As of this morning it seems that Obama is ready to deal with the Right… extend the Bush tax cuts for a couple of years in exchange for one year’s extension of Unemployment funding. The tax cut deal is tentative. It hasn’t gone through Congress yet (although McConnell is probably dribbling with laughter in his office), but it probably will.
When even Conservatives like Joe Scarborough sees and comments on the fact that Obama is moving directly to the Right… and will not increase job creation much, but will add at least a trillion new bucks to the deficit. And who is going to lend it to us? The Chinese? Are we going to listen to Obama’s financial team that extending tax cuts are going to get us out of recession?
And now we won’t be able to blame this crap on Bush anymore. Obama owns it and is most likely making himself a one-term President. And a lot of very unhappy Democrats like me will probably help him to become a one-termer. As Joe Scarborough just said: “At least they can’t call him a Socialist any more.”
I think it is up to Nancy Pelosi (certainly not Harry Reid) to try to hold this arrangement off… and, as I have said before, it would be better to have this whole arrangement with the Right flushed down the toilet and get NO tax cut extensions for ANYONE, than to do anything like what is coming out of the White House. (Steny Hoyer, however, will go along with it… miserable power seeker… and will undermine Pelosi.)
So now we have to pay for increased troops in Afghanistan where we are getting nowhere even faster than before, we have to suffer increasing rather than decreasing unemployment making our tax revenues even lower, and we can look forward to a GOP-controlled future… amazing with a Democratic White House and Senate… which will take us further from the America that was built by generations of progressive leaders from Roosevelt (FDR) through Johnson.
If the Tea Party takeover has taught us anything, it is that we need a new grass-roots progressive movement. And we have to push from the ground up. It’s going to take 30 years.
At least.
“If the Tea Party takeover has taught us anything, it is that we need a new grass-roots progressive movement. And we have to push from the ground up. It’s going to take 30 years.”
Movement conservatives spent 1952-1964 getting a nominee (Goldwater) and another 16 years getting a president (Reagan). The Tea Party (not congruent with the movement conservatives) is actually two parties – the Ron Paulites and the Astroturfs. The Astroturfs are probably hopeless. The Paulites include a lot of people who know they are getting screwed and are furious about it, but they don’t know who is screwing them. It is our job to explain this to them, get them out of their easy racist blind alleys, and running down their Fed-hating insight, because it leads them into the big banks and big business, which actually are our problem.
More radicals are being made every minute now. It is our job to communicate with them and explain who the screwers are – and are not – and we can’t do that by calling them stupid, racist hicks. We need to be patient. A lot of people are angry and in pain, and a lot more will be shortly. Such people are not easy to talk to, but we have to do it to save our country and ourselves.
I just hope the oligarchs give us enough time before springing their little fascist trap – if we’re not caught in it already.
was amazing.
The guy just doesn’t have a backbone.
Or a clue.
Oh, I don’t know about that…. the way he punched the people who got him where he is, I’d say he’s got a backbone; he just doesn’t want to mix it with people who might be able to counterpunch.
The irony is he’s not a bad administrative president… but he may be the WORST politician to come down the pike since Dog was a puppy. He established early on that he was willing to be rolled and now he can’t stop long enough to figure out where his feet ARE, let alone get back on them.
This was an unlosable fight to anyone with the balls of a housefly. The LOWEST number I’ve seen was that he had 2/3 of the country supporting him, and all he had to do to win was do NOTHING. He could easily have put on his power tie and gone on TV (Okay, Faux would have run anything else, but no loss there anyway…)
“Sorry, Mr & Mrs America and all the little Americans, I’m trying to get somewhere but these other guys would rather you all starve in the gutter than ask their base to help the country in ways they won’t even notice. I’ve told them no, repeatedly, but I can’t reach them and we’re running out of time. What it comes to is that this is YOUR country, not mine, and I need to hear from you. What should we do?”
The response would have shaved a few hundred GOP congresscritters’ heads right back to their sacroiliacs and maybe even made the fundiwhacko right get religion (though that IS asking for a miracle.)
Instead what we get is a lookout block to the barbarian horde, and a warning to the citizens to lube up and bend over so that maybe it doesn’t hurt quite so much.
Thanks, O great guardian. Remind me again… I forget. Why did we put you there?
I saw David Axelrod, yesterday, say that tax cuts help stimulate the economy a little back door endorsement of failed policy of the Bush era. I say just raise the taxes on everyone. Democrats should just turn into Republicans, obstruct and do nothing.
The contrarian in me thinks all the woof-woof and yak-yak about Obama’s tax deal is way off the mark relative to the PREZ’s plans. First of all what liberals fail to recognize is that Obama is NOT a team player. Barack only becomes involved with the Democratic Party when it suits his personal goals and ambitions. It has taken me a considerable amount of time to arrive at this conclusion, so you can count me as part of that liberal group. In respect to Obama’s academic background, which is highly impressive, I simply could not understand his political tactics over the past two years.
I recall that many times during the campaign, Obama the candidate liked to use that reference from FDR; wherein FDR told his supporters that it was up to them to keep him (as president) honest as to what was their important visions for America. I am certain that I was not alone in my thinking that Obama’s repeated reference to this FDR quote was just normal campaign rhetoric. He also used many instances during the general election campaign for president to tell his supporters that there will be times during his administration where we (his supporters) would DISAGREE with him. Hence in Barack’s mind: “Forewarned is forearmed”.
So in my estimation, we (his supporters) are at one of those places of disagreement that he was referring to. Hence in Barack’s mind there should be no surprise from his “liberal” base if he differs with them in respect to priorities, and since HE is THE PRESIDENT, he has the last word. Obama views himself as both the COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF and COMMANDER-IN-CHARGE. So here is Obama’s political gamble.
Obama is playing hard to attract the largest political base in America today, the INDEPENDENTS. So just how is he playing this game. Well here it is. He has very successfully cast the Republicans as the hard line uncompromising Party of pure obstructionism who are responsive only to their rich supporters in the minds of the majority of Americans. Likewise he is also casting the image of Democratic Party activists as being likewise unwilling to compromise over the agenda “FOR CHANGE” that they expected to be actively pursued by the Obama administration. Therefore, the slow moving Washington drama that has taken place over the past two years can only benefit one party, and that is the personal stature of Barack Obama among independent voters across America.
Barack also knows that only a JOBLESS recovery can be possible in America over the next 3 years. Therefore his big gamble is to continue his courtship of Wall Street and American business leaders. It is his hope by the last quarter of 2011 the initial signs of a general American manufacturing recovery across the country will pressure corporation CEOs to open up their R&D pocketbooks and spend enough to induce a solid feeling of confidence within the American investment community that a valid economic recovery is taking place in America. This is why he was so eager to work out a tax deal with the Republicans, because any increase in taxes coupled with a cutoff of the unemployment compensation extension would most certainly torpedo any chance for the 2011 start of a real recovery. The Republican deal of 13 more months for the unemployment extension will keep the necessary though low level stimulus flowing in the economy so critical to the 2011 strategy.
It is widely known that the strongest component in Obama’s base is the African American community, who has remained largely loyal regardless of the fact that the Obama administration made little or no effort to assure that some of the stimulus money made it into the black communities across the nation, regardless of the 18% unemployment in these communities. However in spite of this neglect Obama remains comfortable of his firm support in the African American community.
If Obama’s gamble pays off, he will ride to a second term victory in a blaze of public adulation far in excess of that he received when he was first elected to the Presidency.
He’s quit already.
Just look at him now and then look at him during the campaign.
All wore out already.
Sorry.
Wrong man at the wrong time.
It’s just a matter of time before he announces his decision not to run again. Bet on it.
“Next!!!???”
AG
The only thing that’ll be even remotely “permanent” about the “recovery” is the Jobless part of it.
Jobs that left the US under Shrub are already on their second or third decline…
http://www.truth-out.org/jim-hightower-the-redistribution-americas-wealth-few65789
This isn’t a recession. It’s a rebalancing.
This IS the new normal.
You can appeal all you want to the “middle” but once you’ve lost your base you’ve lost the election.
Scenarios:
Anything except 1 and 3 will likley see massive loses down the card
This is all predicated on the continuation of a two-party system. It think that said system has now pretty much run its course.
Read my piece Bloomberg and the NY Times…Round II Of The “Get Obama OUTTA There!!!” Hustle and its followup comments for a broader view.
AG