Oh my God, they killed Kenny!
So, reading Daily Kos has now become the same as reading FireDogLake has become the same as reading Red State.
Obama is a corporate shill! We should have voted for Hillary/Dean/Nader! Obama is a loser!
I have and will be critical when he performs poorly. I would give him an "F" on rolling back Bush era executive power grabs for instance. I'll give him a pass on closing Gitmo, because 99 Senators wet their pants at the thought of a terrorist standing trial in the US, because.... Waaaa, I want my binky!
I am not happy that tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were extended. They don't need them. They are bad for the economy. They are bad for the deficit.
But people have been jumping to the absurd conclusion that it was Obama's position to extend those tax cuts. Now, he DID negotiate rather pusillanimously by signaling back in October that he was open to a compromise on extending tax cuts for the rich if meant extending tax cuts for everyone. Not a fan of that. But perhaps that concession was a bow to the realities of a Senate that was never going to act on his tax agenda. Not with Nelson, Landrieu, Bayh and Lieberman in there.
In return for shoveling money to the rich, Obama effectively got a second stimulus in payroll tax credits. There's a lot of positive economic news out there, as bondad catalogs here. But there is also BofA and a continually weak job market out there, too. As Bernanke has noted, now is NOT the time to practice contractive fiscal policy. Obama also got unemployment insurance continued for 2,000,000,000 Americans for 13 months. That's literally a life or death issue for some as winter approaches.
The idea that a different Democratic president could have gotten anything better through the combination of McConnell's 41 vote super-minority and the Blue Dog deficit peacocks doesn't really hold water. It was the Clintons who repealed Glass-Steagall and it was mostly Clinton era advisors (Summers, Rubin, Geithner) who are the most corporate friendly members of Obama's financial team. People close to Clinton have said she would have repeated 1994 and caved on HCR in order to focus on other issues. Tactically, that would have been smart, maybe, but strategically, it would have meant the sixth defeat for HCR since Teddy Roosevelt offered up his plan a hundred years ago. I don't see Hillary Clinton as being any more "pure" to progressives than Obama.
Howard Dean? Yes, he would have been more pure. But I hardly see him as being more effective. He might have gotten a public option, or just as likely, he would have gotten nothing.
On domestic policy, the Democrats screwed up in 2009 by not enacting filibuster reform, like the kind Jeff Merkeley's thrown out there. That led them to be taken hostage by Nelson and Lieberman and Brown and Collins and Snowe. There is simply no getting around the fact that the GOP was committed to obstruction and there were nominal Democrats willing to help them. On taxes, they should have made the issue of tax cuts for the rich a campaign issue in September. By not doing so, they effectively demolished their negotiating position now.
On foreign policy, there is a mixed bag. Doubling down on Afghanistan seems pointless. But the withdrawal from Iraq is proceeding apace.
I am not pleased on civil rights and civil liberties issues, but again some of that was beyond his control.
But taken as a whole, it seems that the frustration that we see about a political process that enables 41 Senators to stop any meaningful reform is being directed at Obama. He's a guy willing to settle for half a loaf a lot of the time. And people want a whole loaf. I'm just not sure the bakery's open.
Clinton caved, too. He caved on aspects of welfare reform and Glass-Steagall repeal and free trade that isn't fair trade. Shocker, folks, the real party in power is the Money Party.
But there is a difference between tilting towards the rich and getting in bed with them, allowing them to have their way with you, beat you and then make them breakfast in the morning.
People don't like the evil of two lessers, but that's the nature of our two party political system. And, yes, a third party will fail to do anything but throw the election to the other side. Or rather, we have a three party system: Republicans, Democrats and Blue Dogs. And catering to the Money Democrats means always settling for half a loaf.
Bon Appetit.
No comments:
Post a Comment