Great article Mr. Scheer.  I do wish that you had mentioned the expansion of
the middle east conflicts as well.  That is billions going down the rat hole along
with tremendous loss of life.  It is hidden billions going to private industry
defense contractors.  With no rational basis, I add. No declaration of war
against Iraq or Afghanistan.

Many of us who worked on Obama’s campaign are just flabbergasted at his
decisions to date.  Why is it that he has refused to relieve Geithner, Summers,
Bernanke of their positions?  It was clear to we simpler folk that these fellows
were simply a part of the old boy network.  Very clear when those millions-
billions were handed out in bonuses to CEOs, Wall Street administrators for
their poor judgment and decision making.  This, while people were being
thrown out of their homes because they defaulted on their mortgage payments. 
Those mortgage payments were not in the hundreds of thousands per
mortgage, but in the low thousands/per mo..  No justice there.

The back door deals that Obama is allegedly responsible for with the
pharmaceutical industry, and his refusal to actually stand up for the democrats
in congress and support the public option has clearly expressed to us, the
voters, where Mr. Obama stands.  And the unbelievable decision to continue
the conflict in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama was most likely a terrific community leader.  It has not translated
into true leadership for the nation.  I suspect that a great movement will
commence to get third party candidates elected over the next few years. 
Americans cannot afford to allow politicians who work primarily for the
corporatists and lobbyists to continue running the country.  We are broke.  We
are broke because our leaders, democrats and republicans are more interested
in getting our tax dollars and treasury into the pockets of the few, but
powerful.

The Democrats lost when:

1.  Obama decided to ignore previous Republican crimes and misdemeanors,
2.  Obama decided to do a stingy stimulus full of tax breaks and pork,
3.  Obama decided to kill the only option that would have slowed the cost of
health care & led to universal coverage,
4.  Obama decided to accelerate the Bush bailout,
5.  Obama decided to escalate a meaningless and fruitless war,
6.  Obama decided to gut real financial reform and substitute finger wagging
and silly taxes and fees,
7.  Obama decided to not help people with bankruptcy and mortgages
remediation, and
8. Obama decided to fiddle around and not pass a jobs bill.

These decisions all hurt the American people, and all favored the corporations.
We did not vote for Republican trickle down and the back lash is going to doom
Obama. The voters did not vote for Republican lite; we voted for real change.
We got no change. We got wallowing in the status quo.

Supporting Democrats is a serious political disorder like alcoholism or returning again & again to an abusive spouse who repeatedly lies to you. It’s easy to fall off the wagon, to make excuses & rationalizations for it. Even many whose views are developed enough to recognize such truths as the fundamental rottenness of the 2-party system & the complicity of Democrats in all of the Republicans’ major crimes, are still unable to draw the logical consequences of these insights. The central point is this: capitalist society permits the Democrats to be one of the 2 allowed parties for a very definite reason. It’s not because the Democrats “serve the people.” It’s because in a subtle but effective way, they help the capitalists keep the populace under control by providing them with the illusion of possible change. TPTB don’t want the people “served.” They want them managed, or controlled. It is the job, the central social function of the Democrats to always be dangling before the people’s noses vague pseudo-hints of possible change, so as to keep them from bolting from bourgeois politics altogether. It is the Democrats’ intention to never deliver meaningful change, but rather to keep dangling hints of it alluringly forever. This produces control—a populace habituated to remain safely within the lines required by ruling class interests.

Maybe the bottom line is whether or not we all seek the same depth of changes in our society. There is no doubt in my mind that whether under the control of Democrats or the Republicans, the number one beneficiary of political decisions, be they foreign policy or domestic, will be large industries/the extremely wealthy - that is, the general protection of the status quo, and the continuation of a capital-before-people mentality, the right of the US to impose its will on sovereign nations for the benefit of its corporations.

If people are comfortable with this reality, if a slightly higher minimum wage and a slightly friendlier attitude toward minorities or some minor (and generally unenforced) efforts toward reducing environmental damage, if changes on that level are good enough, then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. But if people are seeking significant change, if they want to see the current military occupations end, the power of the military-industrial complex diminish or disappear, and the rights of working people protected, health care for everyon or other changes of that magnitude, then an honest analysis of the Dems’ desire/ability to make those changes must be undertaken. And by all analyses I don’t see these changes coming through them, ever.

I wish it was a matter of pressuring them, writing letters, lobbying their offices, supporting certain candidates. But it has been shown time and time again that these measures don’t work. And this is the question I still don’t seem to have a clear answer for - what evidence is there (in this time of high-paid and high-powered corporate lobbyists, manipulated elections, pro-corporate media, etc) that the citizens of this country have any real influence over the politicians in Washington, or even that elections actually represent the will of the American people? I see some placating legislation here and there but when it comes to the big national issues - war, health care, oil dependency, environment, there is little more than rhetoric and half-measures. It’s the whole thing about doing the same things over and over and expecting different results….The main arguments I have seen for continuing to focus on the Dems as a force for real change are based on faith, not fact.

As an aside, I have been doing a fair amount of reading about social uprisings, revolts, and revolutions lately. There is one thing I know for sure - people successfully demanding social change is NOT some impossible dream. It has happened throughout history, all over the globe. It is common, it is necessary, and, as far as I am concerned IT IS TIME.

Sure blame it on Obama, he’s got big shoulders.  I see a double standard here though.  What woman could pose for a leading Mens Magazine completely Naked and be seated on a seat in the Senate or the House or in any State or even local political race???

Finally,,, Thank you Bob,

Its a bit late, but finally, maybe some of you journalists can shed some light on how this “Massachusetts’ experiment”, was dictated to the citizens of Massachusetts, and maybe now the truth about the false numbers that supported the rationale to implement it had been cooked. I figure that the “Massachusetts’ experiment” was blacked out by the White House, since scrutiny of it would have caused many red flags to be raised, much earlier, as to the process that has masqueraded as health care reform in Washington.

I think the problem has been, well, most of you journalists got Senator Ed Kennedy right, but Massachusetts wrong. You journalists need to start penetrating Massachusetts’ political culture, and stop reporting the myths about this state. If you started to pay attention to the lesson you just learned, and focus on unraveling the myths of this state, this would help immensely, to shed light on a kind of “blue dog fascism” that has been quietly, yet very virulently, assuming more and more power here. Many should have paid attention to the problems Deval Patrick had, when he seemed to represent a push back to this unique “Massachusetts’ blue-dogism”, a trend that has steadily gained footing here, in the last couple of decades. Washington best stop ignoring Deval Patrick, in the same way they ignored Ted Kennedy’s seat, without Deval Patrick around here we are going to see things get much worse.

Someone should also raise the concern, that the last minute, confusing addition of the Libertarian candidate, who happen to have the same name as one of the most well known other Kennedy, well, it is pretty obvious that this kind of politics should not go unanswered, when in fact the effort was meant to be a spoiler. When I saw this Kennedy name on the ballot, I admit for a brief moment, a great romantic and emotional urge rose up in my heart, to make that choice, though my mind knew it to be a ruse, it still was very hard to resist, since little or no information, or warning for that matter, was given about this political trick. Does anyone know how many people accidentally made that choice in a moment, of magical thinking for sure, but due also to political exhaustion.

Massachusetts has big racial problems, and it is run by Beacon Hill Blue-dogers. Why did not you journalists do your homework, if you had, you would not have bought into the myth of this state, and you would have saw through the clever use, of an almost dead history.  You guys, like so many others, including the White House, got the living legend, of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, mixed up with what is really going on in this state on the local levels. The amazing thing about the late Senator Kennedy, is that he alone helped keep this disturbing trend in Massachusetts at bay. I suppose the enormity of one man’s reputation did cause the conditions on the ground here to be overlooked and ignored in a sense. But the cat is truly out the bag now, and its time you journalist stop giving Massachusetts a free pass. 

My wife and I held the line, and voted for Martha Coakley, and besides, she is very qualified, smart as hell, and would have supported policies and remedies much like the late Senator Kennedy. As to Martha Coakley’s competitor, well, you got to be kidding me.

You journalist are now scrambling to make heads or tails of this event, what you should be doing is stopping, and take a time out, and then begin doing your homework, and stop buying into the myths around here.

Rhuen Phreed, 11 Marlborough Street, #22, Boston, MA 02116

After watching Coakley in action I cringed at her ineptness, but Brown is a fraud
too. Coakley would have won if she was halfway competent as a politician. Too
much is being made of her loss having a larger meaning. As many said last night
Massachusetts voters are fed up with all of the corruption in their state and they
already have their version of health care the Federal government is trying to
emulate. Coakley was coasting to a win by 20 points and then went on vacation
and let Brown steal the show. What kind of politician goes on vacation in the
middle of a campaign? Obama took zero days off after the Denver convention.
Also we are losing sight of the slash and burn tactics and general nastiness of the
Republican’s. They want to take down Obama and return to their authoritarian
style of governance. Still Obama should act like this is a wake-up call and forget
about bi-partisianship. This was a loser from the start.

“To salvage his presidency, Obama must reverse course and make solving the “toxic political problem” of Wall Street greed that’s bankrupting the country his highest priority.”

Scheer almost gets it right here, but the problem isn’t Wall Street greed - the real problem is when our politicians sell us out to corporate interests. It’s called crony capitalism. Ultimately it’s our responsibility as voters to stop electing crooks and start electing leaders like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. Primary out thieves like Barney Frank, Pelosi, Cantor, and Boehner.

As long as we have private property rights, we will always have greed. Greed IS good, for greed is what motivates us to go beyond the status quot, to succeed, and to thrive. It is the source of our industry, skyscrapers, Iphone, zippers, pharmaceuticals, toilets, etc. We need greed, but we need to make sure that our government enforces contracts and prosecutes fraud.

INDEPENDENTS DAY
The chicken has come home to roost. We independents are responsible for the election of Mr. Obama becaused we believed he would at least attempt to correct many of the disfunctional issues which prevent the government from addressing the needs of the people. However, from the day he took office to the present day all we have observed is that he has ignored our needs and vigorously embraced all those of the vested interests. He does not have the will nor the wit to change and because of his weakness the Democratic Party is going down in flames. It is not a surprise to find him in bed with those who are destroying the foundations of this country; after all the Democratic Party has taken even more money from the lobbyists than has the Republican Party. In time, we are going to throw every Democrat who has thwarted the will of the people out of office. Mr. Obama VOTES TRUMP DOLLARS. Today we celebrate INDEPENDENTS Day and look forward to many more in the future.

The more dismal lesson from all of this is that “change” is virtually impossible.

I don’t see how you get Medicare for all, for example, when low-lifes like Lieberman threaten to join in a filibuster, along with other conservative Democrats.

How do we deal with the fact that corporate interest groups, whether we speak of foreign or domestic policy, own so many in Congress?  When these forces control so much of the media message?

And how is it that when Dems were in the minority, and threatened a filibuster of certain judicial nominees, from the media coverage, you would have thought it was the end of the world, but when Republicans do so, far more often than the Dems ever did, we don’t hear a peep? How do you get change when a media repeats Republican lies about health care reform without challenge?

Another change I fear we will never see, is reform of the election system, to make races funded in some fashion by the public.  As long as a senator spends a significant part of every week going to big donors for contributions for the next election, we will never have a well-functioning democracy.

Obama should make a mea culpa speech and at the same time fire Michael Geithner, Larry Summers, Robert Gates and James Jones.  He should announce an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and respect for the sovereignty of Pakistan.  He should order our Navy to break the blockade of Gaza and begin immediate delivery of food and humanitarian supplies to Gaza.  He should announce the redirection of resources, bringing home our troops worldwide and redirection of the funds to a Manhattan Project style national reorganization with wartime urgency to convert our economy to one run on renewable energy such as solar and transportation conversion to build electric trolleys and a fast rail network to bring our carbon footprint way down and our survivability way up.

He should appoint an FCC that will require free access to the airwaves for political candidates and ban paid political advertising.

He won’t do those things, of course.

There is a way to get those policies enacted even if Obama is a huge disappointment.

VOTE GREEN IN THE NEXT ELECTION!

What a cheap, 2nd rate, corporatist administration!!!  I am fed up with this changeling president and his lying cabinet.

I can’t even think of coming back to Amerika anymore, because I think it is over - the Corporations have won.

I just got appendicitis here and had to go for surgery. I am so glad that I had my private for profit insurance here that cost me $270/mth for my family. The primitive surgery here, that can’t even touch the Amerikan system, put me through that antiquated, primitive tool called a…let’s see…Oh an MRI and confirmed that I needed surgery from the local Shaman.  They put me in the cave on the 7th floor in a private section away from the other poverty stricken untouchables and readied me for the witchdoctors to perform their magic with my appendix.  After the gods allowed me to live after surgery, I had to remain in the cave section for three days while the priests came through with their chants and concoctions to keep me comfortable - I swear one of the concoctions I kept receiving for pain reminded me, curiously, of morphine.  It was only after the three days of staying there for observation, that I screamed to be released because it was Christmas Eve and I wanted to be with my family.  The, what must have been, volunteers from the first world nations like Amerika, compassionately released me but told me to report back everyday for the following two weeks after Christmas to make sure that I was healing well.

I am fully recovered now and I have been waiting for my bills and paper overload to arrive so that I may do battle with their barbarians over who really has to pay.  I am tired of waiting and I go see my insurance broker to scream about the paperwork and costs above and beyond.  All I received was the sympathetic response from him - You poor, poor American!!!!

Side note:  A European friend coincidentally caught appendicitis after Christmas and had to have an operation too.  She did not have for profit health care and had to rely on that socialistic, communistic un-American single payer system to get fixed.  After comparing notes, I determined that those same witchdoctors must have to work two jobs also to survive because she had the exact same story to tell!!!

Even though I detest the Republican party, as an analyst I must admire their brilliant tactics to bring President Obama down. They knew that he was craving for “bipartisanship” when he came into office. The Republican response was simple and deadly efficient. “Do it our ways or shove it”. Soon they were called “the Party of No”, a moniker which they wore with false pride. Meanwhile Mr. Obama wasted his time to woo in vain a few Republican Senators who led this failed leader up a garden path.
Mr. Obama completely ignored the age-old political wisdom: “you do not wound your opponent, you crush him”. Obama offered triage-in-Congress to the Republicans, trying to bind their wounds until it was too late to discover that they had already recovered.
This nincompoop has failed the working-classes. He will serve out his term, write memoirs, and make millions.

For oldog:

You sure got it right. Change you can believe in has simply gone out of the window. Anyone who really wanted to create a better health care system should have embarked on a step by step process—first clipping the wings of the insurance companies and the drug companies and then putting in place a basic health care system for all and sundry.
As for the economy, Obama and the Democrats as a whole simply sold their souls to Wall street and the predatory banking/investing institutions like Goldman Sachs. Putting the foxes in charge of the hen house was utterly inexcusable.
And, as for global warming and Copenhagen, Obama simply drank the Koolaid like almost all other political leaders. They have still not woken up to the fact that the notion of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) is the biggest perversion of science in human history.  The whole thing is simply a fraud and a hoax. CO2 emissions are NOT the main cause of any warming that has occurred and pretending that we are able to predict what will happen to the Earth’s climate over the coming decades is simply a case of hubris gone mad. The factors which control the Earth’s climate are so complex and so chaotic that we simply do not have the ability to see into the future w.r.t. climate. For all we know we are heading for decades of cooling which is far more harmful to us humsns and other animals than warming.
CO2 is not a pollutant and Obama should be ashamed of himself—with his much vaunted interest in science—for climbing on the AGW bandwagon. The AGW hypothesis will end in being totally discredited and the sooner Obama and the dems as whole realize this the better.

Boy, change comes in mysterious ways!

I say tomato you say tomato, I say Republican, you Say Democrat.

My life had already changed after Bush became president then it changed again when Obama became president, now it is changing again? 

Partisan politics has one purpose and that seems to be to create and bolster animosity. In the end does any sane person believe either party masks a difference?

Voting for a democract or republician is voting
for the same military/industrial system.  Changing
the existing system is virtually impossible.  It’s
too fat.  It will eventually collapse from within.
In the meantime, a small ruined country like Haiti
is an opportunity to develop systems that will serve
all people.  Economic and social engineers should
meet to design a system to serve all people. Communism and capitalism don’t work because they both
neglected the principles of Christianity.  Just after
Jesus was crucified the Christians sold all they had
and gave the money to the leaders to distribute as
people had need.  This is discussed in the book of
Acts.  The system is never mentioned again.  I don’t
know how it was designed and implemented specifically. I don’t know how it came to an end.
However, the early Christians recognized the need to
co-operate in using resources to serve all people.

We may be on the way to having the first four-year lame-duck Presidency. The problems required a bit of gumption not rocket science. The financial sector had worked a Ponzi scam they hadn’t bothered to hide from the public. Instead of prison, several perpetrators assumed high political office. The voters were so eager to trade liberty for safety they allowed the Bush administration to establish a dictatorship inept at waging war. Bush left Obama with only two working tools. The Patriot and Military Commissions Acts would have led to the prosecution of thousands of enemy combatants already running the country. After Barack Obama failed to unite the citizens in populist outrage, the perpetrators channeled dissent into Tea Party nihilism. This has left Obama floating in the pond unable to spread his wings.
The people of Massachusetts have good hearts and their fair share of common sense. They deserve positive actions.

The White House needs to forget and stop acting on the saying, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the bad.” When values people tie themselves to a thrown overboard—guess who also drowns. I suspect Barak Obama is closer to being a true Democrat than Bill Clinton, his policies reflect that brand of moderate Republicanism because of the former Clinton staffers onboard doing the dirty work such as the back-stabbing deal with pharmaceutical companies in early health insurance reform negotiations. The White House is not acting as though Clinton failures were because he appeared liberal instead of that his legislative proposals were lousy and appealed to no one.

It is very simple the Democrats represent Wall Street and Corporate interests, so do the Republicans, so doesn’t matter who one votes for they get the same results.  Change is just a word

I don’t know if the voters of Massachusetts were voting
for healthcare reform or just the candidate of their
choice. However, it is becoming obvious that Barrack
Obama has wandered far from his campaign platform. I
thought he was going to end the war, make government
more transparent, rein in the excesses of wall street,
take medical decisions out of the hands of insurance
companies, and you know, be a DEMOCRATIC president. I’m
confused. Did the Republicans win the presidency and a
huge majority in congress? Sure looks like it.

It’s never quite as simple as true-believers would have it. Be it the battle of good and evil (Christians and Muslems) or politics (left and right). Like airline accidents, political surprises come about because or a confluence of “errors”, not a single mistake. And had any one of the errors not occurred, the crash probably would never have happened.

This was not a rejection of Obama, much as Mr. Sheer (he’s in the paocket of Wall Street) and those on the right (he’s taking the country on too liberal a path) would have it. It was the result of many things at once: a poorly run campaign by Coakley and the MA democratic establishment, who took her win for granted until it was too late and who tried to make up for the lost time with a barrage of offensively negative advertising (such that even I had to swallow a couple of time before voting for her); an economy still mired in under-employment that leaves everyone, republican and democrat, frustrated; a not-particularly appealing Coakley against a rock-star appealing Brown (we are an American Idol country now, after all); and a highly motivated radical right versus a neutered radical left - all the noise has been coming from one directions, Brown’s.

This was not about national politics. If it were, Coakley would have won in a landslide, because this is a state that wants progressive policies in Washington. It was a local election reflecting local discontent.

What Sheer gets right is that, if Obama had been truer to his liberal/progressive calling and not so cautious as to give away the ranch before he even began the fight, the radical left here might have made a lot more noise on Coakley’s behalf and the voters might have felt a more compelling ownership of the direction Washington was going and rejected the damage a Brown win could do to that. It might have tipped the scales.

I don’t see anything but o piling more evidence on showing his
real intent of corporations first philosophy along with the aipac
and I saw this back in the 2008 campaign and took it for what it
was, screw the people because the corporate and aipac lobbyists
are more important, uh, rich.

His actions speak much more loudly than his rhetoric as always.

I cast the first republican vote of my life yesterday.
The only relationship Coakley had to the vote was that she was going
to support the current form of Obma’s healthcare reform.  There was
nothing as all about Scott Brown except that we can remove him in two
years contributing to my vote.  Obama and the DLC lost this seat, but
only for a little while if they smarten up.

If the Democrats just didn’t want to take their majority out of the
center; by only including folks from the Left they would only need to
get a little past center to win.  The Left has gotten zero from either
party since the Boland Amendment, and that wasn’t enforced!  So which
party deserves our allegiance?

There is, and will be much to be said about this election.  But what speaks loudest to me is that these two ‘candidates’ were the best Mass could do to fill the seat of a great orator, Mr. Edward Kennedy.  Mr. Brown will have great company with the likes of Inhofe and the other wing nuts. We are looking more and more like the great Roman Empire, where the lunitics are in the house (and senate). Sad day, sad day indeed.

Under the caption, “Mr.Brown goes to Washington” on her Facebook page, Gov. Sarah Palin offers interesting reflections & pertinent commentary on Scott Brown’s victory.

Excellent article.  The Massachusetts vote is yelling out loud “pass this ‘Health Care’ trash bill and your political future is toast”.  Still, it will be interesting to watch the squirming because changing the minds of politicians profiting from an illusion it is very difficult.  So getting Democrap Corporatists to change course may be impossible.  Will they get it, or will they just insist there is only a communication problem?

This election was more about those who stayed home than it was those who voted. I doubt that Democrats will get the message though.

I don’t know what, exactly, the voters decided in Mass. but if this was a protest
vote against Obama it doesn’t surprise me and I couldn’t agree more with
Robert Scheer. There has been a failure of nerve here for the past year on
incredibly important issues. I’m not as informed as Scheer on the details but
what I do know is enough - that the health care legislation we have, without a
public option, is legislation we got without Obama calling a press conference
and asking the American people to extend Medicare. (If that would mean a loss
of jobs in the health care sector, and I don’t know that it would, then Obama
could ask the American people to endure and adjust to that in the same way
we have had to endure and adjust to the fallout in the industrial economy over
the past 25 years as jobs were shipped overseas to China.) He could have made
a similar message by refusing to escalate the war and refusing to give in to Wall
Street and by signing the Treaty to ban land mines instead of refusing to sign it
and had he done all this and lost in Mass. it would be a far better result than
the one we have.

I guess the voters decided that they might as well elect a true Republican than another Democrat who was a closet one.  At the very least, Repugs are honest about their bigotry and corruption.  The Dems seem to believe that smoke and mirrors will obscure their similar nature.  The voters saw thru that facade and the joke of Obama health care.  Maybe this defeat will be a rallying call for those who have always felt neither party was worth voting for.