Replies to post #95387 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wall_rus]

Heh........between my "cynicism" and your "MtHead", what do we know?.....lol.

[StephanieVanbryce]

Mthead .. you must be kidding.

I also believe his take on the healthcare bill is right on...

Health care is a perfect example of this. Obviously, we want to have pre-existing conditions covered. Obviously, we want young people to be able to continue on their parents' health care plans. There are many things that are going to be improvements.

But let's be clear here: This is a complete and total sellout to the interests of the insurance lobby by the Obama administration. This is, as Michael Moore has said, a complete victory for the ultra-capitalists. Yet, if you look on the liberal blogosphere, people like Jane Hamsher are attacked mercilessly for having the audacity to stand up and say "this is a Democratic sellout."

So you have this blind allegiance to ... what? To Obama as a man? To the Democrats as a party? To me, it's very dangerous when you start going down the road of unquestioning support for any powerful individual or any politician. The moment you cede your conscience to a politician is the moment you stop struggling for a better society.

You are kidding OR you just haven't read the liberal blogosphere since June/July 2009 or so. There has been plenty of criticism and plenty of activism to push the administration to lean left and this and that and "he isn't doing it right" and "it's not enough" and "If only " and " it's too much" "why does he ? " & why doesn't he ? on and on and on .. so much so .. . that many liberals quit being active on their favorite sites. NOT because they didn't have feelings or disappointment also .. but because it all just got too ugly between people who had so many many other things in common. AND then it gets to the point where if enough people are quiet during all the 'piefights' ... they begin to hear themselves, sometimes that is what is needed. A steady diet of anything becomes stale. A change becomes needed and the change of course begins with ACTION & more ACTIONS ... that's when you become effective. BUT to say - it's very dangerous when you start going down the road of unquestioning support for any powerful individual or any politician. The moment you cede your conscience to a politician is the moment you stop struggling for a better society. - What I say is ..........The WRITER MISSED IT! President Obama is the most criticized President that we have ever had in my lifetime... please do not forget that our country did not even begin to criticize bush until 6 years out ... We democrats started criticizing Obama 6 months in. Don't you remember the press ? MY GOD, they were all talking about it - OMG Obama lost his base yadayadayada AND etc. AND they did all the time AND many are still wondering right now AT this present time ! It's disingenuous of anyone to state that democrats ceded their conscience to a politician ! I must assume you just didn't get around much ... heck I NEVER ran into one "Obamabot" blog .. I don't even know if there is such a thing. .. but you can be sure .. that democrats are and have not engaged in what the writer of that article stated .. he's just wrong and uniformed.

[fuagf]

The Liberal Blogosphere Goes Fox News
Oliver Willis
January 26, 2010

This is not directly related to health care, but does have context in offering sharp rebuttal to Jeremy Scahill's suggestion ..

So you have this blind allegiance to ... what? To Obama as a man? To the Democrats as a party? To me, it's very dangerous when you start going down the road of unquestioning support for any powerful individual or any politician. The moment you cede your conscience to a politician is the moment you stop struggling for a better society.

One of the problems I've always feared is that should we elect a Democratic president in this country, he or she might face a domestic handicap among that most unlikely of sources: liberals. Sadly, I'm turning out to be right, and today's collective .. http://www.openleft.com/diary/17112/its-official-obama-is-an-idiot .. pants-wetting .. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/01/barack-herbert-hoover-obama.html .. on both .. http://www.samefacts.com/2010/01/politics-and-leadership/obamas-self-inflicted-lobotomy-proceeds-apace/ .. liberal blogs and on Twitter has been a sight to behold.

Let's go back to the beginning. Every viable candidate for the Democratic nomination came down on the center-left of the American political spectrum. Especially when it came down to Clinton and Obama. On the Republican side (at least perception wise) the candidates that were viable were seen by most to be on the center-right. Why? Because when it comes down to it the American people are not overwhelmingly of any consistent ideology. The same people who would riot in the streets if you touched Social Security or Medicare are the same people who think they should get a tax cut and that the government "spends too much" (just don't cut the government money that *their* member of congress brings home, the problem is with the *other* 434 districts and 49 *other* states, naturally).

What happens in the Democratic party is that the center left candidate makes his positions on the issues pretty clear, and the progressive base of the party assumes that like the Republican candidate, he or she is secretly one of them and upon election day will bust out with some Howard Zinn on everyone's ass. On the Republican side, they don't win unless they cover up their zealotry with "compassionate conservative" pixie dust, they largely stay the hell away from clerics like Pat Robertson and Grover Norquist come election time.

As we saw with Bill Clinton's presidency, the reaction to this not happening can get pretty loud pretty quickly.

Personally I'm not as liberal as a lot of the Democratic base, but I'm not nearly as conservative as others inevitably accuse me of being. I'm pretty liberal on social issues but a caveman on national defense and criminal justice. I think that's pragmatic, but one man's pragmatism is another's Mao or another's DLC. Whatever. Either way, I tend to think Democratic presidents don't do enough of what the base wants -- for example Clinton's NAFTA mistake or Obama's inexplicable foot dragging on Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal and fruitless concessions to the GOP and conservadems on the size and impact of the stimulus.

That said, the liberal attacks on Obama, just short of calling him The Black Hitler, don't accomplish anything other than sending a signal to Democratic presidents that their base really does want to find the quickest most expeditious path to knife them in the back.

I'm not saying liberals should keep themselves quiet and rubber stamp the president -- people who make this argument are simply making a down payment on the straw to run their farms. But what I am saying is that liberals too often treat Democratic presidents like Maury Povich just told them that he has in fact failed the lie detector test.

We saw that on Monday with the leaked story that the Obama administration planned some spending freezes. What we know about the proposal:

* It exists
* Defense spending is exempt
* If/when there's a second stimulus or jobs bill it is exempt
* Health care reform would be exempt
* It is targeting redundancies, waste, excess, etc.
* The details of what will be targeted have not been released yet

That halfway story seemed to be all liberals needed in order to issue their own Fox News Alerts about the betrayal and then began the parade of frankly embarrassing hysteria.

I don't personally like the framing of these issues in one that favors conservatives, that is a fight versus government spending. Not at all, and in an ideal situation a Democratic president should laugh at the idea, knowing that everyone with common sense understands the long term value of government investment in the American economy and social safety net.

We do not live in this ideal world. We live in a world where, as I noted above, the people across the spectrum hold contradictory ideas within their own minds about what constitutes rational public policy. If some are concerned with spending, it seems the least harmful way to do this is to have a bone thrown their way that will actually lower *some* spending without harming the president's domestic agenda.

Is it less perfect than a pony? Sure. Would President Jed Bartlett do it? Probably not, but real life isn't a pitch-perfect Aaron Sorkin script and a fade out after 60 minutes of plot.

How does one correct someone who is on your side but has bouts of straying like President Obama? Offer constructive criticism, rather than throwing his clothes on the lawn, for one. You've got a perfectly good right to bitch as well as moan about things, but the equivalent of crying "fire" in a crowded theater just makes for a crappy moviegoing experience.

Barack Obama is the center-left, charismatic politician he has been for most of his life in the public. There are numerous issues on which he should be much more progressive, not just for the overall fortunes of the progressive movement, but for the future strength of the country. But we won't get there if every perceived misstep (especially one based on a less than clear story that is slowly being filled in) is greeted as if he kicked a puppy in the teeth. We shouldn't help a media environment that already favors Democratic politicians wagging their finger at the base, nor should we allow Democratic pols to get away with conservative nonsense.

Measure pols like Obama on their words and hold them to high standards, but don't profess
anger at them for not holding up to a caricature you dreamily doodled in your Trapper Keeper.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-willis/the-liberal-blogosphere-g_b_436471.html