To Sirota, with loathing

During the primaries, David Sirota established himself as a key Obama cultist and Hillary-hater. Now he has published an anti-Obama column titled Obama's team of zombies. Not many months ago, Daverino was himself among the walking dead.

For example, here's Sirota attacking Hillary -- that's right: Hillary -- for her allegedly double-faced stance on NAFTA. In fact, it was Obama who proved himself the incarnation of Janus. I tell the whole story here.

Even as Obama denounced NAFTA in key primary states, claiming in his literature that he had never supported it and never would support it, he had his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee privately assure the Canadians that Obama's opposition was but a pose. Then his functionaries filled the prog-blogs with the false claim that Hillary, not Obama, had opened a back-channel to the Canadians. (An official Canadian investigation cleared Hillary and pointed the finger at Obama.) After the primaries -- after the lies had won key states -- Obama admitted that he did, in fact, support NAFTA.

Goolsbee's message to our friend up north was a classic example of weasel-wording:

"He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

In other words, Team Obama believes that lying during a campaign is no sin.

Nevertheless, Dave Sirota accused Hillary -- Hillary! -- of "triangulation" on the issue.

Sirota told other lies during the primaries. This comes from his piece in which he argues against the possible choice of Hillary as VP:

Some say Hillary Clinton's defeat was the victory of sexism — but Obama faced at least as much racism.

Bullshit. Davey cites no poll figures to support this contention.

Fact: At the beginning of this race (as I've noted in several previous posts), a poll indicated that 6% of the electorate admitted that they would not vote for a black candidate. Meanwhile, a Harris poll a year ago revealed that

Just over two in five men (43%) say the idea of a woman serving as President makes them angry or upset while 48 percent of men are upset or angry about the prospect of Hillary Clinton serving as President. As might be expected, gender doesn’t appear to be as serious an issue among women. Only 12 percent of women say a woman serving as President would make them angry or upset...

Only 12 percent? Of women?

And 43 percent of men?

Am I really supposed to believe that Obama's 6% handicap was greater?

Obama's own campaign manager admitted that the anti-black voters were unlikely to vote for any Democrat. Nearly everyone in that 6% votes Republican.

By any rational standard, sexism offers a far greater obstacle to a presidential aspirant than does racism. Forgive the self-quotation:

On a few occasions, I've pointed out that Colin Powell could have won the presidency in 2000 just by pointing at the White House and saying "I'll take it." Not one reader has disagreed with that assessment, even though people love to disagree with everything else I say. Can you name a single woman in the history of this country who could have strolled into the oval office that easily?

Keith Olbermann, in a televised commentary, infamously called for Hillary Clinton to be killed. Can you imagine the (justifiable) outrage -- and the charges of racism -- if he had said such a thing about Obama, or about any black candidate?

I am convinced that being black aided Obama in the primaries, and perhaps in the general. Democrats wanted to see a black person as a standard-bearer. (An understandable desire, that: The party should have nominated a black candidate ages ago.) A white candidate with Obama's lack of experience and shady connections probably would not have won any primaries outside of his home state.

In March, Sirota made the disgusting argument that Hillary was relying on racism to win. The calumnies he lists were all discredited long ago -- and they never made much sense to begin with:

That is one of the twin pillars of the Clinton firewall—a well-honed strategy aimed at maximizing “the Race Chasm."

Double bullshit. Hillary had the majority of the black vote until the Obama campaign engaged in an unforgivable disinformation effort designed to paint the Clintons as racists. Why on earth would she have alienated her base -- and yes, black voters were once her base -- in order to gain a "racist white Democratic" vote which Obama's own campaign head admitted did not exist?

(I asked that very question many times during the campaign. The only replies I received were pure lunacy. Nevertheless, the Obots were wedded to their "Clinton's a racist" scenario, and -- much like their Republican counterparts -- they refused to allow facts or logic to impede a beloved hallucination.)

But now, Davey is changing his tune. Too little, too late. Here are his current complaints about the president he once praised in messianic terms:

Obama's national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq war opponent.

Like duh. Sirota may be surprised by this turn of events, but I am not. (Sirota here forgets that Hillary is now Secretary of State, and that her voting record, during the time that she and Obama both served in the Senate, was more robustly anti-war.)

The president has not only retained George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, but also 150 other Bush Pentagon appointees. The only "rivalry" is between those who back increasing the already bloated defense budget by an absurd amount and those who aim to boost it by a ludicrous amount.

Does anyone really believe that Gates would hold that position in a Clinton White House?

On the economic team:

Now, this pinstriped band of brothers is proposing a "cash for trash" scheme that would force the public to guarantee the financial industry's bad loans. It's another ploy "to hand taxpayer dollars to the banks through a variety of complex mechanisms," says economist Dean Baker -- and noticeably absent is anything even resembling a "rival" voice inside the White House.

That's not an oversight. From former federal officials like Robert Reich and Brooksley Born, to Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to business leaders like Leo Hindery, there's no shortage of qualified experts who have challenged market fundamentalism. But they have been barred from an administration focused on ideological purity.

Reich, at least, would have had a voice in a Hillary White House. I am sure that Hindery would have had one as well. Maybe even Krugman.

Obama also said he wants to crack down on the financial industry, strengthen laws encouraging the government to purchase American goods, and transform trade policy. Yet, his economic team is not just promising to support more bank bailouts, but also to weaken "Buy America" statutes and make sure new legislation "doesn't signal a change in our overall stance on trade," according to the president’s spokesman.

But Davey -- weren't you the one assuring us that Obama was going to upend the prevailing culture of free trade fundamentalism?

No mea culpa, no shrift. I won't forgive Sirota for his despicable, deceptive behavior during the primary campaign until he asks for forgiveness -- until he admits that he misled his readers.