I find it interesting that Jane Hamsher is ready to entertain the idea of partnering with the Tea Partiers. Jane seems to have skipped over the people who could help her most (that would be us), and went straight to the right side of the political divide.Small wonder that the Obots (even the disillusioned ones) and the Glenn Beck fans would start dating each other, since they have a lot in common. They both agree that the Clintons are the most pernicious political force in all human history.
No matter how bad this president proves to be, no matter how disappointed or infuriated his supporters become, they will never apologize to the Dems and former Dems who saw through Obama in 2008. Pride, thy name is Obot.
15 comments:
But you gotta admit Joseph, the Obama fanatics DO have an uncanny ability to make to make asses of themselves in new & "creative" ways.
I guess that's why they get to call themselves A-listers..huh?
Almost all of your policy criticism directed against Obama, with which I generally agree, is more, perhaps only apt coming from a former Kucinich, Gravel certainly Nader supporter.
-I don't know what Jane has said about the Clintons in the past, but there was no mention of Clintons in the article "Left/Right Populist outrage...".
-She mentioned the Greenwald and Kilgore articles about "the impoverished left/right dialectic that dominates the media coverage of politics, and its inadequacy when it comes to discussing the dynamics of the health care debate."
-She also mentioned that "Ben Smith printed a letter from a "liberal blog denizen" (who curiously didn't want to use their name) that I think represents the White House/media thinking pretty well: The trick is to put a package together that some visible element of "the left" is out there opposing, but that actually has the support of everyone who matters on the left......"
-As for the suggestion that she is inviting the "teabaggers" to join the left....here is what she says: "There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, "bailout" Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country's resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we've worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging".
-She concludes by saying: "Yet time and again, we're told "Obama retains his popularity with liberals" and that "screeching liberal bloggers" aren't having an impact. Nobody seems to notice that the "screeching liberal bloggers" are reflecting the very same sentiments of the vast majority of the country, whether the very small segment of the population who self-identify as "extremely liberal" holds the President responsible or no".
-Again I read "Extreme Liberal" and "Libertarian" not "teabaggers" and "Obots"
Hope I didn't break too many rules
Just a little ironic...yeah, I really do think.
Mr Obama said the Senate showed it could "stand up to the special interests" and move the nation closer to a health insurance overhaul.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8425284.stm
But you gotta admit Joseph, the Obama fanatics DO have an uncanny ability to make to make asses of themselves in new & "creative" ways.
I thought that was historic and unprecedented (a new and creative way to say new and creative).
Other than, say, Michael Douglas in 'An American President,' name your ideal president from the past who hasn't stubbed his toe and stumbled badly in his first year.
It would be far more fair to condemn the DEMOCRATIC PARTY ITSELF, or at least its miscreants in the Senate, than Obama at this date. Really, show me a president who has had to overcome 159 'filibusters,' who cannot move anything except with 60 votes, period, and has only had a nominal 60 vote caucus in the recent past, and not really, ever.
So, is Obama doing a good job? It is hardly clear he is not when 40 GOP senators hang together on every vote to oppose him, and the D party plays its own dysfunctional games.
Sure, he's not proved to be the wondermaker his most fervent supporters thought he'd be. But THEY were tremendously naive to think anybody could be that. If your point is that they were utterly wrong, well shuh.
I propose that NO particular policy propositions that Obama might have taken would have had whatever great result you think would have obtained if ONLY HE'D DONE xyz.
If you wanted him to exhaust himself tilting against windmills, as in pushing single payer, perhaps the anti-Obama crowd is equally naive as his rabid supporters.
XI
"If you wanted him to exhaust himself tilting against windmills, as in pushing single payer, perhaps the anti-Obama crowd is equally naive as his rabid supporters."
What an idiotic statement. All I wanted him to do was what he said he would do. I guess he's both the most powerful man on the planet and also the most ineffectual. And, yes, it would be nice if he exerted himself to exhaustion on some issue of importance. That's his job.
Joseph: I am a Glenn Beck fan. Don´t agree with everything he says, but on fiscal issues he was right on Bush/Cheney and he´s right now. I also am a big fan of both Clintons. I also don´t agree with them on everything, but I worked for Bill (yes, I feel I can even call him that) and I´ve never been more impressed by someone´s intellect and real passion for the democratic process and our nation and it´s principles.
I stopped being a fan of Obama´s early on in the process. Even, truth be told, as I started to become suspicious of his constant Wall St. sucking up before he even ran for president.
I guess you can think I´m making this up, but there are more like me out there - people who started to actually listen to people like Beck - back when the MSM began its vicious attack on all women who didn´t blindly support Obama. And, people who are sympathetic with the tea party movement but still consider themselves liberals in the old New Deal sense of the word.
Where do you put us?
Why do I get the feeling that had it been Obama instead of Eisenhower and LBJ that schools would still be segregated and Martin Luther's dream just that, a dream.
Yes, lets all make another excuse for BHO. Why should he try given the miscreants he has to work with in the House and Senate.
So much for being a transformational leader.
Regarding Jane - You might know better than I. But I don't recall her being particularly CDS during the election. I only read her postings sporadically during that period, and FDL as a whole was Obot-land (so I largely avoided it). But regarding Jane herself - for the articles of Jane's that I read, I remember her attempting to be somewhat evenhanded (even defending Hillary on occasion, and critiquing the misogyny).
Yes, anon 5:43, to the surprise of many and probably most, the president has far fewer powers than most understand.
The histories of Lincoln/Truman/Eisenhower/JFK/Clinton are instructive. All these men (excepting perhaps Ike in some respects) were heavily criticized in their time as far beyond their depth, as shallow and callow poseurs, as complete and utter failures, and paradoxically, despite their perceived general incompetence, supposedly quite effective as monstrous criminal actors against the Constitution and public good.
And there were points to be made for all these views. However, the judgment of history varies from the contemporaneous views of their respective commentariats.
The perceived-to-be over-the-hill and somnolent Ike did nothing to champion integration until the Supreme Court order mandated it, and the locals threatened forcible resistance. But he invested no personal or political capital on the issue prior to or after this one salutary act.
JFK did nothing on civil rights except to intervene to have MLK, Jr. released from prison one time, while continuing to allow FBI surveillance, wire-tapping, and the resulting harassment.
When Reagan tried to go over the head of Congress directly to the people to eliminate the Boland Amendment's defunding of the Contras, the great communicator failed.
After Clinton promised in his campaign to integrate gays into the military via executive order, Sen. Sam Nunn threatened a Congressional re-write of the UCMJ to overturn such an EO, with a veto-proof majority of the Senate signed on as co-sponsors. So we got the horrific DADT policy, and Clinton had sunk to 42% approval as of June of his first year, on his way to losing the House and Senate majorities for his party, amid scores of defections of elected officials from the Democratic Party to the GOP, and the loss of the majority of statehouses to GOP control.
I have gay friends who insist that Clinton ought to have gone to the wall, issued his EO on integrating gays, and then suffered the huge loss of the Congressional overturning of his first significant act as a new, freshly minted mere-plurality won (43%) president. And they hate him for not taking that full (and to be fair, promised) step, despite the landmines in full view.
I think it is far more sensible to give him slack on that, and to blame those who blocked him (Nunn and the rest of the Congress), even though he HAD promised to do it, and had it within his power to do it.
Even presidents now relatively highly regarded were so stymied by the restraints of their power and the politics of the day that AS OF THEIR PRESIDENCIES they appeared exactly the inadequate and failed actors their critics-in-chief so fulsomely described (even when the public didn't entirely agree as to job approval ratings).
Whether a president will succeed or fail is far from clear as of his rookie year, or even as of his first mid-term. In the case of Truman, it took about a generation after his presidency for a swing to the judgment that his was a near-great presidency, rather than the 30%+ range approval rating failure of his last years that saw him decline to run again.
XI
Here is what Paul krugman has to say about Obama/Clintons:
"There’s a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn’t the man progressives thought they were voting for. But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that
(a) There wasn’t a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders
(b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressive
Now it’s true that many progressives were ardent Obama supporters, with their ardency mixed in with a fair bit of demonization of Hillary Clinton. And maybe they were right — but not on policy grounds. (I still remember people angrily telling me that if Hillary got in, she’d fill her economics team with Rubinites).
So what you’re getting is what you should have seen."
I am not sure what he means by "And maybe they were right..." but he does criticize him on stimulus, the Banks and Bipartisanship.
This XI AKA Anonymous Anonymous is a one trick "pony".
[Obama here]+[excuse here]=[wait until X here]
If it sounds familiar, it's because since Obama got the nomination that's all his supporters can say. Really...that's it, nothing else you can say! So it's good XI-AKA -Anonymous comes here to remind us that Obama can't do anything positive. His:
[Obama here]+[excuse here]=[wait until X here]
Narrative needs to be beaten in to those who were deceived by Obama.
SB,
As much as I admire Joseph's intellect and passion for truth, I enjoy XI's Devil's Advocacy. There are many people (none Obot/Puma/Teabagger) who find the present state of our politics truley interesting and express their opinions not so much to force anyone to conform to their way of thinking but to offer other points of view. I imagine that they do not enjoy being labled and/or "beaten" into submission either. And isn't the wonder of Blogs the ability to hear and be heard and be informed?
I think that was historic and unprecedented.we have worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging/
Post a Comment