisis was kept under wraps until the primary season was over.”

...and who was running for POTUS in 2008 who had “knowledge of economics” and wasn’t in the pocket of The Banks and Big Wall Street? 

Or are you talking about an alternate universe?...

”I imagine that whole “being a corpse for the last 83 years” thing might present an elegibility issue”

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States

Hmmmm, says “resident”, not “living resident” …
I say we give it a shot

I’m deliberately disbelieving this rumour, because if true, the level of “we’re fucked” that it represents is unable to be formed into words in its Second Great Depression causing horror.

So I’m assuming its the usual where some Bush appointee who hasn’t been replaced yet floating non-sequitur shit to make Obama look bad (as they’ve been doing since he first came to office like all the “leaked” memos about how much he really supports secret super conservativism and hates liberals) or Politico just making stuff up wholesale to get the liberal blogs into a frothing rage.

So I’ll wait to the actual speech and if it’s in there, I will curl into a fetal ball and weep.

What I can’t quite figure out is how he can be so profoundly dedicated to turning control of the country back to the Republicans.  It doesn’t make any sense at all, no matter how you look at it.

Look, it’s simple: both the Rs and the Ds are primarily concerned with where their money is coming from, and it’s not from their salaries as representatives. Being POTUS is just another step on the career ladder (and not even a particularly well-paid one, as these things go), and who gets the job next is less of a concern to the incumbent than what what job(s) he gets next. Politics is just a means to an end.

Being POTUS is just another step on the career ladder (and not even a particularly well-paid one, as these things go)

Oh, I would have to disagree there.  True, the literal salary of a sitting POTUS is “only” $400,000/year (plus almost all living expenses paid), but once you get into the office, you are pretty much guaranteed to be a multi-millionaire after you leave the White House.

Bill Clinton has a personal net worth of around $100 Million, and he made virtually all of that money after January 2001 when he left office.  Do you really think he would be worth even a tiny fraction of that if he had never been elected POTUS?

The Obamas were millionaires at the time Obama was elected (net worth around $5 Million - from book sales).  They will likely increase that net worth more than twentyfold once he leaves office and starts getting paid $250K-500K per speech all over the world.  Not to mention the huge book deals, which will be worth well over 8 figures.

Being President of the United States pretty much guarantees that no matter what happens after you are elected, you will be financially set for life from that point forward, even if you are a one-termer (Bush and Carter) or even if you are forced to resign (Nixon).  Even if Obama gets defeated in 2012, he will never again worry about money for the rest of his life.