I thought my dog had broken wind.  But no, it was just another of E. J. Dionne’s columns.

bill, August 30 at 11:57 pm

Excellent comment. I totally agree that the second
best outcome is to see Republicans commit suicide
with their policies under their banner rather than
maintain the illusion that democrats are any real
counter weight to regressive politics. All this has
done is con many level-headed liberals into believing
that their guy is doing the best job he can when he
is merely main-streaming regressive politics with
slick rhetoric.

Getting Libertarians and Progressives together to
vote with greens however like Paul_GA would be the
better result however, and that will have to wait
until 2012.

@ bill

Thank’ee so much for your additional comments. I’m much the same way, but coming from the opposite direction; I was a conservative Repub until after the 1996 election, when I read Harry Browne’s quip that “Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats”. I’ve voted Libertarian ever since, but if Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party had been on the Georgia ballot in ‘08, I’d have voted Green in a heartbeat. I find as I grow older and (I hope to Heaven) wiser, I tend to lean a little more “leftwards”.

@ ofersince72

I, too, wish the pundits would let FDR lie in his cold, lonely grave and quit romancing about the dead past. The Repubs are just as bad, invoking Reagan as if he were some sort of plaster saint—which he never was and never will be.

Journalists please…please…quit your FDR…
wouldas

The comments here so consistently reflect my own thoughts that there wasn’t much to add until Paul_GA chimed in.

Sometimes what appears to be ‘the lesser evil’ is in fact the greater one.  Let’s face it:  it’s not the Republicans or tea-partiers who relentlessly beat on progressives to abandon their principles - it’s the Democratic establishment.  It thwarts progressive (and even centrist) primary challenges not only to incumbents but even to right-of-center Dems aspiring to become incumbents, co-opts the few promising progressives who manage to surmount that hurdle as soon as they get to D.C., and in general sucks the oxygen out of any attempts to reform the party (usually by demanding unity to counter those nasty Republicans, who indeed deserve that characterization but may not be the greater danger).

I stopped supporting virtually all national Democrats in 2003 after they abdicated their responsibility to stand against the invasion of Iraq.  I voted for Nader in 2004 after Kerry became Bush Lite shortly after gaining the nomination, and left the other national ballot slots blank (there being no one on the ballot who deserved my vote).  I did the same again in 2008 after scrutinizing Obama’s actual positions rather than letting myself get carried away by his inspiring rhetoric.  I did vote for one apparently promising national Democrat in 2006, and wound up wishing that I hadn’t after she began breaking progressive campaign promises two months after taking office.

That clearly wasn’t sufficient to stem the race of the Democratic establishment to the right, so from now on I’ll be voting Republican for any national office for which no REAL progressive is on the ballot, to do my best to destroy said establishment and make room for something better to replace it.

Democrats won Congressional majorities 4 years ago and did nothing much to deserve them.  Those majorities increased two years ago, along with election of a president who promised ‘hope’, ‘change we can believe in’, and ‘and end to business as usual’ - and still no really substantive change occurred (though they’ve attempted to pass off several pieces of major corporate-friendly legislation as ‘reforms’, the Obama administration and Congress have actually given validation to many of the worst abuses of the Bush administration rather than vigorously rolled them back).

So why should we expect anything different even if we managed to evict every national Republican from office?  The problem is not the Republicans, it’s the Democrats - and the way to solve it is to kick them out and KEEP them out until they shape up, no matter how temporarily painful the consequences may be.

I’d suggest that those on the Left who feel abandoned by Obama and the Demos abandon them in return and look elsewhere for a principled party to vote for and support (the Greens, for instance), rather than continue to waste their votes on the “lesser of two evils”.

Obama was not the right man for the job but since America abandoned the left in the 1980s (Democrats jumped on the business bandwagon like the Republicans and have remained there ever since) he’s all you’re going to get - he just has to maintain his position as being left of the republicans which is not hard to do. In reality, both ‘parties’ are really two wings of the same centre-right party. Obama hasn’t really accomplished much - the unemployment rate is far too high and is to get higher still - he bailed out wall street but not main street except giving main street tax credits to consume even more (cars and houses) at the very time main street should have been saving and paying down their huge debt. For the most self-proclaimed capitalist country to bail out irresponsible companies (essentially corporate welfare - not to mention all the subsidies, tax breaks and incentives they had before, during and after the meldown) you have to admit it’s not really right to call America a capitalist country - we need a new model anyway. What about the success of state capitalist China or the triad of govt/labour/business model of Germany?

Obama’s ‘withdrawal’ manages to leave 50000 troops behind for ‘training’. But then the US never fully withdraws from any country it has occupied - there are still troops in Japan. Obama’s is a presidency of studied deception. For one thing, in spite of what the rabid snappers on the right keep barking, he is not a liberal, let alone a socialist. In fact the Dems are generally lukewarm centrists from what I’ve been able to figure out from all the vague rhetoric about reform.
What financial reform is possible until the trading laws are changed to prevent Wall Street brokers from gambling against their own investors with convoluted financial instruments like derivatives?
What health reform is possible without a public option?
All I see is appeasment and compromises - which hardly deserve the name of success.

This is a great post.  This is the point I have been trying to make all over the place.  E.J. Dione has a better platform for saying this than I do with my measly blog that only has 16,000 readers.

President Obama seemed to understand this so well during the campaign.  I am somewhat disappointed that he didn’t continue after the campaign.

Democrats think that once they explain something that the world will “note and long remember”.  The Republicans on the other hand seem to know that they have to keep pounding the message relentlessly.

Maybe the Democrats fallaciously think the truth does not have to be repeated.  It has to be repeated at least as often as the lies arrayed against it.

I just noted in small print at the bottom why this article is so pro-Obama and lacking in substance—its from the Washington Post!

Dear Editor, if I wanted to read Corporate spin from the CIA founded WashPost I would go to their website. I don’t come here to see corporate advertising hidden in TruthDig. Please remove this garbage.

Will Obama Tell the Truth?

Will he apologize to America, noting that
he was elected President because he was the only Democratic candidate (other than Kucinich) to promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq? He promised within 14 months all U.S. troops would be gone from Iraq, that would be March 2010.

However, there are still 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, including five combat brigades and thousands of mercs. Let us see how Obama treats this fact. Will he say he needs more time, or will he smile and lie to all those anti-war types who campaigned for him by spitting in their faces and saying that its raining. Then off to Martha’s Vineyard to escape frowns from the professional left.

(gee)...

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“i didn’t see full records of actual work behind candidates in that election”...

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“so what was the basis for casting your vote in november’s ballot selection?”...

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“i saw ads on tv and online everywhere and soon joined that big buzz of hooray!”...

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“so perhaps if you’d seen all past work history facts they would point towards these outcomes today”...

(things need to change to get better… lotsa stuff to do… keep telling the lawmakers… ((no matter when their terms come to an end… and hopefully better workers begin!))... to wake up this government!... to care about the basics!... and stop misleading!... and end this war!... and don’t waste anymore!...

and here’s one of many links that can be used to do that… and get congressional information etc too)... http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials

(and there’s lotsa other stuff to do too!)...

the best of wishes’n'ways’n'todays to each’n'everyone!...

It would be much better for Democratic mouth pieces like the author to level
with the voters than to spin wool.

Democrats would know their Democrats as opposed to inside the BeltWay
apologists.

The ‘opposition’ would not be handed on a silver plater examples of utter non-
sense propounded by nominal Democrats.

Level with the voters:

Obama’s is a rightward-leaning Republican administration in Democrat
clothing, and the extreme Right Wing has a chance to push the nation even
further to the Right in the next election. Obama and his Bushy hold overs have
been a complete and utter disappointment (essentially they have shamed the
Democratic Party and will bring it near disastrous results), but the future, as
presented by the Republican and the Tea Party, will put the middle class even
deeper in the hole.

Bleak but true.

So, if the Author is here to promote traditional Democratic values, he can put
away his Obama apologetics and get down to reality. It would help us all and
might even cleanse his soul and clear his mind.

The author may believe that Obama as ‘kept his principal [sic] promises’, but I
would put that against the following:

1. Ignored previous Republican profligacy, crimes, misdemeanors (Effectively,
allowing torture and rendition to stand as precedents for future Presidents and
Vice-Presidents to use at their discretion. And losing his ‘moral ‘high ground’
and political leverage to ‘blame Bush’)-
2. Supported a stingy stimulus that was a third tax breaks (Contributing to the
current 9.5 % unemployment rate) -
3. Doubled-down and accelerated the Bush bailouts (Effectively closing off any
other options to address the recession by raising the debt to help Wall Street
and closing off options to help Main Street) -
4. Escalated a meaningless and fruitless war in Afghanistan -
5. Gutted real financial reform (no Glass-Steagle, no ‘too big too fail) –
6. Not helped people with bankruptcy & mortgages remediation (record
foreclosures and more ‘help’ for Freddie and Fannie measured in billions)-
7. Fiddled around & not passed a jobs bill and even had to strain to extend
unemployment compensation -
8. Rejected the only option that would have simultaneously extended coverage
and cut costs (single payer) -
9. Promoted off shore drilling, only to see it backfire in his face –
10. Uses (“Heck of a Job, Timmy”) Geithner to promote keeping taxes low for
the wealthy on capital gains and dividends (unlike what those evil
Congressional Democrats want), while cutting Social Security benefits for the
rest of us.
And now
11. Sponsors a budget balancing commission to mess with the middle class’s
last hope (How about getting Senator Baccus to Chair it ?! Oh, sorry, you’ve
already loaded it in favor of the corporations. My bad.).

Now, perhaps, there were some ‘principal [sic] promises’ that I missed, but I
dont think the people who voted for Obama voted for the policies listed above.

About engaging ‘the people’. Few I know who voted for Obama would have
accepted any available explanation for the behaviors / policies listed above.
Obama didnt engage the populous because he cannot defend what he did to
those who voted for him, and, at least, he remains too honest to lie to us. (In
one area, integrity, hat puts him one notch above Bushy and the Repubs.)

Yes, I’ll be one of the few who supported Obama who will vote for him again.
But he has become the lesser of two evils, not ‘change I can believe in’.

Obama’s ‘principals [sic]’, policies and actions have transformed “Change You
Can Believe In” into “Hold Your Nose and Vote Democrat”.

That may be why the ‘passion’ is on the other side.

No, Obama is just trying to pacify for now, those opposed to the troops in Iraq.  He aint pulling them out, not now nor in the foreseeable future. So get used to it.

Dionne, just like every MSM collumnist i know of, defends his self-interest.
He can get his fat cheque only from people with lots of money; ergo, must also defend their interests.

As for iraq, US is not ever going to leave the country, nor ever abandon its ‘management’ of it.
It is well-known fact among the observers that land won thru war can be only regained thru war.

I have stated in early ‘03 at vancouver StopWar.ca that US would build bases in iraq and then let the three peoples fight it among themselves. tnx

Dionne is a partisan Demo, and to him, fellow Demos can do no wrong; thus, his blatant dishonesty about the so-called “withdrawal of all combat troops” from Iraq.

Hank ~ Expectations that all troops would leave Iraq is misinterpreting Obama, who even prior to his election, stated plainly support/training troops would remain. Not much different from Bush.

Your criticism of the healthcare issue is on target. It’s essentially a right/center bill (very similar to the bill offered Clinton by the Right-wing) that could have been better accomplished without Republicans or better with Republican who had the best interest of the nation and not confounding Obama as a goal.

As for GM. It has changed substantially. It’s honed down to three main lines, Chevy, Buick and Cadillac. It has finally made a show piece of an economy sedan in the Malibu. The Volt’s influence is overstated in today’s world, however, may be positioned well for a necessary transition. Peak oil, according to Scientific America this month, is here now or close to it and by 2050, oil cannot possibly be our main mover. There is plenty of lithiium they say.

Dione is delusional.  Obama has not withdrawn the troops from Iraq (the withdrawal is a farce that leaves at least 50,000 combat troops in the country plus untold numbers of armed private soldiers), he has not passed comprehensive healthcare legislation (he coordinated a giveaway to the private healthcare and insurance industries), the financial regulation is full of holes that leave everything pretty much as it was (profits and bonuses continue), and his auto bailout is still a bailout regardless of what the manipulated stockmarket may say about auto stocks (GM has not changed much at all).  This is Democratic party line propaganda.  There is no sense in reading truthdig if we get political campaign propaganda like this.