White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went off the other day on the "professional left" which is never satisfied. The White House apparently is miffed at the criticism they get from the left.
It's summer. It's hot. The president's poll numbers stink. The economy is going south. Tempers are short. But really. The left is pushing the president from the left? The horror. The shame.
Here are six reasons Gibbs' outburst doesn't make much sense, not counting the fact that it will generate hundreds of articles like this.
1. The left was right. The president is in trouble because his historic reforms were too timid, not too bold. The recovery plan wasn't big enough. The banks were rescued, but not reformed and no heads rolled. These two alone have been lethal to the economy, to working people, and not surprisingly to the president's popularity and Democratic prospects.
2. The left was wrong -- but not because it was too independent, but because it was too cooperative. Instead of building an independent populist movement with a moral voice driving opinion outside the beltway, much energy and resources were devoted to the legislative sausage making process, largely in support of the president's agenda. This White House would have been far better served with an independent movement, such as those FDR and LBJ suffered and benefited from. One result is that the ersatz tea party formations captured the voice of populist outrage.
3. The left isn't the problem -- the corporate wing of the party is. The left hasn't gotten in the president's way, for better or worse. It's the corporate right of the party -- the Blue Dogs and New Democrats -- that have stood in the way. They joined with Republicans to weaken the recovery plan. Max Baucus did the dance with so-called moderate Republicans like Charles "death panel" Grassley that ate up the first year in useless negotiations. Blue dogs largely sabotaged energy legislation. New Democrats weakened already inadequate financial reforms. And the deficit hawks now sabotage needed jobs programs in an economy in big trouble. The problem with the left is that it has been too weak, not too strong.
4. The left hasn't been a rebel; it's been too good a soldier. Amazing that the White House would be upset at carping from the beltway left which has embarrassed itself by its willingness to absorb insult and salute. Women rallied to support a health care bill that weakened choice. Progressives supported the bill despite the president's unwillingness to fight for a public option, the taxes on good (read union) health care plans, and the grotesque deal with drug companies to sustain the ban on Medicare getting bulk price discounts. Environmentalists went so far as to embrace off-shore drilling in the failed effort to get the energy bill. Black leaders like Al Sharpton argued against any targeted economic programs, even as the African American community was suffering depression levels of misery in the economic collapse. The anti-war movement gave the president a pass on Afghanistan. Gays have been remarkably patient at delay in repealing the indefensible don't ask, don't tell policy. Progressives pushed financial reform hard, even after the Treasury Department helped defeat amendments to break up the big banks and more.
5. The White House has been hurt less because the left is critical, but because the White House isn't listening. The left correctly understood the White House faced a pitched battle over the direction of the country, not a post-racial, pragmatic, bipartisan era of good feelings. The president's search for bipartisan cooperation compromised his greatest asset -- the bully pulpit. From day one, he should have been teaching Americans, over and over, how failed conservative ideas and policies had driven us over the cliff, just as FDR and Ronald Reagan had done from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The failure to do that has allowed conservatives to revive without changing a whit. Now, three months from the election, the president says he's ready to draw the contrast and start pushing, far too late.
6. Reality counts. Gibbs accuses the professional left of being congenitally dissatisfied. I should hope so. But the White House problem isn't temperament, it is reality.
This White House has passed historic initiatives -- the biggest recovery act ever, comprehensive health care reform, financial reform, equal pay reforms, the largest increase in poverty spending since the 60s, the greatest expansion of service programs since the Great Depression, and much more. The White House understandably wants credit. It had a check list; it made the compromises it needed to make; it moved the ball forward. Why the carping?
But reality counts. We're suffering mass unemployment. One in four homes with mortgages is underwater. Bankers were rescued, the debt increased, and politicians in both parties are starting to talk about cutting Social Security benefits. The war in Afghanistan is a mess. We can argue about whether the president fought hard enough, or compromised too soon -- but the reality is that the reforms, as bold as they were, are not sufficient to deal with the mess we are in.
Here the White House has been consistently off key. Last week at the AFLCIO executive council, the president delivered a powerful and rousing address that made his pitch for the election. At the core was a metaphor:
This election is a choice. You've got these folks who drove America's economy into a ditch, and for the last 20 months, we put on our boots and we got into the mud and we've been shoving that car out of the ditch inch by inch, and they've been standing on the side the whole time watching, telling us, no, you're not pushing hard enough, you're not doing it the right way -- not lifting a finger to help. And now we've finally got that car up on the blacktop there, about to drive, and they say they want the keys back. (Laughter.) Well, you can't have the keys, because you don't know how to drive. (Laughter.) You don't know how to drive. (Laughter.) You're not going to get the keys back. (Applause.) You're not going to get them back.
This is terrific stuff -- only the car is not "out of the ditch and on the road." We're still pushing our way out of the ditch. We've got a long way to go. We'll need new efforts to get there. There's a huge difference in presenting reforms as solutions, the right answers to hard problems -- and presenting reforms as steps in the right direction, with a long way to go. "Stay the course" limited Republican losses in the off year election of 1982 despite the deep recession, but Reagan had blamed liberalism from day one for what wrong, pounded on it, and kept selling his program not as a solution, but as building a new direction. Obama does this well when he does it, but not enough and not consistently
Finally, the good book says as ye sow so shall ye reap. We've got a huge enthusiasm gap going into this election. The rising Obama electorate -- young, single women, minorities -- is discouraged, disengaged and staying home in large numbers. The organized base of the party -- particularly unions -- is getting big-time pushback from discouraged members. Across the board, the "professional left" reports that resources are down for voter registration and mobilization. Get out of the beltway, Mr. Gibbs. Talk to some folks. You'll find the beltway carpers are the least of your problems.
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Social Security has already been cut. Last year no increase due inflation index. Zero inflation. Zero increase Social Security. Treasury did give us $250 but it means next increase won't be building on increase. How many billions does that cut save government. Inflation statistics are figured in basics. Food. Clothing. Fuel. How about rent going up 3 percent. Cable hookup a buck here a buck there it seems every other month. Bus pass increased 9 times what it was. You name what increased money out of pocket for you more than last year. I read no increase in SS this year either. Two years in a row. Historical. Never before 2 years in a row. What's retirement age now? Older 62-65 eh? That's Social Security slash. What will it be in 2020. 67-70? Lucky to live so long working our tails off just for the fun of it. We be so screwed, not to mention tatooed, every whichaway. Reduce, privatize SS and send us to Wall Street for solid investment portfolio in . . . Cap and Trades. Or some exotic get drooling investor bubbles erupting. With obtuse, exotic sub-sub primes this and that insurance hedges on milked out dry empty margins underwritten in taxpayer bailout guarantees. We are so lucky increasingly protected, national security safe, economy static flush--yes a bit diminishing--but so entitlement secure Americans.
Mr President you are not being served well, sir. Remember whose the one that has to be thankful. If your people would go after your real enemies with the same voracity as they go after your friends, your poll numbers would reflected it. Please, don't take your friends for granted.
Amazingly many Democrats do not know how important Unions are in supplying envelope stuffers to phone bank advocates. Obama is making a BIG mistake allowing his crew to slander us all. We on the hard left also gave and gave both money and time to make sure he won. To not have one of our causes fought for or won is bad enough but to insulted? Enough is enough. If they think we have no one else to vote for: we can create our own party or just stay at home. This Dem Congress has not changed much at all and in most way promoted business worse than usual.
I am no longer a Democrat because the party is way too far past the Center Right and Rahm-Gibbs Slander only confirms my Leftist POV. Obama had better listen up: he needs us to win. The voters are fed up with Congress and there will be a reckoning. Sadly if we vote Democrat we have war and if we vote Republican we have war. Both support Oligarchs and make life wretched for the average American.
Keep an eye on the latest Repub mission. Our low birth rate is threating the balance of power and with it, their continued existence, one more reason to attack immigration and the Constitution. It has gotten really ugly out there.
We need a new party. Better to fight the good fight and lose then fight and be betrayed over and over.
YOUR NOT HEARING WHAT I’M SAYING yells the professional left.
And they are both right. The difference being the people actually talk to the professional left on radio and e-mail and in person. Who’s more effective at getting their message out? My bet is the professional left. Who is the most ignored by the Whitehouse? Once again, it’s the professional left.
Now here an idea? Why don’t the Whitehouse listen and use the professional left to get their word out more personally?
Gibbs isn't the only commentator to slap down members of his audience in an abusive way. Even "objective" reporters like Anderson Cooper typically recoil at right-wing excesses like the Breitbart scandal, but then eviscerate their outrage by saying, "...But the left does it too." Of course, they have no evidence that "the left does it too" nor would it matter if it did, since the mainstream press will go to any length to marginalize left thinking in America.
Gibbs seemed a reasonably nice guy and a good replacement for the dull-as-wallpaper hacks who were Bush's spokespersons, men and women alike. Kind of downhome and cheery, "Aw, shucks!"
Then the news started getting grim. Rahm re-mechanized the White House and the President revealed himself to be a hawk, a champion of the big banks, weak on environmental issues, a pretender on education and healthcare.
Now Gibbs comes across as miscast, a snarky commentator on a collapsing Administration in a nation facing a load of crises and seemingly incapable of surmounting any of them. How will he introduce the Palin Administration -- by blaming the left?
“Everyone makes mistakes, but the fact that you are the kind of person that cannot accept blame is egregious."
There was a time when I believed that Gibbs would be the antithesis to the smarmy, sycophantic posing foisted on MSM by Fleischer, Snow and Perino. And, perhaps, at one time he was. But, he's been inside the Beltway for nearly two years and his work as a mouthpiece has hardly been exemplary...but maybe that's more the product of Emanuel or even Obama.
This administration is making a huge mistake in assuming that the base of the party - progressives, NOT Blue Dog centrist Dems - will continue to support an agenda that seems to serve the middle-right rather than the center, much less the left. Unless Obama makes it clear that HCR will be REVISITED; that further regulatory controls will be given to the SEC, FEC, EPA and OSHA; that funding to DOD will be cut, at least, in half, with the return of 95% of ALL American troops abroad; and that current trade agreements will be revised or rescinded, with fair market tariffs put into place...he will lose more of the base.
Why should we support a less than progressively dedicated White House simply because a Democrat occupies it?
One question that keeps coming up, do we have a Democrat in occupancy?
In any case, we are voting Democrat.
The long awaited and over-promised health care bill was not even on a level field, it awarded insurance companies with forced membership and little incentive to control costs. If we had any hope of a better bill in the future, we would not have given up so much ground in the beginning.
...as an Independent...
watching Gibbs and Obama duke it out with Olbermann and the "Professional Left"...
is like...
...watching an episode of "I LOVE LUCY"...
...where Lucy and Ricky get into a fight with Ethel and Fred.
Everyone who wanted a stronger health care bill has to explain how you would get Lieberman to vote for it when he is owned by the insurance companies.
How?
And those who want him to pull all of our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq have to consider the mess that would be left behind by a hasty withdrawal. President Obama is doing his best to make a terrible situation at least a little bit better.
And, as president of the United States, you cannot simply dictate what you want. You need to get the cooperation of congress to get anything done. And that is going to mean compromise.
If any of you think that someone who was more aggressive could've gotten more done, you're living in a fantasy world. Get too aggressive and you burn all of your bridges.
Consider this: Barack Obama got health care passed; Bill and Hillary Clinton didn't. Barack Obama succeeded; the Clintons failed.
That should tell you all you need to know.
We, for example, pushed hard for health care reform. We didn't like the strategy, which wasted a year. We didn't like the deals, and thought clarity about drug companies and insurance companies would have been better. But we were impressed when Pelosi insisted that this get done, and worked hard to support the effort to get it done. It will extend health care to millions. It will also need signficiant changes if we are to get to an affordable, sensbile health care system. As I said in my article, it isn't an answer -- it is a step. And painting it as the answer only undermines credibility.
This kind of attitude is unrealistic, and unproductive. His kind of attitude is going to allow Republicans to take power again.
And the Huffington Post seems to be all too willing to encourage this kind of attitude.