The story du jour is going to be Robert Gibbs’s interview with The Hill. The White House is frustrated with the relentless negativity they’re getting from their left flank, which is the same exact thing that I’ve been fulminating against ever since a good part of the progressive blogosphere decided to fight against the passage of the health care bill. Much of what Gibbs said needed to be said, albeit probably in a less dismissive tone. For example, Gibbs goes too far here:
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
This is an exaggeration. While we won’t be “satisfied” until we have a Canadian-style health care system, we would have been content with a public option that got the ball rolling down that road. And we don’t want to eliminate the Pentagon. We want to get the peace dividend we were denied when terrorism replaced communism as the raison d’etre for our astronomical military budget. We know it’s nearly impossible to eliminate military programs, but we feel that the military budget is so bloated and our missions are so over-ambitious that we should trim the Pentagon before we touch Social Security, Medicare, or other valuable social programs. Gibbs knows we’re right on these issues, so he should be a little more respectful despite our detachment from reality.
On this part, I agree with Gibbs completely:
“There’s 101 things we’ve done,” said Gibbs, who then mentioned both Iraq and healthcare.
Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.
Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.
As I’ve been saying for about a year, the progressive commentariat is not representative of “the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.” That doesn’t make “the professional left” wrong on the issues. For the most part, they’re right on the issues. Where they tend to err is their understanding of Washington DC, the Congress, and the political realities facing elected Democrats all over this country. They err when they assign blame in the wrong places for the results we’ve seen so far.
If Gibbs thinks his comments are going to win over the progressive elite, he’s the one who needs to be drug-tested. But I feel his pain.
My first thoughts when reading that quote were: “Ugh, the poutrage today at DK and FDL is going to be unbearable.”
Yet another day in which a mistep means the WH will be on the defensive. And yet another day in which the “progressives” will spend more time and energy going ballistic at the WH rather than focusing on things that matter more than a dumb quote.
Pretty much. But maybe a couple of people will reevaluate their priorities.
Boo – you use the word “we” a lot in that post – do you consider yourself part of the Professional Left? I have to say I don’t in that you appear to approach things in a more balanced way, give credit to the administration when they do good things and criticise when they need to be criticised. I really don’t think that Obama and the WH are too far away from the Professional Left as far as the issues go and that is indeed one source of their (obama and WH) frustration.
Progressivism is hard to define, but it involves certain values.
It would be hard to find a progressive value that I don’t share. I support single-payer national health care, an end to the war on drugs, strong labor laws, gay marriage, amnesty for undocumented workers, a roll back of our foreign military basing, and end to war in Afghanistan, more economic stimulus, massive cuts to the Pentagon’s budget, protecting Social Security benefits, civilian trials for terrorism suspects, rigid enforcement of the 4th amendment, limited use of the State Secrets privilege, and so on.
The difference is that I am interested in progress. You don’t eat a sandwich all at once, but one bite at a time. I know that this Congress is not progressive. Expecting progressive outcomes from it is a recipe for disappointment.
BooMan–in terms of your being in the “professional Left”–do you live (i.e., is your primary income) off your blogging?
Why? I think it more likely that they’ll laugh at Gibbs and ask if we are so powerful and worthy of Gibbs’ scorn then where are our checks from Soros. Maybe you can tell me, how many of TGOS front pagers actually get paid? We aren’t like the right. But it Gibbs is this pissed off, that means we are doing something right.
Obama has never enjoyed being criticized, not during the campaign, not now. He’s always moved to muzzle and marginalize his left critics. That’s not an attack, it’s just how he is and it’s a fairly normal response. But to the extent that he his upset it is because we are pricking his conscience.
I don’t this he was trying to persuade the far left at all. I think he was playing to the center and to the majority of Americans who simply want their government to work.
The professional left AND right are ruining the country. They care about winning arguments, newscycles, donor dollars and elections more than actually governing and in the process make it harder to actually govern and produce results.
Yes the progressives are almost always on the right side of most arguments these days, and the failure to create a public option is a huge loss. It may be a bigger failure to cave to the pharmas as they did to get their HCR support, but as it was it was almost impossible to pass what they did.
But the noise from the right will not be drowned out by continually calling them on their bullshit. That’s necessary and should continue, but the real political clout will come when the middle of the political spectrum calls on the right to shut up or get out of the way of the real work needed from our government. I think that’s where Gibbs was going.
How is the Professional Left ruining this country? And who is the Professional Left?
The professional left are people who earn a living doing advocacy and organizing.
They are the opinion leaders and elites of the progressive movement.
I don’t agree that they are ruining the country at all, but many of them are doing their part to ruin our electoral prospects in the fall.
Not just the electoral process. The perpetual battle between the professionals on the left and right are also making it impossible to govern.
The posturing from both sides to make the other side look bad leads to (just recently) the failure to provide aid to 9/11 responders and help for small business. The substance and importance of these bills matters almost not at all. Passing ANYTHING is unimportant so long as the nation’s problems can be blamed on the other party.
And it is reason why things like HCR results in such a suboptimal bill. Getting it right matters less than getting sufficient soundbites in and/or features in the bill that can be used for perpetual complaining about the other party.
And it is reason why things like HCR results in such a suboptimal bill.
I know you don’t believe that. Or do you still refuse to believe that the Administration cut a deal with Big Pharma at the outset?
This comment is just annoying.
Did you notice that the health care bill only passed with a bare minimum of votes after the leaders went into procedural contortions? And you think it would have passed without a deal with PhRMA?
Yes. That’s what leadership might have produced, but we didn’t get that, so now it’s anyone’s guess because Fearful “Leader” Obama was hunkered down in Cheney’s bunker until the very, very last moment when the least and worst could be salvaged to save the day (for Him politically). And it passed with those bare minimum votes because no one was excited about it. No one fought for that behemoth insurance industry welfare check that’s going to be subsidized by me and my family. But when it passed, it suddenly became “the best we could do.”
People don’t follow leaders who consistently fail to advance the ball because they’re too busy asking for everything. In a Senate where you need to have all 60 of you members (at the time) you can’t get something that even one of them won’t support. Ben Nelson was never going to be for a public option. Blanche Lincoln was a vote against it on the Finance Committee. The only way it ever could have passed was through reconciliation.
It’s taken as a fact of life that Big Business owns Congress until the moment the president has to cut a deal. Then it’s all about his lack of leadership. He should have told PhRMA to screw themselves, told the insurance companies to eat sand, read the riot act to Nelson, Conrad, Lincoln, Landrieu, Bayh, and the rest, and suddenly, voila, all doors would open to easy passage of a great bill.
Washington doesn’t work like that. I wish it would, but money talks and presidential rhetoric walks.
So, is the president a powerless bureaucrat? If so, what was the point of the whole kabuki theater called “Decision 08”? If the president’s rhetoric is so meaningless, why are we even having this discussion? I was taught (and witnessed via GWB) that the president wielded vast powers as the head to his very own branch of gov’t.
I agree with you that the congress is owned by corporations. That’s not up for debate. What is up for debate is whether Obama should continue to bailout those corporations and then whine about their vast political power while golfing with the CEOs while trying to cancel my grandmother’s social security under the guise of balancing the budget.
But the biggest disconnect for me is this biracial man born in the early 60s is a staunch supporter of “separate but equal.”
I don’t even know what that last part is referring to.
The president is not all that powerful, as witnessed by current events and by the fact that Bush couldn’t pass SS privatization, get his lawyer on the SCOTUS, kill the estate tax, or make his tax cuts permanent.
The president can only do what the Senate approves. Period. He can only move the Senate so far, and there are almost no vulnerable Republicans senators up for reelection, so he has very little leverage.
So, yes, on most of these issues the president is getting what it is possible to get. Those a-holes won’t even let him spend money to close Guantanamo. They’re unbelievable.
Of course they cut a deal early with Pharma. That’s an established fact. And there be no bill without it. Sux but true. Sux probably more than you know.
And there be no bill without it.
And you know this, how? For something like this, you need to talk to the American public constantly. Or are you admitting that the Senate only represents corporate interests?
When the Senate Majority Whip says that the place is owned by the banks, I think you know the answer, Calvin.
I remember all too well because, well, this Glennzilla:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/04/30/ownership/index.html
but that doesn’t mean we, or Obama, has to accept that.
Do you have a remotely plausible suggestion for changing it? Short of a revolution?
Publicly financed elections. Would Congress dare pass legislation that companies aren’t the same as humans? Otherwise, no.
Would that really solve it? Sure, it might help, but it could have the same adverse effects as term limits (voting for your next job).
I mean, I think digby pointed this out, but Arizona has publicly financed elections…yet we have SB1070.
It all depends on what the bill says. For example, all qualified candidates could be given enough funding/air time to match what their opponents spent — which would make media spending pointless. Candidates could be prohibited from accepting more than $25 from anybody during the campaign and during any incumbency. Much, much more and better debate, with little influence by candidates or parties, would make a huge difference.There’s no shortage of good ideas out there.
I don’t see much similarity between term limits and intensive campaign/financing reform. One limits choice, the other provides the means of making informed choice. Of course no law or policy will prevent mob rule like what happened in Arizona and elsewhere.
“Or are you admitting that the Senate only represents corporate interests?”
I am describing the facts on the ground. I don’t like them, but they are the facts.
Obama could have been called a failure if he gave powerful and inspiring speeches calling for a single payer public system with all the reforms to deliver actual quality health for all Americans and then had a handful of brain dead know nothing Senators representing 11% of America and select corporate interests stop it cold dead.
Instead, he put the problem on Congress with a few key objectives and parameters for the bill and told them to go at it. And they did. And it was ugly. And Obama only got involved when it was clear he needed to bang heads.
You know what the “professional left” is. We are the people who constantly demean and dirty Obama’s glorious ascendancy and majestic aura. We are those dirty hippies whom Obama is ALWAYS licking his chops to pick a fight with but he’ll never step toe in the ring with anyone from the Right. EVER. Because he’s the epitome of a coward. Yeah, he’ll mouth a platitude or two (“obstructionism!” /eyes roll) in his weekly address that no one ever listens to but he’ll never have more than polite words for them but we, this newly deigned “Professional Left,” are the ones who need to be drug tested. LOL. This WH (everyone in it…all the way to the TOP) is so laughably inept and counterproductive that it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
So, when all is said and done on Election Day and the Dems lose EVERYTHING because they are a bunch of timid sellouts (yeah, I called Him a sellout!), this new meme of the “Professional Left” will be a distraction that Boo and all of the real professional left will rally around so as to not sully Obama’s white robes.
But the thing is we “Professional Lefties” are always right about the issues and Obama cannot handle that, so he picks fights with us and demeans us at the same time we’re supposed keep him back-lit like Elizabeth Taylor in a White Diamonds commercial. The only thing we’re never right about is where the “center” is politically because we really don’t give a damn about those who rally around “don’t do too much.”
The game is rigged, guys. We’re being setup to be fallguys and scapegoats by this WH and those who are still wrapped up in its thrall. We will be solely responsible for all the promise and change not being manifest in such a “short period of time” because we don’t know the realities of the time and we’re children and layabout drug addicts who need to be coddled. The hits just keep coming out of all of this PROGRESS that I’m about to grow roses outta my ass.
Those people used to be called conservatives. But now that a real conservative is in the WH, it’s suddenly been rebranded as “pragmatism.” That goalpost is always being moved but we “professional lefties” are always wrong.
What’s another name for a person who always bashes his supporters while lauding the supposed “other side” with “all your ideas are valid and welcome”?
you’re just being relentlessly negative Delonjo. it comes from reading the white progressive blogosphere.
Exactly.
probably lives in an alternate universe as well. you know, the one of permanent outrage?
I agree.
Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/10/gibbs/index.html
delonjo, I’m with you. I’m just tweaking our host, who believes that i live in “an alternate universe of relentless negativity and permanent outrage fostered and fueled by the blogosphere” (sometimes i amend that to “the white progressive blogosphere”).
actually, i live in southwest philadelphia, and i work in human services. last year i spent most of my summer helping to save the city’s libraries, because senator specter, then a republican, was instrumental in cutting the stimulus down to its nowhere near big enough size: PA’s share would have closed the budget gap.
then obama came to town to campaign for him, because he saved the stimulus. by cutting it to the point where it was insufficient. and then specter lost, which was actually a pretty positive development.
Actually, I’m fairly certain that you’d be perpetually outraged even if the blogosphere didn’t exist, and with good reason.
Wait til fall 2012. That’s when I anticipate starting my first teaching job.
I’ll be imparting my wisdom to 8th graders.
Greetings from Mt. Airy!
Teachers? In 2012?! Surely you jest.
They’ll be extinct. Obama said that they need to be held accountable for the horrid state of education in this country. And because teachers don’t have Goldman Sachs moneybags to show him nor do they golf relentlessly, they will be sacrificed. He’ll show them who’s boss!!! Yes, teachers must be held accountable; politicians and elitists such as himself not so much. Get that? It was called hypocrisy only two years ago it’s called the birth pangs of progress.
Ok, that’s too negative even for me, and I see no difference between NCLB and RTTT.
The policy sucks, but it’s in no way permanent. These things come and go.
I think he was speaking to frustrated and angry Obama supporters like me, the African American Community, and the vast majority of Democrats who are sick and damn tired of the professional left speaking for us, which they do NOT!
On tv and the blogs, the professional left is much like the Tea Party: overly white and overly hyped. They do not represent rank-and-file Democrats, but they’ve figured out, just like the Tea Party and the crazy right, that the easiest way to get media attention is to trash the President and his accomplishments. To what end? Angering and depressing Obama supporters like me to the point we don’t give damn about the Democratic Party anymore.
I think it’s pretty clear that there are a LOT of professional trolls from the other side constantly fanning the flames of discontent. You can see it in the way comments at “left” sites immediately pick up wingnut talking points about Obama and spin them as “populist”. Michelle’s vacation is the most recent case in point.
Don’t discount the effect of the enemy trolls. It’s too bad Gibbs is also playing their game.
Does John Aravosis live in the same world as me?
No. No, he does not.
Atrios selectively picks this:
But that goes against David Obey’s own account of them coming to Congress during lame duck with a $1.4 trillion figure.
This is a complicated question.
Obey put together his package during the lame-duck. The size became an urgent issue once Obama took office and had to count votes. What Obama told Obey to do in November doesn’t contradict what was placed before him as options once Congress had been engaged.
Yeah when I just went down to eat breakfast I thought to myself that they weren’t mutually exclusive.
Atrios main point is that Summers believed all they needed was an insurance policy.
Where is Aravosis wrong?
His characterization is wrong.
It wasn’t somone in the WH who thought something, it was reality. And tax cuts to 95% of Americans and to small business are not nearly worthless as stimulus. They are less efficient than direct spending, but nowhere near worthless.
It’s basically a slam-job that does a poor job of retelling history and of describing economic factors.
He framed it with truth, not reverence.
i spent my tax cut on my debt.
spending creates more jobs than tax cuts do.
and what people need now are jobs.
like I said, tax cuts are not the most efficient way to stimulate the economy, but they are stimulative. He engages in hyperbole more than analysis.
I love this Tweet from Lizz Winstead:
http://twitter.com/lizzwinstead/status/20790096904
If Gibbs’ goal was to get the professional left on board, he needed to say that the professional left is right about everything.
The more appropriate question might be ‘Does he feel our pain?’ The answer might explain the source of this catastrophic lack of understanding. I’d say that progressives understand Washington D.C. and its perverse limitations (filibuster, 60 Senate votes, etc.) more than the administration wishes to support the aspirations of ‘progressives’. They’ve flubbed it. We can only hope that they somehow manage to pick up the pieces, and by Gibbs going out and effectively dismissing a substantial section of support for Democrats strikes me as pandering to the right. The administration would rather that we worship at the Obama altar of Daily Kos. Gawd, Gibbs needs to come down to earth. Maybe Obama too. What does losing one or both chambers of Congress mean?
Who do you mean when you say ‘our’ pain? The progressive blogosphere is almost certainly better off than the average American. When push came to shove, the Jane Hamshers of the world grabbed the spotlight trying to kill the Health Care Bill while Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders acknowledged that reality dictated that it was worth helping tens of millions of people in need and advancing the ball down the field. Would you prefer that Obama had bitten his lower lip like Bill Clinton?
I meant my pain. Okay. And the disappointment of many people I know who have very, very little. No, he didn’t need to have bitten his lower lip. He could have spoken up more clearly. I don’t give a hoot about Hamsher and the others you name. Progressives are not limited to the blogosphere, as if anything like that exists. It’s just a bunch of people flipping back and forth between each other. Progressives include the poor, too, they barely educated. That’s where the whole thing has gone wrong. There is a shortage of what I would call reality in any of what the administration does, it’s all perception. And in November the Coca-Cola-ing will end.
What does losing one or both chambers of Congress mean?
As close to the end of the world as we know it, politically, as I care to get, thank you very much.
Well if he was speaking to James Carville’s unhelpful rants on CNN for the past 90+ days I’d hand him a cupcake.
The negativity mantra, where nothing is right, nothing is progressive while all the while deleting reality from the collective brain cells no longer passes for analysis, it just has become a waste of time.
When you write Boo, no matter how frustrated you are, you always seem to find the forrest through the trees so I can wash the salt from my eyes. It’s appreciated.
Is it really accurate for you to consider yourself part of the professional left Gibbs was talking about in the first quote?
why not?
Because of your lack of criticism for Obama. You say you relentlessly focus on the positive because everyone else is focusing on the negative.
Atrios had four posts on this today. It hit home. I didn’t bother to go into comments because they would be the same negative tripe they have been voicing since Obama was elected.
Boo Man is honest and thinks. That’s not what’s going on with the people Gibbs was talking about. They are constantly chatting up how Obama and his administration has failed, failed and failed yet again. The are like the right in the accusatory tone.
As for the deal with Big Pharma, Calvin, it was done to get the HCR off the ground. Pharma has true power in congress, hence Medicare Part D was written by the industry. Id Obama had smacked them around verbally, there would not have been any improvement in coverage for medical care. Keep in mind that people do die when they end up without any way to get medical care. The bill begins to rectify this. It doesn’t all happen at once.
Big Pharma does supply needy people with free drugs. They aren’t all heartless bastards.
I’d say that the left wingers that have been griping non stop are the heartless bastards. It is always about them, their wants and too bad about anyone else. A mirror image of the right.
A mirror image of the right.
Both seek a chimera: politics-without-politicians. To very different ends, to be sure, with the opposite-of-identical policies, but the same politics.
I think Gibbs wasn’t being inartful with his language- I think the White House wants there to be a not insignificant portion of the left that is at odds with the White House. Since no one in Washington or the rest of the country has any understanding of what policies are “left” “right” or “center” the White House can only define itself as “centrist” if it picks fights with the left and right. JFK and FDR all had a very vocal and at times hostile left flank and the policy results were very progressive.
What I think infuriates a lot of people on the left who aren’t in the FDL camp is that the White House is being outmaneuvered by the Party of No and being forced to compromise way too much. So a lot of these successes don’t really rally the base because nobody’s really impressed when someone goes into a negotiation, gives away the farm, and then walks out and expects a high five for getting a deal done. It seems like the White House is more focused on cutting those bad deals than taking an honest assessment that their strategy isn’t working and then making some in-game adjustments.
Your second paragraph is actually what upsets the FDL crowd, too. So otherwise, your second paragraph is spot on.
What strikes me about this diatribe is the complete lack of self-examination involved. If the administration has accomplished so much that the “left” should be applauding, is the WH’s failure to communicate not a huge part of the problem? Logic suggests that that conclusion is inescapable.
I think most of us who periodically despair over Obama’s obsessive need to seek a “center” really just want to know that his heart’s in the right place, that he is as unsatisfied as we are with the current healthcare situation, the ongoing civil liberties violations, the bowing and scraping to the “deficit hawk” drones, and in general the impression that he is not committed to fighting hard for what is right. It is not the fault of the left that we cannot accurately sift through the runes to discover Obama’s real dreams for America.
The raw truth is that, in the context of Obama’s promise, both stated and implied, his administration is a disappointment. He has failed to make clear what he is up against, and so invites hits for the inadequacy of his policies. Those who found Bush’s agenda to their liking felt, for most of his term, that he was fighting for their kind of people. How many of Obama’s faithful feel the same way? And is their disappointment really solely their own fault? Gibbs seems to be peddling that line. It is an embarrassing display.
“Professional Left” is a euphemism for “liberal.” They are even afraid to use the real word. COWARDS!