You want to hear something really depressing? If John McCain had won the presidency, there is almost no chance he could have gotten the Bush tax cuts extended for the rich. Think about it. How was a Republican president going to get an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate and House to pass those tax cuts that they hated under Bush?
No, only a Democratic president could get a Democratic Congress to agree to tax cuts for the rich. So, in this sense, progressives are worse off for having a Democratic president than a Republican one.
Then, at least we would have known who we were fighting. Remember, Bush could barely, barely get these same tax cuts passed when the Republicans controlled both the Senate and the House!
Funny how the rich and powerful win no matter who is in charge and what party they claim to be from. And think about how much the political spectrum has shifted to the right that Bush had to use reconciliation and then barely got the tax cut through a Republican Congress whereas now a Senate with basically 59 Democrats just passed the same tax cuts with ease. Washington has fallen off a right-wing cliff and the media hardly noticed.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said this about the estate tax provision:
We had the president -- George W. Bush -- we couldn't get it done then and we're getting it done here.
Ouch. Their victory is so overwhelming that the Republicans are brazenly bragging about how they couldn't even get Bush to do what Obama has done for them.
Finally, you have to ask why Democrats who were willing to fight Bush are crumbling in front of Obama? He claims to be the leader of your party, but honestly who cares? If he is doing the exact opposite of what you claim to stand for, why does it matter what he calls himself?
Democrats would certainly have fought a surge in Afghanistan if Bush was in charge. They would be complaining about warrantless wiretapping if Bush continued that program instead of Obama. They would have hated the monopoly that drug companies got in the health care legislation (because they went nuts over it when Bush made the same deal). And they would have gone apoplectic over these huge tax cuts for the rich. But under Obama, the defense contractors, the rich and the powerful have gotten almost everything they wanted and nary a peep was heard from the Democrats in Congress.
Here is the new memo -- fight him, he's not on your side.
When I asked Rep. Jim McDermott some of these questions last night, he seemed at a loss for what to do next. You can feel his frustration and confusion as to how we got here with a Democratic president. Here are some of his quotes:
Well, I think a lot of us are, in the caucus, we're not quite sure why this is happening. It doesn't make political sense what he did, and it doesn't make economic sense.
I think that we are in serious trouble because the president simply does not seem willing to go after some things that I think he's going to have to if he's going to get anything done for the people of this country. He simply has, in my view, given up the willingness to fight for economic justice in this country.
I think it's going to take us a while to get over what's happened here, and I really think... it is very hard to think how you're going to deal with the next round here, because the president has now shown that he can be bullied, and I don't want my president to be bullied.
And I think he... we would be all much better if we were able to say, you know, that we're not going to back down, and that there's no excuse for us giving up like this. I mean, that's the hard part for me, is that it's giving up without a fight.
[W]hen you start giving in on the kinds of things he's giving in on, you really worry that there is no way back from that. And I'm, I mean, that's why I said it was... this was Gettysburg, because it really is... that was the turning point in the war. And it really is a question of how you continue to rally your troops if you keep giving in on things that people really care about.
Until you get to a point where you're not sure he has the same idea of what "people really care about." He might have a different idea, a Republican idea. Or at the very least, a Washington idea of what people care about -- so-called centrist compromises that somehow always benefit the establishment.
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
Running large deficits places undue burden on the poorer classes through inflation.
Taxing the wealthy was the best way of paying for our government's services.
There is no way we can get vibrant economy with this kind of income inequality.
The poor don't have money to spend and the rich park theirs in gold or foreign stocks.
Why invest in the US when they can get higher return in Brazil?
I am hoping that Dean, Sanders or Feingold will mount a primary challenge.
The Fed is but a sugar daddy for big multi-national corporations.
It should spend its made-up money on America's middle class,
not on the banks (including foreign) which made stupid decisions.
In the early days of WWII, FDR spoke to the American people time and time again to enlighten them to the danger the Axis powers were to us, and to explain that the two oceans were no longer enough to keep the war from reaching us. FDR thought up the Lend-Lease program to help the battered Brits and Russians by enabling them to have access to the weapons they needed to fight back against the Nazis -- and give us needed time to build up our military and industrial might. And then he explained to the American people in easy-to-understand language his reasons for aiding the Brits and Russians.
FDR did not just lie down and whine -- as Obama does -- that we were "outnumbered" by the enemy, he used the power and bully pulpit of the presidency to bring the American people to understand the reality of World War II.
It is easier to fight the enemy at the gate than the enemy already within the walls.
When there was that chance that Wallace would get the nomination to run against Nixon, I would have voted for Wallace, he was at least honest about what he stood for, Nixon was a weasel.
The country could possibly have faced a Wallace presidency down on his more flagrant racist stands. Nixon worked in the dark all the time, and that is harder to recognize, confront and over come.
.
As for the "flexibility" you claim Obama will have to do some progressive things if he's re-elected--he had at least some of that flexibility after he was elected, and he didn't use it. What makes you think he would suddenly champion progressive causes just because he won another election?
With all the Blue Dogs in Congress? I don't think so.
It IS time, in fact decades PAST time, for anyone to the Left of REAGAN to ask themselves why they still consider themselves to be a "Democrat". Are you REALLY for corporate welfare? When you thought about "Health Care Reform" was the picture you got one of the IRS hunting down Americans who DARED to not buy commercial health insurance? Really? On civil rights are you in favor of second class citizen ship for gays, warrentless wire taps, immunity for companies that violate your privacy, and an extended "Patriot act"? Really? Are you for MORE pointless, endless wars?
If you're NOT for those things WHY are you still voting for Democrats? And don't tell me about the "good" democrats. Weiner? Pro-Israel no matter how many Americans and Palestinians they murder. Grayson? Anti-Net Neutrality. Franken? Tax cuts for billionairs is okey dokey with him! Kucinich? You mean the guy who caved on Health Care reform "for the good of the party"?
The two-and-only political parties are in the business of seeing to it that no other party gets into power, ever. To that end, the Democrats, especially our craven President, would rather "compromise with" (i.e., surrender to) the Republicans than introduce or vote for legislation that would relieve the suffering inflicted by decades of relentless corporatist pandering, their only excuse being that Republicans would do even worse. Their ONLY selling point is that they're the lesser of two evils, and apparently that's all they ever aspire to be.
No Democrat ever raises the issue that "the good of the party(ies)" and "what's good for the country" are not at all the same thing and have not been for a long time.
"[T]he president has now shown that he can be bullied, and I don't want my president to be bullied."
.
However, the Dem. politicians also work for the same rich and powerful people as the Repubs....and now they can serve their masters and use Obama as the scapegoat.
The Oligarchs/Plutocrats are getting their way more each day and it gets easier and easier for all the politicians from BOTH parties to help them.
Personally, I do not expect much of the Democratic politicians and almost nothing from Obama and his BFF the Republican politicians.
We ordinary working class and middle class workers are f**ck*d but good!
It's classic facism- they start by destroying anyone who can oppose them, that that means unions, religious groups who won't get on board, and artists and intellectuals.
Even by 2008, after eight years under the Bush/Cheney crime syndicate, I was naive enough to believe, even halfway, any campaign promise by any professional politician. I simply didn't believe that Obama was outright lying in his presidential campaign speeches--insincere, disingenuous, less than completely truthful, sure, but not 100% dishonest. What can I say? I was wrong. A lot of us were.
In that respect, you are correct in saying American leadership has been moved to the far right. However, it definitely is a betrayal for a candidate who runs on "hope and change" to just end up being "more of the same". Just because it should have been an expected betrayal (and was expected by anyone who had critically researched Obama) doesn't mean it wasn't a betrayal.
People voted for change, and instead got a "post-partisan" who loves conservative ideology.