DeWayne Wickam has the right idea. The Republicans are engaged in a variation of the shock and awe campaign used against Saddam Hussein. It’s not meant to make Obama’s troops lose the will to fight, but to weaken them up so that they can’t fight at all. That’s why the bombs are being thrown at ACORN and Planned Parenthood, and public unions, and minority-voting access, and felon-voting access, and college student voting access. But what Wickam fails to mention is that the Republicans are going much further. They are trying to compel the administration to make a deal that includes slashing Social Security; they are attacking funding on all fronts; they are deliberately trying to keep unemployment high; and they are doing everything they can to delegitimize the president by suggesting he’s not a citizen; he’s secretly a Muslim; he’s a socialist; he’s an Ivy League elitist, and so on. They’re stonewalling his judicial appointments. They refuse to let him close Guantanamo. They don’t want a single liberal group to be happy with his performance and they don’t want anyone on the margins of society to vote at all. There are no areas of cooperation. Cooperation would suggest that the president is legitimate.
And that’s just what they’ve done and are doing to soften up the president. Then there are their positive agenda items, like detoothing the EPA and removing all limits on corporate campaign spending.
I honestly don’t know how even casual observers can fail to notice that the GOP is making war directly on them and their country. It’s never been this bad before. There is no question that the next Republican administration will do exponentially more damage to the country and the world than Bush and Cheney were able to do in their two terms.
This is really the reason why I take the positions I do. Everything else pales in importance when I consider what the Republicans want to do when they regain power.
you are on point BooMan
Well said. Crippling the institutions that support, either directly or indirectly, the democratic party, has been the MO of the GOP for some time. Whether its demonizing George Soros, or firing US Attorney’s, its clear this isn’t a new trend, and really has its antecedents in Nixon and its blossoming under Reagan and the unions. SO this isn’t new, but what is new is that this stuff now defines the GOP, rather than just being part of their strategy.
Question: Obama clearly had his chance to play this game as well when he became President in January 2000 and he clearly didn’t- was this a mistake? Didn’t he campaign on a message of change? Was I truly naive in thinking that this meant he actually cared a little bit about institutional reform?
I respect your position that we all need to rally around Obama, because if we don’t know one well, and the alternative is so so much worse. I get that. But why give Obama a pass on his failure to do anything meaningful on institutional reform? Two can play at this nasty game (and if you don’t have the stomach for it, don’t get into politics) and Obama refusing to go on the offensive against Republican institutions has only made us more vulnerable, while no one awards him any points for his “being above it all” posturing.
The president in January of 2000 was Bill Clinton.
While I agree with you Boo, then why does the President hire people like Geithner and Daley?
They are trying to compel the administration to make a deal that includes slashing Social Security;
Which goes to the above because it seems Geithner is advocating cutting Social Security. Have there been good things, like DADT repeal and student loan reforms? Damn right! But there are large issues, like HAMP, where they’ve either dropped the ball or are willfully screwing the pooch. As I think you know, you don’t get people to vote for you over the long haul by saying the other side is worse, or the other side sucks donkey balls. You have to make their lives better. Why do you think the left reveres FDR to this day?
Because both of them had “experience” in the areas that they were hired. “Experience” in both cases was a contact file of people that the President knew that he would have to deal with one way or the other. And both are sops to big business.
In the age of media blitz, I don’t know that the “make their lives better” thing works electorally unless it is unmistakably apparent outside of media reporting. The media fuzzes the issues and campaign advertising takes advantage of that fuzzing to propagate outright lies.
I’m not sure that the FDR the left reveres is the one who actually governed from 1933 to 1945. When he was President, he certainly didn’t go far enough for them. In fact, the National Recovery Act, which was ruled unconstitutional, came very close to opening the door for fascism. The labor laws were so weak that there were strikes until World War II started. And he disappointed even Eleanor with his caution on race relations.
I’m not sure that the FDR the left reveres is the one who actually governed from 1933 to 1945.
This.
Make no mistake that FDR did a lot of great things, but he was not the demigod of liberalism that so many liberals want to make him out to be.
He was essentially trying to walk the line to keep the country balanced and out of the hands of the Fascists and the Communists. The reason why he enacted so many well-thought of liberal agenda items was mostly to placate folks who might otherwise have supported a Communist uprising in the US, not because he had some great noble motive. It was the people in the US who forced his hand, not the other way around (no matter what the John Birch Society folks want to believe).
If you want to see why this country is off the rails today it’s primarily because the right succeeded in splintering liberals in this country from labor – actually it’s primarily because labor and liberals split over the Civil Rights Act and conservatives have been pushing the split wider and wider ever since.
(I actually think that’s why the latest overreach by Republican governors is an interesting one – a clear attack on working-class Republican voters like cops and firefighters is a bold step to take, and either indicates that they want to grab as much as they can in the short time they think they have in power, or they think that the mood of the country is such that even the working-class voters have contempt for the working-class. It will be interesting to see if they’re right.)
Labor and liberals split over the Civil Rights Act because labor operated with ethnically identified locals in lots of places and they suffered the same sense of white privilege as the opposition to Civil Rights Acts in the South. But Republican conservative used more than that to split off labor. Labor was patriotic; the opposition to the war in Vietnam was very offensive to labor as was the disastrous Democratic Convention in 1968 in Chicago. Labor was religious; the Catholic part of the labor movement soon got drawn off into the pro-life and anti-gay movements of conservative Republicans.
Now, a lot of those cultural issues have been worked through but it is only this year that rank-and-file labor has discovered what it lost by supporting Republicans. But even then, Republicans have had some success in dividing rank-and-file private sector workers from the public sector workers.
No, we don’t go goo-goo over FDR the way the right does over Ray-gun(kind of funny since he was nothing like they portray). What I think people like about the FDR years was that he took on entrenched interests. He instituted programs to get people back to work. To make people’s lives better. We are missing that can do spirit now. Our elites are failing us, basically.
The Republicans are engaging in scorched earth strategies because they know that their scam is running out of steam. They want to lock in electoral advantages before their power unwinds. They have the self-consciousness to know that they have no national candidates, no remaining wedge issues—nada.
But their power is beginning to slip at the state level. The governor of Wisconsin faces protests everywhere he goes in the state. The folks in Michigan have been given a wake-up call. The folks in Ohio are taking their protests to the street of small cities and towns across the state. In South Carolina, over 2000 protest at the state capitol the Republican budget.
The Democratic Party is collapsing in Congress but beginning to be reborn in the states.
And I don’t think people are going to take kindly to being disenfranchised.
This is going to be a very interesting year.
The battle we better pay attention to are the folks who actually administer voting and election laws at the local level. Which means that any off-year local elections this year are going to be very important for being able to offset the formal restrictions the Republicans are planning. It also means that Democrats are going to have to raise enough volunteers to be their own voter registration campaign on a much wider scale than before. The voting groups being discriminated against need to regain the anger of being excluded and given the tools to succeed at navigating the new rules. That might mean having some high-powered legal representation to fight firings of people who were standing for long hours in a voting line. It might be time to invite international observers to watch a real-live great American election–the “whole world is watching” and watching closely. And the rank-and-file of unions are going to be important as never before; hopefully their leadership can now wean them away from cultural issues.
There are any of number of ways to deal with the Republican assaults on electoral choice. You can depend on the establishment Democrats not being willing to pursue them. So the grassroots must get out and act. Just as they did in Wisconsin.
I think you are a terrific writer. You balance measured optimism with cold-eyed political realism in a unique way. It would be great if you had a larger platform/soapbox of some kind down the road.
Can I let you in on my secret. If you live long enough and pay enough attention, you notice things. I have a big enough soapbox in comments and an occasional diary. It’s part of being retired and having other things to work on.
It also helps to have had a spotty career in which one has many jobs of many different types in many industries. And to have witnessed the kabuki of government officials, managers, and executives and hung out with all sorts of manufacturing workers.
I second your motion, Lodus. He always has a well thought out argument. Love his comments. Very thorough and informative.
The President has already said he supports Simpson’s ideas. So I guess he will “reluctantly” go even further in the pursuit of “bipartisanship”. Part of this is no doubt all the blog posts at dkos to the effect that SS goes to old white people who vote Republican anyway.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. They’ve been going after ACORN and planned parenthood for ages. Frankly, I’m not sorry to see ACORN gone. I know a lot of Dem activists who genuinely disliked ACORN because they made a bad name for people going door-to-door and registering voters.
The Republicans been going after teachers and education for along time, too, and their hatred of Unions has been embedded in the Republican DNA since the inception of the Union.
Minority voting access? Duh. They’ve been interfering with that since the Emancipation Proclamation. Denying Felons the right to rehabilitate their right to vote…so not anything new there.
Shock and Awe? That’s an over-reaction. They’re doing what they’ve always been doing. Soften us up so we can’t fight…please. We haven’t even begun to fight.
Can’t remember when I’ve read a more defeatist article than that one. Everything the Republicans are doing right now is business as usual.
Yes, the GOP is exactly as you write.
But let’s understand that “The Most Progressive President Since FDR” is fully enabling them. He’s endorsed their framing of everything and is standing up for nothing.
Yep. In the beginning I thought he was using bipartisanship legitimately. You know, “Just in case you want to work with me, I’m offering my hand.” When that didn’t work I figured he was offering it to show the media and the public that the Republicans do not care, they hate him and everything he stands for, and they will do everything they can to tear him down. Once that was established, I expected a fighter. But he keeps doing it!
To this day, he is offering them more cuts to pass short-term stop-gap measures, and all I can picture is him sitting in a corner in the fetal position with a sign that says, “Please don’t hurt me.”
Yep — I had a similar progression in watching Obama “negotiate” the last 2.25 years.
I put a lot of money and time into his election in 2008. I feel most betrayed by his 100% embracing of the Cheney doctrine regarding torture and habeus corpus. (When both Dick Cheney and Peter King go out of their way to complement your torture & war policies — as they have done for Obama — then you can forever give up any claim to the words “liberal”, “progressive”, or “democrat”.)
However, until a few months ago I clung to the idea that at least he had done some reasonable things on the domestic front during his first two years. No, I’m not ready to claim the Heritage Foundation-inspired HCR is among the greatest progressive accomplishments of all time, as many have claimed, and most of his other accomplishments were of the walked-when-we-needed-a-home-run variety, but at least they were better than nothing.
But even then the signs were present that there was nothing on the table that he wouldn’t sacrifice in a negotiation. And since then we’ve seen that in spades.
To sum up: Mr. President, I, and millions of others in the middle class, supported you to get you elected. But you haven’t supported us.
I know Booman is of the viewpoint that even so, we should still support Obama in 2012 to keep out the Republican. And, alas, probably I will do so. But I won’t be motivated or inspired like I was in 2008. “The lesser of two evils” is still evil.
You Naderite motherfucker. Stick your thumb up your ass and vote Ron Paul already maybe then the world will be a brighter place for you.
So sorry. You have made me see the error of my ways. I am now excited and motivated to support Obama with no regard to anything he does or does not do.
How could I have been so blind? It is obvious to me now that indefinite imprisonment with out charges, for example, is a horrible, impeachable act when committed by a Republican but something to be praised and supported when enacted by a Democrat.
And I will feel exactly the same if Obama slashes my Social Security benefits. As long as it is a Democrat signing the bill, I’m happy with it.
Thank you for setting me straight.
In 2010, we had an election, and part of the reason it was such a fucking disaster is that Obama’s policies, direction, and style did not motivate his former partisans to get involved. Now the question will be “What lesson did Obama take from 2010?”
Because if the lesson was “I wasn’t bipartisan enough for those nice fellows with the R”, 2012 will be a disaster squared.
You’re right. Our problems are systemic, but they all stem from the power of the right. More power for them, more problems.
that’s a bit uncalled for. I didn’t read anything about “not voting for Obama” in that comment.
Furthermore, there is currently a debate in the White House, and among the Democrats in general, about cutting social security. Why wouldn’t a progressive be less than enthusiastic about voting for that?
Even booman acknowledges that the democrats are often horrible: he pretty much says the main reason to vote for them is the republicans are so much worse:
that is hardly a ringing endorsement.
Just call him “Neville Obama”.
What is the point that Obama will say “OK, that’s it. I’ve had enough. This assault on the American people will not pass me.”
What is the policy that the Repukeliscum espouse that he simply will not endorse? So far, this appears to be “Let’s make a deal on Repukeliscum territory. Democratic ideas and ideals are SOOOOO 1980s”.
When is he going to stand up to the turds?
there is no such point. Everything that has happened the past 2 years has shown that there is NO principle that Obama considers worth fighting the Republicans for.
The Republicans are busy being, well you know, Republicans; that is, toxic to the general welfare and inimical to anyone who is not blessed with abundant wealth. What seems different this time around is that we have a man sitting in the white house who would rather talk than fight and who puts image above substance. If Obama continues his present course, I am afraid we will have a Republican president beginning 2013 and from that point on the American Empire will mark its swift decline. I am not happy with the idea of Empire nor of its decline either. Why can’t this chief executive just have some more calones?
The real war Americans are fighting is neither in Afghanistan or Iraq, but on their own home soil against a globalising elite which is utterly ruthless in expropriating man and nature of all they possess.
In fact Afghanistan and Iraq are distraction which perform the useful function of fooling Americans into thinking their real enemies are some sort of outside islamofascist others when the real fascists are sitting in a country club near you.
Until Obama and the Dems more generally understand that they are fighting a war which only one side can win, and which the more ruthless side will win, they are losing all the way.
Bipartisanship is appeasement by another name, engaged by those who lack the moral courage to fight for themselves and the most vulnerable in society.
We should all send Obama an umbrella. He is bringing peace with the Republicans in our time, you know.