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The Obama administration’s new budget for fiscal year 2013 (begins October 2012) is apparently going to be so bad they have decided to start warning some liberals ahead of time. From The Hill:
Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal.
[...]
“A senior White House person said we weren’t going to be happy with the budget, but they’re doing the best they can” given the spending caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, said one source.
This just makes me shudder. When I think of just how unacceptably conservative some of the “accomplishments” the Obama administration believes liberals should be bragging about are, I can hardly imagine how terrible this budget must be if even the Obama team is warning that it is bad.
While the Obama campaign is going to try to pivot to talk about jobs, this bad budget is a direct result of Obama’s incredibly misguided pivot last year to spending cuts and deficit hysteria. That was a massive political and policy mistake,. We will continue to feel the negative repercussions from it whether or not Obama has an election year conversion to populism.
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He doesn’t care anymore about his base then Mitt cares about the GOP base. You’ll get the Corporatist of your choice this yr. No Change and No more talk of Hope.
It makes you shutter? No, the word is shudder ;)
The Multi-Millionaires in the White House are catapulting the Austerity. Everything is going as planned by the KochRoaches. As they say at TPV, we ultra lefties do not deserve this President.
We HAVE to primary this asshole.
It’s a matter of political self-preservation for progressives. If we don’t, we will be political dogshit.
He may have been thinking along the lines of ‘Katy, bar the door!’ ;o)
A budget designed to attract the Romney Republicans. To Hell with Democrats. “You’ll vote for me anyway, right? I’m the Lesser of Two Evils.”
Is it time for this site to talk Third Party loudly?
Obama/Democrat bumper sticker:
yes.
Just my perspective, but Bush just pretended to be a cowboy…Obama pretended to be a democrat.
Fake to the left, pivot, and jump to the right. Got that one down.
What do you think we are now?
Fun fact: when one pivots, one stays in the same place.
“We will continue to feel…negative effects…”
Thassit. Done deal. 8 ball in the side-pocket, for this preznint…
The question is, with his now re-pivoting into “progressive” mode, will the people who helped him double John McCain’s electoral vote, again get fired-up with Obama’s back-to-the-future bullshit?
I think not. Nothing has changed. The campaign strategy of:
“You have to vote for us; we suck less!”
was a catastrophic failure in the mid-terms. Why is it going to work in 2012, when people are looking at 3-plus years of Obama’s squandering of more political clout than any president since FDR has “accomplished”?
Kris: I think Obama has effectively consigned us to the dogshit role, but it’s not too late to stop playing it. All we have to do is find and put forth, a real progressive alternative. If we can do that, and SOON, then this poll-driven “centrist” just might get it through his noggin that Clinton-style triangulation is the path to political disaster and a place in the history books as the poster-boy for a failed president.
It’s about all we’ve got left, for political influence.
You get the president you have not the president you voted for. Or something like that.
Totally. It would only be a ‘mistake’ if he didn’t believe it.
The fact is, the tack to the right is less a placation to the right as it is a revelation, with the republicans’ obstinate opposition, and out right craven racism at hating a black trojan horse, they won’t look it in the mouth.
yes please!
i don’t think much of whole right wing Democratic party but
there is a anti Wall street antiwar, pro occupy, fraudclosure moratorium
candidate http://www.darcy2012.com/
interview http://tarpley.net/world-crisis-radio/ 1-14–12 show
Dump Obama 2012
Shutter works too…as in all the small business’ that will shutter their doors. Hope everyone likes Super Wal-Mart.
Put it this way: since Obama, with that real mandate for real change, chose to lay down like a cur dog for the people who had nearly ruined the country, it meant that they could get even crazier, and use the fall-out from Obama’s sustaining so much of the bushCo lunacy, to shriek that we need more of the same lunacy.
These mad-hatter “solutions”, now increasingly coming from both republicans AND democrats, have been Obama’s biggest “legacy”.
That he should be rewarded with another 4 years of it, is just more lunacy.
It’s like this: these policies of protecting the corporate status-quo have been proven failures. I think that If the republicans get in, they will continue at a somewhat accelerated pace, and the shit will hit the fan that much sooner than if we have Obama perpetuating his charades as he talks about changing predatory capitalism while he really sustains it.
We thought that things had gotten bad enough that americans were ready for real change. In that, I think we were right. That’s why democrats won big in 2008. The problem is, that the guy we won with turned out to be a political coward of the yellowest stripe. ( I do NOT believe he came into office planning willingly to be at high risk of becoming a one-term president, as part at of some rightwing conspiracy…) It looks like it’s going to take
more of a crisis to force an FDR-style correction.
Agree, Jill Stein for 2012? Or Darcy…
Not a political coward, Tanbark. See below:
“Book Description
Publication Date: June 2008
Barack Obama is a deeply troubled personality, the megalomaniac front man for a postmodern coup by the intelligence agencies, using fake polls, mobs of swarming adolescents, super-rich contributors, and orchestrated media hysteria to short-circuit normal politics and seize power.
Obama comes from the orbit of the Ford Foundation, and has never won public office in a contested election. His guru and controller is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the deranged revanchist and Russia-hater who dominated the catastrophic Carter presidency 30 years ago. All indications are that Brzezinski recruited Obama at Columbia University a quarter century ago. Trilateral Commission co-founder Brzezinski wants a global showdown with Russia and China far more dangerous for the United States than the Bush-Cheney Iraq adventure.
Obama’s economics are pure Skull & Bones/Chicago school austerity and sacrifice for American working families, all designed to bail out the bankrupt Wall Street elitist financiers who own Obama. Obama’s lemming legions and Kool-Aid cult candidacy hearken back to Italy in 1919-1922, and raise the question of postmodern fascism in the United States today.
Obama is a recipe for a world tragedy. No American voter can afford to ignore the lessons contained in this book.”–Webster Griffin Tarpley
i have zero expectations so there’s no more disappointment with this ‘people’s president’.
Notice there is no claim that the conservatives are going to be disappointed is there ?
Things haven’t changed nearly enough since I posted the following almost three years ago;
I lump Obama with all the other phonies, especially the ones in the clown-car.
Try as I might, I just can’t see how electing anybody else could possibly effect the speed at which we are about to fly off the cliff.
Drop the pretense, O, and just come out and say, “I’m the leader of the Oligarch Party. Suck it, peons.”
I’m late to this post, but have nothing but blame for the Obama team.
I will say again, that the people must write in a candidate and refuse to vote on the black boxes. There is no real representation, and there will be none until we make it happen.
I don’t care if Satan is running against him. I will not vote for Obama, period.
Sorry to be agin all that, but he’s a politician and has that ego. The idea that he won the presidency as a sacrificial lamb that would go down, for being a county-club republican (or worse) willingly, is nonsense, to me.
I mean, arguing about why he’s caved to the republicans so many times, and is poised to go into the political shithouse, is like arguing about whether bush and his minions were world-class idiots for invading Iraq, or if they PLANNED to create this giant, bloody, ongoing, clusterfuck. The point is, they did it, and they should have been held responsible for it, every day of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House. Instead, he sustained it for three years, and now, the fallout from that sustaining, is on his bartab, as it should be.
His cowardice was never more evident than when Breitbart and FoxNews got after Sherrod for her “racism”, and he practically shit his pants, he was in such a hurry to get rid of her to appease the rightwing fanatics.
That wasn’t part of a plan; it was the behavior of a president with the political courage (and perception) of an amoeba.
Barry is just the black lawn jokey for the more (sic) culturally liberal elements of the 1%. Or as they use to call them “house n-ggers.” Sorry if I offended anyone, but sadly the shoe fits…..
Put horns on him and give him a red cape and a pointy nose…….Romney could BE Satan.
But, frankly, I may be agreeing with you.
Yep, O’Failure and way too many of the Senate Dems are just Pretenda-Dems.
That’s why I no longer am a Dem.
That’s right. Fool me once shame on me…..No, fool me once shame on YOU. Fool me twice, shame on the fool…. No that’s not right.
..
We got screwed. I’ve got THAT saying down pat.
I don’t lknow about you Bob, but I feel a lot like Wile E. Coyote, most of the time.
How anyone can vote for this POS again is beyond me. I sure hope Occupy comes out strong in the spring. I know St. Louis is working really hard now. If you have any suggestion for Missouri i.e. 3rd. party let me know. I don’t see anything in 2012. But I agree with your statement 3rd. Party now. :)
And the sad thing is that they’re right. Many of the bots WILL vote for this poseur.
Just look at Kos, Rachel, Ed. Americablog, etc.
Ditto. No more ‘lesser of the evils’ for me.
Evil is evil. Period.
What book is that?
The book is, Obama The Post Modern Coup, by Webster Griffin Tarpley.
Here’s his site and it’s a good source for actually knowing what the hell is going on in the world.
http://tarpley.net/
Looks like a great site. I have reduced my political reading a bit because it gets my blood pressure boiling. Thanks for the link.
It’s past time. Rocky Anderson for President!
You’re welcome popeye99. Keep up the good work in St. Louis!
I know about the feeling of helplessness in the face of this Evil. No American should now ever have the nerve to ask “how could it have happened in Germany?” That would be the height of ignorant, hypocritical arrogance.
Are we being tested? I now have so much more love and respect for the American Revolutionaries.
Thank you! And thanks for the link to that site. It looks quite interesting.
Like popey99, I too have cut back on reading political sites, The rampant ‘bot’ism is more than I care to endure.
Damn straight we are being tested. These fascist MF are trying to see how far they can go, which IMHO they are have planned for this coup for a long time. If you have read Howard Zinn you know the only way to make change in this country is to stand up. It’s always been this way. Thanks for the compliment I wish I was healthier and could devote more time and energy to occupy. It’s frustrating.
They need to take their austerity budget and shove it!
What most posting here don’t seem to realize is that you are trapped. If you do what you say, then you are going to get the individuals in office who are the farthest from your point of view. That will marginalize your viewpoint and isolate you even more. It’s an old political tactic, and it works. Throughout history the only quick solution has been armed rebellion, and armed rebellions usually fail. OWS is being marginalized now, just as the anti-war people were marginalized in the late 60′s, in fact, in exactly the same way. The tactics of the 60′s got us Nixon, and in a more suttle way, Bush the Younger. Be as angry as you want, but your solutions aren’t solutions at all–you will lose, and lose big. In no way will you effect “change” towards Progressivism.
Are you fucking nuts??
If I hear the phrase “pivot to jobs” one more time……..
Thank you for the textbook example of trying to induce learned helplessness. Now go back to the National Review.
Sure, because the last time, the Ned Lemont thing worked out so well. Or, you can just vote for Romney if there is no difference between the two.
You are angry and lashing out because you know what I’ve written is true.
And to accomplish this they chose a skinny black guy from Chicago to lead their movement?????
Seems unlikely to me.
If I were gonna to lead a “coup” like that, I ‘d choose a guy like Romney. But that’s just me.
You are, in fact, offensive. I’m done here.
So your assessment hasn’t deepened in three years?
Republican politicians pretend ignorance IN ORDER TO MAKE THE KILL. Their Gruppegeist mirrors that of the NATSEc state. They are authoritarians and their followers want to be among authoritarians even if they lie to stay in power.
Democratic politicians, in the main, could not tell the truth even if they were for the little guy. Look what happened to Carter. The American public is so abusively propagandized that they have, to great extent, lost their souls.
The American Dream has ended. Now, what to do with all the fools who mistook it for reality in the first place?
Follow up:
About that site…..when I see Rense and LaRouche, I’m no longer interested.
But thanks anyway.
That’s why you aren’t making the choices, comrade.
YOU are the problem America must overcome to move forward. We heard what Obama promised during his 2008 campaign and we’ve seen what he’s done as President. It is incomprehensible that anyone who voted for him in 2008 because he/she believed he would make a sincere attempt to deliver on those promises would vote to reelect him in 2012.
Yet, here you are. This election is not about the Republicans.
‘dog; What we’ll get is the assholes who will, at the least, be honest about implementing more of the policies that have been ruining us, and that will accelerate the catharsis that we obviously need and didn’t get, with the election of Obama.
If he wins again, all we’ll get is that the corporatist agenda will be somewhat hidden, and a lot of people (like yourself) will be flacking the idea that playing defense, and losing defense, at that, is preferable to having the republicans in to take the responsibility for the shit that’s coming down, whether Obama’s in office, or Romney.
Those policies are failures, and anyone who supports them deserves to be turned out of office for doing it.
Lastly, there is the little matter that you ignored; As Truman said:
“The voters will prefer a real republican to a fake democrat, every time.”
He was right. If you doubt it then check the mid-term results.
Running on the “We suck less!” platform will get us reduced to the status of the 1860 Whigs.
Rather, the tactics of the 60′s revealed the ruthlessness of the imperium. Winning is for loosers.
There will always be *ssholes to battle.
“This election is not about the republicans.”
Hammer-nail-bang!!!
It’s going to be about Barack Obama and his failure to deliver, or even attempt to deliver, anything remotely resembling a salvage operation and real change after he was given the clearest mandate and best opportunity to do it, of any american president since FDR.
That his “reaching out” to the assholes has allowed them to shriek about even crazier “solutions” to our problems, is no reason to reward Obama for his feckless shit. This time, if we meekly roll over and fall in to support him again, we will be as spayed and neutered as is Obama, himself, and, just like Obama, we will have asked for it.
To quote the always on target Matt Taibbi:
Face reality. There is “to the right” and “farther to the right” and “complete fascist”. At the national level, there is no “left”. The only successful left has been Taft and FDR, and even they can be put into the iffy category because they would both argue that they were capitalist first and populist second (and Teddy Roosevelt, but his agenda was largely implemented by Taft). Oh, it was tried, with the miner’s strikes in West Va. and the People’s Worker’s Party and others that were all successfully marginalized. History repeats itself–study it carefully.
The Republicans get it. “All politics is local”. If you cannot win at the local level–school board, council, mayor–and actually have those people reflecting your views, you cannot win at the national level. It takes time to build from the bottom, but it is the only successful way to implement the policy you want. Unless a truly charismatic individual comes along–in which case you are just as likely to get a Hitler as a Roosevelt.
And for those here that think I’m a right-winger–my politics are to the left of Ghandi.
Both political parties have conspired to create elections that offer no choice.
1. Vote Democratic and get conservative policy;
2. Vote 3rd party, decreasing Democratic votes, helping to elect Republicans;
3. Don’t vote, decreasing voter turnout, helping to elect Republicans;
4. Vote Republican and get conservative policy.
The only effect liberals can have by voting is to vote Republican and throw the fake Democrats out of office.
If McCain/Palin had been elected in 2008, things would have gotten so bad that the 2010 midterm elections would have resulted in Democratic, veto-proof, majorities in both houses of congress.
If only 4% of liberals in Florida, Pennsylvania & Ohio were to switch there 2012 vote to Romney that would result in a 8% hole for Obama – a deficit he can not overcome and win – goodbye Obama. Hello president Romeny, more failed conservative policy, and the end of the conservativism in the 2014 election.
Liberals have to demonstrate that they will not vote for Democrats or Democrats will never do anything for liberals.
Truth be told.
And that is why I say “trapped”. If you do as you are advocating there will be even more suffering. For example, do you have any gay friends?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuyXTZuGPAs
So I guess you get my point then?
Yes, we knew then what we know now, and yet we’re sitting around talking as if it’s some sort of surprise.
There’s only one change, and that is the proximity of the coming elections, which is bringing reality into focus, we haven’t got a chance to change our course, and so it should be clear our votes are worth sh*t.
We had veto proof majorities if Reid had only forced REAL filibusters.
Didn’t seem to matter.
I think we need to concentrate on LOCAL/STATE politics and build a viable third party to force all those shitheads out.
Well said.
Agree completely.
“All politics is local.”
You are mistaken.
Barack Obama came from practically nowhere, to win the nomination and the presidency. He won it basically because of two things:
Bush and his coterie of idiots had fucked things up so badly that it was possible for someone who could fairly be considered a progressive, to win, and because Hillary Clinton was so stupid that she thought that, even after 8 years of Bushco fuckery, she could “triangulate” her way into the White House, by smooching rightwing ass, while retaining support from her natural liberal constituents. As was clearly shown, she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
This all had very little to do with local politics. The conditions for Obama to win were created and set by what was happening at the top levels or our government.
You enjoin Bailey to “face reality”.
I suggest the same for you. We got the living shit kicked out of us in the mid-terms, because all the democrats had to run on was: “The republicans are even worse.” It didn’t work then, and if they try it again this year, we’ll get hammered at least as badly.
Incidentally, I don’t think you’re a right-winger; I just think that, like a lot of democrats, you can’t make the emotional adjustment to the reality of Barack Obama’s taking a giant shit on the progressive agenda.
You spoke of Gays needing him for a second term. As one of the threaders on here pointed out a while back, ending DADT was handed to him on a platter, and to placate our military and the conservatives, he tried to send it back to the kitchen. He only told Holder to stop trying to block it, when it took on a life of it’s own, and he risked another firestorm if he continued to try to keep it in place. These little social wins are overdue, but having them in place of what he COULD have accomplished, if only he’d tried, is piss-thin gruel, and considering everything, he’s sold us out.
I won’t reward him for doing it.
I think progressives should first issue an ultimatum demanding some simple and reasonable changes. If they are not committed to forthrightly and vigorously by the president and the Dems, progressives will vote third party. If the politicians make the choice to not respond, so be it – they had their last chance.
At this point, brain-dead Obamabots are a greater threat to the Republic (and the progressive agenda, which I believe is the Republic’s only hope), than are the Rethugs. Only by removing the protection of the D label will there be any chance that the people will see the corporatist agenda with enough clarity to forcefully reject it.
Good post, Glen;
When he came in, with the clout and the expectations that he had, all he had to do was try. IF the repubs had, for example, filibustered on real healthcare reform, all he and the dems needed to do was keep bringing it up and forcing the filibuster, and every day, he could hold a presser and tell the voters:
“Folks, I promised a real overhaul of our healthcare system, and I’m trying. We’ve got the votes to enact it, and the GOP won’t let us. I would ask that you keep that in mind, at the mid-terms.”
In a matter of a couple of weeks, if not days, the republicans would folded like a house of cards, and Obama would have been Captain America.
Put it like this: instead of John Boehner now having Obama’s political balls in a mayo jar, Obama could have the entire republican congressional leadership over to the White House for a urinal-cleaning party. Of course this all didn’t happen, and our boy did wondrous rehab on the assholes.
Anyone who wants to reward him for all this with another term, is part of the problem, not the solution. In fact, the most important thing that can happen now, is that this be graven in stone above the White House portico:
“If you run as a progressive and talk about the real changes that we need to make, and then govern as a country-club republican, you will be fired in the next general election.”
Here; let me save some bandwidth.
The time to start confronting the assholes was when he walked in the door of the White House.
Doing it now (or, more accurately PRETENDING to do it now) when they’ve got him by the short-hair, is just campaign-kabuki bullshit. It means………..nothing.
I was gonna say that none of the democrats in congress and especially the one in the White House got no cajones.
But you said it more elquently.
Good point here too.
Driftglass:
Once again, “don’t do no good to close the barn door after the horse already got out.”
I like the “campaign kabuki bullshit” reference.
Obama tried to take the “high road”. Doesn’t work when your opponent is lower than a snail’s belly. Gotta get down “in the mud” with them sons of bitches and wrastle. No holds barred.
“They failed because when faced with the reality of an intractable opposition of bleating, bloody-minded, knives-out lunatics, this Administration simply refused to believe that it could not charm or compromise…..their way to victory.”
————–
You can’t say it simpler or better than that.
Basil; glad that Driftglass is getting after O., some.
Early on in Obama’s term, Drift did the wickedest photo shoppe I’ve ever seen. I wish I could find it to post:
It was a shot of Rahm giving a towel-draped, smiling, Joe Lieberman, a loving massage, while Obama stood right behind with the (presumably scented) unguent in hand and ready for more dispensing. :o)
I was laughing so hard, I thought I’d suffocate. :o)
In other and more recent news; most of us are aware that Obama just licked some more conservative ass, when he threw teen-age girls who are still minors, squarely under the bus and denied them over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill. I have three young granddaughters, one of them soon to be 15. To me, that was truly despicable.
What possible defense can any of his defenders make, for his doing that?
‘guy, good follow-up. Driftglass has a laser-committment to “no more bullshit!”. :o)
You cross swords with him, and you’ll need an ass-transplant, as some republicans found out over at Steve Gilliard’s old site, bless Gilly’s great heart. :o)
Bingo!
It would have BENEFITED both the Republican party and the country if in 2009, when Obama’s foot was on the neck of the Republican party, he had stepped down HARD.
The irony is that Obama so desperately wants to be a “game changer” President like Reagan, and he had to finally drive the spike through the stupidity of voodoo Reaganomics to actually be who he wanted to be. He didn’t seem to have the necessary conjones. He still doesn’t.
Obama’s crap budget coming just in time for the November election.
He’ll deserve what he gets.
If, on election night in 2008,
someone had come on here and said:
“In three years there won’t even be a public option in the HC “reform” bill…much less, single-payer, and relative to that, after the mid-terms, the republicans will have a healthy majority in the House, and the Speaker will be John Boehner, who, in one day, will refuse to take Barack Obama’s pathetic phone calls FOUR TIMES…”
“Humana, United Healthcare, and Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield and the rest of the health insurance robber barons will STILL have that exemption from the anti-trust laws…”
“Social Security and most of the safety net will be on the chopping-block table for the republicans to get in their longed-for hacks…”
“Barack Obama will have attended fatcat democratic fund-raisers where, in front of an appreciative audience, he will have a large time talking shit about the progressives who were so instrumental in his defeating Hillary Clinton and John McCain, to win the presidency.” … etc….
If someone had predicted this on election night, they’d have been hooted off the Lake.
Not to intrude unduly, but let’s see if I can take the general temperature of this thread, save for the few who said, “yes, the site should promote a third-party candidate’. (A few names were tossed out; cool.)
Obama is a fuck-stick sell-out, either a con man, or the most depraved pivoter in history, doesn’t matter the etiology of it, and clearly now works for the (Greater) Vampire Squid.
Obama might be one degree better because he still (against all indications) might enact some further gay rights legislation (forget transgendered again, but okay…)
Third party runs are useless; they just give more votes to someone *other* than the candidate third-party voters cast votes for. The ‘Ralph Nader’ offense. Check.
OWS has been co-opted (no evidence given, but opinions rule!), so it sucks, too. Check.
Rather than make a push for someone *outside the corrupt legacy parties*, we should first make Democratic or Republican candidates swear to us that, “Honest, dears; I’ll change, and fight for the Common Man.” Cuz politicians never promise us The Moon, and give us (sorry) Dick instead. So we should be positive about it, and wait for another cycle, then compare notes for a couple years, argue till the cows come home about: “Did he/she fork us over, or do something that was incrementally fantastic as it could lead to further reform, just like in FDR’s day?”
Lots of “I will never vote for that traitor Obama, which leaves, unless my math is wrong: The Republican nominee, or…a third party candidate…or a very powerful write-in vote (please spell that name exactly right or it won’t *count*).
Wow. Stupefying. Seriously. (apologies to some quasi-workable ideas I missed)
How about imagining that OWS is a nascent revolution, and can succeed, will succeed, because it must; it’s all that’s left. Think Diebold, Citizens United, and more. Think about Ms. Hamsher and others primary efforts being supplying Occupies all over the nation, so they might survive the winter, and all the diaries telling of the various ways the movement is imaginatively adapting not only to freezing temperatures, but to police crackdowns and forced removals. The movement will, of necessity, come alive in the spring as citizens suffering increases in leaps and bounds, and the European economy melts down, and boomerangs back to the US. And austerity policies’ effects come due and clobber us mightily.
Then: hink about not being so captive to an electoral process that *discounts your needs, and the country’s infrastructure’s needs, and the planet’s heath that is necessary to our survival, and tell me…what you want to do toward electoral politics in the meantime?
Occupy a 3rd Party. I KNOW it can’t win. Not the point. It keeps them on the ballot which is a large part of the battle and it costs the major parties to pick up the votes they’re losing.
Anyway, I’ve been doing my best to warn the Obama administration and Senator Klobuchar that they do not have my vote.
“What do you want to do toward electoral politics in the meantime?”
Piece of cake: Primary the hell out of Barack Obama. :o)
IMHO, then, even if the PTB *allowed* that primary candidate to win, you would have yet another President representing the corrupt two-party system, spending his/her remaining time courting those same Elites to build a campaign war chest. Not to mention that this candidate would necessarily have to draw votes from the Left and the Right (assuming the center is almost fine with either O or Romney, say.
Then: if your candidate were to win the general election, you would find that candidate spending three-fourths of his/her time raising campaign funds for the next three years, because re-election campaigns start in earnest at the end of the second year (in the SOTUS). So… the triangulation would have begun early, because CU will take half of forever to neutralize, either with an amendment or a Constitutional Convention, both tough sells to a recalcitrant, money-grubbing Congress.
So: instead, we find a candidate who appeals to progressives and conservatives who are sick to death of war, the current tax policy, the disappearing safety net, love Medicare, and can buy into Medicare for all; wants the Banksters prosecuted, and some kick-ass financial reform set in place…well, you get my drift. And no; I’m not looking at Ron Paul; I’m looking at a person who has a strong moral compass, and still believes that the federal government can act as a good force that must protect citizens and the planet from the excesses of capitalist rentiers and extractive industry, plus puts American workers ahead of profiteering in any trade deals, and would want to cancel the existing ones that are so toxic to workers in nations on both ends of the agreements, which are now also about the militarization of said nations.
NOT just a Lefty, but with key Lefty values that conservatives can love, or at least accept enough to cast their votes for this candidate. All the while working toward the non-violent revolution, which is where the most energy should be.
Well said Wendy. IMHO this is our firewall and we can’t give up. My kids are too important to me. Thanks for your input and sound reasoning. :)
Thank you Wendy, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Wendy, I’m not sure what you mean by “non-violent revolution”. If you mean a milion people marching on Washington, I think that’s really unlikely these days.
Also, in some of your posits, I think you’re clutching at imaginary straws.
“so instead we find a candidate who appeals to progressives and conservatives…”
I think that’s simply a fantasy. No one on the political horizon comes close to being that. In fact, Obama came the closest, in that he got a lot of independent votes, and look what he turned out to be. We don’t need to be “brought together”; we need someone who will win big on a basically progressive agenda, and then IMPLEMENT that. With Obama, we got the first, but then he utterly funked the rest of the job. As I’ve said upthread, I think it’s very important that he not be rewarded for that, which is why I hope some progressive will step up and primary him. This political situation and the remedy for it, wasn’t complicated. All that Obama had to do was confront the republicans early and often, and keep pushing real reform legislation up to the hill, AND publicly demanding those up-or-down votes, and the republicans would now be so far under the troll-bridge that they’d have to be fed with slingshots.
Instead, Obama has done nothing except protect the corporate status quo; defeating him is the biggest priority.
I would ask: What “key lefty values” would conservatives love?
I missed hearing about those, and I’m leery of any progressive who also appeals to conservatives, or tries to.
We already have an arch-compromiser and uber-bipartisan in the White House, and he’s a disaster for a progressive agenda. I’m tired of “reaching out” to the assholes who’ve nearly ruined us. It was lunacy for Obama to do it.
Bears repeating, and should never be forgotten. Obama has steered the course that brought us here, and the course he steered was not the right course at all. When he came into office, perceived nationally as being a liberal who would change course and having a huge mandate and millions of loyal followers behind him which collectively had the potential to be a near unstoppable political force, he essentially grabbed the wheel and maintained course full steam ahead. No leftward steerage at all. He blew it in a big, big way.
I will not vote for Obama.
Until now, I was a 30 year LIFETIME Democratic voter.
We are MILLIONS and MILLIONS.
If Obama has a problem with this, he knows what to do – move way left.
Regarding the diary, I think I see a HUGE parallel between Obama and Jerry Brown, Gov of CA in this budget regard.
Um how to shorten this up . . .
Both are calling (or are going to call) for Draconion Cuts to programs and services that will devastate the poor, needy, minorities and such.
That’s intended to rouse and awaken everyone . . . it’s a media ploy to inflame . . .
Then, they also politely suggest we gotta tax the rich to make up for the cuts or people will suffer.
This too, is intended to incite and inflame, in this case the elites.
In the end, programs are cut and the lack of raised taxes is blamed on the political process dominated by the minority party (in CA 2/3 vote means the minority can hold up ANY changes).
In the end, the 1% elites who pay our erected offals to serve THEM, WIN!
We the people always lose.
It’s a simple game and scam, yet a majority of we the people seem unable or unwilling to get it, because of the media, the messaging and it’s all run by the . . . yep, corporate fascist 1% elite.
So Mr. Walker, when do you begin to address this issue and stop reporting what the mainstream messaging is? Cuz that serves only the elites, it’s not serving the 99%, much less the masses.
When will you serve, US, your readers, the FDL progressives, who yearn, clamor for and desperately need some thots about how to change things?
We KNOW (part and parcel thanks to you, Mr. Dayen, Mz. Hamsher of course), we KNOW what the trad lines are, we KNOW what the MSM regurgitates daily there are PLENTY of mediums to hear that message . . . hell, there are plenty of others writing about the MSM being useless . . . when will you write about how to confront, change and make this THING OF OURS, this nation, this government and our lives, OUR OWN, again?
Please.
You used to write MUCH more about the needs of the masses and what COULD be, now it seems, you write more and more about critiquing The Veal Pen and yet, it sounds like the same bleating I hear every where else . . . it’s become PART of the veal pen.
N that’s sad.