Marcus: “If the swooning left had read Obama’s policy manifesto, ‘The Audacity of Hope,’ it would have gotten an advance peek at Obama’s style as president, elevating the achievable over the perfect.”

Logical fallacy: assuming the conclusion.  Assumes that what Obama has **sold** as “all that’s achievable” is, in fact, all that **was** achievable. 

And that’s a highly suspect conclusion.

When Obama does such things as cut secret deals with the hospital industry, AHIP and PhRMA to protect their profits, and then winds up pushing for, passing and signing a health care “reform” bill that was largely written by lobbyists, jettisoning market-based policy items (specifically, the public option) that consistently held supermajority support for months on end, in poll after poll (CBS, NYT, WSJ, Quinnipiac, and more) from summer 2009 through spring 2010, and on which he campaigned, but which would have threatened the profits of the hospital industry, AHIP and PhRMA, with whom the WH cut secret deals, and then hides behind “this was the best we could achieve in the Senate”, you begin to wonder where the smell of rotting fish is coming from. 

In short, there’s plenty more that’s “achievable” (with effort and an, ahem, “Yes We Can” attitude), that Team Obama isn’t even trying for, and thus, it gives the lie to Marcus’s assumed conclusion that what Team Obama is after is “elevating the achievable over the perfect.”

You have probably nailed down all the conflicts going on for President Obama. My problems all center on any time he gives in to or up to republican thinking on any issue. To me that means corporate interests win and people come up the loser. Republicans rammed through anything they wanted with all the congressional republicans ramming right along with Bush/Cheney. Now I don’t like that President Obama would even think that any republicans can be counted on for the country’s benefit. They have slapped him in the face. Tried to knock him down and hoped to trip him down the stairs if at all possible. No way will I ever vote against President Obama or his agenda. I just want his agenda to be for what he believes in. Compromise to republicans is weakness. They have no interest in doing a good job of leadership or cooperation.

Another voice to add to the ones here who, as I do,
feel that Obama isn’t just being a pragmatist or
“centrist”, he’s been a total turncoat in favor of more
of the same, corporate-controlled governing we’ve been
afflicted with for generations. His backroom deals with
the insurance industry and Pharma, as well as the
incredible hiring of the very people who helped bring
on our present economic malaise, shows that he truly is
a Chicago pol.

Yawn - yet another “Gee, it’s not Obama’s fault that people expected him to govern differently” excuse for an article.

It IS Obama’s fault.  He continually encouraged high expectations with his promises of ‘hope’, ‘change we can believe in’, and ‘an end to business as usual’.  He advanced very specific campaign positions in support of things like the public option, drug reimportation, no mandates, real financial reform, closing Guantanamo, repealing DADT, reversing the Bush erosion of civil liberties… - most of which he didn’t even TRY to get accomplished once in office (and some of which he actively worked against).

And since elected he’s out-right lied about things like ‘all health-care reform options being on the table’ (while he was successfully keeping single-payer completely out of the discussion - for over a year) and even his lip service for the public option (even after he had sold it out in a private deal with industry last summer and therefore was, naturally, doing nothing to advance it in Congress - for that matter, he was lying about his refusal to ‘interfere’ with Congress as well, since he had no reluctance to do so once the public option was safely out of the running).

I didn’t vote for Obama because I thought he was a progressive:  I read his position papers and voted for Nader.  What I’m properly castigating him for now is for not making any attempt to live up to even those medicore positions.

“Nice load of excuses for Obama’s lame betrayals of specific promises made and for his incredibly weak and vascillating leadership style.”

Right on Oleeb. Stop making excuses for Obama and his right-leaning policies. It’s pathetic. Obama barely tried to have a public option or pass anything meaningful like EFCA or other progressive bills. He’s never really wanted progressive change; he wanted to get elected.

Virginia777

“Go ahead and destroy the last chance we might have to restore this country to the Democracy it once was, yet has not been for a long time now.”

Destroying a dog that is chewing off your leg is no loss. When you bring down Obama, you bring down the corporate lies with you. Stop defending the corporate puppet. Sure, Obama is better than McCain, but is that really hard?

RudySpeak,

Thanks for Defending Kucinich. He should run as a Social Democrat and tell the Democrats to go to hell.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Just keep it up progressives, carping about Obama. Go ahead and destroy the last chance we might have to restore this country to the Democracy it once was, yet has not been for a long time now.

This article is yet more of the same, destructive Obama-bashing, and as usual, it is encouraging the commentators to do more of the same.

I’m so tired of the “photoshock” type of whining about Kucinich. You people are
SO easily distracted. Dennis got the press and, hence, the attention of the
easily manipulated. Kucinich was the LAST of the 60-odd “progressives” who
vowed to hold out on single payer and I don’t see anyone carping about Lynn
Woolsey, Henry (cap-and-trade) Waxman, or, current pass-getting media star,
Alan Grayson. Kucinich held out until…passed the time… that every single
other “prog” had abandoned him and Public Option was dead. Even Horatius
eventually dived off the cliff. Anyone think his trip on Air Force One was a
chummy, “C’mon Dennie, join the team” talk? At a minimum it was a reminder
that as The Best Congressman We’ve Got, MONEY was coming after him and,
“Geez, Dennie, I’d hate to think the DNC couldn’t allocate any funds for a non-
team player”. At a minimum. Probably more like,“Hey, I’d hate to think of you
and that pretty wife of yours taking the Paul Wellstone flight…” Get real, these
thugs don’t take prisoners and he’d already fought “til the battle was over. Find
a more relevant scapegoat. There are over 60 of them.

“Life as we know it will end and we the people, will be all the worst that they can determine us to be.”
Questions:
1. Do threats and predictions of doom creat enthusiasm and energy necessary to bring about movements for social change?
2. Can corporations or governments “determine us to be .. all the worst” unless we allow it to happen?.
3. What has brought about successful social movements of the past?

Personally, I suspect that at least half of the negative criticisms of Obama and the Democrats are coming from right wing enthusiasts who are working to undermine what’s left of the disappointed left by seconding their most vicious comments.

Photoshock: Excellent post!  100% agree!  Damned good post!

“If the swooning left had read Obama’s policy manifesto, “The Audacity of Hope,” it would have gotten an advance peek at Obama’s style as president, elevating the achievable over the perfect.”
Ha-ha-ha!  So it’s our fault for not understanding the poor beleaguered President?  Ok! No problem.  I won’t vote for him next time!  Why; I just don’t know how to educate my self well enough to vote.  Plus with the left staying out of the election President Obama won’t have to lie to the left about campaign promises he has no intention of keeping!  That’s our fault too!  Shame on us!  On the other hand; I’ll save money on donations to the Dems this year and in two more.
I’m so ashamed of being an ungrateful left/progressive!

Samson, you are absolutely correct in your assessment of the situation. What is surprising is that in the coming election, Demicans in the millions will continue to vote for the elite ruling class, a sell-out member of which Dennis Kucinich is.
There are no viable third party candidates from which to choose and which can be elected, because of the ‘selection’ process known as voting.
We, the people, the true government of the United States, from which the “inside the Washington Belt-way elite’ derive their power are son damnably apathetic that we could not field a viable third party. We the people, must raise a third party of, by and for the people or we are doomed to mass extinction of the worst kind.
Sheeple all, we cannot escape the fact that the true power brokers are not the governed, but the corporatocracy, the combination of the corporations and the governmental elite. Commonly called socialism. But not a socialism for the people, whose existence is now in question, but a socialism which run by the corporations is a government of, by and for the people called IBM, Halliburton, KBR, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the bureaucracy created by and for the corporations to service their needs.
Should we not overturn this abominable system that has been created by the Supreme Court and the Congress, we the people, are doomed to a life of economic slavery and apathy. Watching ‘American Gladiator’ and “Growing Up Gotti!”
Life as we know it will end and we the people, will be all the worst that they can determine us to be.
Sounds bad doesn’t it? Well, it will only get worse than predicted if we don’t overturn their system of governmental access.
Dwight David Eisenhower, warned us, the people of the likelihood of the Military-Industrial complex and its unwarranted and unlimited use of power, but what is not known, is the true phrase, that being, the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. Which by the way, has happened and is causing the havoc as we speak.

Nice load of excuses for Obama’s lame betrayals of specific promises made and for his incredibly weak and vascillating leadership style.

At the heart of your argument is the following red herring:

“To some extent, this is inherent in the nature of the job. No president can govern as purely as his most ideological supporters would like. The art of the possible requires trade-offs certain to rankle those who elevate the importance of one particular issue.”

This is a nice diversionary argument that the Obamabots have been making on every single flip flop from the FISA flip flop to his betrayal of his promise to restore the rule of law and include a public option in his alleged healthcare reform plan.  But the fact is, the left is angry that Obama has simply lied to them repeatedly.  He flat out lied about the public option.  He flat out lied on everything having to do with transparancy in government.  He has flat out lied when he discusses anything having to do with torture.  He lied about offshore drilling.  He clearly lied about card check legislation.  He has lied over and over in order to service the needs of the very same pack of corporate thieves the Republicans serve.  Obama’s serial lies and flip flops go well beyond anything like “the art of the possible” or the sort of trade offs our legislative and political process often requires.  The left would be fine if that is what is going on, but that is not what is going on.  The man is a liar on the issues most important to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and he is making hypocrites and liars out of the conservadem/DLC/Democrats from which he springs.

I find the ongoing defense of Obama’s lies by many journalists and commentators on the basis stated above highly offensive and insulting to the intelligence of the public who understand very well how Obama has sold out the public interest in favor of the corporate interests.

ohiolibgal wrote:
“The sad thing about the Democratic Party is that the best thing they have going is that they are a better choice than republicans - and it’s hard to imagine a bar lower. Our last two democratic presidents? Republican lite.”
And she’s absolutely right about this and everything else in her post.  The only choice left for progressives is to withdraw our support for Democrats.  Let this demented house of cards fall.  As long as we keep nibbling at the carrot on the end of their stick this will continue to happen.

He’s made his own bed with we progressives. He could have ended the perpetual wars, he could have not sold out on health insurance, he could have not appointed Goldman Sachs alumni to reign in…Goldman Sachs and the rest of the old boys Wall Street bandits going wild - in other word hiring the foxes to guard the hen house - and one of them is a misogynist to boot. Oh, he could have gone after NAFTA and those other flat earth trade agreements like he said he would too.

He sided with the corporatists pure and simple - as well as the military/industrial complex that President Eisenhower stridently warned us about in his 1961 farewell address.

The sad thing about the Democratic Party is that the best thing they have going is that they are a better choice than republicans - and it’s hard to imagine a bar lower. Our last two democratic presidents? Republican lite.

We need real change, not the tepid seriously watered down change Obama is selling. He had a chance, all the capital in the world, and instead of using it…..well, we know what happened, he squandered it.

Change you can believe in has turned into change you can wipe your ass with as the continuation of the Bush administration is rolling forward unhindered in it’s effects on human kind and planet.  A health care bill that is one of the biggest give-a-ways to the Corporate health insurance industry ever seen with millions of Americans squealing like stuck pigs as they hang on to every word from Rush Bimbo and Faux News believing it is SOCIALISM!!!!!  There’s not an American alive that knows what Socialism is or would recognize it if it bit him or her on their fat asses.  There’s also not one American alive that knows or understands Mussolini’s definition of Fascism in spite of the fact that is exactly what we’re living under in this country now.  The Corporations are deluding a large sector of American’s into believing the problem is the “Guberm’nt” when the Corporations own and rule the Government.  And as long as that’s the case nothing will change.  And in fact IMHO nothing will change…except get worst.  The structure is now firmly implanted world wide and any and every government is powerless to stop it; as if there was any will on the part of the people that get elected to change it.

“Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy.

In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low. This can apply to a multitude of government systems, as the key elements of plutocracy transcend and often occur concurrently with the features of those systems.”

“The word plutocracy (Modern Greek: ???????????? - ploutokratia) is derived from the ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.”

And that’s where we are at.  When the Supreme Court can over rule the popular vote your vote don’t count.  Most have forgotten that happened in 2000 and the voter fraud in 2004.
When the President brings in to his administration the economic advisers that were the same people that caused the economic collapse from Lehman Bros. and Goldman Sacs; you should know just exactly who is running the country.  But you don’t.

Why?  Because Americans are fat, stupid, self-centered/self-seeking greed based simple bastards.  That’s what happens when you are the citizen of a country that was started to exploit the natural resources of a particular land mass through the use of slavery and violent force.  Most white people in America don’t know that before they were indentured servants they were slaves living with the black slaves as well; and that didn’t change until the slave revolt in the 1790’s.  “Oh that’s ancient history, why does that matter?”  Because you are still a slave.  Remember all those toys and vacations you took on your credit cards and the refi of your home?  It was never your money.  It always belonged to the banks and credit/financial industry.
Do you know what ‘they’ used to be called?  The Company Store. 
Ready for more?
1.) This country has never created any wealth for it’s citizens.  It has only created debt.
2.) It’s going to do it again just as soon as your greed overtakes your shock at what has just been done to you.
3.) The American Plutocracy has stayed in power for over 300 years doing this to every generation of Americans and no one does it better.

Yankee Doodle Dandy that motherfuckers.

To Samson:  Any “advice” you might offer Obama or the Dems would automatically be suspect.  You offer the same old right wing talking points. Ho hum - did you have Frank Lutz’s list handy?

Clueless. Marcus echoes (it’s her job) the standard MSM myth of “political
reality”.  Over and over again, the same baseless claims keep getting repeated
until the sheep believe, not simply that they are true, but that the sheep
thought of them themselves. As Aldous Huxley would say, “15,000 times
between the ages of 12 and 18”. “No president can govern as purely as his most
ideological supporters would like. The art of the possible requires trade-offs…”
To characterize as “his most ideological supporters” the 72% of Americans [WSJ
poll]  who wanted HCR to have a public option is typical BeltWay-ese for ” the
monied interests we work for don’t want it”. To say that the EFCA is of concern
to only unions is to portray beneficial social progress as of interest only to that
group most actively pushing it. Think, do YOU get a “weekend” off, or only the
unions who invented the term and pushed for it? Obama doesn’t get “trade-
offs”. He deals with “giveaways”. What did he “get” for endorsing the atrocity of
nuclear power, or off-shore oil drilling? I could go on for pages about
approving assassinations of US citizens overseas, signing the Patriot Act (Feb.
27th), not ending kidnapping (oops, I mean “renditions”) as State Policy, his
handling and likely collusion in the coup in Honduras, war in Pakistan (we did
have a Constitution once… he supposedly taught a course on it), but why
bother? The conclusion Marcus gets paid to obscure is unavoidable; Obama
supports got gulled again, buying into the “lesser of two evils” meme [12,000
times between the ages of 10 and 19] and got G.W. Bush’s 3rd term. And Marcus is here, as in every con game, to “cool the mark”.

Obama’s base needs to give Obama and the Demcorats a lesson.

Don’t just ‘stay home’ in 2010.  Instead, get out and actively back an independent/3rd-party candidate.  Find one that opposes the wars, opposes the wall street bailouts, and supports single payer health care.  If there isn’t such a candidate, then help create one and get them on the ballot.

Take away enough votes that the Democrats lose race after race this fall and Obama’s re-election becomes in doubt, and you’ll get rid of this smirking “don’t pay attention to the angry activist” attitude that the Democrats and their propaganda writers have. 

Send Obama and the Democrats down in electoral flames this fall, and then you’ll see the Democrats being a little nicer to their base in the future.

Don’t get mad .... get even.

The part about Obama now pushing offshore drilling is classic.  Vote for Obama .... get “Drill, baby, Drill” instead ... and if you complain about it, then you are just some unreasonable leftist who can’t understand how wonderful Obama is.

Obama said Ronald Reagan was his favorite President.  But according to the WaPo Democrat propaganda writers like Ms. Marcus, if you are a Democrat that now doesn’t love Reagan and his policies, then you are just some unreasonable activist type and your opinions are rightly ignored.  You should get with the program and love Reagan just as much as Obama does.

Interestingly, a quick visit to Wikipedia shows that the WaPo hired its managing editor from the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago.  No surprise then that this pro-corporate message is now being blasted out to the left through the WaPo’s Democrat propaganda writers.  You will come to love Reagan one way or the other.

What’s really interesting is that a supposedly left-leaning site like Truthdig seems to have the promotion of this pro-corporate WSJ propaganda as one of its leading missions.  There isn’t one crappy Democrat propaganda piece from the Reagan loving WaPo that doesn’t get reprinted here.

The president does not do certain things, one of them, the most important is to set economic policy.
The economic policy of the United States and the world, is set by the ‘Central Banks,’ one of which is the Federal Reserve Banking System. Which is neither governmental nor Federal. It is a private banking system created by a group of bankers in early 1910, passed into legislation in 1913 by 3 Senators and without the consent of the American people.
So do I care for the concession of President Obama? Absolutely NOT! His waffling on the issues that got him selected president, progressive issues one and all is totally concessionary and absolutely a stand for the power-broker elite.

I don’t think corporate Democrats have cause for disappointment.

As long as President Obama systematically dismantles the Reagan Legacy, I really don’t care how he does it or if his opponents don’t like it. Removing the stench of Reagan’s decaying legacy is worth the pain.

I think your prediction that Obama will be the 6th decisive President may be a bit premature. 

Ms Marcus is correct to point out that no President can be ideologically pure.  But they can at least make a try, can’t they? I believe that we could have passed HR 676 with the proper political strategy and leadership from the White House.  It may have cost Obama his second term, but maybe not.  If we could have tasted true universal health care perhaps after a few months or years the system could have been the crown achievement of Obama’s Presidency.

The current health care bill is one formed by crisis and concession instead of a focused, honest discussion.  It reminds me of what one of my bosses used to say, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” 

Well, now we have it, and it’s wrong. I realize that the health care system is just one issue to the larger point of the article, but it sums up the rest of Obama’s Presidency pretty well.  We’re escalating wars, Gitmo still open, illegal domestic spying still going on, foreign policy trajectory (American exceptionalism) still the same, Bush/Cheney still on the loose, and so on. 

If you were reading between the lines of Obama’s speeches and votes, you might have gotten a clue that he’s a center-right politician.  Yes, it’s true that many filled his empty vessel with their own Progressive visions.  I was doing that, too, up until the end of the Iowa Caucus.  A few months later I was looking for another candidate and I ended up voting for Nader.  I could tell that Obama was going to be more of the same… in fact, he’s almost a cookie cutter of Bush.

-Wexler
None of these

When government takes taxpayers’ money and gives it to Wall Street, corporations and banks to “save” the economy from crashing, that’s socialism.  When government pays soldiers to go fight wars and pays their medical expenses and gives them retirement money if they come home alive, that’s socialism.
When government spends tax money to help people pay their medical expenses, ot gives them tuition money to study, or pensions its older people, that’s socialism.  Government does these things because nobody else will or can.  Taxes pay for all these things because there is no other way to get money to keep people alive and well. If people are not alive and well,everybody lives poorer and dies sooner, and eventually their country falls apart.   
Every country with a big population has big problems helping its people live, eat, breathe, drink clean water, study, learn, think, grow up, raise children.
  We like to pretend we can each individualliy take care of ourselves.  Actually, it’s impossible.  We are born into social groups and die in social groups—always have, always will. 
  Government money spent to help people is a question first of necessity, and second of fairness. It is not morally right to let some people go hungrey while other people have far more than they need.
  No president’s job has ever been easy because all these problems are waiting for him every day when he wakes up, and there are never enough people to help him. Most people don’t even want to help him, or think they don’t know how to help him. They think they have done enough just to elect him, and then to criticize what he does or doesn’t do. If there is a vacuum in helping him, the wrong people will jump into the vacuum.
  You don’t want to be president, do you?  Then roll up your sleeves and find a group of people near you and join them and start helping him carry the load.

The United States of America (aka, USA) has had five decisive presidencies: (1) Washington, who established the republic; (2) Jefferson, who expanded it geographically; (3) Lincoln, who kept it together; (4) Teddy Roosevelt, who established it as a global power; then (5) FDR, who expanded its rights to include social and longevity rights.

Now, we have a sixth decisive presidency: Obama, who is trying to re-direct it and preserve it as an ongoing enterprise into the future. It doesn’t matter one little bit what the Republicans or other domestic terrorist groups or individuals do or say, now or in the future, and it doesn’t matter if the masses of generally clueless citizens vote for the other party in November, nor does it matter what adjectives they use to describe the man and his presidency, the fact is that his is and will be regarded as a decisive presidency. How on earth can such a rotten country with such a stupid citizenry be so lucky?