In light of the shutdown that wasn’t, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) posed an excellent question on Twitter:
Our fights can’t be just to stop their horrible ideas. Don’t we need to have our own agenda?
That, in less than 140 characters, seems to me to capture much of what’s been wrong with the budget debate so far. I have no idea what President Obama and the Senate Democrats actually want to do, other than prevent the House Republicans from doing what they want to do. That strikes me as a poor negotiating posture, as it will inevitably result in the House getting at least part of what it wants, while the good guys get bupkes – which, in fact, seems to be exactly what happened last night.
Someone needs to be leading up there. Who’s the Senator in charge of the budget? Why isn’t he (I assume it’s a “he,” since most of them are) blanketing the airwaves the way Paul “Fraud” Ryan is? And why isn’t Obama’s budget guru doing the same, outlining a vision for what is possible in these difficult times?
Come on, folks. The best defense is a good offense, as the saying goes.
We are constantly outmaneuvered by the Republicans because we are constantly on the defensive. We got played like a fiddle in this whole faux budget crisis. All the Repubs needed to do was roll out the abortion & repro rights stuff while increasing the cuts elsewhere. Then, when they were satisfied, they pulled the Title X stuff off the table. We, on the other hand, look like we “negotiated,” that we “held firm” for women all the while the Republicans are laughing themselves silly.
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p>The current crop of Democrats is naive and spineless. Would that we could clone Anthony Wiener we might actually have something.
There are innumerable Democrats, yourself included, who saw this ploy for what it was, exactly as you described. Unfortunately, we are powerless to put our understanding into practice, or sway those in power. Republicans operate with the knowledge that in the final analysis, Democrats will “Do what’s right for the country”, and accept the threat in order to avoid the shutdown, or Constitutional crisis as Gore did when he dropped his challenge against Bush.
They want to cut $X B in spending? Fine. We want $X B in revenue enhancement. What am I talking about? Eliminating tax breaks. Every buck that they want in cutting a program, we want a second buck in the form of a simpler, cleaner tax code that lessens the chance that GE or Daddy Warbucks pay $0 in taxes.
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p>We’ll win that battle in the media. They can cry tax increase all day long, but we just look in the cameras and state that to balance a budget, all hands are on deck — and that the JP Morgan CEO can afford to pay a little more in taxes given that he got a 51% raise this year.
Stop the wars and save money. Am I the only one that heard the promise of defense savings when the Soviet Union collapsed? Anyone hear that a
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p>Easier to stop wars than start to tax the wealthy? Problem: the popular media is owned be the death merchants and the other wealthy folks.
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p>“Making peace is harder than making war. –Adlai E. Stevenson
At one point, in early 2009 we did. Employee free choice, close Gitmo, make millionaires pay their fair tax share, draw down in Iraq, real health care reform, etc.
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p>Then we gave up on it. Well, more precisely, a large minority of Senate Democrats, a small minority of the House Democrats, and the president gave up on it. I’m still not sure why, but I suspect largely for the same reasons the Republicans don’t want it. It was an agenda that didn’t resonate with upper class Americans of either party, so was seen as superfluous.
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p>Smelling weakness, the Republicans demanded more. Recognizing weakness, many Americans wondered what the point of voting Democrats was. So now the agenda is half of whatever the Republicans want. AS they want more, our agenda moves rightward.
Obama was glad to see the petty bickering over historical budget cuts end, so that it did not interfere with the Longmont mothers plan to visit the monuments while on vaca in DC.
Where is the fire to protect the middle class, the poor, or the disabled?
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p>Where is the long range planning in my Democratic Party?
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p>Who is fighting to save the New Deal, protect the planet, and defend me, and my children – the coming generation against the Oligarchs, Banksters, and Plutocrats?
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p>At least two inquiring minds want to know – AmberPaw and Sabutai.
“I tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy.” Just about what we do for the Republican agenda. The Oligarchs, Banksters, and Plutocrats rule us as a despotic father of children with the support of the GOP and acquiescence of Democratic party leadership.
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p>I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more pathetic sight than Rep. Frank holding a piece of paper and telling people it was “financial reform”. Was he imitating Neville Chamberlain? Was this the inspiring leadership of the Democratic Party? The best we can offer? When we’re in moral bankruptcy does anything count as “leadership”? Any fire in the bellies of Democrats? Is it only the big payback that counts?
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p>The only Democratic leader on the national level that I’ve seen provide any standard of consistent leadership over the years is Dennis Kucinich. Not afraid to address issues, he’s been for economic reform, against sending more Americans to die in illegal and endless war, against torture (Human rights – something Democrats once supported), and for openness.
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p>Mostly we’re the party of, “Me, too! but not as much.”.
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p>“The worst bankruptcy in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm.” –H W Arnold
was huge. It set the stage for all this. Of course, now the GOP has a majority of the house, so playing a lot of defense is sort of unavoidable, IMO.
Truthfully what does the Democratic Party stand for besides extending the life of certain social programs? Look at the Planned Parenthood flap — it was less about abortion and more about keeping the chuck wagon going for Planned Parenthood.
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p>What do you want all this money from the revenue for? What kind of society are you after here, besides one a bit gayer? Democrats are great at rattling off a five-point plan on the war, global warming, gays, health care, and plug-in-your-cause-here.
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p>But anyone who saw the Democratic Party from the New Deal to the Kennedy years would recognize the difference. That was a vision for a prosperous middle class. What their cars, houses, kids, schools looked like. How you got there was the question we had elections about. I don’t see the Democrats seeking that status for anyone besides their interest groups.
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p>The Democratic vision for the middle class is tax “the rich” to support a middle class lifestyle for government offices, and companies or entities that would have no existence without government support.
Just because it is from Seascraper, don’t ignore it. It contains the basic elements of the problem Democrats have in communicating just what we do stand for, and in that vacuum, what Seascraper has written is what has taken hold for a lot of people.
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p>For me, there are two issues that take a huge priority over everything else and should be the basis of the Democratic message:
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p>The big disappointment over the last 2+ years is that we’ve neither articulated a narrative that these are important things that Democrats can and will fight for, and that we’ve actually slid backwards on both fronts.
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p>Unfortunately, Obama’s big speech this week will reinforce instead a conservative frame, deficit reduction.
You’re doing it again.
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p>Again, why do I care. Will I get some of that money if you take it away from the 1%? Based on past experience and everything the Democrats say, they will take that money and give it to their friends. But I don’t want to make money off the government. I don’t want to be a friend of the Democrats or the Republicans in order to make my living.
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p>I know where I want to go. All I need is $70-100K/year.
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p>Explain how you will make my life better, not who my enemy is.
Taxing the rich is a means, rather than an end. If we didn’t constantly cut for the rich we’d have money to invest in your children’s education, your public safety services, the roads you drive on, etc. etc. Their hoarding it does nothing to stimulate the economy, create jobs, or advance the common-wealth.
I feel like the Republicans want to push us all off a big cliff and the Dems only want us to go halfway down…the cliff.
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p>How does that work?
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p>It’s pretty scary sitting here thinking that there doesn’t seem to be anyone really pushing back in our defense, in the country’s defense.
to wipe us all out. Makes the engineered financial collapse of 2008 pale by comparison.
Unfortunately, the president, for reasons that elude me, has dropped much of the agenda of “change” that he campaigned on. Key examples include continuation of the Bush-Paulson approach to Wall Street and the economic crisis, abandonment of the public health care option, and changing a small strike force to provide continuing local security into an open-ended 50,000 person US army stationed in Iraq. I assume this is because planning for re-election in 2012 began as soon as he was elected in 2008, but no doubt there is more to it than that. Democratic leaders in Congress certainly haven’t stepped up in Obama’s place, so here we are.
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p>Perhaps this shows the limitations of a two-party system, and the effect of a Republican Party that has shifted to the right: in order to beat them, all a Democrat has to do is stay just a bit to the left of where the Republicans are. Moving any more than that to the left — no matter how good for the country — is relatively politically risky.
Obama was swept to victory on a progressive platform.
Though I wish it were true. He was swept to victory on an anti-Republican wave and being the most palatable alternative to a tired old fart and the moron soccer mom he picked for a VEEP. Remember when McCain-Obama was a dead heat after the DNC and before the RNC, even though ‘generic D’ lead by five points? Two words put Obama over the top to get the White House: President Palin. The day Powell endorsed Obama was the day he won that election and independents. When they realized he was still a liberal on most issues they fled back to the GOP which suddenly “returned to its roots” even though many of the same crazies run it, or have been replaced by even crazier people. I really, really, really wish the President would move to the left and I am sure he wishes he could too, its just not possible in this environment and he is doing the best he can.
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p>Where I do disagree though is on GITMO, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, restoring civil liberties, the public option, and GLBT rights, solid majorities of Americans, including most independents, support these policies. The problem is even before the GOP takeover a minority of Congressman supported those policies (since House districts as a whole are far more conservative since they are far less representative of the country, we have gained 50 million people since 1963 without gaining a single representative but thats a digression). And unfortunately one thing I admire about Obama vs his predecessor is that he truly does respect the separation of powers and differs significantly to Congress, but the downside is that this allows them to drive policy and is interpreted by Americans as unusual since the norm has been imperial Presidents of one stripe or another. The last two Presidents to differ this much was Bush I and Carter, one a “wimp” and the other “dragging us through malaise”. Obama better start reminding the Republicans who won the Presidency and use the bully pulpit and work outside Congress more. He should also micromanage the party leadership better, its long been time to dump Reid and Schumer or Durbin would be much tougher leaders, and Durbin is a solid Obama loyalist. Similarly Pelosi and Hoyer need to go on the House side. Dumping Tim and replacing him with Debbie was a great place to start. Majority Leader Schumer/Durbin and Minority Leader Weiner sounds like music to my hears.
I have a different view from both you and jconway.
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p>In my view candidate Barack Obama was swept to victory by the nearly catastrophic collapse of the financial system. Even the most conservative voters, and the media that pandered to them, had to confront the reality that eight years of Republican economic policy had destroyed the economy.
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p>Candidate Barack Obama had already done a masterful job of positioning himself as calm, poised, smart, sensitive — in stark contrast to his opposition, and even starker contrast to the outgoing administration.
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p>Thus, when the economic maelstrom broke upon the shores of the electorate, Barak Obama was swept to victory on a flood of horrific economic news and accompanied by the flotsam and jetsam of Republican party that couldn’t believe it had so badly screwed up the nation and that was caught by such complete surprise that it hadn’t yet invented or bought any pro-Corporatist spin.
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p>In my view, President Obama was elected in spite of, rather than because of, the progressive aspects of his platform.
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p>I also think he, and we Democrats, bungled a historic opportunity to demonstrate that Democrats are good for the economy and that Republicans are fiscally irresponsible. In my view, the political story during 2009 and 2010 should have been about the heroic Democrats wading through the rubble of the economic disaster wrought by Republicans, rescuing survivors and laying the foundations for a twenty-first century economy among the rusting wreckage. In that context, any candidate for any public office who promoted the failed policies that led to the collapse would have been met with ridicule and contempt.
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p>That’s not what we did.
Might be the best encapsulation of the Obama administration and its discontents I have seen yet on this blog! I think the biggest problem has been a tendency to play safe and not rock the boat, which was so ingrained in the administration that they forgot to take credit for keeping the boat afloat, not an easy achievement I might add. Instead of making proactive economic arguments in favor of Democratic proposals we have allowed the Republicans to dominate the debate. I defend some of the deals Obama has had to make and have usually stood by him against unfair progressive criticism, but the fairest charge leveled against him is that he squandered a historic opportunity to re-frame the old debate and undo the post-Reagan center-right consensus and really frame the argument on economic grounds. If we are still talking the deficit it means we aren’t talking about jobs, and every day that goes by we don’t talk about jobs is another day the Republicans gain voters and traction.
I appreciate your kind words.
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p>It seems to me that, having said all this, we have to face the question of what we do now.
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p>Fortunately, for us, the other side is still promoting the same failed economic rhetoric. I think we have to pivot and nail them on it.
Nowhere is this more imperative than in our local Senate race.
…needs to repeat often and publicly the passionate anti-Brown speech he gave at a breakfast in Newburyport over the weekend. He had more passion in his voice than any of the Senate candidates that spoke.
Maybe John Walsh needs to be more visible since he’s one of the few people who seems to be able to articulate a vision of where he (and we) want to go. The only places I’ve seen him speak are events like Christopher mentions. It’s great for pumping up the troops, but the rest of the public needs to hear what he has to say also.
He’s at least more fired up than the current crop
but Obama promised CHANGE from the Bush policies. McCain attempted to pick up the CHANGE slogan and promised a milder change. Voters picked the liberal.
VP pick has slightly more importance than the candidates SuperBowl pick. Besides Dems were the only ones horrified by Palin. http://www.rasmussenreports.co…
Conservatives have a favorable impression of her by a 79-8 margin, but this falls to 43-35 among moderates and 26-46 among liberals. – Still overall favorable
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p>Obama does not require Congressional support to close GITMO and withdraw from Afganistan and rebuffed the Courts decision to end Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.
The health care bill he was willing to fight for was less popular than the public option.
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p>Obama requested an additional 3 year extention of the PATRIOT Act, without a single request for any reforms. It failed on the 1st vote and he added pressure for them to take it up again.
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p>If Obama fought as hard for progressive issues as the Republicans do for theirs and failed then you would have some hard facts to base your assertions on.
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p>If you are correct – then why should we care who is in the White House?
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p>PS Screaming liberals like Roosevelt get re-elected (a lot), because they act in the interest of the middleclass and are effective. Voters see the difference in their their lot improving and are grateful. Hopeful.
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p>I tend to go for a simpler explanation — he didn’t mean it. There were too many issues where he signalled his willingness to extend the Bush policies, but because they were not top-line issues, it was ignored.
“I assume this is because planning for re-election in 2012 began as soon as he was elected in 2008…”
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p>If this were the case why we would change the platform and themes on which he successfully ran in 2008? If people voted for change, doesn’t it stand to reason that they would want to keep that going through the next presidential election?
that he now has a four-year record that, in important respects, doesn’t match up to what he ran on. So the strategy has to be significantly different this time around.
It sounded to me like Bob was suggesting the strategy pivoted as soon as he won the first election. What I’m asking is instead of pivoting why didn’t the President push harder for change right out the gate and at every mark since then, so that once 2012 rolled around, he COULD run on a similar strategy.
to take a stand on upper income taxes. Outgoing democrats failed to enact a budget. Game over. Reset?
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p>The Ryan plan leaves deficits pretty close to where they will otherwise be, while significantly cutting Medicare benefits and issuing more tax cuts ONLY for the rich. Even the Wall Street Journal editor has suggested everyone knows taxes are going to have to be raised some (while also gutting Social Security and Medicare, wink, nod).
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p>Story of the past two years – US financial interventions managed to avert a leveraged debt default spiral but in doing so, turned the failed, insolvent banking institutions involved into even bigger banks with even more concentration of power. Quantitative easing has been a further gambit on behalf of those with leveraged debt, with the costs borne by those who use their paychecks to pay for gasoline and food for their families – IE, biggest hit in the developing world, but also a defacto pay cut for everyone at or below the median income in the US. Bigger pay cut the further down the income scale you are, because when you’re in the bottom 30% or so, nearly all your income goes to food, energy, health care , and shelter.
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p>Now, I’m by no means a fan of redistribution as a primary means to a distribution of outcomes similar to what the US saw from the 1940s through the 1970s – a rising tide lifting all boats. But when a ‘progressive’ technocratic intervention puts $Trillions into saving leveraged financial institutions and that reinforces a trend of separating the haves from the have-nots, it is time to ask why our only means of intervention have been pumping money for the past 30 years to a narrower and narrower plutocracy, while leaving even median income people struggling simply not to lose ground. All the plutocracy does with the money is assert they need more and more of a tilt to the playing field, or else they’ll just run off to another continent with the money.
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p>From the perspective of this little budget skirmish, I think the Democrats should have look at the deficits and known that, though the time was right two years ago to open the fiscal spigots, something had to be done to constrain a yawning gap between revenues and spending. And the biggest part of that yawn has been that tax revenues are below 50 year lows as a percent of GDP, spending is also near 50 year highs but is only marginally above say the Reagan numbers. But revenues are off the cliff, and it was time last fall to put upper income tax rates where they were under Bill Clinton, and probably also to take some steps to contain some spending for this year’s budget to preempt those with a higher proclivity for doing so with the support of a large part of the population.
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p>I’m not with the fiscal spigot to the max types like Krugman – I think they should have been declaring victory and saying it was time to move slowly towards a more balanced and private sector focused recovery. That led by bold leadership to put some of the enormous corporate stash of cash to work within our shores. Krugman thinks Japan stagnated because they didn’t do enough stimulus spending, while I think it was because of a combination of demographics and a real estate bomb that makes ours look like a cup of slightly too hot tea.
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p>SO what can the democrats do? Hilight that in the GOP plan, only seniors who can afford to pay more than Medicare does get health care, while the Democrats choice is to do something to get more bang for the health care buck, as is done in most of the rest of the civilized world.
Apparently, David Plouffe is going to be on all the Sunday talk shows today, taking what appears to be a more aggressive tactic on the budget. He says the President will be making a major deficit related address this week, including comments about raising taxes on the rich. We’ll see.
When does Obama graduate from saying to doing? Even John Kerry is appearing more a man-of-action than the President. Kerry, for cripes sake!
But words do mean something. The Tea Party is winning the war of words. The GOP put out the Ryan plan. I’d like to see an Obama plan.
That didn’t work so well in Afghanistan where a number of speeches seem to have established a permanent unplan.
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p>Obama doesn’t strive for the ideological center so much as for defensive improvisation; he aims for the muddle not the middle.
On other policies I think he has aimed for the pragmatic center or the pragmatic progressive policy option.
Like the recession?
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p>Like financial regulation?
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p>Like Gitmo?
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p>Like premature deficit reduction?
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p>Like healthcare reform?
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p>Frankly, they’re all muddles. Even health care reform was sold as a mildly better muddle than our current predicament.
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p>I’m not sure about the sharp distinction between saying and doing here. One of the key things Obama can do is signal his positions in a national address to give Congress an indication of what is acceptable and unacceptable for him to sign.
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p>I’d agree that he hasn’t been doing this nearly as much as he should be, and must do more. But I’m not sure what you mean by Obama should be “doing” more rather than saying more. What is he supposed to “do” — take over Congress and force them to enact legislation?
It’s frustrating to feel like the terms of the debate are being set by Ryan, Boehner, and the Tea Party. I’d at least like to see Obama say something about what he stands for, what he’ll fight for.
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p>I got a little excited to hear him say at the SOTU that he was going after oil subsidies. Since then? Nothing. In terms of ‘doing’, I’d like to at least hear ideas like that staying in the conversation. It’s not going to ever get done if it’s not a part of the public debate.
“I will veto health reform unless it includes a public option, then blame the GOP for lack of reform.”
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p>”I will veto a stimulus package that’s not big enough then blame the GOP for not creating jobs.”
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p>”I will veto financial regulation that doesn’t go far enough, then blame the GOP for catering to their Wall Street buddies.”
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p>etc. etc.
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p>I know this may sound harsh to some and runs the risk that we would make no progress at all. However, the GOP never hesitates to blame us regardless of actual fault. At very least he has to drive the conversation via the bully pulpit, and make the GOP squirm by popular opinion.
because if he keeps going at this rate, turnout of his base supporters is bound to suffer.
Not to give up hope, but I don’t see him taking any of these suggestions. Far from squirming, the GOP seems to have a lot of reasons to be pretty pleased with themselves.
Not a far out hope
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p>Your suggestions do not sound harsh at all; indeed, I think Obama needed (and needs) to take a stronger public position on a number of issues. But “the risk that we would make no progress at all” is very problematic in an all-or-nothing approach. I, for one, am glad we had some progress on these issues rather than nothing at all.
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p>The problem from Obama’s perspective is that he knows he’ll be blamed for a poor economy regardless of how much he “blames the GOP for not creating jobs.” The Republicans know this too, so aren’t particularly concerned about Democrats blaming them for not creating jobs.
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p>Rather than a hesitation to issue veto threats and try and blame Republicans for failed policy progress, I think the Obama’s biggest problem is that he hasn’t adequately outlined his own agenda. He’s done a good job focusing Congress on certain general problems — health care being the most prominent example — but he hasn’t given enough direction to Congress and members of his own party on the details.
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p>This criticism is, I think, what thinkingliberally is getting at when s/he mentioned frustration at the fact that “the terms of the debate are being set by Ryan, Boehner, and the Tea Party.” This is definitely one area where Obama can, and should, do more.
I have to admit, though, I wasn’t all that happy with Plouffe talking about avoiding partisan politics. Partisan politics means standing for something. Having values you believe in and can express. It can’t all be about finalizing a deal, having something you pass, bringing parties together. ‘The American people dont’ want…’ You know what they do want? Leadership they can respect. Stand for something. Standing for compromise is not ‘something.’
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p>I would like to see a speech later this week that does that.
I would be OK with, or at least more understanding of, compromise as the ultimate result if I didn’t see so much pre-concession from the White House.
Obama high-fiving tourists after giving up so much to the Republicans wasn’t something I easily understood either.
Though the Lincoln Memorial was an interesting setting for that. I don’t believe that venue could ever be truly closed, at least the statue platform. The museum in the basement could be locked and there would not be any rangers around to answer questions and give talks, but there would not really be any way to prevent tourists from climbing the stairs to the platform. Heck the bookstore is operated by a private non-profit, so technically that could still be open as well.
I am disgusted with the direction this country is taking. We are out-doing Bush at this point — pursuing policies that are probably to the right of Reagan.
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p>Now, as the Globe puts it, Obama wants to cut entitlement spending? In other words, Medicare and Social Security? Really? While rewarding large corporations (who send our jobs overseas) and the super-wealthy (who have no place to put their excess wealth, so they speculate on things like real estate and oil, and fund the construction of overseas factories which rob this country of jobs)?
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p>Where are the progressive leaders amid all this? Bernie Sanders can’t do it alone.