The special election in Massachusetts has highlighted the vast disconnect between commentators on the right and the left about what President Barack Obama stands for. To libertarians like Glenn Beck and conservatives like Sean Hannity, Obama is either a Marxist or confirmed radical, who has sought to put over an overt socialist or even communist agenda. But to proud leftists like the editors and writers for the Nation, he is, as Gary Younge puts it, a candidate “who never claimed he was a radical,” but who offered the left only “hope and inspiration.” He was a progressive candidate, which Younge argues “is not the same as his actually being progressive.” Take that, Glenn Beck!
The same refrain comes from Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel and left-wing activist leader Robert L. Borosage. Obama in his first year, they write, did not create the “transformational presidency” some thought he promised; instead, he gave in to the big banks, big pharmaceuticals and the corporate world as a whole. Indeed, their side learned a hard lesson: “Obama is not the Messiah.” Some of us might have told them that a year ago, when to all indications, the entire left viewed Obama the candidate in just such a fashion. But Vanden Heuvel and Borosage, like their colleague Younge, note that Obama “has never been a movement progressive the way Reagan was a movement conservative.” Thus he has ceded the “terrain to the legions of the old order that are mobilized to fend off real reform.”
Their editorial statement, written before the election, indicates that they were probably not too surprised at the election results, although their compatriots immediately would join in spinning it in a way that allows them to try and save face. Seeing Obama as a failure who raised hopes only to smash them when president, their argument essentially is that it was their fault not to create the mass movement that might have pushed Obama to really enact their socialist (i.e., “progressive”) agenda, and to let the right-wing populists of the tea party movement usurp the frustration of the people.
So what are these self-proclaimed “progressives” saying about the meaning of Scott Brown’s victory? Are they going to learn the lesson that Bill Clinton learned early in his administration? Clinton learned that to get something done he had to listen to the electorate and move to the center/right. Rather than forge ahead with a highly unpopular attempt to create universal health care, he had to stand for programs that had bi-partisan support and that were opposed by the left. As we know, it was with Republican backing that Clinton got NAFTA through and initiated welfare reform, much to the consternation of that era’s leftists.
If the president listens to his supporters, he will not, and will surge forward in the same car that is about ready to go over the cliff in next November’s election. Take the advice of E.J. Dionne, who at one time was the most sensible and nuanced of liberal commentators. Now, Dionne argues that the failure was not Obama’s, but that of the Republicans who refused to support programs they had valid reasons to oppose. If Obama engaged in secret “inside deal-making,” Dionne says, it was the opposition’s fault. The administration’s secret measures alienated Obama’s own base, who “believed in his promises of transformation” as well as the center that liked the president’s “conciliatory” style.
If only the Republicans backed a bill that would have greatly increased the deficit, resulted in new high premiums for insurance and higher taxes, then all would have been well. But they didn’t, and hence, Obama had to make deals for no lower priced drugs and create a program that was a windfall for the insurance companies. So, Dionne says, moderates “saw expanding deficits and high unemployment,” which opened the electorate to accept a “Republican story that linked the two and blamed the Democrats.” Does Dionne really think there is no connection?
Barack Obama is primarily a Progressive in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson. He is just as egotistical and narcissist as the president elected in 1912. Wilson was also convinced that he was riding the wave of history, and the zeitgeist had chosen him to lead the citizenry to the Promised Land. Obama’s flirtation with Saul Alinsky is only of secondary importance. Studying Wilson will help you more to comprehend the existential underpinnings of the current president’s thinking. They are first, last, and foremost “elites” who attended the best schools—and their intentions are wonderfully noble. The common folk should appreciate their altruistic self-sacrifices on their behalf. Only a reactionary “enemy of the people” might disagree. Wilson was convinced of his intellectual brilliance and righteousness—and had near zilch interest in reexamining his staunchly held beliefs. The same holds true of Obama. In other words, he is not another Bill Clinton. Obama is not going to reverse course! It is going to be full steam ahead.
I strongly contend that Barack Obama will not finish out his term of office. We can only hope that he resigns gracefully. If not, we are perhaps in deep danger. Obama is not wrapped too tight.
These people are completely tone deaf.
It may be a center right country on many issues, it might be a center left country on certain social issues…but it is a CENTER country.
It despises extremism. It has tolerance for radicals voicing opinions, but it does not have tolerance for radical legislation and extremism in governance.
Leftists want a rigged game. “Ted Kennedy’s seat” belonged to them. The entrenched media belongs to them.
They only have one play in the playbook. Blame.
They love to throw stones, but there are no mirrors in their glass houses. They MUST blame “others”. So, the “shift” now…will be to “blame” Wall Street and the banks…and corporate greed. They wish to redirect the anger away from themselves and their radical “ambush legislation”…back onto the capitalist “symbols” of “greed”.
It’s a dangerous ploy…even with their entrenched propaganda arm in their pockets. Because if THAT backfires…you won’t be able to get a Democrat elected dog catcher anywhere but Haight Ashbury.
Barack Obama and his fellow travelers also prefer believing that those citizens opposing them are comprised of wild-eyed angry people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority is thoughtful and quite knowledgeable concerning the issues of the day. They are not irritated children needing to be humored until they once again start behaving in a rational and reasonable manner.
A rational analysis, hence wasted.
The Loony Liberal Left made the Long March,
fought the Good Fight, and won, and now are
going to lose it all in an economic Tsunami
right out of 2012, the Movie; They are not
going to give up their irreligious faith;
It is all they have left to buoy them up.
somebody get the big O an echo chamber, so he can hear the bs spewing from his mouth. he said the people are angry at the technocrats in Washington and then he says the people don’t get what we are trying to do…duh yes we do. the left doesn’t understand that most people have some college education in them, it doesn’t mean much to them and i agree, there are some educated fools running the show. one of them went to Harvard.
The left doesn’t get it. OK, fine. But does the Republican party get it? People abandoned the Republicans because the Republicans abandoned the principles of limited government.
I’m sick of two dimensional talk about tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts from the Republicans. Where is the plan for the SPENDING CUTS?
Where is the plan for reducing spending to budget surplus levels? Where is the plan?
Here’s a hint for the Republican who wants the vote of the not so silent majority. We want to here these words: I will cut spending across the board 10% per year until we reach a budget surplus. The surplus will be applied to the debt exclusively.
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater, 1964 nomination acceptance speech.
There are many extremes in action that are good.
Military Maxim: When the enemy is committing a blunder, don’t interfere.
Captain Obama has ordered All Ahead Flank and the RMS Libtanic is barreling towards that iceberg…
God told Adam that he could eat from any tree in the Garden of Eden, except one. This was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – if Adam ate from that, he would die. But all was well in paradise, and the man and the woman were happy.
Until the serpent came to tempt them. ‘Eat the fruit’ said the serpent. ‘Why not?’
Eve was intrigued by this temptation: the fruit would make her wise, she thought. So she took one piece from the Tree of Knowledge, ate it and offered some to Adam. He ate it too.
Suddenly everything changed. They felt shame, becoming aware of their nakedness for the first time. They hid from the presence of God. But God called to them: “Where are you?” They knew the were caught.
Their reaction was very human. Instantly, they began to blame each other. Adam blamed Eve for offering him the fruit. Eve blamed the serpent for tempting her. But the deed had been done, and they now faced the consequences, which were terrible – God sent them from the Garden, and an angel with a flaming sword barred the entrance so Adam could never return.
No doubt, the serpent was a Republican.
*phew!*
Talk about a river in Egypt.
…and the band plays on.
*taps*
shhhhhhhh! let them (the dems/liberals/progressives) go. there’s a clear path to the cliff and they’re racing each other to the edge/ please don’t tell them to slow down!
Obama is genetically incapable of moderating his positions and direction. he lived, ate and breathed it all his life. he knows NOTHING of the reality of mainstream America and our values. and he did way more than flirt with Alinsky. he is destined to hit”the wall” at full throttle.
let him go.
I think that the leftist pundits are not actually trying to give Obama advise. I think that they are covering for themselves. They are positioning themselves as the purists, and trying to come up with a way that he failed them. That way, they can wash their hands of him, and still never have to admit that they, and their utopian fanasties, are wrong.
Even American blacks may soon find a rationale to wash their hands of him. I think that the narrative may soon emerge that Obama isn’t actually one of them, as he doesn’t have a personal heritage rooted in the “black experience” of Jim Crow and slavery. Instead, he was a prep-school quasi-foreigner.
Much ugliness is coming.
This is going to get very, very ugly.
A proofreader, a proofreader! My kingdom for a proofreader!
Oh well, ignore the misspellings.
When the French royalty returned to France in 1814 after the end of Napoleonic wars, the French foreign minister Talleyrand famously quipped “they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” In a very short time, the French people remembered why they had beheaded the previous king. The Bourbons did not rule France for too long after their return from the exile….
In 2009, the American Bourbons, the liberals, came back to power from the decades of political exile. Now, it’s fair to say that they controlled the House and the Senate since 2007, and they threw enough roadblocks to Bush and Reagan, but the White House was the crown jewel that they really longed for – coupled with complete control of Congress. Finally, the liberals were setting the agenda for the entire nation.
Read the rest on my blog:
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2010/01/worse-better.html
Unfortunately ACORN do not, yet, vote in Congress, and the Blue Dogs do.
Ignore the Blue Dogs, find the votes in abandoned warehouses. ACORN have incomparable ghost votes locating skill, the Minnesotans can attest to that.
The loony left’s main problem (and here I’m including all these editorial suggestions about how Obama should react to the Scott heard ’round the world)) is that they don’t begin their strategic advice from a workable foundation. In other words, boys and girls, you can’t be wanting to sell Volkswagons and decide to position yourself in marketing terms as the most luxurious, most comfortable car on the road. You can’t do it on day one. And you can’t do it when a new model comes out three years down the road. There are some parameters you must stay within or you have no credibility. Expectation must match realization. Obama has strayed from his parameters. He’s done it again and again. Making fun of Scott’s truck was a colossal gaffe. It gives anybody who ever thought about American made products an excuse to vote for somebody else. Anybody else.
The left thinkers have to realize Obama will be a sure failure if he tries to convey to people he’s something that he’s not. It’s not like you can just
pick a way to act, choose issues, take sides and go from there. If your candidate can’t bring himself to say he screwed up, you’re in deep do do. Unless he never screws up. Ever tune a guitar? You can have a string a smidgen out of tune and most people don’t notice. But too much out of tune and it throws everything off, and nothing sounds good. Then all you get is the hook.
A look back.
In the primaries Obama positioned himself as someone who embraced the desire of most people to make this country work better for everyone.
Have better health insurance. Not get blindsided by a precondition clause, for instance.
He talked about ethics and openness in government. About tax restraint. He never hinted that he was going to raise the national debt by two and a half trillion dollars in 11 months without blinking an eye. He never hinted about a government takeover of medical insurance coverage, car companies or banks. Those were never in the Obama equation.
Toneally, the moment Obama bragged that, “I won, you lost.” he lost half the fence voters who punched the ticket for Obama. Barack Obama is not a gracious man. He’s a bad loser and a bad winner. He has virtually no sense of humor. His handlers remind him before he speaks to try to resist the urge to tell jokes. Remember day one in the new administration when the anointed one joked about Nancy Reagan talking to White House pictures on the wall? I cringed. Not because I like Obama, but because it was so tacky.
As to what he promised and what he delivered on.
Obama never hinted he was going to drop the word, terrorist; Call terrorist acts man made disasters. He never hinted that he was going to hire a bunch of staffers who didn’t pay taxes, were self proclaimed communists or NAMBLA fans. During Obama’s first week he branded white males racial cowards. A month later he failed to enforce the voter intimidation laws. And put this country on a high speed chase to financial oblivion. Did you know before Obama was elected that he loved Saul Alinsky and hated the free enterprise system? Hey, Barack, is that a package of Cracker Jacks in your pocket?
About once a week for the last 12 months the American people got whiplash being surprised by Obama’s strange actions and decisions.
Imagine, trying the 9/11 enemy sneak attack killers, instead of with a military tribunal, under American criminal law. Not only that, in New York City. Instead of spending money on lawyers for terrorists to defend them, Obama should be spending money on new weapons to kill them. Never happen. Not in his DNA. Obama has yet to make a promised delivery.
Now the topic of conversation turns to the best way to spin the Brown victory? In other words, rather than face facts and tell the truth like an honest Joe, Obama will likely pick the best sounding excuse for the loss and move on. Reminds me of a carnival. Around and around she goes and where she stops nobody knows. Just make sure it’s a good spin.
Now the part of this piece I want to really word correctly.
People, Axelrod and Immanuel were in the right place at the right time. Obama had the one golden ability that was enough to win all the marbles; he’s a great teleprompter speaker and has great speech writers. Outside of that, he’s just an extreme left wing politician who was out to
transform America. Redistribute the wealth and all that socialist dogma that fills his Harvard educated head. The fact that he’s our first African American President was a great bonus. But it was far from the whole story why Barack won so convincingly.
Now, though, the bubble has burst. The worm has turned. The tide has finally come in.
I personally know five people, five hyper-talented marketing experts who could guide Obama down from his delicate perch on the ledge of a 50 story building where he’s hanging on by a shoelace. Obama knows none of them. He doesn’t even know people like that exist. Needless to say, none of those names are in Ron’s article. Or live in Washington. Or specialize in politics. All Obama has around him are political hacks and hangers on.
And that won’t change.
Because there’s so much socialist garbage packed so tightly in Obama’s head, sometimes I think another six months of the American people’s rejection and it’ll implode. Obama tries to look relaxed in the most stressful moments. But he’s wired tight as a high “E” string.
There’s no going back for Obama. No golden parachute. I saw him today on TV sounding angry, talking about himself in the third person, creating another straw man and trying to knock it down. It didn’t work. The magic is gone. The horses have left the barn. Elvis has left the building.
Trying to figure out how to spin the Brown win is as futile as trying to save two scoops of ice cream that’ve fallen onto a city street.
It’s like asking a blind man to solve a Rubiks cube. Obama is virtually beyond help. He sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Chanticleer
came to similar ends. Pride foreshadows a fall. If it simply were the result of an overcooked potato as Dickens once said, there’d be no real problem. But that’s not the case, is it?
Ilia iacta est. And to all a good night.
I don’t think we have to worry too much about the left wising-up. I think it is safe to talk about these issues in the open. Our warnings will just confirm their thinking that the right thing to do is to go far left. Regardless, this all makes for some interesting politics.
Will Obama change course? Not if his appearance in Ohio means anything. His speech was laced with angry words and gestures. And that in an area that has suffered an increase in unemployment with more factory closings since he was elected. It appears that he is sticking to the angry rhetoric of the committed left. The only problem is that the majority of the voters are sick and tired of “it’s all Bush’s fault” and would like to see some results.
In his sit down with George Stephanopoulus following the MA debacle, Obama’s remarks & general excuse making would not indicate that he has gotten much of anything.
As in Ohio yesterday, he continues to throw words, hoping some will stick.
“If there’s one thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview at the White House…
This is so far out in left field as to be inaudible. Not to mention that he was speakin’ at us every 5 minutes, all year long, never much substance, but a whole lotta words.
“Moreover, they do not like an all Democratic Congress, and want some political diversity that stirs the pot up.”
Silly man – don’t you know that the Dem’s idea of diversity refers to skin colors/ancestry only?
More and more, I come to think that the void between the “liberals” and conservatives is like the old description of the Americans versus the British: Two countries separated by a common language. The lefties use words in ways completely alien to everyone else.
Smart Democrats will become Scott Brown Democrats, rallying the “regular” people to classic liberalism, using JFK clips about creating jobs with tax cuts in their own campaigns. Okay, got lost in fantasy.
Mr. Radosh:
“Some of us might have told them that a year ago, when to all indications, the entire left viewed Obama the candidate in just such a fashion. But Vanden Heuvel and Borosage, like their colleague Younge, note that Obama “has never been a movement progressive the way Reagan was a movement conservative.” Thus he has ceded the “terrain to the legions of the old order that are mobilized to fend off real reform.””
This shows why “smart”, educated people are always the easiest marks for the con man.
They simply cannot imagine someone else being smart enough to put one over on them…and rather than recognize it for what it is once they’ve been rooked,(the first step in learning from a mistake is identifying it AS a mistake), their pride disallows them from seeing reality for what it is.
Obama fooled some of these folks, and intimidated the rest with the color of his skin,(and one really wonders how good his grades and the quality of his theses were at Harvard).
Working class voters, by and large, were NOT similarly fooled. I recall the West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio Democratic primaries, when the Alleged Hawaiian got all the union endorsements, but the Pantsuit UberFrauFuhrer got all the rank-and-file votes.
“Yet Obama’s other columnist supporters persist in not taking reality into account. In his New Yorker blog, editor Hendrik Hertzberg writes that Obama can be faulted because he “allowed the right to profit handsomely from the economic disaster that their policies … brought about.” In other words, as Obama himself obviously thinks, “it’s all Bush’s fault.” Thus what the liberals and the House have to do is not listen to the electorate — who obviously misunderstood their own real interests and voted incorrectly — but tighten their “stomach muscles, pass the Senate version of the health-care bill A.S.A.P., and move on to jobs and the economy.” If they don’t, and do nothing, it will be a “failure that would reverberate for a generation.””
In regards the commentariat, one supposes that political columnists for MSM publications are not subject to the same drug urinalysis testing regime that say, an over the road truck driver is.
They must be “listening to Foghat” at volume 11 up in there is all I can say.
After listening to “another” liberal sycophant media commentator, attack anyone who may have an opinion other than that of a rabid liberal, and watching the frothing at the mouth rantings of a few media types whose vitriol is so over the top one wonders if commitment is in order, I now realize the liberal left in America, is so over the top that nothing at all but total surrender to socialist ideals & operation will satisfy them. And, they all demand Obama simply force those stupid voters to ‘shut up” & stop talking. These commentators continue to go all out attacking Americans. “The only people who voted for Scott Brown were the
‘non-college educated’ whose opinions simply do not matter since they simply do not & will never have the intellect to understand what is good for them that Obama & rabid leftist Democrats are doing “for” them.
This is the ‘let’s shoot ourself in the foot’ logic that only the deranged would buy into. To follow this advise is to prove once again that the definition of insanity is repeatedly following a failed course of action, assuming this next time the outcome will be different, or more accurately, the outcome will be the one we want it to be!
That is not only insane, its frighteningly insane.
ObamaCare was a big issue, if not THE big issue, in the Mass election. I wonder what would have happened if Coakley had come out of the gate (not that she ever would have) with a statement along the lines of: “I am a good Democrat in the proud tradition of Massachusett[e]s’ own Lion of the Senate who served the people of this state so long and so well. I am a good Democrat, believing as I do in the Democratic Party’s core principles of equality, fairness and choice and I will work with my colleagues in the Senate to advance those principles. I am a good Democrat as I stand behind President Obama and Congressional Democrats while they work so diligently to right our listing ship of state and correct the dangerous course set by others. BUT, I know, along with all of you, that the health care insurance reform legislation currently being considered in Congress is bad for the people of Massachusett[e]s. Therefore, should you honor me by sending me to the Senate, I pledge to be the 41st vote cast in opposition to the bill. And I pledge to you further that if ever Congress again considers legislation that I believe would be detrimental to my constituents and my state, I will be your independent voice and your independent vote because, make no mistake, this is your seat and I work for you.”
She would have taken a lot of grief from the left, but that probably would have been in her favor. Do you think she would have won the election?
Obumbler demonstrated yesterday that he hasn’t learned a thing in the first year of his reign (for us the year of living dangerously). In fact, I don’t think the man has a learning curve. He won’t take Katrina “I suck lemons for fun” Vanden Heuvel and others’ advice because Congress won’t follow him over the cliff and that would be too humiliating. No, he’s going instead with the populist schtick and will now attempt a Thelma and Louise with the only sector of our economy currently performing well. And meanwhile, the wolves of the world stand by licking their chops. The man is an absolute menace.
President Obama decided to do one of his public addresses against the backdrop of an American farm, but the ceremony couldn’t get started because of all the flies buzzing around his head. Obama demanded to know why the flies wouldn’t leave, so the farmer explained to him, “Well, those are called circle flies. They always circle around the back end of horses.” Obama angrily replied, “Hey, are you saying that I’m a horse’s ass?” The farmer answered, “No Sir, Mister President. I would never call someone a horse’s ass. It’s hard to fool them flies though.”
The simplicity of Obama’s quandry struck me as I was reading the article: Just as a Republican will take a lot more grief for starting…or continuing a war than a Democrat because lefties are always chomping at the bit to renounce war, A Democrat will get blasted for increasing the size of the government, social programs, and raising taxes. GWB caught some grief, but not much from the right for his bail-out. Obama had to more than match it, and the righty salvoes began; then he went for health care and the noise doubled, a guy tried to blow up himself and an airplane and failed, but righties waiting to pounce on softness, went nuts again.
The smaller corollary involves the war. Obama took half the grief from the left that GWB would have taken for sending more troops to Afghanistan, and of course, far less support from the right than GWB would have gotten, but none of this helped him much.
In other words, Nixon could go to China and do all sorts of wage and price control shenanigans because he was a Republican. Imagine McGovern getting away with that. McGovern could have run a covert war in Cambodia and received a lot less grief, but I am now belaboring the central point. Obama has not been nearly as radical as the righties predicted, but still liberal enough so that they could go nuts. Both parties have become experts at predicting the evil of rival President-to-be and then going wild when the evil appears, albeit in much milder form than they had predicted.
I think that Obama will do a Clinton and move to the center; after all, he may be working with a Republican House after the next election. If he is as lucky (or good?) as Clinton and has another bubble come along, he has a great shot at a second term. If things stay bad, he will be very vulnerable, but the Repubs have to be smart enough to run a Romney type, not a Palin type.
Ron – E. J. Dionne and others like him think the voters are insane. First they voted for Obama because they were anti-Bush, now they voted against him in several elections because they are anti-Bush! Maybe the insanity is in people like E. J. Dionne who could think such nonsense.
OBAMA IN ohio—-so busy solving crisis(THAT I MADE UP) , I was too busy to talk to the people.
Another mouth full of garbage.
He spoke a million words and said nothing.
HE went around the world, telling how bad the AMERICAN PEOPLE are.
Msm had him on evernight, kissing his A–. On every magazine and every newspaper, said a million words, where most of them was I, MY, ME.I am the CHOSEN ONE,I am going to change AMERICA, then the WORLD.
Give me a break, the poor manchild , didn’t get to talk to the people.
This Muslim , manchild never shuts up, on the other hand , he never says anything.
The blame game and excuses are over. Your time has come and GONE.
HAVE A NICE DAY, LIBNUTS.
DENIAL,THY NAME IS LIBTARD! Let’s hope the vicious little fool listens to their “wisdom”.
Can we get up a collection,and buy Hertzberg a rabies shot?He seems sorely afflicted!We need to keep him alive to reinforce our contempt for these demented statist trolls.