I don’t think Armando really addressed my point. If it makes him feel any better, I do acknowledge a newfound appreciation for the challenges Clinton faced once the Republicans took over Congress. Yet, my problems with Clinton have always been less about policy triangulation in the 1995-2001 period than about his incompetence in the 1993-1994 era, the DLC’s fundraising strategy for the DNC et. al., and his personal shortcomings that damaged the party and the country leading to the Gore/Bush fiasco. But I don’t think Armando ever realized that my objections to the Clintons were less about policy ideology than political ideology. I was more offended by Lanny Davis and Dick Morris than I was by welfare reform and school uniforms. Most of all, I was offended by Al From. But all of this was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter much. The party of today is much better and much healthier than it was at the end of Clinton’s presidency. And it still sucks.
As for the rest, I was going to reply to Cenk’s Uygur Doctrine, and I’ll just wrap Armando’s thoughts on what blogs ought to do into that piece (when I get to it).
I’m thinking you mean Al From, founder of the Orwellian-named Democratic Leadership Council.
Not to be confused with Bob Shrum. Just saying.
yes, thank you. I fixed it. It’s that damn David Frum that screws me up.
But Shrum isn’t much better .. he stinks at running a campaign
I had a real eye opener a few days ago, after seeing the latest Gallup poll that had Obama’s approval rating at 87% of Liberal Democrats. Among racial groups, it was 91% approval from the blacks and about ~70% for Hispanics.
But if one were to guess what Obama’s approval rating among self-described Liberals is using Liberal blog posts and commenters as a gage, I’d guess it was maybe 10%.
So it seems to me there is a huge disconnect between the people who are the base, and the people who think they are the base.
And I’ve wondered since the inauguration what the motivation is behind some of the bloggers and commentors. Is it really necessary to blog post after post of negative critique, every day? What does that accomplish? I guess there’s a certain market for readers that are of constant harping/bitching variety, so it might be good for hits, or perhaps they think of themselves as somehow a loyal opposition and would be accused of selling out if they posted anything remotely positive.
But it just seems to me that doing this 24/7 is a form of wankery because it often comes down to posting to ‘prove’ how right they are/were. And I wonder about the psychological need of obviously bright people posting how right they are, over and over again. Whether you think Obama should be doing ‘x’ is the right thing, or if you knew all along Obama was worse than Hillary or Hitler, you’ve made your point already, over and over. Can ya give it a rest?
Exactly right:
Is there? If some pollster were to call me up and ask my opinion re: Obama’s approval rating … I’m still gonna give him good marks .. I’m not gonna let the Repukes have that satisfaction … and I’m still gonna want to push Obama to do better than he is
What the blogger opinion of Obama is doesn’t figure into the criticisms of Obama’s policies and tactics (and its the tactics that are driving some bloggers nuts). Obama’s popularity is not going to help or hurt Democrats in 2010. But a bad healthcare bill will hurt in 2010. And there are a lot of non-blogging progressive Democrats who got out for the first time in 2008 and worked hard in canvassing, contributed funds, and participated in phone banks. These folks are not likely to show up to pull a Democratic Senator’s chestnuts out of the fire after voting for a healthcare bill that is unpopular locally.
Some folks mistake the comments on progressive blogs that are savaging Obama with accusations of bait and switch and claiming to have known it all along as being from progressive Democrats. Many of them are leftier-than-thou novoters or unshakable Naderites. The should not be confused with those critics who still hope for a successful Obama administration that strengthens progessive Democrats.
They say they are progressives and that they need to keep Obama’s feet to the fire.
I say it’s a bunch of hogwash.
these are people who formed this little zombie cult on another blog, and the founder pays them to go out and spread hate and divisiveness among liberals on those blogs.
The question I keep asking is why is she really doing this and why is she paying people to do that.
Must read today re Obama’s first year in office – not as bad as the right and left want to make it:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article6968283.ece
It shouldn’t need to be said, but the choice in 2008 was between Obama and a very short list of other people, both Democrats and Republicans. No good case can be made that any one of them would be doing a better job than Obama is doing, or that the country would be in better shape with their leadership than it is with his.
The only one for whom any case at all could be made is Hillary. But c’mon! In what way would she govern more ‘to the left’ than Obama? Would the Republicans and the Blue Dogs co-operate more with her than with him? Of course not.
The tea baggers would be screaming ‘socialism” just as loud. The primary difference would be that instead of the birther nonsense, and thinly veiled racism, we’d be treated to endless reruns of Ken Starr’s greatest hits and hardly veiled sexism.
More important, Obama won the nomination because he and his team were more competent than she and her team were. Their strategy was better. Their organization was far more disciplined and focused. They could count better. I’d argue that Obama is on the verge of getting major health care reform– disappointing as it is to me and to many– because again he and his team can count. They got the best deal for which they could get 60 votes in the Senate. I’m pleased Hillary is Secretary of State. But there’s no reason to think she’d be pursuing better policies with more success than Obama is if she were President.
Still think i was right.
I’m 32, so I was a fairly young political observer during Clinton’s first two years. I was 16-17 at the time, and this was pretty much before the internet, MSNBC or Fox News. I watched a lot of CNN back then.
But I remember what happened fairly distinctly. It’s easy to look back and say Clinton screwed up or whatever, but that’s not really what happened. Instead, Clinton was stopped again and again by GOP filibusters led by Bob Dole and joined by the conservative southern Dems who were still a sizable part of the caucus.
Clinton could only get 50 Senate votes for his landmark budget bill even though the Dems had 56 (I believe) Senators. Bob Dole was not some nice old guy like he is in his Viagra commercials. He was a mean old bastard, a mix of John McCain and Mitch McConnell, and used every trick to shut down various Clinton initiatives. There weren’t as many filibusters then as there are now, but that’s because they weren’t always needed. The conservative Dems in the Senate would vote with the GOP to kill things in committee. Health care being of course the biggest example.
The GOP would block everything they could, then blame the Dems for not getting stuff done. The GOP presented a coherent plan, their Contract for America, while the Dems presented no plan at all. I never thought the country really wanted these Republicans in power, but instead were suckered into thinking that Dems were lazy or ineffective because of GOP stalling tactics.
We’re seeing the same thing now, exactly the same behavior by the GOP, but lucky for Obama he has much better numbers in the Senate. That said, Obama and Clinton share one flaw in that they are allowing the GOP to define the media narrative (Dem infighting and/or incompetence versus GOP obstruction).
I’m hoping the Dems get a lot more passed in 2010 (and more jobs created) so that the GOP attacks fall flat. They should consider taking the fight to the GOP on their total lack of seriousness, and keep reminding folks that it was GOP leadership that got us into this huge mess in the first place.
Boo writes: “I was more offended by Lanny Davis and Dick Morris than I was by welfare reform and school uniforms.”
I’m just guessing, but you probably weren’t in a school where you were made to wear uniforms and probably weren’t depending on your welfare check.
nothing ever happened with school uniforms, it was a line in his SOTU speech.
I opposed the welfare reform for the things that Bill Clinton promised to fix with it, but didn’t, not for the parts he wanted and campaigned on. Primarily, this was the treatment of legal resident aliens.
“For most of us, that motivation was originally outrage at what the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress were doing.”
If you go back far enough, I think a lot of people got into blogging during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. It seemed at the time that the whole country was going nuts, the Democrats in congress were by and large just trying to keep low, and the media was egging it all on. So, I think the original point was to have some place to commiserate, rant and attack Republicans and the media. Hopefully, this would lead to some infrastructure to battle the VRWC.
During the Bush years, it became a place for people to vent their rage over a stolen election and the hard turn right the country was taking, and to organize. On a daily basis it was a way to attack Bush, Inc. and even moreso a place to feel welcome amongst kindred spirits in what was a very hostile environment.
So, now we have Obama. The blogosphere seems to concentrate on atacking Obama and his administration’s policies, faults, failures and much less on attacking Republican insanity. Unlike the late Clinton years, there aren’t many blogs playing the role of defending Obama and instead some seem to be focusing on attacking him. And it seems to me that a lot of people who during the Clinton years were pretty level-headed were radicalized during the Bush years and are even moreso now.
That’s how I see the overall picture.
Amen.
The sad thing is that Obama needs our support this past year as much as Clinton did during the hearings.
He walked into a mess, we all knew that. What we don’t know, but, many suspect, is that things on every end were far worse then is known to the public.
And this guy is charged with fixing it all, granting these spoiled progressives their every wish, dealing with hateful republicans and their teabaggers, and a world left in turmoil and on the edge thanks to Bush & Co. policies for 8 years.
the fact that he, one human, could not do it all and in less then a year, has people like AH of the H post and JH of lake, out to destroy him. They probably want to beat the republicans to destroying his presidency because he is not pure enough, is being president to all of the country and not just this sliver of people and decided to save our economic system from collapsing and having that second great depression instead of tackling those true progressive issues.
Clinton’s first hundred days were a mess. He couldn’t make decisions and drifted a lot.
The health care fiasco helped usher in the Republican wins for congress.
During the 2008 primaries, the Clintons damaged the Democratic party with their all consuming craving to be in the White House.
The Senate basically voted Hillary out of the Senate to be SoS.
The Clintons are part of the past as the Democratic party has changed.
When I met Al From during the early part of the primaries, he had a very good opinion of Barack Obama.
He didn’t see him as someone who was too far removed from the DLC.
If what you disliked about Bill Clinton was his embrace by and of the DLC and Al From. Well Barack Obama is in the same category.
And I always thought that was the case myself. And unlike Clinton who had to govern in the roaring wind of a right wing hegomeny, Barack Obama has a much stronger progressive community and infrastructure behind him. And he’s ignoring it…and I know that Bill Clinton would have welcomed such a progressive strength as the Bernie Sandrs story makes quite clear.
As David Axelrad wrote to Barack as they were conidering whether to run or not…one of the things he said is that Barack Obama really doesn’t like to be criticized.
But I don’t think that should be a factor in fighting for what is better policy for this country.
But to Al From, Barack Obama was his kind of Democrat