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Curbing Your Enthusiasm
Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?
These questions were inspired by the ongoing suspense over whether President Obama will do the obviously right thing and nominate Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial protection agency. But the Warren affair is only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a vast wave of progressive enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was bound to be followed by disappointment, and not just because the president was always more centrist and conventional than his fervent supporters imagined. Given the facts of politics, and above all the difficulty of getting anything done in the face of lock step Republican opposition, he wasn't going to be the transformational figure some envisioned.
And Mr. Obama has delivered in important ways. Above all, he managed (with a lot of help from Nancy Pelosi) to enact a health reform that, imperfect as it is, will greatly improve Americans' lives - unless a Republican Congress manages to sabotage its implementation.
But progressive disillusionment isn't just a matter of sky-high expectations meeting prosaic reality. Threatened filibusters didn't force Mr. Obama to waffle on torture; to escalate in Afghanistan; to choose, with exquisitely bad timing, to loosen the rules on offshore drilling early this year.
Then there are the appointments. Yes, the administration needed experienced hands. But did all the senior members of the economics team have to be protégés of Robert Rubin, the apostle of financial deregulation? Was it necessary to install Ken Salazar at the Interior Department over the objections of environmentalists who feared, rightly, that his ties to extractive industries would make him slow to clean up a corrupt agency?
And where's this administration's Frances Perkins? As F.D.R.'s labor secretary, Perkins, a longtime crusader for workers' rights, served as a symbol of the New Deal's commitment to change. I have nothing against Hilda Solis, the current labor secretary - but neither she nor any other senior figure in the administration is a progressive with enough independent stature to play that kind of role.
What explains Mr. Obama's consistent snubbing of those who made him what he is? Does he fear that his enemies would use any support for progressive people or ideas as an excuse to denounce him as a left-wing extremist? Well, as you may have noticed, they don't need such excuses: He's been portrayed as a socialist because he enacted Mitt Romney's health-care plan, as a virulent foe of business because he's been known to mention that corporations sometimes behave badly.
Read the full article here.
232 Comments so far
Show AllObama is a phony!
As is his suckup, Krugman.
Glad I had my barf bag handy after reading this BS.
Krugman's warning that Obamacare will help Americans "unless a Republican Congress manages to sabotage its implementation" is precisely what makes Obamacare, Obamabankster, and so much other Obama legislation doomed to fail you and I and guaranteed to enhance corporate profits.
Had Obamacare implemented single-payer there would be no implementation risks. The Obamacare we got was written by the insurance and drug industries to be a big shell game that they will win and we will lose.
Spot on, Rich M, you got it exactly right We are infinitely worse off now than we were with Cheney running the show because a huge swath of people from just to the left of center to progressive still have their vision clouded by artificial stars and are disabled from action. Until that crowd comes to their senses or the left gets off its collective ass, we are SOL.
Every time we voted for the lesser of two evils, both evils became more evil.
Perfect analysis in one sentence.
I also agree!
I think it's time to dig in our heels. We are being made fools of.
Everytime we took our foot off the brake we went downhill faster.
If you're waiting for your "purist progressive" fantasyland, please be patient, really patient.
Asking Obama to do things like uphold the Constitution instead of ratifying and in some cases expanding on Bush-Cheney policies on civil liberties is "purist"?
"We have no King"- The purity trolls of 1776!
Bush killed the Constitution before Obama was president.
Bush did a lot of damage to civil liberties, and he got plenty of support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress: The Patriot Act (TWICE!), legalization of his illegal spying program, legalization of torture, and so on.
Obama is continuing many of the Bush era attacks on civil liberties. Just because Bush did it doesn't mean that Obama should do it too.
So, if you're not patient like, Shawn Berry, then every time you get a chance to counter an anti-Oilbomber post, then ridicule the poster, so you can have the non-patient Republican-esque fantasyland of the new Republicrats!
Shawn Berry must be a very young person and doesn't have the years behind him to notice: The Democrats have moved far to the right with each election.
Why is that? Because Shawn Berry and others reward them for it. How hard is that to understand?
Did you know that University of Illinois Professor Francis Boyle - a world renown expert on International law and the US Constitution - is filing a complaint to the International Criminal Court against Obama for his crimes against humanity?
Sometimes we "purists" just have resist and fight when the not-so-pure is actually evil in disguise.
Sorry Democrats, I don't vote for war mongers, child killers, or anyone who would be so callous as to deny people a good health care system - doing these things to people, just to be at the top of the giant political garbage heap! I can smell them from here.
I'm in my 40s but thanks for making me feel young. Obama's not a criminal. It's the system he's part of that's the criminal. We don't like rewarding Democrats for not being "pure" enough but we have no choice unless you want Republicans in their place. Hey, I don't like it either but you have to be pragmatic and patient to win. You can't win everything. Compromising will happen too but that's life. We can keep begging for a "progressive purist" utopia or we can take baby steps and get there.
Sorry you're dead wrong. Talk to Professor Boyle. Obama is a criminal.
Using your twisted, immature logic, those who commit crimes are not guilty, it's the system, stupid!
If he were working to change the system, I'd give him some credit. But he's not. He's working in the opposite direction.
For non-violent crimes, victimless crimes, I could follow your point. When the crimes are ones of brutality, that's a more serious matter and has to be stopped.
Then we're all "criminals" for voting for him? Guilt by association?
The right makes giant leaps while the left settles for baby steps. That explains a lot about the direction that our country has gone in the past three decades!
The country has been moving to the right for 30 years. Where did the right make giant leaps? The left always makes baby steps. It worked for labor unions, social security, medicare, deficit reduction and balancing the budget, civil rights, women's rights, and others.
Giant leaps to the right? Let's see...the war in Iraq, the Bush era attacks on civil liberties, welfare reform, and the financial deregulation of 1999-2000, just to name a few examples. Don't you think that Bush made giant leaps to the right with the help of Congressional Democrats and Republicans? If not, why get all upset over just a few little baby steps to the right?
The left has made some giant leaps during the Progressive era, such as getting the direct election of Senators and female suffrage. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we made some huge strides on consumer and workplace safety and environmental protections (especially the Clean Water and Clear Air Acts).
Bush's giant leaps I agree on. I don't agree that female suffrage suddenly came. Women have been fighting for a lot of equal rights and that's good. I assume that Congress and the states decided to see what women's voting could do to influence the direction. The history of women's suffrage in the US was long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_States
It took a lot of years of baby steps and public pressure to make it happen. I see the same pattern emerging on health care.
Bush killed the progress on consumer and workplace safety and environmental protections. Obama is stuck with the same Congress who went along with Bush on it. As long as Congress isn't under pressure to change, even a President Nader won't make a difference.
"Obama is still wrapped up in his dream of transcending partisanship?" oh really?
Deconstructing Krugman:
Obama has a "dream." MLK had a dream. Obama has a scam.
Obama wants to "transcend." You know, rise above all the pettiness. We all want to transcend. We're lefties, eh?
Let me act as Krugman's editor here:
"Obama is still wrapped up in the promises he made to big money."
"And Mr. Obama has delivered in important ways. Above all, he managed (with a lot of help from Nancy Pelosi) to enact a health reform that, imperfect as it is, will greatly improve Americans' lives - unless a Republican Congress manages to sabotage its implementation."
Obama has delivered? Unless it is sabotaged? So...in other words he hasn't delivered anything. He managed to pass a law that might change things for the better or worse in the future...remains to be seen because it hasn't been implemented..at all. Someone needs to show Mr. Krugman how to use an online dictionary so he can look up what delivered means. Can Mr. Krugman point to any accomplishment that has actually occurred so we can judge whether it is a success or not? He can't point to anything! Nothing! Obama has been 100 percent negative. In fact...the only thing Obama brought to the table was to institutionalize the war against terror, the ending of the bill of rights, torture, etc... Obama has become a war criminal like Bush and Cheney and deserves to be tried by the Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, and Palestinian people and then hung.
Why would any progressive vote for Obama? A third Bush/Cheney term would have been far better. The two had 20 percent approval ratings and were widely unpopular. They couldn't do anything without inspiring a protest. American protesters made fun on them and staged mocked torture scenes from the Iraqi photos everywhere they went. They were cornered and lacked the support of Europe. LMAO. Obama came in and ruined all of that. For some reason people gave him the benefit of the doubt. Rather than change the course we were heading, he put us in overdrive and slammed the pedal to the floor. He is the biggest nightmare that could have happened to this country. We are sooooooo screwed.
Get real, Krugman.
Obama wants the Republicans to take control of Congress because he will have an easier time making excuses and will get even more contributions from Obamabots.
You've got their number!
Delivered -- excellent post. Every one of those "sweeping reforms" has a long lead time of many years. I would except by sometime next year people might start to realize this, as the Depression II gets deeper. By this measure I would assume any "sweeping reform" NAFTA and its progeny would also have an effective date of oh, say, 10 years or more down the road.
Obama is so transparent. Like any crook, or serial killer, he's got a solid MO. The only ones who haven't figured this out yet are people like Krugman and the rest of the bots, who proudly point to the "sweeping reforms."
Krugman sez: "Why does (the Obama administration) go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?"
***
Methinks Mr. Krugman has actually swapped Obama's "friends" with his enemies.
The sole reason Rahm was hired at the start was to keep a boot on the throat of any genuine progressives who might have threatened to poke a stick in the spokes of the wheel of corporate progress.
Those who voted for Obama are not "friends". They are marks.
"Curbing Your Enthusiasm"
The title should be - Hoping You Are Still Dimwitted.
Among the drivel in this article was this black hole of a question -
"What explains Mr. Obama's consistent snubbing of those who made him what he is?"
1. "Those who made him what he is" are the same greedy warmongering pigs who are controlling the congress.
2. There has been no "snubbing" of Obama's creators. The people who are snubbed are the people who Obama pretends to tolerate.
3. By asking the above question, Mr. Krugman pretends that Obama is someone he is not.
4. Do the Nobel Prizes have any real significance (beyond PR)?
Obama himself pretends to be what he's not.
"Above all, he managed (with a lot of help from Nancy Pelosi) to enact a health reform that, imperfect as it is, will greatly improve Americans' lives"
Mr. Krugman is correct, as always.
As the owner of a health insurance company and a shareholder in a major hospital chain and several pharma corporations, I can say with confidence that my life has been greatly improved by Mr. Obama. Thank you, Mr. President.
There are exceptions for people who can't afford to pay. If you can pay, don't worry about it.
The Senate bill only covers 57% of the uninsured by 2019, is fraught with all sorts of loopholes, and has little in the way of cost control. The subsidies to buy insurance will become unsustainable if costs continue to increase rapidly. These are the kinds of problems that can undermine support for health care reform in general, and so they are worth worrying about.
Where does the projection of 57% comes from? The bill could have been better I agree. Single payer would have been great but gotta start somewhere. We might make it to single payer before 2019.
31 million covered and 23 million still uninsured, which I believe comes from the Congressional Budget Office.
Hopefully, they'll revise it. But it's better than covering no one so far. I'm for another round of health care reform. Step by step, we can make it to single payer. How's your state doing on single payer? MN is already trying to get there.
"It could have been better" can be used as an excuse for anything, as can "we gotta start somewhere." The bill serves the purpose of shutting up the advocates and lulling the public, so as to head off a potential threat to corporate profits. It was a great "start" in that direction. It will be much moire difficult now to rebuild the momentum and to get anything passed. This should be obvious. Your argument will be , and is being used to prevent any further reform by setting up the illusion that the problem has been dealt with or is being worked on.
No further work on health care reform will be possible without people loudly and stridently speaking out for it. You respond to those people with this "start" and "could be better, yes" and "will be better in the future" nonsense. The position you are taking is self-contradictory and illogical. There is no way to get to single payer in 2019 or ever if no one is strongly advocating it in unambiguous terms. Yet you use "we may get there by 2019" as an argument against those strongly advocating it in unambiguous terms.
Single payer is not "great," it is the baseline, it is the start, it is the minimum. Unfortunately, millions of people are not going to "make it to 2019." I guess they just regrettable but acceptable collateral damage in the war that Democrats are waging to preserve and protect the current system - protect the profits of private interests - while convincing others that they are not doing that.
The bill doesn't stop future reform. Congress can always revisit it and make amends anytime. At least more people will be covered and eventually we'll get universal health care. We may get to single payer even before 2019. Death and taxes are inevitable. Even the best insurance doesn't guarantee that you'll get your treatment. If a doctor botches the treatment, what then? Single payer would have been nice to have but what makes you think that the Republicans in Congress would get in line and see to it that they would make it work? The Republicans would have easily killed the new single payer system from starting and we'd be back to status quo. Should the Democrats have slayed the insurance companies? Hell yeah but it's not practical. 3-4 million more jobs would have been lost and President Obama would have been a possible target for assassination. I don't like the insurance companies but I'm used to it like everyone else. What do you plan to do to get single payer passed quickly?
Shawn Berry, please could you be more specific about the "exceptions" for people who can't afford to pay.
I would love that information. And when does the rescue happen for those people, 2014?
Is that the same year that the federal government takes an interest in whether or not you are legal in your required overpriced insurance purchasing?
I recently had my hours cut at work, and then because of such cuts lost my employer based health insurance.
I then discovered, that I can't possibly afford an individual plan of any sort that is worth buying, because the ones that I might come close to being able to afford, I wouldn't be able to afford to use it in the first place.
Meanwhile, the simple expansion of Medicare through a low cost buy in, exists somewhere in the ether of a parallel and more sane universe.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/HealthCare
/obama-sign-health-care-bill-law-republicans-challenge
/story?id=10176898
"Under the health care bill, by 2014 most Americans would be required to have health insurance or pay a fine, with the exception of low-income Americans. Employers would also be required to provide coverage to their workers, or pay a fine of $2,000 per worker. Companies with fewer than 50 employees, however, are exempt from this rule. "
That's what I found.
I work for a company with fewer than 50 employees, as apparently do 20 million Americans that will fall through the cracks of your bill. I am glad to know, that you can afford health insurance. Congratulations.
If you are working part time because your company wants to save by putting you to part time so that you don't get any benefits, the new bill won't allow that. Have a look.
http://www.mfrtech.com/articles/3180.html
Very well said, VP. That's an excellent summary of how decrepit and lame the health care plan Obama and Congress has insulted us all with. Krugman parrots the same tripe nearly all liberals do: it's a worthy achievement and we should all rejoice. Atleastit'sbetterthanBush! But if Bush had a third term he'd very likely been forced to help pass a better plan than the present one.
32 million more will covered with that plan. Be grateful.
That's like asking the victim to be grateful when the torturer stops.
Not necessarily. Would you have preferred the status quo or helping an addition 32 million one of which could be you? Improvement is needed but we got off to a good start. I wouldn't call this a torture bill.
VP: I agree with Ephraim, very well said. And I, too, have the same sentiment you do about Krugman. I think he takes his neutral stance to preserve his job at The New York Times. Even if a writer is not directly instructed as to how far they can go in the way of criticizing a president (or policies that benefit the elites who own the media), they intuitively understand where the boundary line is placed. We should never under-estimate the power of conformity, particularly in times when the best jobs are difficult to come by, and it's risky to step out of line.
Krugman is basically telling us to STFU and vote for the lesser of two weevils. That's why it's called POLY-TICS (AKA many blood sucking vermin.) Sorry, Paul I can't stomach either of these two so called parties. In reality as the poster above has said both deliver slightly different versions of the same old GOP policies. Plus, I vehemently disagree that the so called Health Reform bill will improve much of anything for the public since it does nothing to control cost and can't, because it's basically just another CORP. giveaway.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a 94 yr old woman, once deeply involved in progressive causes, who lived through the Depression. She never liked Obama. Thought his ties to " machine politics " would hinder the goals and needs of the poor and middle class. She said, the difference between Obama and Roosevelt was that Roosevelt really tried everything to see what worked. He was an innovator and believed that failure was not an option. Obama, on the other hand, has not been either. He is simply too cautious, to afaid to offend and fight for what needs to be done. " Krugman and other Obama defenders can say all they want but our first black President is a coward, politically. He has shown himself to be weak and gutless on the economy, healthcare, the wars, etc. He is not as advertised. He should be ignored as a policymaker. Direct action on the street level is our only recourse. The sooner the better.
"Direct action on the street level is our only recourse."
I agree with you, linkwray. But as RICH M and SHAWN BERRY have pointed out (albeit from opposing POVs) the election of "progressive" Obama has actually de-fanged the growing anti-war movement (or any actual "progressive" policies --- except stem-cell research, I'll give him that).
I can see it in my own household: For eight glorious years, my wife and I lived in harmonious contentment. We bonded daily with our mutual despise of all things "W" and "Dick". I could rant for hours regarding the disaster we both saw this country heading toward. Since the election of Brand Obama, "mums" the word around here now. Yes (full disclosure) I am married to an Obamabot. She is wise in many ways, except the foolishness of partisan politics. It leaves me frustrated. Now we argue over "little things" that were never a concern during the Bush years. She still watches BO's speeches and gets all "choked up", while I retire to the bathroom to vomit.
I need a good ol' Repug in office in order (if nothing else!) than to restore my marriage...