In a set of recent pieces, Cenk Uygur has made a defense of relentless criticism of the president and an argument that Howard Dean and Jane Hamsher cannot be wrong no matter what they say so long as they are attacking the president from the left. Part of this argument I understand. Cenk is arguing that loud, visible criticism from the left helps blunt accusations that Obama is himself on the left, and that this makes him appear moderate which, in turn, makes his job easier. This isn’t an argument on the merits. Cenk isn’t saying that Obama is left, center, or right, and he isn’t arguing that criticism of him is fair or accurate or otherwise. He’s making a simple observation about how it benefits Obama politically to be attacked from the left. In this view, there is no downside to blasting away at the president from the left because you are either right and he might hear you, or you are wrong but he’ll benefit from the optics anyway. There are a couple of flaws with this strategy, even if it is true so far as it goes.
The first flaw is that there actually is a downside to having progressive opinion leaders blast away at the president and say things like this about him:
…you won’t make things better because you don’t work for us. You work for ExxonMobil, Blue Cross and Goldman Sachs, who are all stealing from us and making our lives worse. You can’t work for the people who are stealing from the public and serve the needs of the public at the same time. A House divided against itself must fall, you cannot serve the voters and Mammon, etc., as they say. It doesn’t matter anymore if some of you want to, or would if you could, because you didn’t and evidently can’t.
Most blogreaders and radio listeners and Olbermann/Maddow watchers don’t like to admit that they take their cues from opinion leaders. But many of them do. Because of this, progressive leaders can’t act like Charles Barkley and say they don’t want to be role models. Opinion leaders shape opinions, and they can breed cynicism and apathy if they so choose. If they go out and tell their audiences day after day that the president of the United States is stealing from them to do the bidding of Goldman Sachs and Exxon/Mobil, then a hearty percentage of their readers are going to, you know…start to believe it. And that’s where you start eating into your base and causing problems in a midterm election that will be decided on differential turnout. So, you ought not to go around saying these things unless you really truly think they’re true. And if anyone thinks that blockquote above is fair and accurate, then I just don’t know what to say to them. It’s a bunch of malarkey, is what it is, even if it does advance Cenk’s strategy of making the president look reasonable.
That is why I have a problem with this next bit from Cenk:
…I believe in attacking hard from the left. Some have started to call this the Uygur Doctrine, which, of course, I love. The reality is I’m a political moderate who until about a month ago believed we should stay longer in Afghanistan and that single payer was not the way to go. But it’s not my positions that matter as much as my attitude. We have to, have to, have to attack Obama form the left. If we don’t, he is seen as the far left and the whole spectrum shifts even further right than it already is.
I don’t know if he realizes it but he’s going to damage his own credibility with his audience if he continues to advocate that people make arguments that he doesn’t even agree with because they help move the Overton Window to the left. It’s important that Cenk not ask his audience to take him at face value when he isn’t being honest about his critique of the president and is asking others not to be honest either.
Another problem with Cenk’s argument can be seen in his advice for those of us that don’t agree with this strategy of incessant bombthrowing.
The point is that the mainstream media loves people who they can call “moderates.” If Joe Lieberman is somewhere between Obama and Cheney, no matter how far to the right he is, he gets to be called a moderate. Why? Because there’s someone to the right of him.
Now, you have someone to the left of you. Congratulations, you made it! You’re now part of the cool crowd in DC, the only people that the establishment media care about or give any credence to – moderates.
But Cenk is wrong about this. The only progressives who get on teevee and radio are bombthrowers who attack the president (and blacks that got confused and became Republican shills). You never see supportive progressive bloggers on television or radio. Never. That’s because controversy drives ratings. You see moderate elected Democrats on television because they disagree with the party and the president. The same phenomenon makes Jane Hamsher a starlet of cable news while anyone who defends the president is about as exciting as a WHAM! reunion.
Now, Cenk argues that we can’t be worried that relentlessly criticizing the president (regardless of merit) will help Republicans because we aren’t going to get good policies out of this president and this Congress if we don’t push with everything we’ve got.
I know what some of you are thinking – that’s not the worst case scenario. The worst case is somehow their attacks on Obama help Republicans win. But if you buy into that, then you have to pack your bags and go home. That means you are never willing to forcefully challenge Obama out of the fear that it might somehow hurt him. While I’m sure he appreciates that, I can guarantee you that he will thank you by completely ignoring you (and your policy priorities). Asking politely is obviously not getting the job done.
But we have already established that Cenk is not merely advocating “forcefully challenging” Obama, but attacking him relentlessly as a matter not of merit but of strategy. And that leads to problems of both personal credibility and base suppression. This is not the way to go.
This brings me back to my promise to address Armando’s critique as part of my response to Cenk. Armando says:
… it is somewhat surprising to see Booman’s “Obama’s Dem Party, love it or leave it” admonition. It’s not as unreasonable a view as it might appear at first blush. It is reasonable to think that criticism should be measured and the push against Dems muted. But in my view, that is the wrong approach for the Left blogs. I believe, as I have for some time, that the Left blogs can and should be a voice for the Left Flank of the Democratic Party. I believe that Left blogs should fight for policies they believe in, not the pols or the political parties.
Of course, Armando badly mischaracterized what I said because I didn’t ask or tell anyone to leave the party. But his view that “Left Blogs” should advocate policies they believe in and not pols or political parties is kind of beside the point when “Left Blogs” are bashing the president more as part of an Overton Window strategy than as a fair critique. What matters here is effectiveness and credibility. If you can get a public option by helping to convince Olympia Snowe, then pursue that. If Lieberman, pursue that. If Ben Nelson, pursue that. If Evan Bayh, pursue that. But if you instead call them all whores, attack their spouses, forbid Obama from making concessions to them, and accuse Obama of secretly agreeing with them, then I don’t think you’re going to get the outcome you want no matter how good it makes you feel.
So, what I think we really need to do is stop playing games and thinking we can outsmart the electorate. Be honest with your audiences. Be fair to the president and Congress (they are deserving enough of legitimate criticism). And remember why we got into this business. The Republicans are fucking nuts and must be kept out of power for as long as possible.
Wasn’t that Bush and Cheney’s gig? or do people really just not discriminate between presidencies at all?
I’ll read this post in a minute but, I am reporting breaking news from TPM. Rush Limbaugh was taken to a hospital in Hawaii with chest pains and it is reportedly serious.
that is all I know right now. the major papers don’t even have it reported yet.
Hmmm. I guess it’s too much to hope that his heart grew three sizes today and that’s where the pain is coming from.
it’s hard at this moment to remember I’m a Christian.
i was feeling something similar. not wishing ill on rush even though i consider him a detestable human being.
And Saddam got his head ripped off. Don’t really care.
If you relentlessly attack day and night because of some flawed idea that it helps the president, then you are really kidding yourself.
The fact is that you complain or voice your opposition when you disagree with an issue or policy. If all you do is trash, hit hard and make outlandish and even conspiratorial comments, you will be tuned out. You are not presenting an honest disagreement on something of substance. You are disagreeing just to do so.
The president will stop listening because he will see it as just bitching as always and not because there is a problem.
then when there is one, no one is listening.
I think Cenk is well intentioned, but this campaign of his shows how wet behind the ears he is. The idea that these kind of attacks on Obama are useful is just plain stupid to the point that it becomes hard not to question Cenk’s own motives.
It’s kind of like if you can catch Steve Jobs using a Blackberry as his primary smartphone. Think of the ad/propaganda bonanza: “Even Steve Jobs knows the Blackberry is better than the iphone!” Works pretty much the same way when you can get Cenk, Sirota, Hamsher or some other well-meaning but self-obsessed amateur on the TV or the Net calling Obama a liar/traitor/sellout/fascist/weenie. “Even these commies think Obama is a liar and a sellout! Why doesn’t anybody trust Obama? Because he is a liar an a traitor to his own base an to all Americans!”
That’s the line these people are feeding to the enemy. Nice going, everybody. It’s hard to be reminded again that “progressive” does not automatically = smart. Among other things theories like this demonstrate yet again how the Internet, for all its virtues, also magnifies voices that should still be learning instead of yapping all the time.
Sometimes I think somebody changed the whole English language on me sometime last summer. People from all sides are calling Obama a liar, a sellout, a socialist, a fascist — I just don’t get what he supposedly DID that people are so outraged about. So I looked it up on the internets, and here is a list I found of achievements in the last 11 months:
All of these things strike me as important, meaningful and useful. I don’t understand why progressives like Cenk Uygar think it is useful to try to play 11-dimensional chess.
Besides, Rahm is an 11-dimensional chess grand master.
Thank you CathiefromCanada for pointing out these achievments! Good luck in trying to get Jane LIEberman and others to focus on it. Now that they’re sleeping with the right wing Dogs and have fleas, they won’t. Too busy scratching behind their ears…
Cenk’s strategy will likely result in folks seeing only the criticism and not the appearance of movement to the right. Most people are not political junkies with rapt attention to every last detail.
lacking the eloquence and patience of Booman, I can only observe that someone who titles a post “Why Jane Hamsher Can’t Be Wrong” is one or more of (1) a fully lobotomized Janebot; (2) a paid Jane shill (you know, like those “paid Pharma trolls”); and/or (3) dumber than a box of hammers.
Or (4) pimping a diary.
Great piece BooMan. But your response to Cenk’s bit about the Cheney – Lieberman – Obama political spectrum seems to actually support his argument, instead of refuting it. I re-read it a couple of times. Still seems like you acknowledge that attacking from the Left is an effective media strategy.
In general, it seems that Cenk argues for one strategy and you argue for another. You seem to feel, and please stop me if I’m mischaracterizing here, that the far left should tone down their criticism of the President in order to more effectively negotiate compromises to achieve incremental partial victories on legislation. This seems to me, at best, a short term strategy. In the short term, we have a better chance of retaining our majorities. In the short term, we pass legislation, albeit flawed and possibly even counterproductive (only time will tell).
But what about the long term? That Overton Window issue is a real one, and I’m not sure you fully address it. We DO need to snatch back power from the corporate/bureaucratic/military nexus. We DO need to bring the political discourse further left in order to achieve the things we believe should be achieved. And I really don’t see how reserving all but the most timid criticism of Obama brings us closer to those goals. Should our criticisms be fair, made in good faith, and be constructive? To be sure, and to the extent some have gone beyond those bounds, I share your dismay.
I agree that “incessant bomb-throwing” for bombthrowing’s sake is counterproductive and foolish. But the Democratic Party has become an institution that rewards cowardice and corruption; there is a perverse disincentive against pushing the agenda of the “far Left,” which of course is actually mainstream. Giving Obama an all-access pass, wooing the Blue Dogs and their ilk, etc may smooth things out in the short term, but in the long term it strengthens the WRONG people. So what to do?
I do believe that BooMan’s point about attack from the left is that it should be a principled attack and not a hollow media strategy.
How are principled attacks working to shut down the wars around the world? How are they working to roll back the Bush Era invasions of privacy and curtailing of civil liberties? Is it principled to mention that the DOJ is still arguing against equality for gays?
And is writing that Rahm benefited from failing to do his due diligence any worse than pointing out Cheney’s Halliburton fortune? If we are talking merely about facts, then is investigating and compiling facts necessarily wrong? Where does investigation stop and witch hunt begin? Considering there’s barely a mention on any media, I wouldn’t say that there’s a witch hunt against Emmanuel quite yet. And let’s presume the most extreme outcome here. Let’s say Emmanuel is guilty and is a crook. If that hurts Obama then should we just shut up about it because we don’t want to hurt Obama’s “effectiveness”?
Boo can say that the Senate bill is the best we can get and it will make health care in America much better for many more people in the future. Is it unprincipled to disagree? Since nothing is set in stone yet, and the future is, well, in the FUTURE, can anyone honestly say what the bill will do and how it will perform? Is it safe from Republican tampering when they gain control?
It’s obvious it’s personal with Hamsher. I’m just not sure why.
As you will note above BooMan obviously disagrees at where I would draw the line between principled attacks and hollow media strategy.
It is personal with Hamsher because she has tended to make her calls to accountability personal to some of the most highly identified progressives in Congress. And she has done oppo research on where progressives are getting their funding and who is or has employed Congressional wives and who pays the welfare checks on “Democratic consultants”.
The first flap came when she was whipping votes in the progressive caucus to strategically draw a line in the sand on voting against any healthcare bill that did not have a public option. In that process, which was itself controversial, she started calling out members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who were acting noncommittal, endorsers of HR 676 for example. When she called out John Lewis for failing to commit, there were lots of flaming threads. And pie fights. Stupid stuff on both sides. This lead to a controversy about the fact that she was paying to dKos diarists who had been blogging healthcare issues for a while — slinkerwink and nyceve — to help whip the Congressional vote in coordination with Darcy Burner. “Paid propaganda” was one of the charges.
BooMan reasonably thinks that that tactic was bound to backfire and cause the loss of the public option altogether. It’s a reasonable argument that is finally a matter of judgment. And there were diaries here and counterdiaries on FDL about it.
But the real firestorm started when Jane called on the Susan Komen Foundation to fire Hadassah Lieberman from her job as a funds developer because Hadassah Lieberman had been employed at a lobbying shop that was representing several healthcare and insurance companies. And followed up by calling out Lanny Davis on Ed Schultz’s show — “Who’s paying you, Lanny?” Davis reminded folks of a graphic of Lieberman in blackface that FDL had done during the Lamont campaign — intending to argue that Lieberman was pandering to blacks not supporting their agenda. Blacks in the left blogosphere, as expected, went nuts.
Then Hamsher joined with labor, other progressives, Ron Paul, and Bob Barr in a letter supporting the Grayson-Paul amendment to audit the Fed. That was the beginning of the working with the enemy conroversy. And the final flap was Hamsher and Grover Norquist signing a letter to Eric Holder asking for an investigation of Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae operations during the post Gramm-Leach-Bliley period when Rahm Emmanuel was on the board of Fannie/Freddie. And going of Fox and Friends, ostensibly to talk about Senate healthcare reform bill (which she advocated killing) but instead letting the F&F audience know about the letter and calling for Rahm’s resignation.
It’s not totally personal but there is a personal edge to it in that Jane “rebutted” a diary that he wrote about how pushing for the public option and antagonizing Nelson and Lieberman drove the public option out of the Senate bill and potentially out of the resulting legislation. I’m not sure I have the arguments right; go back and look at the diaries here and on FDL. And from there is got more and more back-and-forth and heated.
if you’re “not sure why,” you evidently weren’t paying attention when Booman posted a reasoned and NOT personal disagreement with something Lady Jane said, and she responded — as she ALWAYS does to anyone who disagrees with her, and if you don’t know that, you’ve also not been paying attention — with a tantrum of vicious name-calling.
In short, your idol Jane is the one who makes it personal, every time.
Booman,
Bravo for the post. It’s nice to see a reasonable response to the posturing going on re: this topic.
Here for example is the glib excuse given by Jane Hamsher for attacking healthcare/Obama on…of all places…Fox and Friends:
“I went on Ed Shultz last night, and Fox deliberately today after yesterday’s hubub. It scares the bejesus out of the DC establishment of both parties to think that the left and right might align against the corporate interests that dominate the massive giveaways that keep happening no matter who’s in power.”
Not only is the statement absurd on it’s face (the right wing establishment is not scared by Jane Hamsher….it’s ecstatic she did it) but it also underscores the mentality of some that they either win 100% of the loaf or they don’t want any loaf at all.
You have some links or quotes to prove this?
…because the Fox and Friends host was flummoxed. She said that and then took down John Kyl and the Republican obstructionists in the Senate with the comment “Where were they for eight years?”
It was a definite mixed message.
I think it’s an assumption, but one that’s certainly not misplaced.
Take Steve M.’s response:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-jane-question-is-why-did-they-book.html
He also makes the point that while the fatcats like the bill, they’d prefer no bill to this one.
The fact is true. The bill is so awful even some liberals loathe it. And the same liberals loathe the Republicans irresponsibility about the bill and say so on Fox–without being talked over or contradicted.
I don’t know exactly what the fatcats would like. Candor is not something I expect of them. The stock market seems to think that the Senate bill is a very good thing, but that could only be a “sell on the rumor of a downside, buy on the fact” sort of reaction.
My frank opinion is that this is tempest in a teapot that mostly goes unnoticed outside a certain section of the progressive blogosphere.
Wasn’t the host Steve Doocy? That dude is in a permanent state of flummoxation. And I would distinguish him and his reaction with what the execs at Fox News hope to get out of having Hamsher on. I’m sure they’ll take some criticism of Republicans as long as they get what they really want out of her.
Here’s one from Instapundit:
December 22, 2009
JANE HAMSHER DEFECTS TO FOX: “Forget the junior Congressman from Alabama who is defecting to the Republicans. The big defection of the day was the decision by Jane Hamsher, proprietor of the left-wing Firedoglake group blog and organizer of the Hadassah Lieberman boycott, to appear on Fox News to call for the Democratic health care proposals to be defeated. While Hamsher is ultra-liberal, she points out that the Senate bill will lead to increased costs on the middle class.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 4:21 pm
That took about 3 seconds of googling.
Yeah, but not entirely accurate. I think Hamsher is opposed to the Senate bill, not all bills about health care reform.
So Glen Reynolds is not being entirely correct. And maybe a little disingenuous.
I’m not sure if I agree with your characterization of what she said but for the sake of argument I’ll give it to you. I think it’s somewhat besides the point anyway.
When Jane went on that show she knew (as she has pointed out herself in the past) that the right would disingenuously use her appearance. Fox did so right there in the clip and it continued afterwards everywhere else. Worse, she also knew that their opposition wasn’t aimed at a better bill…it was aimed to kill any bill at all.
Her excuse is that by going on she scared the left and right ‘establishment’ in Washington. That’s bunk and an unfortunate bit of self justifying egomania. She has done truly great things in the past. I just wish she would take a moment to realize that perhaps there is such a thing as disagreeing with Jane Hamsher on method and not being a sellout on principle.
While a uniting of populist movements on the right and the left might scare the establishment on the right and left, I agree with your assessment that for Jane to claim that she scares the right and left establishment in some DC-induced egomania. Being inside the Beltway tends to do that. Working in the heart of the beast, talking to Congressional staff (knowing their names), and all that.
If BooMan left his cabin and found a nice place in Adams-Morgan, we would probably have to start worrying about him. Fortunately, being a first-time dad tends to ground one in more reality that one might want.
what “great things” would those be? All she’s ever done is wage jihads against those she hates, and she hasn’t even been successful at that (see Lieberman, Joe). IMO that’s why she’s particularly desperate now.
Perhaps you mean “Natural Born Killers”?
You have to avoid engaging in the ad hominem that is currently flying around. It certainly doesn’t help Jane’s defenders that they immediately call anyone who disagrees with them members the Obama ‘personality cult’ and it doesn’t help those of us who disagree with her to do similar (although I’ve been known to mutter ‘project much?’ under my breath).
FDL has done great work on the US Attorney’s scandal, Libby’s trial and a host of other issues. And agree with them or not, they certainly have done alot of legwork on health care. There’s no reason to deny that and it doesn’t innure them from criticism.
The problem of course is that somewhere along the line Jane and others there decided that a strategy of burning down the village in order to save it was the only way to achieve progressive change. It also doesn’t help that grandiose statements and unsavory media appearances are used as tools in this effort.
That’s bad enough without anyone repairing to insult.
Marcy Wheeler and maybe a few others at that place, do what you call “legwork.”
And now she, and they, are destroying their own credibility by carrying water for Mistress Jane in her latest fatwa against Rahm and the Senate HCR bill (which have nothing to do with each other except in her own conspiracy-spinning mind).
Sorry, but I’ve watched that place devolve since 2005, and I’m calling a spade a spade. If you’re above that, good for you.
I used to respect you. What the fuck happened?
When did you turn into a Republican?
You ARE a Republican now, I hope you realize that.
The Republicans have vanished. Teabaggers are not Republicans, they are nutjob fringe freaks.
The Democratic Party is now splitting into Old Republicans and Old Democrats (Progressives).
You need to take the word “Progressive” off of this fucking website.
You are now a Republican.
You have out “Dennis Miller’ed” Dennis Miller.
I’m too new to know who’s a troll and who’s not. So I’ll leave it to others to HR or not. But this comment is beyond offensive. It is ludicrous. Did you see the thread that Cenk’s diary triggered on DKos. Are all his critics Rebulicans then?
he’s addled. Not necessarily a troll, but definitely suffering from some serious synapse dysfunction.
Thank you the lack of addled here, Booman. Have a good New Year.
This comment is not only wrong, it is needlessly hateful, totally inappropriate for the Frog Pond. You need to take a serious timeout.
Asking others to reconsider nonproductive criticism of a Democratic president is not something a Republican would do. BooMan has not aligned himself with teabaggers or Republicans in any way. Did you make a mistake and post this comment on the wrong blog?
Frankly, given the quality of your thinking, getting your respect is about as worthwhile as getting Switzerland’s oil reserves.
I can haz Swiss Oil?
This statement by Cenk really bothers me. It just sounds totally wrong, not to mention the idea that such a harebrained ‘strategy’ employed by Cenk and others is worthy of being enshrined as a “doctrine”.
Just feels really off the mark.
He’s showing his cards with that – no more hedging about where his interests lay. Real progressives are about improving this country through their action – not having actions named after them. He and Jane have much in common.
I think you’re right here – he’s flat out admitting that he’s got an ego & that having his name attached to something flatters that ego.
Other than that, there’s nothing to see here.
How blessed those of us who don’t have egos are here in Booland.
By the way, it seems that besides lack of egos there are a lot of posters who are missing a sense of humor here.
Graveyard humor has always been a distinctly minority taste.
Another narsisist on the rise. I’ve lost count of how may are out there.
As opposed to the drones toiling in the fields happily.
You really don’t have a sense of humor, do you?
I got the “humor” in in his reply, and it made me smile. But the humor was cover for the truth. So, one is either a Cenk or a drone?
Signed, A Drone
Part of having a sense of humor implies knowing that the best of it hides a truth.
Booman, your post seems to be a discussion about whether progressive bloggers like Jane Hamsher ought to criticize Pres. Obama so harshly and so frequently. I understand the concepts involved, but I don’t see why you think the discussion should be framed as, for example, “Jane should not say Obama has betrayed us,” rather than, “I disagree with Jane about this. I don’t think Obama has betrayed us.”
You are not likely to change Jane’s mind about saying what she wants to say, so why not concentrate on disseminating your own views rather than trying to influence other people’s statements?
For myself, although I’m very disappointed by some of Obama’s decisions, I’m not yet ready to say he is betraying the principles I voted for. In my mind, Pres. Obama is still on probation.
All I know is that it’s tiresome to watch some attack him for everything and some cheer him on regardless of what he does. Why can’t we hold him accountable and support him at the same time. Obama needs to know he messed up big time in HCR. He also needs to do something about Geithner and Summers. Besides that, he’s doing a pretty good job and I personally am thankful it’s him and not McCain/Palin in there.
I may not agree fully with Cenk, but I do think that many progressive bloggers have been giving Obama huge breaks. Obama has clearly failed to make a good case for substantial health care reform.
This summer, while Obama was on a western states tour, there was a health care fair in Inglewood California. Why didn’t Obama take a quick detour to highlight the plight of thousands of people lined up for free care? Very, very few bloggers got on Obama’s case at that time (and there were a few subsequent fairs that also were missed opportunities).
And there is a lot of “just take it libs” on the topic of the Senate health-care bill’s means of funding. Taxing the middle class instead of (as the House bill does) creating a new tax bracket for half-millionaires, is political poison. And I don’t want to read Ezra or others talk about how shifting the expenses to individuals (which is what the Senate bill does) is going to reduce “costs”. It will reduce “expenditures”, but the cost of a hip replacement isn’t going to change. This conflation of “costs” with “expenditures” in order to assert that we are going to solve health care is not that different from Republicans’ high-deductable/HSA/patient-restrains-consumption “solution”.
As long as I’m on a rant, how about Ezra “rebutting” charges that insurance companies are making big profits by linking to a libertarian’s table derived from a Yahoo Finance listing of industry groups. Maybe it’s legit, but Ezra’s casual linkage to someone with Larry Kudlow and the Club for Growth on his blogroll does not inspire confidence.
Who will defend Ezra’s action in this case? Anybody here at Booman Tribune? (TO BE CLEAR: I know Booman et al are not responsible for defending Ezra, but Ezra is very symptomatic of what’s pissing off some progressives, so I think he’s a useful case to discuss.)
I have detected increasing mendacity on the part of bloggers arguing for the health care legislation we are likely to end up with.
I don’t think Hamshire was right to co-sign with Norquist. But calm, reasoned arguments about various political moves by Obama, or the policies being put forward, are essential to changing minds.
FINALLY: Do you know when Obama held his last “traditional” press conference (i.e. not with another head of state or at end of a meeting). It was July 22. This is worse than Bush. Anybody here want to defend that kind of behavior?
Best comment in this thread.
I may not (& don’t) agree with everything Cenk & Jane say, but they are right to agitate. And they make some very valid points along with their bomb-throwing.
The Left needs a strong voice, & we ought not be taken for granted by the likes of Rahm Emmanuel.
And Boo, especially with respect to Jane, it sounds like it’s gotten personal for you.
I don’t have any problem with agitation and fervent advocacy. Holding your party’s feet to the fire is totally fine. The problem is that they are calling for attacking the White House without any reasonable regard for the the consequences and without any rational relation to political strategy.
We have barely won control of the government and some Democrats have already forgotten how we got here…by being inclusive, by embracing incrementalism, by eschewing interest group centered politics.
The most ridiculous part is that the big center of contention…the current health care bill…is something most of us could barely have hoped for 4 years ago and is also emphatically not the last word in health care policy. It can and will be improved incrementally over time. If you don’t believe me ask Tom Harkin…that’s why he’s not a fan of reconciliation.
yes, it has gotten personal between Jane and Booman.
quiddity writes:
“I have detected increasing mendacity on the part of bloggers arguing for the health care legislation we are likely to end up with…
Do you know when Obama held his last “traditional” press conference (i.e. not with another head of state or at end of a meeting). It was July 22. This is worse than Bush. Anybody here want to defend that kind of behavior?”
No one will defend it, but no one will address it either, because it would mean admitting error. I’ve been noticing at this site a weird tendency to drop the subject when a commenter makes a point that’s hard to dispute.
Example: Booman critized me a week ago for being out of touch. I pointed out the difference between where I live and what I do for a living, and his circumstances.
it was the last I heard on how out-of-touch-with-the-people I am, but no one ever acknowledged they’d made a pretty silly assumption. It’s the whole “i’m not wrong because I never conceded” trick. I hate that.
WTH?
I just looked at every comment you’ve made in the last three weeks and this exchange you describe simply didn’t happen.
I told you that the people living on your street would be prime beneficiaries of the health care bill. I didn’t say you were out of touch.
Either this conversation took place much longer ago, or you invented it in your mind.
Brendan, you can come off as badly out of touch sometimes.
in my mind. I imagined this.
sorry, I missed it. Probably because I raced through after I didn’t find it in the last two weeks.
As for your response, that’s the first time I read it, so that’s why I never responded to it.
and I’m not out of touch.
i forgot to mention, I’m also one of the working poor. i really AM a paycheck away from disaster. this week, i have to explain to uncle sam how it is that I can’t afford to pay my student loan.
pardon my bile man, please.
a lot of us hoped for so much more than this, we’re still fucked, and no one’s riding to our rescue like they did for Lloyd.
I was responding to your comment about no economists on the right or left thinking the bailout was handled well. I don’t know what you want to call ‘well,’ but it definitely averted the worst and Bernacke is probably going to get confirmed because most of the people in Washington think he did a good job during the crisis (if not before it).
As for the rest, I know where you live and you know where I used to live, and we’re both plenty familiar with life in Philly. I wouldn’t say you you don’t have your hand on the pulse of the city. I was talking about your estimation of what economists think.
First off, Cenk, at least in the piece I saw, was more than a little tongue-in-cheek and lighthearted in his advocacy of the concept of push. And I do think it’s personal with Boo now.
Second, pushing from various points on the political spectrum is a traditional way of describing D.C. sausage-making.
Third, Cenk’s point seemed to me to be that push from the Left fights against suckage from the Right and as such is good in providing balance. If, for ex, Howard Dean or Jane Hamsher are wrong on certain points then those points can be argued. If they have been inappropriately mean-spirited, well, call them on it.
Fourth, if it’s wrong to attack Obama is it right to keep attacking Hamsher?
Fifth, are you telling Hamsher to shut up? Because if you are, it doesn’t seem to be working.
Sixth, Left v. Right is an easily misrepresented scale anyway. One man’s Left is another woman’s Right-Of-Center. And you can always find something to skew someone else’s rating. And no one’s rating system is the same. You might as well be comparing athletes of different eras and sports. It’s a sliding scale that hardly measures anything. If Hamsher is so far to the left that she’s right in Boolanders’ eyes, where are Boolanders in other people’s eyes?
A better measure would be a vertical scale. Top-Bottom. Does the Senate health care bill better serve the wealthiest or the poorest? What about all those people in between? Do they end up with better coverage for less money? Or does more money accrue to the top dogs? Who gets what and who pays for what?
A vertical scale could be applied to, say, the Afghan War. Cui bono? Sometimes (or often, or usually) corporate media doesn’t supply all the information you need to fully understand a subject. You have to dig.
Happy New Year from the cool, foggy Pacific Coast.
I’m really tired of seeing Dean used as a stalking horse for the likes of Hamsher. He has never called Obama names or questioned his truthfulness or motives, even while criticizing both the HCR bill and Obama’s strategic mistakes. He does not deserve to be put in the same box as the crazed Hamsher.
I don’t think Hamsher, Sirota and the rest of that crowd are especially far left. They seem to be in it for themselves as much as Limbaugh or Beck are. Whatever works to get attention. It has nothing to do with left or right. The only question on HCR is, could Obama have gotten something better? Seems to me that the battle just to get what we got proves that we couldn’t — but there’s probably a reasoned argument to be made that he could have done it better. Screaming about how he’s a corporate whore, a sellout, a liar is not among those reasoned arguments.
Is that what they’re really doing? Agitating? Going after Rahm & Fannie/Freddie is vicious and their plan seems to be to make government come to a halt to punish Obama and the Democrats while allowing George Bush, Dick Cheney, and others to commit war crimes etc without flinching an eye. No bonding of the right and left when it came time to go after the war criminals!
Dropping your panties for the right wing is not the solution at all. I’m embarrassed by Jane LIEberman’s actions. Sleeping your way to the top is no longer accepted is it?
Interesting that the name of Rush L. comes up in a discussion about whether a strategy of relentless attack would be profitable.
I never could see the sense of living your life in a manner that it will look good on television. I suppose in that worldview an admonishment to “be honest” is a strategy.
Maybe I don’t watch enough TV but this statement seems a bit hyperbolic:
What television do you watch and which radio shows to you listen to? Who do you consider progressive bloggers? Who would you consider supportive progressive bloggers?
The longer this pie fight flames on, the more I begin to think that there are more issues than goals, tactics, strategy fueling it. On all sides, there is the increasing smell of personal conflicts between people who at least have met each other and maybe even tangled outside of the blogosphere. On all sides, there seem to be other emotions than passion for change involved.
And I don’t see the realization that from the point of view of radio and TV producers (and why are they the important distribution channels), President Obama has Robert Gibbs and Dan Pfeiffer and a bunch of Senators and members of the House and almost every Democratic political operative to defend him. And also, outside of a few slots on MSNBC, shows have a Village narrative they are trying to reinforce.
I would not say that the criticism of the President for specific failures is an Overton window strategy divorced from a fair critique (who judges fair?). From what I’ve the statement about the political spectrum intends to quiet those fearful of the consequences of the President being criticized by his perceived base.
More and more this seems to be a fear-driven debate. One side fears that the President is leading us into a Republican resurgence because of backlash over essentially corporation-supporting legislation, which the public sees as corporation-supporting legislation. The other side fears that attacks on Obama’s policies, performance, ideology, and character will reinforce Republican attacks on the President and weaken his ability to pursue his agenda. Both are wrong in their fears. Based on the admittedly reduced sample of my diverse, working-class (tow truck operators, security guards, real estate agents, IT workers) neighborhood, neither of those fears are grounded.
Folks hate the Senate bill. A Ron Paul supporter, who is a nurse, told me that in her opinion, “Why don’t they just extend Medicare to everybody?” Yes, my interior response was “Huh? Huh? Huh?” (hearing Stephanie Miller’s voice say that. Folks who I know supported McCain now respect the President for the action he took in Afghanistan (not a popular action among progressives); they are willing to concede that he is a strong commander-in-chief. Most are baffled by what has gone on in Congress and the Republicans I know are angry at the stupidity of their own party. Folks are in what I would call a populist mood and wonder why Washington is still kow-towing to “the special interests”. No one I know except for a few of my closest friends has mentioned Cenk Uyghur, Jane Hamsher, firedoglake, or even Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olberman. The only audience that seems to be paying attention to this kerfluffle is about 300,000 progressive bloggers (diarists and commenters, not owners).
It’s time for the big bloggers to move on.
Other than Markos, name me one non-elected progressive opinion leader that you see on television that isn’t there to complain about the president. Name one,
why don’t you address the rest of the comment, particularly the part about how the writer spoke to working class people and asked their opinion?
i think when something doesn’t match your narrative, you prefer to drop the subject rather than engage in what could be a losing debate.
Tarheel has been supporting Hamsher’s actions in every thread on the topic. I disagree with him completely, which is obvious from what I’ve written. I feel no obligation to argue with him. He knows I don’t agree.
He also makes some of the most observant comments of anyone who posts here.
I don’t really see any way you can disagree with what I’ve posted in this piece because the alternative is to support demagoguery. If you want to be a demagogue or read a demagogue, make your case for it.
So now Jane Hamsher and Howard Dean are merely demagogues? Demi-gods or demagogues. Is that the choice here?
leave Howard Dean out of it.
What is a demagogue?
It’s an opinion leader, right? Someone with a soapbox who is persuasive, right? Someone who appeals to people’s resentments and grievances (both real and imagined), right? And someone who has no interest in fairness or truth, but only in some cause (usually themselves), right?
So, does that describe Jane? Yes. Yes, it does.
A demagogue:
And note that these are not exactly “ancient times”.
Look at this.
Make sure to deracialize it and tamp down the hate. Then looks at how the FDL pattern of argument and terms fit.
Polarization- binary argumentation
Ingroup/outgroup Thinking- “insiders” vs. “outsiders”
Slipperiness on Crucial Terms- Corporatists
Scapegoating the Out-Group- Rahm
Simple Solutions- or the lack thereof
Motivism- Obama
Rejection of the Notion of Reciprocally Binding Rules or Principles- the Uygur Principle
Personalizing of Criticisms- calling me a bottom-feeding troll, e.g., but more general of all her critics.
Apocalyptic, Eschatalogical Metanarrative- the country is going to shit if x,y,z (my demands) are not met immediately.
Denial of responsibility for situation- no acknowledgment of failed strategy
etc.
Completely? No common ground at all?
I agree that the blogosphere creates a false-consciousness about who’s listening and I agree that people are in a populist mood.
But I don’t attribute good faith anymore while you maintain it.
There’s a major brouhaha going on in the netroots that is bigger than any personal grievances between bloggers. You do a decent job of describing it, but it’s not the case that I am on one side of it.
I think there’s a lot of legit criticism out there that’s just being given too much weight. One example would be the PhRMA deal. Sure, that broke a campaign promise about openness, but seriously, who the hell cares? I mean, that is tiddlywinks. Reimportation of drugs is kind of an idiotic policy anyway. Sure, I’m all for cheap medicine, so let’s stop subsidizing everyone else’s medicine and make it cheaper to buy American drugs. In any case, deals needed to be made to get this done. I’m not worried about it. But for some, this is evidence of total turpitude.
The same goes for a lot of stuff, especially the AIG pass-through to Goldman. I don’t think most people have the slightest understanding of high finance or what it meant that only JP and Goldman were left standing to absorb the mess and keep us out of Hoovervilles. I’m tired of lazy feel-good populism. There’s enough it floating out there that I don’t need to amplify it.
But, hey, this stuff is controversial and worthy of debate. What Rahm Emanuel didn’t do as a board-member of Fannie in 2000 is another matter entirely.
Preach. Same crap about NAFTA. I’m tired of the endless anger over it as if it killed 1,000,000 jobs; the truth is it has probably been a slight net-gain. It hasn’t been some hallowed deal that’s created millions of jobs, and it’s not some policy that sends millions of jobs elsewhere; both sides on this issue are mostly disingenuous, but the left is the side that especially pisses me off because it’s more about “der turk der jerbs!” than anything else.
I disagree with you about importation of drugs, though.
Fair enough.
There aren’t a whole lot of progressives on TV.
Rachel Maddow and the others on MSNBC seem to spend most of their shows dispelling Republican and right-wing untruths about Obama.
As far as their opinions on the Senate health care bill, aren’t their opinions THEIR OPINIONS? And if there is a lot of opposition to certain aspects of the bill, doesn’t that say something about the bill along with who is saying it?
Just a quick comment here, Booman…
I’ve been a “lurker” here for many years and the reason I keep coming back is because of your reasoned approach to things, and the intelligent discussions that you have with your readers. I just wanted to let you know that it’s much appreciated.
“All the best” to you and your family in 2010 and beyond.
The biggest mistake in Cenk’s post that you don’t address is that Jane Hamsher and Cenk are attacking from the RIGHT with the Norquist letter while Howard Dean in his call to kill the bill was actually attacking from the LEFT and saying we needed a government run public option and this made the reform inadequate.
There is a big difference in the tactic and the direction of attack. Just because you are a progressive does not mean you can mouth off Republican talking points; that simply reinforces Republican memes and lends them credibility.
I mean, Jane Hamsher was quoted by Orin Hatch on the senate floor approvingly. And she was happy about it! Wow. Orin Hatch was giddy getting a lefty blogger using his party’s taxation meme to hit the president.
I hate talk of the overton window: but in her attacks against taxes Hamsher has been moving it to the right.
Hamsher will hoist that old Overton window in any direction that gets her face on television.
Of course she was happy about Hatch. She’s fucking ecstatic everytime somebody important acknowledges her existence.
Hamsher is on the right. She’s a publicity hound. And a demagogue.
Okay, then I guess no one here at Booman needs to pay attention to her.
I agree with 95% of your post. Apart from the outliers like Jane and Cenk, i don’t think HCR really was this massive divide in the blogosphere. I think ultimately we all would have agreed that the best course of action was to (1) publicize the fact that Lieberman and Nelson obstructed reform so that it was better for insurance companies and worse for ordinary americans and (2) fight to make it better every second until it lands on Obama’s desk.
I think you overlook the fact that the netroots are basically the GOP in 1964, when the rank and file movement conservatives finally become organized and engaged under Goldwater. Its really not until Bush II that we see the extreme power they have over the party establishment, forcing them to take positions and govern in a certain way that I imagine make the pollsters the party employs cringe. All of this is to say I think the netroots are still figuring out ways to flex their muscles and have an impact on legislative outcomes. You’ve done a great job pointing out how counterproductive a lot of our advocacy efforts have been, that’s important, it keeps us grounded. But perhaps we should be discussing more what advocacy efforts and engagement actually worked and then do more of that. And if we are going to be critical, lets not do so in a way that stymies future political entrepreneurs from the netroots who are coming up with new ways to influence the debate. Innovation, trial and error are ugly and your efforts to hold up a mirror to us at times and show us the monsters we’ve become is invaluable. But if we’re ever going to get the sort of influence in the democratic party that movement conservatives have, innovation and trial and error will be what get us there.
The other thing that was happening 1964 to 68 was the Vietnam War and how opposition to it fractured the Democratic Party, culminating in the Democratic Convention debacle. This spectacle of violence and disunity in the Democratic Party drove millions of voters to the Republicans — who would want to vote for a party when its supposed supporters were rioting in the streets?
Regardless of its origin or purpose — however “principled” everyone is — continued opposition to Obama on the part of Democratic party supporters will undermine his authority and credibility, perhaps to the extent that a likable Republican candidate in 2012 could tip the scales. I think this is what Booman is afraid of, and I am too.
It’s damaging for the left to try to weaken Obama politically, and nobody wants to go through 1968 again. But when the left disagrees with OBama, I don’t think we or the democratic party should start pulling the 1968 card. We’re pretty far from that and not even Cenk or Jane is even in the same universe as the protesters in 1968.
Big picture I think the netroots have two valuable roles to play in American politics, and yes, we do have to sometimes take a step back and think these big meta questions and then apply ourselves accordingly:
If I had to add a third, I would add something like
3. Work with other progressive institutions and the Democratic party to advocate, organize around, and campaign for specific progressive reforms.
The last one is tough and with health care we showed we have a lot left to learn. I think we’re pretty darn good at the first two, and I think in 5-10 years we’ll have mastered the third.
Well, if you read the comment threads at Firedoglake, Corrente, etc, you see just as much vitriol against Obama as you saw against Johnson in 1968, maybe more, and for no reason that I can understand.
In the mid-1960s, many Democrats thought Republicans were a spent force in America — their last two presidential candidates, Nixon then Goldwater, had been defeated, and in Goldwater’s case, Americans turned away in revulsion from his radicalism. Then you had Johnson’s Voting Rights Act, the War on Poverty, Medicare– why, Democrats were on a roll, American was on their side, the Democrats had a permanent left-wing majority, what could possibly go wrong?
The problem is that the FDL crowd turns out not to be articulate, at least when it comes to articulating policy goals as opposed to conspiracy theories and personal, uninformed attacks on Obama’s motives, “real” masters, blablabla. Because of that Hamsher becomes the bad money that drives out the good to the extent that she is seen as a voice from the “left”. She needs to be confronted for the same reason Lieberman and Nelson do.
Cathie, having lived through those years I think you missed a couple of things in the dynamics.
First off, it was very important to oppose the Vietnam War. And the keepers of the Democratic Party wanted that war. The Republicans generally supported the war. So what were people who opposed the war to do? Not oppose the war because it didn’t fit nicely into the selections in the voting booth? Perhaps they should have just stayed home like the voters in Virginia and New Jersey did this last November? In fact, that’s what happened.
Second, the rioting was done by the police in Chicago. It wasn’t so much people hating anti-war demonstrators (there was no anti-war candidate) but not seeing a real choice between Humphrey and Nixon. And even back then, when Democrats are selling their party as warm-over Republicanism, then people don’t buy the warm-over stuff. And you may not recall but Nixon ran as the peace candidate. Granted, he was lying, but that’s how he sold himself.
Third, your quick parallel left out two people speaking out against the war: Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. By most metrics Kennedy would have defeated Nixon. Those two men were principled. They were silenced. Maybe if they’d just shut up the Democrats could have won the Vietnam War and everything would have been fine..
I lived through those years too, and I agree it was much more complicated. I guess my main point is that politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum — external events like wars and assassinations and people flying airplanes into buildings, will have an enormous and unexpected effect.
Armando distorted the post. It is really not what she says. That is always critical. Hamsher is wrong because she & Grover Norquist teamed up to implicate Rahm for his prior employment and Obama because his admin. removed the cap Bush had put on Fannie & Freddie which he was allowed to do without Congressional approval. Her conspiracy theory goes that he only did this so he could buy toxic assets & other nefarious reasons…..etc., etc. So it makes perfect sense she feels to write the atty gen about Rahm asking he be investigated & screech at Congress to investigate Obama. That is not ok in IMHO. With the idiot Norquist, this could tie up Obama for the next 3 yrs. Whitewater? Travelgate? Spec Pros. Anything to get Obama back because she obviously hates him. I have never heard her say one positive thing about Obama–ever. You won’t have to worry about thinking he is too far right on policy because there will be no more passed. Investigations tend to tie your hands. It was a stupid thing to do. All for spite, nothing else.
Spite…hate…conspiracy theory…Whitewater.
Doesn’t it strike you even a bit odd that Jane is calling for ONLY Rahm to be investigated? What about all the other board members? Why wasn’t this letter sent as soon as AG Holder was sworn in? Doesn’t it seem even a smidge off that Jane is pulling this stunt now?
To me, it looks like a personal vendetta.
By the way, does Jane have anything to show for her bellicosity & agitation? As far as I can tell, all her actions haven’t made 1 iota of difference. Shouldn’t that be a cautionary tale for the rest of us?
Booman, I am pasting a response I typed to Jane Hamshers latest diatribe over at HuffingtonPost…..they didn’t post it, I guess it must have hit home a little. I think every comment I’ve ever posted to one of Janes posts hasn’t been including in the comments, is she moderating her own discussion threads. I spent a few minutes composing it and hoped someone would see it. Thanks in advance if you let it be posted, freedom of speech is a good thing.
Response to Hamshers latest post at Huff.
There is so much wrong with your post. It is very misleading and cherry picks facts, wow, just like a republican. I think you overestimate your power in this battle, 60 democrats and independents passed the senate’s bill, you couldn’t even get one of them to go along with your ideas to kill the bill. Not one. I’m very glad that those 60 senators are pragmatic and know that it isn’t going to get any easier in an election year to pass anything. All those good folks in American who will benefit from this bill will be very appreciative that someone tried to help them, they turn into votes. I know many people who are going to directly benefit from this bill.
I am an extreme liberal, a real liberal, who has been observing and participating in politics for a long time and when Clinton compromised, I swallowed hard and accepted that in order to make change, even if it is incremental, compromise is mandatory. Now with this president, I do the same, because the status quo is not accecptable.
This corpratism you speak of, it’s America. We are not a socialist country even though I wish we were. Did you just recently realize this? Do you really believe that Obama has created this phenomenon in 11 months as president? I’ve observed it for many years, the Bush years really took it to a whole new level, Haliburton, Blackwater, all the others. And really, do you think Obama can just change the way Washington works by waving a magic wand? Would Hillary have done it? There are so many unrealistic expectations about what a democratic controlled congress can do, especially with the bastardization of the filibuster in the last 16 years. I know you understand the filibuster problem, but apparently ignore it when thinking about health care and getting something passed.
You and Cenk need to work with the people who are in charge, Obama, Reid and Pelosi to try to change the way things work. Do you think by “relentlessly attacking” them that you are going to have any sway with them? When I’m attacked, I don’t feel inclined to embrace the person attacking me. I’ve spoken to many liberals over the last couple of months and you know what, they are very wise to the ways of Washington, they understand the way things work and support the president in trying to get something out of this dysfunctional system.
I’ve been going back through old posts, looking for some perspective on the lefty blog bustups of late, and I see how similar the debate now is with the “dump Geitner” movement back in mid-March.
A push to remove Geitner because he’s too close to Wall Street, led by many of the same members of the lefty blogosphere who oppose the HC bill now, which got support from the right, though they had a very different set of end goals.
And the the critics were right. Geitner was not the best choice. But when it comes to governing, I can’t see how taking down Obama’s Treasury Secretary roughly six weeks into his term, as the stimulus debate was starting, in any way represented working with the Administration, or a “push from the left.”
That’s kneecapping, plain and simple. Which is why question the motives of some of these same bloggers/activists now. They’ve ground these axes many times before.
But everything in this passage is perfectly true. It’s becoming clear to more and and more progressives, with the exception of dead-enders like you, Booman, that the present American political system is a scam. Obama’s followed the playbook of the Democratic Congressional opposition to Bush II: we’d like to help the American people, but we just can’t, because the Republicans won’t let us.
The two corporate parties have been using the gridlock that the Founders built into the American political system with consummate skill. Every significant decision that Obama has made since taking office benefits the Few and hurts the Many, yet Obama is applauded for his “liberal victories”.
The first step in restoring a measure of justice and fairness to American national politics is to see through the con game that the two parties have been playing against the American people since Reagan. If enough people see through it, the system will become delegitimized, and the lying and deceit that it depends upon will no longer work.
I hope that the posts by Cenk Uygur and Jane Hamsher mark the beginning of a new truth-telling by progressive bloggers. In contrast, you, Booman, serve the same function as mass media pundits: to confuse and distract the public by endlessly explaining away why, despite continually working against us, the system is good, and that we must understand it as it presents itself, instead of seeing through it.
We are politically powerless. But liberating ourselves from delusion is a form of freedom in itself. You, Booman, don’t even have that.
Yes, Booman is a prisoner of his own mind!
nalbar
Yes, we can use the distrust of the system and of elites that people had in the 60s. Why do you think the Right hates the 60s so much?
Who knows what the new decade holds in store… Certainly, the 60s were the last time we had anything like a functional democracy in this country, as opposed to a feigned, or managed democracy.
Your post is a pretty good example of how a person can see what they want to see and not what they were meant to see.
nalbar
I don’t think most people who lived through the 1960’s would describe them as a time of functioning democracy, whatever that means.
Most observers were concerned that we were losing the battle with communism, that our cities were rioting, that our children were acting self-destructively, that our universities were in turmoil, that our leaders were being assassinated, that we were losing a war that probably shouldn’t have been waged, and that no one seemed to have any answers for any of it. I wouldn’t call the era ‘functional,’ although there was a decent degree of prosperity for the right kind of people.
I shouldn’t be surprised that when you look at the 60s from the point of view of contemporaries, you look at them through the eyes of the establishment, as opposed to the anti-war and civil rights movements and the counterculture, but I must admit I am a bit taken aback.
This indicates to me that you will never be able to connect with any stirrings of democracy in this country.
your average American is now the establishment? Do you listen to yourself?
Now, I know that you aren’t arguing that Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden and Huey Newton and Malcolm X and Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan and the rest of the counterculture thought we had a functioning democracy. Or do I?
I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
People like the ones you mention challenged elites, and that’s what made the democracy functional, in the sense that truth was spoken to power, and public debate was not controlled by corporate mass media.
Today we have a managed democracy. And when someone speaks the truth to power, they get attacked by bloggers like you, as you did in this post.
You’re living in a fantasy land.
Oh geeze, you have to link to that guy. And when I was in such a good mood. I literally cringed when I saw his face.
What’s interesting about him is that people born after about 1970 really have no idea how evil he really was. Another one of America’s dirty secrets.
Booman, you could have won your argument with just his name. We will pay the price of that guy for 200 years. Sure Bush and Cheney were bad, but nobody compares to Hoover.
nalbar
No, it’s an example of you trying to be clever and me using your cleverness against you.
I guess you are too young to appreciate the view of the world that The Prisoner was trying to convey. Hopefully, people coming of age today will not turn out to be as quietistic as you and Booman, who, having grown up with managed democracy when it was not quite so brazen, cannot see it for what it is.
I’m afraid I am not intelligent enough to explain it to you.
Sorry.
And I watched the Prisoner when it first came out.
Like I said, you are seeing what you want, not what is meant for you to see. (hint)
nalbar
It’s always sometime in the past (e.g. since Reagan) when this country was idyllic and corporations and tycoons didn’t determine who was in Congress and the White House and how they would make decisions. It’s horseshit, Alexander.
People constantly tell me how the Democratic Party used to be great. When the fuck was that? During Jim Crow? While the sent us to die in Vietnam? When Teddy Kennedy felt the need to run against the sitting Democratic president? While Clinton was pissing away his majorities with unrealistic overly-ambitious health care plans? When was this wonderful period in our past of which you speak? And how is the situation right now worse than it was under Carter or Johnson or Truman or FDR? How?
No one ever has an answer for that. It’s always “the world is coming to an end because Obama didn’t let the financial sector collapse like they deserved to.” It’s mostly hot-air.
You know, what Obama did in building his coalition for victory was unprecedented, and the true answer to the DLC-corporatist approach the party has been using since Dukakis got his head handed to him. But no one wants to look at that or the OFA, or think about how it can start the bend the cost-curve on two decades of the Dems feeding at the same trough as the Republicans. Relax, fix yourself a lemonade.
People constantly tell me how the Democratic Party used to be great. When the fuck was that?
The Democratic Party, for various reasons like the Great Depression and the high economic growth of the 1960s, as well as powerful unions, was able to create and expand the welfare state under FDR and Johnson. Yes, Johnson escalated the Afghan war, but in escalating the war in Afghanistan, Obama is worse than Johnson, because he is repeating Johnson’s mistake.
Obama continues Clinton’s and the Republican dismantlement of the welfare state. The present health care plan is worse than nothing. During his renomination hearings, Bernanke basically said that Social Security needs to be dismantled because we can’t afford it, but said nothing about the costs of America’s two (so far) wars.
Economists are supposed to give facts, and be impartial on policy issues, like guns vs. butter. (Also, the chairman of the FED should worry about the financial system, not politics.) But hardly a complaint was raised. And that’s who Obama chose to renominate! That’s just one example of how corrupt his administration is.
Johnson expanded civil rights; Obama continues Bush 2’s program of shredding the Bill of Rights:
The list goes on and on.
I can’t judge your blockquote because it leads to post with self-analysis and no linkage.
I’m not hear to tear down LBJ, but the dude did get a million Vietnamese killed and nearly 60,000 American boys. He was a giant on civil rights and belongs with Lincoln in a pantheon of great American presidents. But you’d probably focus exclusively on the negative and tell us that the world never had it so bad.
You can’t be bothered to follow one extra link? That’s one way of covering your eyes, so that you don’t see the true nature of your liberal savior.
I looked for and did not find any non-self-referential link. He linked to himself.
US: Guantanamo Prisoners Not `Persons’
Spoken like a true Nader supporter. The guy who single-handedly brought us George W. Bush.
You dimwitted Democrats sound like a broken record. I have never voted for a third party. The only time I voted non-Democratic is when I lived in Cambridge, and I was put off by us being given another Kennedy. You might find this opinion objectionable, but I don’t believe that dynasties have a place in democracies. And no, I wouldn’t have voted for a Republican if the Democrat wasn’t a shoe-in.
Just listen to yourself. You say Nader “single-handedly brought us George W. Bush”. Hasn’t it occurred to you that the theft of the election orchestrated by James Baker, and Al Gore’s, as well as the Democrats in Congress, refusal to resist an obvious coup had anything to do with it?
You are a zombie, or perhaps more precisely, a mini Booman.
Are you actually still defending Obama after the healthcare debacle?
Seriously, dude. The 11-dimensional chess match was a nice fantasy, but Obama screwed us.
It is possible — highly debatable, but certainly possible — to argue that we got screwed. But maybe you could explain how it was Obama who did the screwing.
Booman, Your two arguments are absolutely sound, but here’s another one. I see no evidence that the right or even the MSM cares anything about what “progressives” are saying. The fact that Obama is relentlessly attacked from the left will do nothing to “convince” the right and center that he is really not so much on the left, because they simply don’t care that some fringe lefties are attacking him, all they care about is that he advocates policies they consider left-wing. The strategy is about as clever as sneaking into a movie theatre walking backwards so that the doorperson will supposedly think you’re actually on your way out.
The analogous strategy does work and has long worked for the Right because a lot of the RW crazies are actually in Congress, or are other kinds of bigshots, and hence get lots of press, making their slightly less extreme colleagues look moderate in comparison.
The only real way to push the envelope leftward is to pass legislation and institute policies that really make people’s lives better, even if they didn’t support you in the first place. Not words but deeds.
You know what’s so pathetic about this controversy? I actually lived through the 60s and as far as I can see Obama is the most genuinely liberal president we’ve had since JFK. God knows the Right and the military-industrial complex were strong enough in the 1960s, they are even stronger today. If you had any objectivity you would realize that they are doing evrything they can to trip him up, just like they did to JFK. But the saving grace of the present is that for a much larger sector of the American population than was true at that time, the military, the banks, the MSM, corporate america, have lost their credibility. Those on the left who are attacking Obama are following a pre-set narrative, just like the wingnuts do. They seem to lack the perspective to judge what is actually going on. The Right wants you to attack Obama, and you’re doing just that.
the saving grace of the present is that for a much larger sector of the American population than was true at that time, the military, the banks, the MSM, corporate america, have lost their credibility.
Then why is Obama not making the slightest effort to resist these institutions that have lost credibility? Instead, other than having dropped the Republican war on women and science, he continues or expands on every other Bush policy: continuing and escalating war, further cutting away at personal liberties, giving giveaways to corporations while doing nothing to slow down the bipartisan program to dismantle what’s left of the welfare state, doing nothing to help struggling homeowners and workers.
If you were paying attention, you’d realize that Nixon was more liberal than Obama. Nixon wanted to establish a negative income tax (that got sidetracked due to Watergate), he established the EPA (Obama is doing nothing about global warming), and he finally wound down the war that America was in then.
I think what Alexander is trying to say is that if Obama would just wave his magic wand and spread around some pixie dust then all our problems would disappear in a burst of Lucky Charms. Or something.
You people are as delusional as the wingnuts.
Fortunately, the Booman Tribune is an extreme case, and a good portion of the progressive blogosphere is coming to grips with the fact that Obama is just a more deceptive and refined corporate tool than Bush was.
You people are as delusional as the wingnuts.
I guess we are. Good of you to come by and let us know.
Happy New Year!
Instead of making snarky remarks, why don’t you try to think?
People like you eternally loyal to the present Democratic Party are like Charlie Brown’s constantly believing that Lucy will hold the ball for him, no matter how many times she has tricked him. This is not a difficult problem. The resources needed to figure this out exist in American popular culture. But you people are too traumatized by what your beloved Democratic Party has done to you to figure this out.
Instead of making snarky remarks, why don’t you try to think?
A bit arrogant of you to suggest I don’t, no?
But you people are too traumatized by what your beloved Democratic Party..
It’s not ‘my’ party. I last voted this September for Socialist Left Party (Norway) by absentee ballot.
The purity tests of you and a few other users are simply becoming tedious.
I don’t understand what you mean by purity tests.
The issue is: do you understand the real purpose of the American political system, or do you have sentimental delusions about it?
Since you have knowledge of Norwegian politics, surely you must understand by now that the American system is designed not to be democratic?
Since you didn’t say anything substantive in your original post, I could only suppose that you agree with what Booman says about Cenk et al.
Thanks you for sourcing the Charlie Brown reference. I was about to be like, “what is this Charlie Brown of which you speak?”
The fact that Jane Lieberman Hamsher and other “progressive liberals” believe that the only answer to our nation’s problems today is to ban with the right wing fringe of America is disgusting. Republicans are never the answer unless the question is, “Who is responsible for destroying the nation while blaming the liberals?”.