After reading this blog over at Americablog, I feel a little galvanized. One of the most unfortunate things to happen coming out of Barack Obama’s election is the fact that we’ve seen that the “change” he represents is not the change we were looking for. In fact, when it comes to how people are treated in this country in comparison to corporations, there really hasn’t been any change at all. It’s pretty clear that there’s only shades of difference between Clinton, Bush and Obama on that all-important matter. They all represent the interests of corporations over common citizens, just to different degrees.
The scariest thing that we’re facing, though, is the great unraveling of the last vestiges of the New Deal: Social Security (and Medicare, which is surely in the spirit of the New Deal). As FireDogLake has documented at length, the Obama administration is taking aim at the two most important programs in all of government. Among President Obama’s very secretive Deficit Commission, comprised of 18 members, is a full 14 who support deep cuts to Social Security. Obama learned from Bill Clinton’s nonpartisan attempts to make cuts — by appointing an equal number of people who wanted to cut and not to cut – and just decided to appoint a near-unanomous group of foes of social and economic justice.
So, in that vein, I return back to the Americablog post — which is a clarion call for primary challenges all across the country, at every level, against this group of Corporatist Hacks who would seek the final death knell of New Deal politics and the commitment to humanity and elements of social and economic justice that the New Deal represents. We need primaries, and we need lots of them. We need to fully take over the Democratic Party until every last Blue Dog and corporate-friendly member is taken out.
Here in Massachusetts, in this very year, we have a huge opportunity to make good on that commitment. We need to make sure Mac D’Alessandro wins. So, please, contribute to his campaign, join his Facebook group, follow him on Twitter, and most importantly, talk about him to your friends and volunteer for his campaign.
We need to stop supporting congressmen who vote for wars that never end, and won’t stand up for basic matters of economic and social security — like the premise that everyone deserves good quality health care in which they’ll never be denied treatment because of preexisting conditions. Mac is on your side; Steve Lynch has been fighting against you for his entire career.
As far as “only shades of difference between Clinton, Bush, and Obama”, I think that’s absolute crap. Plainly untrue, on so many levels it’s impossible to imagine. The EPA actually using its powers of enforcement over CO2 is one, and it’s enormous. One of the reasons we elected Obama is to get back to mediocrity from a position of utter disaster.
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p>On the other hand … As far as being galvanized against the corporate takeover of our government, let’s go get ’em. I’m with you.
he’s attacked one constituency after another. I’m done trying to stick up for him, just hoping someone will have the guts to primary him. Charley, maybe you and the fewer and fewer defenders on the left Obama has left will stop defending him once he makes crystal clear his efforts to gut social security. It’s coming. If at that point it doesn’t become a Civil War inside our party, America could just be done for at that point. There’s a reason why the “deficit commission” has been so secretive. They don’t want everyone to realize what they’re really trying to do… but as I’ve said, 14 out of 18 of the members Obama’s already appointed are gung-ho for tearing social security apart.
the SSI commission in The Nation. He said it was filled with Democrats that would like to reform deform social security.
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p>Then I heard somewhere that the commission was hopelessly deadlocked.
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p>Greider seemed short on facts. But I know one thing: Obama ain’t no Progressive.
For starters, the commission is incredibly secretive. I highly doubt anyone knows what’s actually going on inside the meetings, aside from a few in the administration and those on the committee itself.
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p>Secondly, the people on the committee are largely on the record. My 14 out of 18 figure was not made up in thin air. Obama went out of his way to ensure the committee was filled with people known for wanting to cut deeply into Social Security. The Clinton deficit commission was only ever deadlocked because Clinton had the audacity to appoint a wide group of people who were pretty evenly split in terms of wanting to cut it or not cut it. Obama and Rahm learned from that lesson: If you want it cut, put people on the committee who want it cut, too.
…what’s the point of appointing a commission to help you decide?
it’s a “bipartisan” commission, so when it inevitably decides in favor of gutting social security — by a wide margin — the President can then hide behind the “bipartisan” nature of it. Of course, he’ll get to leave out the fact that he essentially packed it with people who were very, very partisan on the matter of wanting to cut social security. Such a thing is far, far too arcane for the average citizen to get and understand coming from our horrendous fourth estate, which probably won’t make any attempt to report it that way anyway.
I don’t think we can be a “go get’em” progressive movement when it comes to tackling the corporate takeover of our government, and be supportive of Obama at the same time. Obama is the biggest ally of the corporate takeover of government right now. Hell, even the health care bill was to some extent a continuation of the let-the-corporations-take-over-government movement. People are now going to have to pay what amounts to thousands and thousands of dollars a year to private corporations because the government told them so… and let’s not forget that, when you get passed all the lip service, Obama fought tooth-and-nail against the one thing in the entire bill that would have reduced the corporate-takeover aspect of it… the public option… and he won.
He appeals to progressives until the discussion gets serious.
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p>It’s funny how the phrase “public option” was removed from Obama’s OFA web site soon after he took office.
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p>Glenn Greenwald makes an excellent argument that Obama’s actual agenda is represented by the pro-corporate positions of Blanche Lincoln.
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p>Obama’s primary support for Lincoln exposes the lie of his “I would if I could but I don’t have the Congressional votes” excuses.
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p>Health care is only one of several major issues on which Obama has favored corporations over the public good. The composition and secrecy of his Deficit Commission are dangerous. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit because it is self-funding. (Why don’t the media outlets explain this better? Never mind.)
This is the same Administration that gave BP a pass:
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p>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…
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p>So despite the applause for the EPA on reducing carbon…we’ve got a hell of a mess, courtesy of an agency whose oversight has been called a “rubber stamp.”
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p>So – big freaking deal with the EPA. We have a monumental environmental disaster in the Gulf, one that could have been avoided had the Administration not been asleep at the switch. I’m with Ryan on this one. If this is what hope and change is supposed to look like, then give me despair and the status quo. What’s that old saying? With “friends” like this, who needs any enemies?
Carl Pope, retiring director of the Sierra Club:
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p>http://www.bangordailynews.com…
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p>Big freaking deal with the EPA indeed.
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p>What would you have done differently, and I mean technically, specifically differently, on the oil spill to make it stop sooner?
How about making BP do the environmental impact statement analysis last freaking year, Charley? I know you love the guy, but this is ridiculous. His administration, on its watch, give BP a pass and you’re all good with this? I don’t give a rat’s patootie what Carl Pope thinks. Best environment president? Please. He gave BP a pass. I wonder why? Let’s follow the money trail, eh?
Charley, the record speaks for itself. He can’t be both the best environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt and the guy who let BP destroy the Gulf Coast, quite likely for generations. There’s a massive, massive cognitive dissonance there.
Appoint someone who values the environment to head the Dept of Interior.
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p>Over 100 scientists and conservation groups signed a joint letter to Obama’s transition team in opposition to the Salazar nomination. Link Energy interests, on the other hand, were pleased.
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p>Why did Carl Pope support Salazar? One speculation is that large environmental organizations wanted continued access to the administration and Congress, and were concerned that criticism might diminish this access.
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…(and I honestly don’t remember whom you supported in 2008), but I felt all along that Obama was long on hope and short on change. All the young people and liberals went gaga over him because he made a speech early on opposing the Iraqi campaign without the burden of really having to make a decision since he was not yet in the Senate, while that big bad witch Hillary (as well as John Edwards and comfortable majorities in both chambers without the benefit of crystal balls) voted to support what the President SAID he would do. He campaigned on a MA style health care plan which always concerned me and others were concerned about his support for constitutionally questionable civil liberties violations. He always spoke as wanting to bring people together, not as a fighting stick-it-to-the-opposition progressive. I continue to believe that at very least Hillary Clinton, whom I supported and do not regret having supported, would fight harder for what she and many of us believe in. Frankly, I don’t understand why people are so surprised at how Obama handles confrontation.
I was never a huge Obama guy — and voted for Hillary in the primary.
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p>Hillary would have been an infinitely better President on domestic matters, and I don’t think there would have been any significant difference on international matters — because every anti-war/liberal tack Obama took in the campaign were lies anyway. He has absolutely, positively no intention of leaving Iraq or Afghanistan, he’s just going to remove “combat” troops… the distinction of which will be almost meaningless to the people of those countries who won’t want the tens of thousands of troops we leave there throughout Obama and after him that aren’t “combat” troops. Hell, Obama hasn’t even closed Guantanamo… and the fruit doesn’t hang lower than that…
…that you have such different feelings about Deval and Obama, while I often have trouble seeing much difference between the two, for better or worse.
if Obama had a shred of the intestinal fortitude or even care that Patrick has, I’d be a much, much happier camper. Deval’s actually stood up for the progressive positions, Obama’s continually and routinely fought against them. If Obama were governor of Massachusetts, we may not even have marriage equality now, never mind the best environmental reforms in the country put into effect or a guy who’s so competent when it comes to managing the budget.
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p>I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that Obama’s ego casts shadows that cover entire states at a time, while Deval Patrick actually gives a damn about someone other than just himself.
…is that Deval is working with a legislature that is very often on his side. It’s easy to loudly be in favor of something when you know you won’t get much political push-back. After the first gambling disaster, it’s notable how much Deval tiptoes around the Legislature.
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p>I submit that if Obama had a legislative branch as tame as Deval’s often is, he’d be getting more done. Conversely, I can’t see much “intestinal fortitude” coming from Deval if he had to deal with an Eric Cantor…Deval has trouble enough with Sal or DeLeo.
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p>At the end of the day, the same people are advising our president and governor to more or less do the same things for the same reasons. The fact that there are sometimes different results I ascribe more to their different operating environments more than different intentions. Let’s face it — if you can’t get Democratic priorities enacted in Massachusetts of all places, you’re pretty much a loser.
On paper at least Obama enjoys the friendliest Congress a Democratic President has had in a long time. Comfortable majorities in both chambers and even theoretically filibuster-proof in the Senate until Scott Brown came along. Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have done yeoman’s work for the left, but neither the President nor Harry Reid seems willing to fight very hard to keep Democrats in line. Republicans should be all but irrelevant at the moment given their numbers, but Reid won’t “go nuclear” and Obama insists on a rousing chorus of Kum Ba Yah:(
Obama could have easily fought for a public option, but actually worked against it. The Democratic Party in DC will do almost anything he says. Honestly, Deval Patrick could only dream of having as much power in Massachusetts as Obama does in DC. At least Deval pushes left; Obama undermines it.
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p>Clearly, this is not true. We had Senators such as Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Max Baucus threatening to torpedo much of Obama’s agenda unless they got the concessions they wanted. Many Blue Dog Democratic members of the House have voted against all or most of Obama’s agenda.
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p>You mention in your post that Blue Dog/Corporatist Democrats are a big problem in the party right now. But then you suggest that “the Democratic Party” (as if it’s just one entity) will do almost anything he says. There’s a pretty clear contradiction in both those statements.
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p>The fact that Obama has to deal not only with the Republican Party but conservative Blue Dogs in his own party is a critically important difference between him and Deval.
Many of the concessions they wanted were things Obama was not willing to fight for and/or not wanting himself.
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p>Obama got pretty much what he wanted in the health care bill, and others.
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p>If Obama leaned hard on the Lincolns etc, trust me, things would have been VERY different. He sat back and let them undermine the most important piece of legislation since the New Deal, to the point where it is, basically, a giveaway to the HMOs and a ticking timebomb of cost increases.
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p>It will bankrupt us, and they are dusting off their hands and patting themselves on the backs.
They didn’t torpedo his legislation, they did he and Rahm Emmanuel’s bidding.
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p>You think Blanche Lincoln gets the President’s fiercest support by “torpedoing” his real agenda? Nah, she did him huge favors. Obama… and Rahm… and the Blue Dogs, of which they are charter members, HATED the Public Option, and hated the other progressive things that people like Nancy Pelosi have legitimately been trying to stand up for. If Obama really wanted these progressive mantles, like the public option, he would have actually fought for them. The only times he played tough were with the progressive caucus.
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p>You’re being played for a fool.
Is there that if only Obama “fought harder” the Blue Dogs would have come around? Blue Dogs, especially from conservative states, are going to act in their own interests, not Obama’s.
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p>If they were such push-overs that it only takes better progressive leadership to push them over the edge, then the corporatist Blue Dogs are nowehere near as problematic as you suggest in your post. That’s not the case, however: they are the main reason why it’s difficult to push through a progressive agenda in Congress, not Obama.
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p>FDR, JFK, Truman, and Johnson were all frequently lambasted by progressives in their day for not pushing harder for progressive reform. It’s hard to argue, however, that they weren’t successful domestically — or that they were weak leaders and/or conservative Democrats. The problem they faced were conservative members in their own party (and they didn’t even have the same problems with united Republican obstructionism that Obama now faces). With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect it will be the same story with Obama.
The Blue Dogs haven’t had to prove whether or not they’re push-overs, because the President has never challenged them… on pretty much anything. This is especially the case in the Senate. The President’s actually put progressives feet to the fire… we never saw the President do that with Blue Dogs. Why wasn’t he holding town halls on these big bills at states with these conservative senators? He did that with progressives. His pick of Rahm Emmanuel should have cemented the fact that he’s a Blue Dog in everyone’s head — if Liebama’s not outright supporting the Blue Dogs, then he’s letting them undermine the entire progressive agenda without any retribution whatsoever.
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p>The progressives, on the other hand, have largely gotten behind the President, even if they’ve had to be dragged along at various points. They’ve tried to make blue-dog legislation better and as best as possible, but only at the periphery. The President’s full weight could easily get the Blue Dogs in line, just as it has the progressives up until this point. If you can’t and don’t understand that, you don’t understand DC.
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p>How?
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p>That an okay start?
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p>Let’s not forget that the DNC spent $500,000 on ads for Ben Nelson — years before his next election — after Nelson’s ratings plummeted because of his actions on health care. The ads, of course, applauded Nelson’s anti-Democratic-Party actions… trying to help him out as he undermined health care reform. That is not the actions of a President trying to hold a Senator’s feet to the fire. That’s the sign of a President who was trying to undermine the progressive elements of health care reform.
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p>Let’s also not forget that Obama wielded some of the tools I mentioned above against progressive Democrats trying to stand up to Obama’s obfuscation and undermining. Case in point: Obama getting Kucinich in line by planning a health care event in his district, then getting him on Air Force One. Obama knows how to play hard ball — he just doesn’t play it with Blue Dogs. There’s a reason for that. They’re his peeps.
like:
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p>more charter schools regardless of their merit (referring to the Gloucester charter mistakes)
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p>integrating the mentally handicapped into “the community” and closing state-run facilities that had improved over time (discussed at length at BMG)
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p>slot machines that are designed to addict their users, and which generate most of their revenue from addicted people
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p>I would like to like Deval as much as I did when I volunteered for his campaign in 2006. I like that he got rid of the Mass Turnpike authority. I like that he is making moves to restrict health insurance cost increases, but where is the imagination regarding how costs can be decreased?
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p>I would be happy to learn that I have been uninformed or there are good reasons for the first three policies I listed.
Electing people to Congress has to be about policies, not about personalities or vague thoughts.
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p>Lynch does not deliver the goods. It’s as simple as that.
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p>Lynch voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.
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p>And Lynch voted against the Health Care Bill, which prohibits pre-existing condition exclusions.
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p>Lynch was elected to Congress because he supported the right of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade to exclude some gay group.
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p>The courts backed the parade organizers. That’s all fine and well, but it’s no way to pick a congressman who’s going to be voting on big national issues.
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p>They want to whittle down of Social Security? That’s a real winner. Maybe then, people will wake up to what rat bastards these politicians are.
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p>All this going on and on about the deficit is so ridiculous. When it comes to funding wars and jails, we never hear about the deficit. But, when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, oh we must pinch every penny.
If gasbags would shut up about the deficits and SPEND MORE FEDERAL $$$$, there would be much less unemployment, and the economy would be better.
But the corporations don’t want that. They want to use the high unemployment rate to keep wages down. And that’s just what’s happening.
The last part of the diary talks about supporting D’Allessandro, partly to keep the President honest on the left.
I wonder who “we” is. I got the change I voted for. Had you gotten the change you voted for, I would be voting for a non Democrat in 2012.
that you were waiting for!
because that’s what this is all about.
I am unable to take seriously anything that uses the word “corporatist” as a pejorative.
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p>I would be just fine if the Crazy Wing of the Democrats choose to amputate the moderates in the name of Party Purity, as the Crazy Wing of the Republicans seem to be doing presently. That might leave an un-aligned group of the sensible to somehow govern, if the stars align, leaving the crazies on the fringes where they belong.
as opposed to a capitalist society? Because as it stands now, our government negotiates with large corporations, from the health care industry to the banking industry and big oil, in order to create an environment that is supportive of their interests and their success. You can ignore this fact if you want, or even support it. But in the end, it’s going to create a horrible society to live in. We are already well on our way to being such a place. No-one’s trying to “amputate the moderates”. We’re trying to amputate the corporations out of a government that is suppose to serve the people.
and, like that term, simply means “policies with which I disagree” all packaged up to sound like a vast monolithic conspiracy against my preferred policy choices.
for policies that help the top management and boards of corporations while ignoring the devastating effects those policies have on everyone else?
I would probably call some of them good, and some of them bad, depending on what the policies are.
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p>I am certainly opposed to policies that are evil, evil, pure evil, and support policies that are wonderful and good.
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p>Referring to everything so broadly isn’t much more useful than calling all of your policy preferences, no matter what they are, “socialist.” It is an empty pejorative.
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p>In other words, the term, like “socialist” really offers no information other than to be a marker of the speaker’s political persuasion, that the speaker likes his or her own team, and doesn’t like the other team.
Not every Dem who is critical of corporations and the favors they extract from government thinks the solution is to destroy them. Many of us simply want to see them subject to stronger, better regulation.
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p>I compare an under-regulated capitalist system to a sports event that lacks a referee and rules. Such a system encourages and almost guarantees that much of the play will be underhanded and unethical. You can’t count on the corporations to police each other or for “the market” to always work. Under-regulation and lax enforcement gave us the Massey coal mine tragedy, the BP gulf oil disaster, the bank meltdowns, and the mortgage foreclosure crisis.
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p>When I refer to a “corporatist” government policy, it is one that unfairly favors a corporation over the legitimate interests of employees, customers, and/or the general public. I cannot speak for others who use this term.
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p>I am not saying that every law or policy that benefits a corporation is bad. Of course it should be illegal for an employee to steal or embezzle from an employer. Frivolous customer lawsuits should be thrown out. Once environmental regulations are sufficient to protect the public, there is no need to make them punitive.
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p>That said, I think that corporations in our country currently have too much power and that government should act to correct this imbalance. I am hard put to find circumstances here in which corporations have too little power.
floating in the gulf stream, collapsing coal mines, corporatist policies bankrupting this country to save evil, vile people, while not even sticking out a finger’s worth of help for the middle and working class with the health care bill’s most important piece of reform that never happened, the public option.
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p>This guy may have slowed the rate of the disasters, though with the worst environmental travesty this country — and perhaps world — has ever seen over the course of human memory… it’s tough to say that. And we can’t pretend this is George W. Bush’s fault. Obama had a year + to reform the MMS and did NOTHING. N O T H I N G. Since Deepwater Horizon, 200 new deep water oil rigs have been approved… some at even deeper depths. This, after the President’s “moratorium.” So, in Bush’s — I mean Obama’s mindset — “moratorium” means “whee!!!!! let’s build more!!!!”
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p>I know I’m sounding a little crazy right now. The President, however, is the one who is driving me mad. He and his corporatist hack policies that are literally destroying thousands of American lives, as we know it. He promised change… and even though I was always skeptical, I never — in a million years — imagined he’d be this bad. This shit is Epic Fail. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
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p>I will stand up for ANY progressive that stands against Obama in 2012 in a primary challenge.
has there been a President who has fit your model of: (1) providing strong progressive leadership; (2) being a strong fighter against “corporatist” policies; and (3) wasn’t a “hack” (whatever that means)?
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p>I’d be curious about your answer.
FDR is the best, but not alone. You could make cases for LBJ, JFK, Carter, etc. We’ve actually had a number of good-meaning, if not perfect, Presidents that clearly cared about people and not just corporations. There’s even been one or two Republicans 🙂
That’s interesting, because, of course, the corporatist label could be better applied to FDR’s first term than any president in history (see the National Recovery Act).
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p>All of the Presidents you mentioned, especially FDR, were savaged by his “allies” on the left for not being more progressive on the economy and being too cozy with business. (That’s not even to get into the frequent criticism, even from his wife, that he wasn’t doing enough on civil rights.)
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p>The point is pretty straightforward: no president can ever be progressive enough for some on the left. No matter what happens, and how effective s/he is, it’s impossible to please everyone at the time. That’s fine, and it’s true that no President is without flaws, but let’s not pretend that just because Obama hasn’t magically enacted all of liberals’ goals that he is therefore a corporatist, regressive hack.
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p>Just like progressives now look back through rose-colored glasses at presidents past (the same presidents that received constant flack from their left while in office), Obama’s presidency so far will, in hindsight, be seen as both a mix of excellent steps forward for progressives as well as some missed opportunities. That’s par for the course, but you make it seem like his performance is all the latter and none of the former.
FDR was not a “corporatist” and Obama is no FDR. Now you’re freaking trolling at this point.
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p>I could deal with disappointment, Hoya. As I’ve said: I never expected much. But this goes way, way beyond what any of our past, Democratic presidents have done. Stop being so freaking blind. Maybe the last vestiges of supporters on the netroots will wake up once Obama guts Social Security. I hope it never comes to that point, but so long as so many are so blind, it’s seeming inevitable.
FDR was also my favorite president, and given what he dealt with I think he was also the greatest. So I have zero interest in trashing his great legacy. Still, it’s hardly revisionist history to suggest that the “First New Deal” (including NIRA) was a policy failure, and that many socialist-leaning Americans (before the term “socialist” became derogatory) thought it was doing nothing but propping up corporate monopolies.
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p>But one of the reasons he was the greatest is that he was not only willing to use power effectively, but also willing to compromise to get things done. FDR had much more political capital than Obama ever did (not to mention a much smaller minority party), but he too did not deliver everything progressives wanted at the time.
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p>Anyway, my point is simply this: progressive presidents have always been charged with disappointing many of their ideological supporters, no matter how “great” we see them in hindsight. Why? Because it’s a heck of a lot harder to actually govern than it is to stand on a soapbox and complain about someone else’s governance (something left-wind third parties make careers out of).
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p>Given the political dynamics of what he’s facing, I think Obama is doing a fine job governing. A perfect job? Certainly not. But also nowhere close to the miserable “corporatist” failure that you accuse him of.
We’ve moved so far to the right post-New-Deal that “compromise” doesn’t mean what it used to anymore, and we don’t have an alternative party willing to engage in compromises to begin with. I’m well aware that there were a lot of liberals in FDR’s time that didn’t think he did enough with the New Deal, but let’s get real. If Obama’s “stimulus” was half as ambitious as the New Deal, we’d have grown a lot more jobs. Instead, it was not only watered down in terms of hundreds of millions, but nearly half the stimulus was given toward tax cuts — which do almost nothing to stimulate the economy — as a means to get Republican votes.
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p>Guess what? We got almost no Republican votes (and not a single one in the House) — so what was that ‘compromise’ for? I’d submit to you that it was what the Blue Dogs, including Obama, wanted. They didn’t have the interest in doing a real jobs bill, which would have been up to the challenge. Hell, I bet they’d be scared it would have worked — don’t want to show the people that government and the public sector can be a part of the solution.
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p>Well, we have Deepwater Horizon, fueled by the MMS Obama refused to change, even though they knew how broken it was – and how it did anything it could to help out the oil industry. Do you really think Obama’s done all that he can to hold corporations accountable to minimum safety standards, even in areas where the government can directly intervene? Hell, his “moratorium” was a moratorium in name only — as I’ve said elsewhere, under the President’s “moratorium,” we’ve seen literally more than a hundred new oil rigs OK’d by the MMS.
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p>No one went after the corporate excess — the giant bonuses going out on the government dime, in a year when these companies were losing billions… even in the now Government-owned AIG. Do you really think the President fought as hard as he could against that kind of corporate excess? Seriously?
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p>Or how about the ‘credit’ bill? Do you really think the Obama administration did as much as he could to ensure that credit card companies couldn’t unilaterally change the terms of conditions, or force upon people such absurdly high fees and interest rates that they’d have no hopes of recovery?
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p>And, finally, health care: He not only let the bill be passed without the public option, his very actions undermined it. I don’t think the President is a dumb man; I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
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p>At what point will you concede? When he throws Social Security under the bus? It’s coming.
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p>And Ryan, I do share your anger and frustration, with the POTUS’ failure to live up to my expectations too. He is not a member of our tribe.
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p>As a lobbyist for low income people, I got used to working with powerful elected and appointed office holders and who are willing and able to deliver on one or two of my policy priorities, and who told me they were not willing to support the rest of my progressive/liberal agenda. Of course I always asked them to not work actively to kill those items and sometimes they kept silent until they voted no.
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p>I have been criticized on this site for saying a public thank you to those folks and not publicly joining a campaign to replace her/him with a more progressive candidate.
Here is a quickly googled list
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p>I don’t think that it is unfair to say that many on the left saw the New Deal as treating symptoms, not the disease, which they then viewed as capitalism (corportism?) itself.
That back then, we had real Communists, and real Fascists … and not for no reason. Times were damned crazy and dire — crazier than now.
Deficit reduction isn’t an important national security item?
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p>Sorry, I just can’t take Gaius Publius seriously. After lumping Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama together in one fell swoop, he/she sounds like just another hard-core lefty tilting at windmills.
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p>Which is unfortunate, because I’m more confused having read that bit than I was before.
(though its importance is certainly overstated by most politicians and the media) it’s that these calls for austerity ONLY come when we’re talking about social costs. I’m all for reducing the deficit — let’s enact Alan Greyson’s proposal to end supplemental wartime spending and make the US military operate under the hundreds of billions they’re given a year in their regular budget.
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p>BTW: Routinely, it’s the progressives that are pushing to get out of the red… in ways that won’t destroy the economy. The conservadems and corporatist-hack dems don’t want to gut Social Security to cut spending, they just want to gut Social Security and spend that money elsewhere, or privatize it to make the money be spent on Wall Street.