Speaking to Rich Donors, Obama Mocks Dissatisfied Dems (david mizner)
http://www.salon.com/news/opin...


Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particular derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

Greenwald:


What's most striking about Obama's comments is that there is no acceptance whatsoever of responsibility (I've failed in some critical areas; we could have/should have done better).  There's not even any base-motivating vow to fight to fix these particular failures (we'll keep fighting for a public option/to curb executive power abuses/to reduce lobbyist and corporate control of our political process).  Instead, he wants you to know that if you criticize him -- or even question what he's done ("well, I don't know about this particular derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that") -- it's your fault:  for being some sort of naive, fringe-leftist idiot who thought he would eliminate the Pentagon and bring about world peace in 18 months, and/or because you simply don't sufficiently appreciate everything he's done for you because you're congenitally dissatisfied.  

This gives you a taste of the gathering:

http://www.greenwichtime.com/l...


Here's a look at who joined Obama and the Richmans -- not to mention the Secret Service -- Thursday night:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal; Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy; Democratic National Committe Chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; director, producer, actor and Conyers Farm resident Ron Howard; television journalist Jane Pauley and her husband, "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

I'm sure they laughed heartily. As for the non-millionaire base of the party, the Times has a story about them:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09...

Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political handicapper, questioned how successful labor's push will be. "The question is, how effective can labor be when so many of their people are unemployed or underemployed and just not happy campers?" he said. "How effective will they be in getting people to do the hard work - to do the phone banks, the get-out-the-vote?"

Patricia Elizondo, president of the 2,000-member Milwaukee local of the International Association of Machinists, fears just that.

"People have been unemployed for two years, and they're unhappy that the healthcare bill was not as good as they expected," she said. "Two years ago, I had many members going door-to-door to campaign. Now they're saying, 'Why should I? We supported that candidate, but he didn't follow through.' "

But you know those machinists. They're "congenitally" unhappy.

He can mock his way all the way back to Chicago....
...and I will say good riddance.

Regards,

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me-and I welcome their hatred. - FDR

"cling to their guns and bibles"
but for the urban loft demographic.
This Should Not Surprise Anyone
Obama wanted exactly the legislation he got. Apparently, he does not believe the public option (or any real government involvement in the free market) was needed or appropriate, despite considerable evidence and experience to the contrary. The same applies to financial regulation and the rest. He's a Democrat whose policies benefit traditional Republican constituencies, Wall Street and Big Money and Big Business. Clearly Obama is not working for the rest of us. If we benefit, it's by accident.

That he can mock the people who voted for him, well, that part is amazing. He's either arrogant or extremely stupid. I suspect the former but there are lots of stupid people who get into and graduate from Ivy League schools (and state schools, too). A degree doesn't prove much beyond that you passed. Certainly a degree doesn't prove you have common sense or a heart.

How we neutralize Obama's policies, how we succeed as progressives in the face of party leadership that acts Republican, well that's our burden and our challenge.

well we weed em out
through green/independent/otherlefty party voting, writins or sitting on our hands when the party gives us a neoliberal candidate.  Yes it will probably mean a republican in 2012, but in 2016 we get some type of progressive dem/green/other who respects us.  The best way to do so is to run on a platform of FAIR TRADE.  The lack of tariff is what is killing us, and killing jobs.  It is the reason stimulus didn't do squat and won't in the future even if we had dems that were sympathetic to it.  The green jobs are going oversees to authoritarian protectionist states, like China.
[ Parent ]
Great points!!!!
We need a party that is focused on economic populism, all the other issues should be secondary.

Regards,

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me-and I welcome their hatred. - FDR

[ Parent ]
The only criticism he is aware of and that is worthy of being mocked
and ridiculed is the criticism from the left. Obama has made the Democratic Party the only major conservative party in this country. Any pressure or impetus for change is coming from the further right.  
Precisely!
We on the left, meanwhile, sit (as I am doing right now) and bitch about it online.  The Tea Partiers are certainly a bunch of bigoted Flat Earthists, true; but, much like our distant forebears from the 1960s, they are willing to hit the streets and make noise.  They are also willing to politically sacrifice those in their own party who aren't moving [backward] fast enough.  Meanwhile, we just take the moldy crumbs of the shite sandwiches served up to us by neolibs like Obama and Hoyer, and gripe online.

Oy!  I think I will get my plane ticket to D.C. for 10/2's One Nation march.  

[ Parent ]
The tea party has the media and
rich people  on their side.  Weeding out neolibs is doable however!
[ Parent ]
If you DO go on OCtober 2
be aware there are some who want a real protest against the way this government  and its policies have functioned for the last 10 years and likely longer

http://www.blackagendareport.c...

and others who will undoubtedly try to make it a pep rally for the Democrats and Obama.

[ Parent ]
Thanks for the heads-up
I'd like to think I belong to the former group, and that we will make our presence and message known, loudly and effectively.  We'll see, I guess.
[ Parent ]
I agree with Glenn Greenwald's argument
but I think there's a sort of mismatch here, in that President Obama mostly complained about liberal discontent with his domestic agenda, whereas the examples that Greenwald posted were mostly on civil liberties and foreign policy (with several notable exceptions, including the anti-public option deal that is my #1 reason to not vote for Obama in 2012).

Let's look at what Obama/Pelosi/Reid have accomplished for domestic policy - stimuli, budgets, health insurance, and financial reform.  Aside from health insurance reform, which I think was a total disaster, I think there's been at least progress in the right direction on each of the other three issues.  So we should at least give Obama and Democrats credit for that.

Did he look for WMDs, too?
What an ignorant thing to do.  
This shows what an elitist asshole this jerk is.
He won the election by acting like a revolutionary that wanted to overthrow the whole system of pwoer, and now he shamelessly brownnoses the "serious people" and ridicules reasonable left wingers who are righteously enraged about his moderate conservative course that fortifies the status quo? What a hypocrite!
Really, what he says now is "change isn't possible"!
Imagine what had become of him in the primaries if he had run on THIS message! "No, we can't do it. It's ridiculous to stomp for change like the public option. Let's be satisfied with small corrections of the course. Don't hope for anything more!" Can you imagine that? His campaign would have sunk like a stone!
[ Parent ]
Indeed; who knew how good we almost had it
with John Kerry?  He's certainly an elitist, and comes across as a pompous ass; but, the evidence suggests that he was far more progressive than Barack Obama.

[ Parent ]
What evidence would that be?
?
[ Parent ]
possibly the Obama record.
We don't know how bad Kerry would be, but Obama is performing almost on cue to the wishes of the corporate power, the military, the wealthy. It is almost as if he understood his role to keep a lid on everything, providing a cover that still is bought by some of the gullible, while all the worst of the Bush-Cheney (real) changes are cemented in place with the assent of the Democratic Party. Could anything be clearer than the active betrayal by Obama and his crew of all popular hopes and aspirations.  
[ Parent ]
I'm sympathetic to your arguments, but...
again: the stimulus, the budget, and financial reform - these were all at least steps in the right direction, weren't they?
[ Parent ]
not much.
most of the serious lifting on the financial side was to protect troubled assets, and bail-out financial institutions, reinflating or at least trying to the collapsing assets of the wealthy and the financial elite. Did you happen to miss the 4 million that Obama introduced to poverty? We have 43 million now with incomes under 20,000 per year. Steps in the right direction?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The cost of an extension of the metro line to Dulles is 3.83 billion; the cost per MONTH of Obama's new bigger and better, escalated and expanded war in Afghanistan is 6 BILLION a month.

http://voices.washingtonpost.c...

Steps in the right direction?  

Foreclosed homes up 25% on the year.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/...

Steps in the right direction?

I think you know the unemployment figures. Environmental protections, DADT, renditions, Guantanamo.

Steps in the right direction? Maybe. It depends which side your on.

[ Parent ]
holy shit that Dulles line pricetag
all to serve the upper/upper middle class, of course

flying is fucking expensive

[ Parent ]
First of all, I was talking only about domestic policy
On foreign policy and civil liberties, he's terrible, agreed.

On domestic policy, there are a number of bad outcomes you suggested: poverty, home foreclosures, unemployment.  But the question was on the value of what the Democrats have done.  The financial reform law: was it better that it passed, or are we going to be worse off now that it has passed?  Is it moving us in the right direction and to a better place than where we'd be if it had not passed?

[ Parent ]
You ask, is it better that the piss-poor legislation passed, than it didn't..
I ask if the Democrats are dealing with the problems this country is facing. They are fundamentally quite different questions. Conditions in this country are getting worse, not better. If you are drowning and one person will drag you down quickly and the other slowly do you take the hand of the one who drags you down slowly? I think you look for some other way. Now I know I am positing a metaphor that may or may not be entirely apt. But if the Dems are not making conditions better just making them less worse than we believe the Reps would...that is an entirely different proposition from the one you are proposing as the deciding factor. Because then you never deal with the question of how to make things better. Yeah, better Dems, more Dems, primary them....no, that has been tried extensively, for a long time and  the Democratic Party has gotten worse, much worse. So, just do the same thing again and again and hope for the best? Otherwise we get worse. I don't see that mindset producing anything of value.
[ Parent ]
Isn't "less worse" still better?
If you drown more slowly with one, at least that gives you more time to look for someone who can really help you.

What I was saying was that all the legislation I mentioned still moves us forward, even if not by much.  If you're in a house that's burning down and the three options are run out of the house completely, take two steps towards the door or sit down and wait for the house to collapse on you, and run out of the house is not a viable choice because it will never get elected, then taking two steps can still at least be considered progress.

[ Parent ]
What's progressive about those, lm?
Those are pragmatic policies and decisions that are totally in line with centrists interests, and not progressive at all. Not even the financial reform, which is just another patch to repair the most apparent problems, and not systemic change. A progressive solution wild have been to define a set of policies for the banks, and to declare everything else verboten!
[ Parent ]
No question it could've been better
The key question is: Is it better (for liberals and progressives' goals) that it passed, or not?

We're always going to be in a position where we say, "Damn, that law could've been better."  The question is whether it goes in the right direction, even if it's only two steps.

[ Parent ]
I wouldn't go that far. But at least Kerry was more honest...
...and didn't pretend that he would try to change the world. And still, I'm sure he would at least have fought for better laws. It's Obama's cynical hypocrisy, and the lack of any progressive values that pisses me off.
[ Parent ]
In 2004, the consensus view among Democratic Party
elites was that they had to be Republican-lite to have a shot to win the election, and that is the campaign we got.  

In 2008, in part because of popular mobilization that had begun prior to the 2004 election which had increased over time, Democratic Part elites knew that any candidate would have to pay greater lip service to progressive values, and the campaign(s) did so.  That said, the two major candidates did plenty to signal to other elites that there were serious limits to the change they might pursue.  And after the election, for a combination of reasons, not the least of which was the White House and DNC's actions, that popular mobilization largely (but by no means entirely) dissipated.  

But those same elites were not convinced they had to govern in a progressive fashion, and are only trotting out progressive frames now with another election bearing down on them.  

You can tell that this is about the party and not just Obama because there is very little dissent from other party elites, because they generally (not every individual) agree with the chosen path.  

I'm all for criticizing Obama for the bad choices he makes (such as here - he is certainly responsible for the things he says), but it misdiagnoses the problem, which leads to inappropriate remedies, to explain this solely as about individual choices - something that we as progressives generally reject when it comes to policy but too often embrace when it comes to politics.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

[ Parent ]
Well, indeed, we have to see this in light of the times....
...the circumstances, and relative to the power structure. And this shows that the people have been played for suckers once again. Always the same kabuki theatre. Damn.
[ Parent ]
We were Rolled in 2008
I admit it.  They played me for a fool.  But as they say, fool me once....

[ Parent ]
I was considerably more enthusiastic about voting for Kerry
than I was about Obama.

With Kerry you got an experienced statesman, who had actually passed significant legislation on the environment, and had, in his younger days, defied his own party to investigate a bank that was laundering money for terrorists. He pursued the truth where it led, regardless of the cost to his party, which counts for quite a bit with me.

With Obama you got a pleasing, malleable cipher who would do exactly as he was told by the establishment money men. I knew long before I cast my vote for him that he would out-Clinton Clinton in triangulating to the right, and lacked even Clinton's tiny spark of independence. He turned out to be even mushier and more vacant than I had expected.

So there you go.

[ Parent ]
"Overthrow the whole system of power"? Hardly
Didn't you read this before the election?

Shifting back to how he sees himself in the Senate, Obama seemed to amend his previous statement about what kind of leadership progressives can expect from him. "I am agnostic in terms of the models that solve these problems," he said. "If the only way to solve a problem is structural, institutional change, then I will be for structural, institutional change. If I think we can achieve those same goals within the existing institutions, then I am going to try to do that, because I think it's going to be easier to do and less disruptive and less costly and less painful.... I think everybody in this country should have basic healthcare. And what I'm trying to figure out is how to get from here to there." He went on to tell me about his support for other structural changes such as public financing of elections, forcing broadcasters to offer free airtime for candidates, adding strong labor protections to trade pacts and major efforts to create a more just tax system.

Obama is telling the truth--he's not opposed to structural changes at all. However, he appears to be interested in fighting only for those changes that fit within the existing boundaries of what's considered mainstream in Washington, instead of using his platform to redefine those boundaries. This posture comes even as polls consistently show that Washington's definition of mainstream is divorced from the rest of the country's (for example, politicians' refusal to debate the war even as polls show that Americans want the troops home).

Btw, this is one of the most instructive political articles ever.  Props to David Sirota.

[ Parent ]
Same as it ever was

 At least we now know where this newfound "fight" on the tax cuts is going.

 

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

holy shit, user DTOZone IS Obama

I've always imagined him to Rahm
or a tnr columnists givin his claims of having a job as a reporter.
[ Parent ]
I thought he is Mark Ambinder
Imho he shows some of the same traits, being much too pro-establishment, too willing to accept the authoritarian position, and too eager to dismiss progressive points.
[ Parent ]
One thing's for sure: He ain't Seymour Hersh!
And prolly not Gregg Palast or Joe Conason, either. Maybe Cilizza or Milbank? But aren't those more funny than him?
[ Parent ]
I was going to suggest Ezra Klein
but either would be at least creative about their slavish devotion
[ Parent ]




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