Of Obama's winning coalition, first progressives and independents, then rank and file Democrats started souring on the president, seeing his cabinet, his economic policy choices too closely aligned with those of Wall Street. All the GOP had to do was lay low, just keep restating that they were against an unpopular president and they could probably have coasted to victory on vague hopes and photo ops.
Instead Rick Perry comes out with a tax plan that increases income inequality even though we are now tied with Uganda, then actually said, "I don't care about that" when pressed by a reporter. Tell that to the two-thirds of Americans who "said that wealth should be distributed more evenly," according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. (9 in 10 Democrats, 2/3 or independents and 1/3 of Republicans).
But what about the other GOP candidates in this the most anti-Wall Street electoral climate since the 1930s? Cain's going no further than a lead-in talk show to Huckabee on FOX, let's be real, and Romney, the actual eventual GOP nominee -- no matter how many corn dogs he downs -- is Gordon Gecko.
This presents a relatively straightforward path to victory for Obama should he consistently abandon his policy of appeasement. On the stump recently he's been funny and forceful, just as he was toward the close of business last year, but all too often an opportunity for action, even a simple action like not rescheduling his jobs speech for Boehner, arises and he capitulates. He demanded that Congress "pass that bill" and they just didn't, making him look more and more Carterian. Obama's path to victory lies in assuring skittish voters that he will not only fight the GOP, but defeat them in their War on Working Americans.
And when I say "Working Americans" I mean the 99% of us who work or are trying to.
The recent pivot to the slogan, "We Can't Wait," followed up by a barrage of executive orders is exactly the way forward in the short term but in the long term Obama needs a grander plan. He needs to make the case that in the last four years he was an outsider to the ills of Washington, a trusting reformer boxed out by entrenched interests. He needs to lay out a specific New Deal, even a relatively deficit neutral one, that harnesses stockpiled uninvested private capital, the army of the unemployed and necessary public works projects to bring our nation, finally, into a new century already over a decade old.
This plan needs to be his and his alone, not an amalgamation of ideas from all sides of the aisles. The president needs to tell us what the nation would look like if he had his way, and then work with the Democratic Campaign Committee to make sure that in 2012 he has the votes in Congress to turn those plans into actions.
From Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, Americans are mad and politicized (though in the Times/CBS polling OWS is twice as popular as the TP). We're also dissatisfied with our outlets for change. The president needs to remind us to once again stow our cynicism and channel our angry energy through our best hope... him and party he leads.
He needs to promise us that he won't let us down, remind us that change is hard and always slower than we'd like. He needs to tell us that if we reelect him and like minded congresspeople he'll take it from there. He needs to look us in the eye and say, "I got this."
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Joe Peyronnin: Republican Idol: 2012
Hello?
He wants to slash Medicare, put Social Security on the chopping block and essentially gut the New Deal.
Did you hear what you just said?
" The recent pivot to the slogan, "We Can't Wait," ...."He needs to promise us that he won't let us down, remind us that change is hard and always slower than we'd like..."
Hello?
Wow. The writer needs to examine something other than his heart. BHO is a professional politician, and to cling to his coattails with little more than a promise, is NOT doing your due diligence; Just like the LAST election.
The only weapons he has left are tough talk (not his style), and executive orders (where are the recess appointments?)
If the GOP loses, it will be because their crazy candidates shoot the party in the foot. Not because Obama did anything to motivate the left or the independents. And voters will make a choice based on who sucks less.
Naturally, I understand the limitations imposed by an obstruction obsessed minority, but the guy is executing Americans with no due process for crying out loud. Democrat...Republican...same crap different piles. No matter who wins in '12 it will be the donors who are represented by that administration, not you and I.
The man we elected in 2008 and the man who entered the WH are not the same. And the one campaigning now won't be the same in 2012 if he's re-elected. How do you know what to expect in the future? Look at the past.
He's only saying all this (and doing little, as always) because the Republicans are in the news all the time and the election year looms.
We should believe what he told us for 3+ years. "It's too hard, the Republicans won't let me, I have higher priorities, we have to have balance (like putting SS and Medicare on the table and raising taxes on us, as well as the rich)", etc. He proved to us that was all true. Now that his power has long since been squandered and his term is coming to an end, now he wants to start doing a tiny bit of what he said he would.
Why would anything be different this time, unless we elect an overwhelmingly liberal Democratic house and senate - and, sadly, we won't.
He has done a lot... And sure he has promised a lot and struggled to deliver, but there has never been an opposing party with so much hatred and single-mindedness then the current GOP members of congress.
I agree it is frustrating. And I think he needs to be far more aggressive. But what's the other choice?
But if we say we have no choice, which I admit is correct, at least at present and probably future, then we have only ourselves to blame. I feel about progressives as I do about Obama. If we say it's too hard when we haven't tried, we are not victims, but self-defeaters.
As I've often said in referring to my disappointment with Obama: Fight a hard, competent, and honorable fight and lose, and I will respect you and follow you to the ends of the earth. Whine that it's too hard and the other guys stole my candy, and I feel nothing but contempt.
We need to present some other choice. I'm not well connected or well financed enough to make anything happen. Few of us as individuals can. But I surely hope a strong progressive candidate will step forward to challenge Obama. I am ready to put everything I can (money, time, hard work, whatever) into supporting a candidate with integrity and backbone. Sadly, it doesn't seem likely, so I don't know what to do.
Can't vote for Obama, can't vote for a destroy-the-world-as-we-know-it Republican.
Should call myself Smoldering Ruin II, because that's what I do, i .e. smolder at what they've done to our country as a whole and our people as individuals.
Too bad there aren't more of us angry enough and determined enough to push the Congress, or at least the Pres and the Dems, since the Repubs will remain intransigent until they run us right off a cliff, into doing the big, bold things so obviously necessary to salvage the economy, put people back to work, and return us to first world leadership in the quality of life things that count.
Obama nationalizÂÂed student loan lending and Sallie Mae had to layoff 2,500 of their employees. The federal government began directly lending to students thus requiring Sallie Mae to layoff employees. 2,500 now unemployed because of Barack Obama.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/30/sallie-mae-blames-layoffs-obamas-student-loan-overhaul/
Obama imposed a drilling moratorium after the BP spill which costs thousands of people their jobs. Seahawk Drilling, a major publicly-hÂÂeld drilling services company, declared bankruptcy due to the sharp decline in Gulf drilling work. That's another 494 people now unemployed because of Barack Obama.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2011-02-12-seahawk-drilling_N.htm
In September, Texas energy company Luminant announced on new burdensome EnvironmenÂÂtal Protection Agency regulationÂÂs are forcing it to close several facilitiesÂÂ, which will result in about 500 job losses. That's another 500 people now unemployed because of Barack Obama and the EPA.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/12/epa-regulation-forces-closure-of-texas-energy-facilities-eliminates-500-jobs/
I just named three specific examples of how Obama's policies have lead to private sector job losses. Now tell me which party has declared war on working Americans.
http://www.salon.com/topic/the_real_reagan//
America is NOT a socialist nation and we don't want to become one!
In corporate world, you'd have to be blind not to see that. And all you have to do is follow the news to see it. Prime case: bankers.
As for hard working, some of the hardest working people earn $8 to $10 an hour. Others are the middle managers and professionals in corporate world who work 70 and 80 hour weeks with no vacations and blackberries and computers always at hand 24 x7 while their big execs golf on Wed afternoons, party on Fri, take 3 hour non-business lunches, take extensive luxury vacations, etc.
Intelligent, you ever talk to some of these bozos? Like the CEOs of Fortune 500 top 10s who don't know their companies are broke, that their subsidiaries don't really exist, or that you can't count the same income twice on the books? They themselves claim stupidity and gross incompetence. And many have little business education.
Luck, lies, and links (to the already powerful and where you play golf) are far better than education and hard work for advancing careers. The best man or woman rarely wins. He's working too hard and too dedicated to doing the right thing to have time for socializing and politics needed for high advancement.
But what WE have to do is give him a true liberal progressive congress, so that he has no choice.
The Obama DLC are enablers of the GOP agenda . They are Reagan democrats, moderate republicans AKA: New democrats, pragmatic Progressive, Blue dogs, New American Foundation, Progressive Policy Council, Third Way.
Vote for the CPC progressive Caucus, The Progressive Democrats of America, the Kucinich Grayson folks in the primaries. the Dems in the general.
Obviously don't vote for the anti republic GOP/Tea Tories.
Since Reagan they have been out to starve, drown, sabotage and vilify the Beast, our republic, the USA.
They are against democracy. They are against citizens rights. They are for absolute rule by the rich. Do they sound like Eisenhower to you?
Concentration of wealth will destroy the Republic, that's not Marx, that's our founders:
"When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny." John Adams
"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard." Alexander Hamilton
I'm an old OLD liberal Democrat, who saw the writing on the wall in the 1970s, has been writing about it and politically active for decades. Reform isn't on the agenda of either party. Republicans don't have to bother trying to keep progressives out of office -- Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter.
Republican-turned-Independent Arlen Specter over progressive Democrat Joe Sestak.
Republican-turned-Independent Lincoln Chaffee over Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsement of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressional seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy is retiring from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).
Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.
By the way, by getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in US history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed.
Citizens have little enough of a Constitutionally-guaranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping them. We have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic). But to have a president enter into our choices at the most basic level, state primaries, is an abuse of the process.
Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignments, etc., but did not. Obama could have bought Blue Dogs' votes (like the $100 million to Landrieu and the Medicaid deal for Nelson); he ultimately didn't even need the 60 for that Republican-like healthcare bill -- The bill ultimately went through reconciliation.
This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the puppet-masters who control him want in office. On both sides of the aisle. Obama, Ds and Rs in office, working on behalf of transnational corporations.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
There is nothing that Lieberman (or Nelson or Lincoln) is doing that Obama hasn't ordered. Obama and the DLC-Democrats want Lieberman there, doing what he's doing, which is to take the heat off of Democrats.
And the proof of this is that (since you mention Nelson), when Obama needed Nelson re: StupakAmendment, he 'bought' his support. That's what Obama could've done for Nelson's or Lincoln's vote at any time, on any legislation.
There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People and blame it on Republicans. Because they're DLC, aka Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Most of the progressive Caucus did hold out longer than any of the rest, and Kucinich only gave in when MOVEON and his own constituents screamed at him to vote for the bill as is. The progressive Caucus is out last best hope.