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Obama’s Squandered Summer
The day before he gave his latest brilliant speech, Barack Obama repeated a well-worn mantra to a television interviewer: "My job is not to be distracted by the 24-hour news cycle." The time has come for him to expand that job description. His White House has a duty to push back against the 24-hour news cycle, every 24 hours if necessary, when it threatens to derail his agenda, the nation's business, or both. This was a silly summer, as wasteful in its way as the summer of 2001, when Washington dithered over the now-forgotten Gary Condit scandal while Al Qaeda plotted. The president deserves his share of the blame.
After a good couple of years of living with the guy, we know the drill that defines his leadership, for better and worse. When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits - and waits - for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career. Cable networks slap a countdown clock on the corner of the screen and pump up the suspense. Finally, Mighty Obama steps up to the plate and, lo and behold, confounds all the doubting bloviators yet again by (as they are wont to say) hitting it out of the park.
So it's a little disingenuous for Obama to claim that he is not distracted by the 24-hour news cycle. What he's actually doing is gaming it for all it's worth.
As a mode of campaigning, this tactic was worth a great deal. Obama not only produced eloquent speeches - especially the classic disquisition on race that silenced the Jeremiah Wright pogrom - but also executed a remarkably disciplined tortoise-vs.-hare battle plan that outwitted and ultimately vanquished the hypercaffeinated political strategies of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. As a style of governing, however, this repeated cycle of extended above-the-fray passivity followed by last-minute oratorical heroics has now been stretched to the very limit.
Wednesday night's address on health care reform was inspired, lucid and, in the literally and figuratively Kennedyesque finale, moving. It was also (mildly) partisan, a trait much deplored by high-minded editorial writers but in real life quite useful when your party is in the majority and you want to rally the troops to get something done. But there was little in the speech that Obama couldn't have said at the summer's outset. Its practical effect may prove nil. Short of signing a mass suicide pact, the Democrats were always destined to pass a bill. Will the one to come be substantially better than the one that would have emerged if the same speech had been delivered weeks earlier? Not necessarily - and marginally at most.
In the meantime, a certain damage has been done - to Obama and to the country. The inmates took over the asylum, trivializing and poisoning the national discourse while the president bided his time. The lies that Obama called out so strongly in his speech - from "death panels" to "government takeover" - ran amok. So did all the other incendiary faux controversies, culminating with the ludicrous outcry over the prospect that the president might speak to the nation's schoolchildren on a higher plane than, say, "The Pet Goat."
None of this served his cause of health care reform or his political standing. The droop in Obama's job approval numbers isn't remotely as large or precipitous as the Beltway's incessant doomsday drumbeat suggests. But support for his signature program declined, not least because he gave others carte blanche to define it for him. Perhaps the most revealing of all the poll findings came in an end-of-August Washington Post query asking voters what "single word" first came to mind to describe their "feelings" about Obama and his health care proposals. For Obama, the No. 1 feeling was "good." For the policy package he'd been ostensibly selling all summer, the No. 1 feeling was "none."
It's not, as those on the right would have us believe, that Obama's ideas are so "liberal" that the American public recoiled. It's that much of the public didn't know what his ideas were. Even now I'm not convinced that most Americans know what a "public option" really means or what Obama's precise position on it is. But I'd bet that many more have a working definition of "death panels." The 24-hour news cycle abhors a vacuum, and the liars and crazies filled it while Obama waited for his deus ex machina descent onto center stage.
That he let the hard-core base of a leaderless minority party drive the debate only diminished his stature. That's why his poll numbers on "leadership" declined. The right-wing fringe has become so deranged that it will yank its kids out of school to protest the president and risk yanking more Americans off assembly lines by boycotting General Motors to protest the administration's Detroit bailout. Even Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich stepped in last week to defend Obama's classroom homily from the fusillades by some of their own party's most prominent ideologues. The White House should have landed a punch before they did.
Obama would have looked stronger if he'd stood up more proactively to the screamers along the way, or at least to the ones not packing guns. As the Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith has reminded us, it didn't harm the New Deal for F.D.R. to tell a national radio audience on election eve 1936 that he welcomed the "hatred" of his enemies. Indeed Obama instantly gained a foot or two in height Wednesday night once that South Carolina clown hollered "You lie!" (One wonders what this congressman calls the Republican governor of his own state, Mark Sanford.) As the political analyst Charlie Cook has pointed out, Obama's leadership poll numbers have also suffered from his repeated deference to Congress. Waiting for the pettifogging small-state potentates of both parties in the Senate's Gang of Six is as farcical as waiting for Godot.
Now that he has taken charge, Obama will speed the process and, we must hope, secure reform that may make a real difference for everyone, starting with the 46-million-plus Americans who have no health insurance. But when we gain some perspective on the summer of 2009, the health care debate, like the crazed town-hall sideshows surrounding it, may seem very small in the history of this presidency - maybe even as small as the Condit follies and the breathlessly reported shark attacks of summer 2001 now look in the history of the previous administration.
The reason is that health care reform, while an overdue imperative, still is overshadowed in existential urgency by the legacies of the two devastating cataclysms of the Bush years, 9/11 and 9/15, both of whose anniversaries we now mark. The crucial matters left unresolved in the wake of New York's two demolished capitalist icons, the World Trade Center and Lehman Brothers, are most likely to determine both this president's and our country's fate in the next few years. Both have been left to smolder in the silly summer of '09.
As we approach the eighth anniversary of the war that 9/11 bequeathed us in Afghanistan, the endgame is still unknown and more troops are on their way. Though the rate of American casualties reached an all-time high last month, the war ranks at or near the bottom of polls tracking the issues important to the American public. Most of those who do have an opinion about the war oppose it (57 percent in the latest CNN poll released on Sept. 1) and oppose sending more combat troops (56 percent in the McClatchy-Ipsos survey, also released on Sept. 1). But the essential national debate about whether we really want to double down in Afghanistan - and make the heavy sacrifices that would be required - or look for a Plan B was punted by the White House this summer even as the situation drastically deteriorated.
No less unsettling is the first-anniversary snapshot of 9/15: a rebound for Wall Street but not for the 26-million-plus Americans who are unemployed, no longer looking for jobs, or forced to settle for part-time work. Some 40 million Americans are living in poverty. While these economic body counts keep rising, tough regulatory reform for reckless financial institutions, too-big-to-fail and otherwise, seems more remote by the day. Last Sunday, Jenny Anderson of The Times exposed an example of Wall Street's unashamed recidivism that takes gallows humor to a new high - or would were it in The Onion, not The Times. Some of the same banks that gambled their (and our) way to ruin by concocting exotic mortgage-backed securities now hope to bundle individual Americans' life insurance policies into a new high-risk financial product built on this sure-fire algorithm: "The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return."
When we look back on these months, we may come to realize that there were in fact "death panels" threatening Americans all along - but they were on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and on Wall Street, not in the fine print of a health care bill on Capitol Hill. Obama's deliberative brand of wait-and-then-pounce leadership let him squeak - barely - through the summer. The real crises already gathering won't wait for him to stand back and calculate the precise moment to spring the next Do-or-Die Speech.
78 Comments so far
Show All"The day before he gave his latest brilliant speech...."
This is about ALL we can expect from this player-of-people: A brilliant SPEECH!
Talk is cheap then this guy is spending a fortune! To be an orator is NOT the same as being a leader in the best interests of "We the People". He has lied about everything from being PRO-Single-Payer to closing Guantanamo to leaving Iraq to building up Afghanistan to "The Bailout(s) to.... Well, YOU add to the list.
The point is: Words and great speakers seem to pass into the human psyche where lack of truth and action do not reside. Yes, Obama supporters, you were had. As far as I can tell, the Repugnants and Corporations are STILL running the show.
Oh, and his Congress? When they hold the majority they still act like a minority.
Oh, well. We "keyboard warriors" will fix things, won't we?
Nothing to add to your brilliant summary, except perhaps that your screen name suggests that you might once more fall for the Kucinich trap in 2012.
Kucinich is a sham. A sham designed to keep the left in the Democratic Party. He knows he will win nothing and at the end he'll support the pro-war corporatist like he did in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Then his ignorant voters will follow him and vote for whoever the War Party nominates.
The only way I'd take him seriously is if he resigned his corrupt party and ran as an Independent. The Democratic Party is rotten to the core, they have an incurable and inoperable cancer known as greed for war cash. There's nothing anyone can do.
I do NOT agree with paragraph #2 but WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE with paragraph #3.
I became a registered Democratic Socialist after the last election. Technically, by definition, Kucinich IS a Democratic Socialist but, apparently, doesn't realize it.
I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT AGREE that he is a Dem puppet/sham or whatever you want to say about him, though. I believe he means well; however, he, unfortunately still believes the Dems are the "party of the people" which we know to not be close to true.
Follow this and see what I'm talking about and maybe join me?!
http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/widemsoc.pdf
I was wondering, did Kucinich ever apologize for withdrawing from the presidential election in 2004 just before the democratic convention?
That act was what took the democratic party pro-peace movement and immediately made it voiceless. It was a great disservice and ultimately, sellout, of the pro-peace movement. I understand that he may have been under a lot of pressure to fold, and he did.
I will give him credibility again if he withdraws from the democratic party. Till then, he is just an enabler that allows the democratic party to claim that they are listening to all voices, including progressives.
Maybe more will come to realize that the democratic party is just another shill for the corporate elite, same as the republican party, and Obama.
Why did your namesake back him? I doubt anyone here thinks this forum is going to change anything and I'm sure posting here is not the only thing people here do to change things.
Obama's healtcare tactics serve his corporate masters, and distract from his wars. No use suggesting that they are "mistakes." But liberal hope springs eternal.
David Green is right! Words are not meaningful from a known PREVARICATOR--when we voted for him we were looking for action--we have had our fill of words, from Clinton, Bush, and now this smooth talking snake--I'm reminded that Satan is the father of lies--we have experienced his bastard sons for too long--NOW IS THE TIME FOR REAL CHANGE!
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
2.1 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
2.2 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
2.3 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
2.4 But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
OCT 4th MARCH AGAINST DECEPTION/NATIONAL STRIKE
Nice words. Who came up with that pipe dream?
They say that the finest legal mind belongs to a lawyer that can hold two conflicting thoughts in his mind simultaneously. If this is true (I disagree, by the way - I think this applies to sophistry rather than wisdom), Thomas Jefferson certainly fits the mold. He is the same guy that, after penning such majestic prose, nearly went bonkers when Haiti freed the slaves, gave sanctuary to French plantation slave owners in New york City and, with George Washington's hearty approval, sent weapons and supplies to counter the revolution. Hypocrisy is old hat.
And so are high sounding phrases about the human condition.
Question--Were Tories progressive? Or were they helping to retain the same old masters--King George and his punks?
Tories were loyal to King (the nut ball) George. However, the problem with the well educated opportunists like our founding fathers was that their words about equality applied ONLY to white, property owning males, period. The words were great but they were bullshit. There was a war of letters between Thomas Jefferson and educated men about whether blacks were human or not. This guy was pumping the darky hired help but didn't consider them totally human? What next, that pretty mare? There was an African american astronomer that computed the exact times of the rising of Jupiter's moons during this time (much used by mariners at the time) and Thomas Jefferson refused to believe it. Benjamin Franklin, when he lived in London, was in a knock down drag out back and forth with an African freeman educated in England (he had aided Sir Banks in scientific expeditions) who had written a book about Africans and slavery. Franklin mocked him furiously.
We were a slave country. England was against slavery so we had to tell England to go away. We also wanted the native american lands that England had signed treaties to honor. So we had to have a new country with no silly treaties. The rest is bullshit. We were not a Christan country. It's all a myth. You have been lied to. Taxation without representation was a fig leaf for a defense of slavery and a land grab (the Tories had their lands confiscated). Read Kevin Phillips on the first American fortunes, who made them and how. Then come back and tell me about Thomas Jefferson. Yes he wrote fine words but he had ulterior motives and never lived by his words.
Another great column by Frank Rich. Is the President listening?
I've been waiting since Nov '08 for Pres Obama to show us those changes he promised. He's given us the same-old, same-old Bush/Cheney/corporate policies. He has not been LEADING. He has been reacting. The latest will be throwing the public option under the bus to please the corporate campaign donors to himself and the Democratic Congress, and to placate the crazies of the Rep party and those Blue Dogs who represent about 1% or less of the population.
O certainly appears to be Bush III, with no change in Bush/Cheney policies. The question is why such non-action on campaign assertions. So far the best explanation is that O is a pod-person controlled by alien life forces.
But as Rich states, "the right-wing fringe has become so deranged" that even without proposing any bill, O is set upon by rabid flying monkeys. The volume never abates from the Limbaugh-Hannity-Beck corner, and their shrieks threaten to undermine any action O might attempt. Would O have succeeded in moving the ball by simply plowing forward through the middle? Extremely doubtful, since even O's corporatist actions have invoked rightist cries of "socialism".
So the question is: what tactic might O use to expose the Limbaugh fringe for what they are, and possibly reduce their currently quite effective screeds? If O's corporatist moves are not the acts of a pod-person, perhaps they are a strategy to allow deranged right-wingers self-destruct. Perhaps. If so, then godspeed to O and the rest of us.
Pretty funny stuff. I agree that racism is behind a lot of the right's attacks on Obama. It's the only explanation that accounts for their lack of need for any logic whatsoever.
That's the big difference between the left and the right's criticism of Obama's health care plan (or lack of one)-- the left is actually critiquing policy statements and proposals. The right is taking potshots at fragments of sentences heard third-hand, possibly while in a drunken stupor. ("Socialism! Death panels! Fascism!, etc, etc.)
"So it's a little disingenuous for Obama to claim that he is not distracted by the 24-hour news cycle. What he's actually doing is gaming it for all it's worth."
I'm afraid this fellow is 'gaming' more than just the 24-hour news cycle.
It's becoming clear to me that Obama is exactly the wrong person to lead at this time.
The more the 'crazies' pick on him, the more his supporters understandably feel sorry for him. Never mind the countless head-fakes, punts, and misdirections already in evidence on the key issues. I believe that his "historic" triumphant election actually works against the non-authoritarian left.
In just nine short months, he has managed to fragment his followers into the wait-and-see crowd, the apathetic he-can't-do-it-all-by-himself crowd, the I-get-goosebumps-hearing-him-speak crowd, the I-can't-imagine-the-alternative crowd, the histrionic hamburger-eating-beer-drinking-dog-naming crowd, and the but-hey-we-got-a-brothuh-in-da-white-house crowd, all while the planet burns, poor soldiers die, and the rich get richer off the backs of the working class.
A perfect foil for the small divide-and-conquer crowd of privileged elites.
Excellent comment. I love the names you give to the fragmented Obama groupies.
Consider that Obama has managed to alienate anyone worthy of the name "progressive" by following the advice of all the serious Washington pundits: occupying some mythical, post-partisan, no man's land between the overt savagery, racism and infantilism of the right wing (Beck, Limbaugh etc) and the savage capitalism of the organised criminal gangs (corporations) that fund him. That's what they call bipartisan. Moral principles? Forget it. That's for unserious, shrill extremists.
crossmankl: I agree, Old Peculiar's "crowd" types are exquisite. If Obama is the utter disaster that many here believe him to be, his "types" should provide a quite useful template for countering the base of his support. He didn't get to the place he is without being (many) things to (many) kinds of people and, except for the ineducable hamburger eaters, they can "recover" from their illusions with intelligent and well-placed rhetoric. These are the "great speeches" that, as I see it, need to be made; as they already are being made by the likes of Paul Street, Naomi Klein and the great writers at Black Agenda Report.
Agreed Galen Whale Moonpie Peculiar - this whole thing is depressing.
But what the hell is Biden doing? As Vice prez he could easily be Obama's attack dog, letting the Prez take the high ground. Biden should be kickin ass, taking on the Right Wing Noise Machine. The Dems look just like Kerry did in 2004: if they arent deliberately throwing the fight, they are doing the best imitation of it I have ever seen. Then again, they are owned by the corporatocracy, so maybe they are in effect, neutered.
If it still matters, if there is still a semblance of a country left in 2012, I will vote third party - no more of this "lesser-of-two-evils" bs.
Well said.
What 24 hour news cycle, at best, since I last saw any msm news, the white house would get about 5 minutes and the capital would get about 5 minutes from each station on 'all' the goings on in washington d.c. and an extra 5 minutes for national and international news and 45 minutes about sports and celebrities with the 'modern' 24/7 news channels, then it is looped for about 3 hours while other 'interesting' tidbits become available, what a sad sick joke.
And I have noticed that mr. 'change to believe in' squandered his first 100 days(I did not think he could 'change' much in 100 days and still believe that but I am still waiting) and now we slip into the 4th 100 day cycle and it still bears no change in the difference from previous administration going back to slick dick nixon, sorry make that lbj, no make that hoover, no make that woodrow 'the woodpecker' wilson who signed our country away by signing the federal reserve act of 1913 into law.
To repeat a comment I made before:
Obama's weapon of oratory has run out of bullets.
As we approach the eighth anniversary of the war that 9/11 bequeathed us in Afghanistan, the endgame is still unknown . . .
The endgame is not unknown. The endgame is disaster and anyone with a handful of brains could tell you that.
not only is the minority party without a leader, so is the majority leaderless. that is, however, by design; bambam is only playing his puppet role.
Me thinks things are just starting to get ugly--real ugly.
The dems will continue to get their asses handed to them on a regular basis.
They will lose control of congress in 2010 and the presidency in 2012.
These people are the Keystone Kops of Keystone Kops.
Sad, but nonetheless hilarious.
Obama gives insurance industry huge gift: 50 million uninsured Americans will be given government subsidies to buy health insurance. No new taxes, the money to pay for this subsidy comes off the backs of Medicare users. Not good, Obama.
Better to restore the tax cuts to the rich granted by Bush and to quickly wind down our oil wars in the Persian Gulf. Use that money for health care, jobs, infrastructure , education.
(Probably won't happen, as Obama, his party, the opposition, et. al. are all creatures of the Pentagon-Wall Street Complex, that vast conspiracy that afflicts the poor and props up the rich all over the world.)
@ dr wu September 13th, 2009 12:54 pm: To put it politely, you're out of your tree. Obama specifically said that not a penny from Medicare would be used to pay for any new insurance plan. Did you even listen to what he said? If you think he's lying, that's fine -- but that's only your opinion, and it's not based on fact.
Hear, hear.
Man, I wish what you said was shouted in headlines daily for a week.
And now time or Newsweek has a story with this headline, "We need to talk about death". Fasten your seat belts folks, the elite killers have plans.
Excellent analysis, Rich M.
The phrase "eliminating fraud and waste" could easily turn into wholesale cuts if they can't find enough fraud and waste to save the kind of money they're talking about. There were many other such unclear and inexplicit phrases peppered throughout that speech.* While it's an excellent idea to curtail waste and fraud in Medicare, the waste and fraud in private insurance is far worse and could save far more money if a single-payer system was enacted. To his credit, the President outlined proposals to at least regulate private insurance.
*Example: "It would only be an option for those who don't have insurance." WTF does that mean? Couldn't I drop my insurance and get the public option? Would you have to prove you didn't have insurance before? If it's a better deal, why would the CBO estimate only 5% of Americans would sign up for it? None of this makes sense to me.
Obama talks the talk. And talks. And talks. And talks. And talks.
And that is all he does. Talk.
Here are some FACTS:
-The economy is still in the crapper.
-Billions in bailouts are still flowing to the criminal kleptocrats.
-Guantanimo is still open.
-The abduction and rendition, and subsequent torture (excuse me, 'enhanced interrogation') of 'terrorists' are still happening.
-Innocents are still dying by the score in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
-The occupation of Iraq is still in place.
-Blackwater and similar criminal mercenary companies are still on the US payroll.
-China has become the single largest *seller* of US Government bonds. (THAT should scare the hell out of you!)
-Officially, unemployment is at it's highest level (9.7%) since the Great Depression. Unofficially, real unemployment is at 16% or 27%, depending on who you talk to. (In California 40% of working age employables are unemployed...)
-Iran is now firmly in the cross hairs for an Israeli and/or American attack.
-Israel continues to expand it's illegal encroachment of Palestinian land, building new settlements, and throwing Palestinians out on the street.
So how is the 'Hope (TM)' and 'Change you can believe in(TM)' thing going for you?
Walk in peace.
Three more important items not on the list
FISA Vote
Enforcement of the "Rule of Law"
Transparancy......when
DADT - went back on his word to repeal it and his DOJ released a brief comparing gays to pedophiles.
I have unemployment at 22%; you have to be a lefty to have it at 25 or 27%, and I'm middle of the road. (Laugh out loud?)
Well, if you ever wondered what you get when a guy who theoretically, possibly, might be a centrist becomes the ostensible leader of a country that has been lost to extreme right wing ideology for a generation, now you can see what happens with that combination. You get that guy morphing from centrist to solidly right wing right before your eyes.
It is amusing to see the actual far right wingers criticizing Obama’s and the Democrats’ health reform, because they are criticizing a right wing bill. I guess they didn’t know they are closet socialists, laugh out loud. (Seriously, not a few of them don't know that.)
Ideologically, having no public option at all is even more right wing than having a weak, doomed to fail public option. But no public option at all will allow the health insurance reform to fail more quickly, which is a good thing, because that in turn will put more pressure more quickly on individual states to enact some kind of single payer themselves. Especially since states, like individuals, are going to be saddled with new and ever higher expenses that the federal government refuses to deal with due to right wing ideology. And with the no public option at all scenario, there will be no chance for true single payer to be tarnished with (by being associated with a failed public option) an undeserved reputation.
Even a strong public option just increases the time before the system collapses entirely, before the premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and disallowed items become so high that even average income individuals find them impossible to pay, and above average income individuals find them increasingly difficult to pay.
The New York Times is reporting that the public option appears to be dead, meaning the health insurance reform will be a solidly right wing, dead on arrival reform. Anyone who spent time or money electing Democrats got essentially nothing for their efforts (other than perhaps a kick in the groin.) Had they perpetually remained in charge of all branches of the government, the Republicans would have eventually gotten around to passing roughly the very same law!
The new law will consist primarily of new laws against health insurance corporation acts that should have been illegal decades ago, and a brand new, unprecedented, and doomed to failure regressive tax law "requiring" the purchase of private health insurance. I put the requiring" in quotes, because as in the very last years of the Soviet Union (and other dying systems) what people in general and government officials in particular are "required" to do and what they actually do can be quite a bit different.
The New York Times Public Option Obituary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/health/policy/13plan.html?hp
-------------
Kucinich, Sanders, and all other progressives, need to unify into a party like this: http://www.ndp.ca/ now controlling two provinces, Manitoba and Nova Scotia, controlling large regional metro areas including Toronto and Vancouver, and controlling 36 of 308 Commons seats. The influence of NDP on actual laws in Canada is greater than you would think just judging from number of election victories
Priors and links to all my CD favorite articles: http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com
Exactly right.
I tuned into ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" What a joke, as usual. Same cast of characters such as Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. No fresh ideas, no challenging bounds of Republican/Democratic accepted discussion. When a guest makes a ridiculous argument that we need to protect insurance companies because people may drop private coverage for government coverage, none of the bobble heads argue that if people choose the government option because it is cheaper and provides equal or better insurance, then we don't need the insurance companies.
One word to sum up Obama's agenda...?
Antidisestablishmentarianism...
One word to sum up Obama apologists interpretation of his presidency so far...?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...
Once Again... The analysis of Obama's effectiveness is framed in a dualistic methodology... With the well-meaning David up against the MSM Goliath... The Dems versus Republicans... And anyone who has criticism for this administration gets pidgeon-holed or lumped in with the fake opposition and the regressive reactionaries... Dismissing the POV of true progressives as meaningless at best, or dangerous at worst... When Progressives attempt to reframe the issues with Facts-on-the-ground, to dispell the hypnotic rhetoric of Hope/Change, Liberals shrug them off as inconsequential or already a done deal since Obama has Pledged to make it happen... When information is presented that show Obama being a front man for CFR and Goldman Sachs, with Kissinger whispering in one ear and Brzezinsky whispering in the other ear, Liberals vehemonently reject it with "that doesn't fit into my Belief Structure"... This the magic of marketing and telling people what they want to hear... the High Priests of Wall Street and Madison Avenue have exploited Americans in their need to believe in something, anything, that their beliefs trump the critical thinking skills of even the educated professionals...
The Hopiate of the masses...
You know it's bad when Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich are publicly supporting Obama...
Galen,
don't forget that BushCo. et al are neither behind bars nor for that matter even being investigated.
Nor have the corrupt and inept Attorneys General appointed by Bush been replaced.
Lobbyists still own most of the federal government.
And millions of Americans are so ill-informed they can't decide whether Obama is a communist or a fascist because they don't really know the difference.
No experience and no policy theories (beyond staying in office) = B.Ob and the Country in the crapper!
In his own mind and the mind's of his true constituency, O is performing on cue and exactly to their liking. Military spending is up, up, and away ........ a single-payer option for healthcare isn't even part of the discussion anymore. Wow! He is good.
Franky is trying to elucidate some chessmaster political strategy from Obama as being okay during the campaign but needing some "adjustment" now. It's utter baloney.
However, the main issue really is the war. Frank mentions that like we aren't painfully aware of it. It's the media downplaying it that he is blind too. Frank is a day late and a dollar short. He and the New York Times need a long vacation (without pay).
Rich hits the mark:
"Some of the same banks that gambled their (and our) way to ruin by concocting exotic mortgage-backed securities now hope to bundle individual Americans' life insurance policies into a new high-risk financial product built on this sure-fire algorithm: "The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return."
I didn't watch or listen to the speech. Why bother?
Healthcare is but one of a number of indicators that Obama is not a transformative president in terms of policy. And that is a loss for Americans in the lower and middle classes. He seems to have made imprinting Washington with decency as his one transformative goal...good luck. Meanwhile all but the rich suffer.
The people he chose for his administration were a big clue that there would be no Change We Can Believe In. Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanual, even Hillary Clinton... these guys are the democrat status quo who are doing their best to more firmly entrench it, and Obama seems fine with that.
The right wingers rail against a government takeover. What they should be railing against is corporate greed and the tightening of corporate control on government, a trend continued by the Obama administration.
Is Obama even hinting at doing anything he said that provided him such support during the campaign. We've still got a huge presence in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is expanding, banks have not changed their risky practices even though they were provided with a huge government handout, were still waiting on reforms that are likely to be watered down or non-existent, Wall Street flourishes while unemployment flirts with 10 percent (more like the hight teens in real terms), he cuts loose one of the best guys he has in his admin go (Van Jones - green jobs) because Glen Beck criticizes him.
There was nothing to be expected of Obama if you were not already doing great under Dubya. The Obamabots and the rich fat cats don't think that Obama squandered summer. The rich fat cats are laughing at Main Street just like they did from 2001-2008 as the Joe the Plumbers were making it hellishly difficult for the rest of us on Main Street to fight for economic justice. This time however, it's the Obama wing of the Democrat Party that's assaulting us on Main Street by calling us "Republicans" or even "racists" for fighting for things like single payer and not going into Afghanistan.
P.S.: I said this on another post but I feel the need to say this part here too.
In case anyone thinks I simply hate Obama, I don't. But here are my biggest complaints about him which I voluntarily took the time to think and write down for a homework assignment for one of my friends on Alternet plus I promised Henry8 that I would show the list. Here goes:
1. Bailing out the wrong people who are already well to do such as Wall $treet.
2. Continuing the wars and occupations and adding new ones. Biggest disappointment is replacing soldiers with mercenaries in Iraq !
3. No intention of repealing Dubya's NCLB which would bring back some room for critical thinking and reasoning and stop making it easier for military recruiters to seduce students into signing up.
4. Nothing planned on reducing the costs of education. He can preach to kids about staying in school but if education is so expensive, it's hard to expect them to stay through college.
5. No plans to reverse the trends in outsourcing jobs to cheap slave labor. Employers love to misuse the education excuse.
6. No plans to rein in "free" trade scams such as NAFTA, CAFTA, China PNTR, etc...
7. No intention of ending the corporate tyranny that is responsible for stifling small business, non-monied innovators and inventors, and small farmers. I'll explain down the road.
8. No support for small farmers. Instead, it's all just support Big Agri and persecute the small farmers to bankruptcy and tears !
9. No plans to undo FISA, Patriot Act, and restoring other civil liberties and freedoms stolen this past decade alone.
10. No plans on reforming health care. Single payer is off the table and alternative practitioners are given no voice.
11. No plans to save the environment by funding public transportation and I'm back to having to drive 45 miles to work thanks to PT being unavailable in my area. Cap and trade does nothing other than give W$ another bonus. I also hate gas guzzler and can't stand Uncle Sam rewarding them while giving gas sippers fewer and smaller tax breaks despite the expense. Also Uncle Sam is funding Big Oil, Coal, Gas, and Nuclear with our taxpayer money when they shouldn't be. Let solar and wind technologies actually compete and see what tech really wins by themselves.
12. No plans to end the war on drugs and especially ending the prohibition on cannabis. Thousands of uses of industrial hemp as some have pointed out on this site.
These 12 are equally frustrating and the most so.
Wow. This is quite the list. Makes a person want to vote third party or something, even if it would help elect a Repub...
Excuse me but a vote for third parties isn't a vote for Republicans. I voted thrice for Nader and yeah, last year's vote kept MO red but too bad. See, Gore, Kerry, and Obama ran lame-brained centrist style campaigns, each lamer than the last. But as you can see, I vote on the issues and pay no attention to the candidate's party affiliation.
Agree. Obama gets elected and we still have Republican policies. The Obama/Biden ticket has turned into Obama/Bush.
I always agree with everything you say, Jennifer. And I've said the same about the corporate clowns who've run as Democrats, including Clinton, for years. It's why I voted for Nader, too. And I agree with something you said earlier, that we criticize Obama so strenuously on this site not because we "hate him," as so many of his blind supporters contend, but because he's only extending and prolonging, as indefinitely as he can, Bush and Clinton's entire agendas. Obama is too passive and inert a figure to get all riled up about on a personal level. He's entirely without passion or even detectable conviction. He's like Calvin Coolidge, one of our more flagrant persidential zeroes, although more like Herbert Hoover in his political passivity regarding the crises he faces. The only people now who seem to truly hate Obama are the Glenn Becks, Hannitys, Limbaughs and assorted tea baggers who are racist to the core and need to believe Obama is some sort of dangerous liberal or socialist. They're just many of the members of this insane asylum society who happen to be functioning outside the walls. Obama is the warden who they believe is giving them the wrong medications.
Sioux Rose
Jennifer: Thank you for compiling a comprehensive list. I'm sure there are other factors that can be added; but you definitely hit on all the big ones! I think his maintaining "business as usual" is a sin of enormous proportions given the ominous nature of our times, and the moral call to treat ecological devastation as the threat it is. The crises of our time are opportunities to rethink the way things are being done, and apt interims for consciously changing gears. That this prez has not bothered to do so will count against him not only in history books; but any who own the hubris to step into power at this critical time and dp NOTHING to change the tide of mass destiny, wow, that's a karma few would trade places with him to possess.
I certainly agree.
Frank Rich may be trying to tell Mr. President that the fact that his administration has done nothing of susbstance is about to have negative consequences is about 3 months behind the power curve. Hence my comments on this site, when I suggest solutions, are relegated to the "do it yourself" arena of human action. The gist of my thinking is that, if you can't trust corporations to provide you with certain services you want or need, you must invent an infrastructure with a group of neighbors who have similar needs. A lawyer can package the whole thing and keep everybody honest. Of course everyone has to keep the lawyer honest too. Ideally, he is part of the "group insurance" or mortgages or whatever herself/himself. Even stock brokers can be circumvented (they do it in Vegas every day). Personal contracts with a group of neighbors with agreements to honor "securities price insurance" [ We can't call them bets because that would be gambling :) ]. I.e. the stock goes up, you get paid; it goes down, you pay. The purpose of brokers in stocks is totally unwarranted now. We can all do our own research. I hasten to add that I have no 401K and no stocks. I avoid them like the plague but you get the idea. The whole push to larger organizations by corporations was supposedly to save us all a little money with economies of scale. They have perverted that with their CEO pay and customer betrayal. We need to remake the infrastructure from the ground up. These same groups would then join to vote in blocks immune to corporate influence. Of course they'd be ruthlessly attacked but we aren't up against paper tigers here.
Thanks Sioux Rose. Actually, the credit for getting me to compile the list goes to my friend Photon's Feather. He thought of doing that as an idea and I got interested and thought of doing it as a homework assignment. :)
I gave it some time. I did eventually show him the list and he said he'd set up his printer. I think he too wants to think about it.
As with the ecological devastation, the tricks and methods misused in the economic realm to keep the divide between the economy and the environment are complicated enough to give me a splitting headache. There are so many good venues to take towards healing the divide between the economy and the environment but it can be hard to know where to start and what really works. I feel like trying them all like a child would do. :)