The Idiocy of Michael Lerner: His Call to Challenge Obama from the Left
“Rabbi” Michael Lerner, you might recall, was last in the national spotlight during the heady early days of the Clinton administration, when, for a brief time, First Lady Hillary Clinton evidently became a fan of Lerner’s cause of the moment, “the politics of meaning.” You can read about Lerner and his background on Wikipedia here. Or, if you want a really critical account of his past, you can read the posting at Discover the Networks. I have previously written about his fraudulent pose as a true friend of Israel.
It is, frankly, somewhat beyond me to understand why so many people take anything he says with other than a grain of salt. The man has lurched from cause to cause, theory to theory, and movement to movement, always with one common theme: follow Michael Lerner to the path of nirvana. Years ago, before the internet, he seemed to echo the late Kim Il Sung, in buying full-page ads in the pages of the New York Times (at $40,000 a pop) to plug his own articles and books, which were otherwise ignored. The man is a notorious egomaniac, who for some unknown reason has managed to still maintain a band of followers.
Now, the Washington Post saw fit to give him space for his latest effort: to encourage the left to run a candidate against Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Of course, the man who used to argue that one had to be candid and proclaim oneself a socialist revolutionary now refers to himself by the usual euphemisms “liberal” or “progressive,” a tactic we have become all too familiar with as the new way of hiding one’s true beliefs in the effort to gain acceptance.
Knowing that Lerner is really a Marxist of the far left, it is rather obvious to see why he chastises Obama for making his once true believers “depressed and angry.” Lerner does not seem to comprehend that those who come from a mix of the Chicago brand of rough politics combined with a Leninist pedigree have always been tactically flexible. As Lenin once put it, it is necessary to take “two steps forward, one step back.” Obviously having no patience for real politics, Lerner sees Obama as giving in on tax cuts for billionaires, demonstrating “spinelessness” in escalating the war in Afghanistan, giving in on a public option, and refusing to prosecute the Bush administration people who sanctioned torture. Lerner is a no-holds barred radical, and nothing less than an immediate enactment of the most radical agenda will satisfy him.
So having accused Obama of betraying his base, Lerner pleads with Obama to become “the candidate whom most Americans believed they elected in 2008.” Aside from asking whether those who voted for Obama agree with what Michael Lerner holds as his agenda, he assumes that the views of the “base” are those of the electorate at large. One must pause to ask the obvious: Does Lerner have any explanation for why the center, the moderates and the working-class independents who voted for Obama in 2008 deserted him in droves in the recent midterm elections?
One can only hope that such a lefty candidate sucks just enough support from The One so that they both lose.
Let’s hope they goose-step so far to the Left that when they do their little jack-booted dunce-dance of faux-victory they won’t even notice that final step over the cliff of historic idiocy.
BTW, great blog, CW. You need more visitor comments!
I still think the Democratic Party is finished as a national entity. It can only win elections in the bluest of areas and an occasional purple one. The radicals will only pull it further towards the Left. A new party will have to be started. Barack Obama “outed” the moderates when he forced them to vote for his Health Care bill. The ones who even survived the last election are now toothless. They are thoroughly marginalized individuals. Many of them will join the GOP.
The “Progressives” were trying to slowly infiltrate [RINO] the GOP as well. Perhaps it took all of this unmitigated mayhem that is happening (not just in the US but also in many other “socialist-lite” Western cultures) to wake up the average American to what is reallyK/i> going on.
When will people learn that history CAN repeat in the worst and most horrific ways?
‘The “Progressives” were trying to slowly infiltrate [RINO] the GOP as well.’
Right, Delia. One closet-commie even wanted to get Ed Koch into the GOP!
When supposed “Pubs” call themselves “Progessives”…yeah, I’m concerned.
That is the kind of “democracy” Michael Lerner proposes in his effort to create a society of — those great words again — “love, kindness and generosity.” That means, he writes, a “progressive push for a new New Deal … the Caring Society.” The candidates should come from people he suggests such as Sens. Russ Feingold, socialist Bernie Sanders, Barbara Mikulski, Al Franken, or Reps. Joe Sestak, Maxine Waters, Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, and others. Just pick among your own favorite on the left-wing of the Democratic Party. Oh yes, he also suggests Rachel Maddow, Bill Moyers, or Susan Sarandon. (Even Lerner, however, doesn’t put Keith Olbermann on his list.)
Lerner’s list is brilliant (as satire) but incomplete. Everyone will have their favorite missing candidate. Mine is Krugman. I wish Mr Lerner well. He is insane, but we should be careful to whisper, rather than shout, that fact.
Michael Lerner should be encouraged;as an embodimentof Stalinism with a hippie face,which was the new left)he can give the Demtard party the coup de grace in the 2012 elections,by influencing it with his politics.
Sounds like cover to pretend that little lenin is a centrist. There’s been a lot of flak about that from numerous nuts since the election.
Meanwhile, the destruction of the county continues uninterrupted.
The tax “victory” is just the status quo, isn’t it? It’s better than the alternative, but hardly a turn back of 2 years of in-your-face leftism on steroids.
Went to hear Mr. Lerner speak in NYC at an old theater in the early 90′s when his Tikkun Magazine was all the rage on the left and his name was mentioned by Hillary several times. Wanted to see who this cretin was. Was surrounded by the usual stereotypical fringe sub humanoids, some of whom even looked like they took frequent showers. He glided on stage sporting a dramatically gigantic headcovering of some sort, looked like a large woman’s hat. He obviously thought he was as adorable as all get out, posed, and waited before speaking so we all could control our emotions at the wonder of being in his presence. He spoke about all the horse hockey you described above and told everyone that he and his other leftie cohorts were “waiting for a sign from this White House” about how to proceed with their left wing agitprop and trouble making. I had the happy opportunity to bust his little bubble a bit because I shouted from the back of the theater that his hat was very distracting and was making it hard to hear him properly. He really is as you described. He is a fantasist and totally disconnected from life on the ground.
Back in the Reagan Administration, P. J. O’Rourke did an article in the “American Spectator” calling for a “New Enemies List.” Since we were supposedly in the dark night of resurgent McCathyism he figured that we needed a new enemies list to go with it. He invited readers to send in recommendations who should be on the list, and published them all in the next four issues of the magazine (the responses were hilarious; one was number 4 grade river gravel). One reader sent in the name “Tikkun.” O’Rourke’s reaction to that suggestion was a side comment “(huh?” He’d never heard of it (neither had I). I would be just as happy to go on never having heard of it.
Maxine Waters with Al Franken as VP obviously has dream ticket written all over it.
LMFAO!!!
”Lerner also calls for the media to give access to all the minority candidates. Can you imagine a presidential debate with the Republican and Democratic candidate having to sit and give equal time to the candidates of the Libertarian Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Green Party, and all the other sects and irrelevant groups that together would not get more than one per cent of the vote and that would greatly interfere with hearing what the only two candidates who count have to say?”
For chits and giggles I used to read the free leftist “underground newspapers” that were printed and floating around in Atlanta back in the seventies. I wish I could find some of them now as several things they touted as being the best way to go about getting their agenda enacted have unfolded and been successfully implemented exactly as those writing for the leftist rags suggested they could. Among the things proposed was exactly what is advocated in the above paragraph. It wasn’t to grant more audience to the smaller groups in hopes of them garnering support, though. According to the theories in the “underground peoples press”, multiple parties would lead to so much dithering and confusion that it would pave the way for a “proletarian strongman” to take over. Perhaps Lerner is hoping that if enough factions can make noise the public could be convinced the system has totally fallen apart (I’m sure Lerner thinks it has) allowing his man Barry Soetoro to declare martial law or to do the next best thing, rule by Executive Order and leave Congress condemned to fighting the reality of dictatorial rule in court but not being able to stop it.
Yeah, you’d also get fringies like the American Constitution party and the Prohibition party.
You gotta laugh at the left; every time a messiah comes along, it turns out he has feet of clay. By all means, pound Obama from the left.
Perhaps it is a shrewd move by someone.
If you extend an edifice to the left then what was the extreme left can be made to look much more central.
Sensible people are no doubt not deceived but the media can make hay with it and hammer on about what a moderate he is.
And as has been shown many times before, if you present a lie often enough as the truth it does become accepted as such by a certain percentage.
Winning elections is not about fooling all the people, it is about fooling enough to win.
The left has yet to learn anything. I expect they will repackage Howard Dean. He wants it most. He had a taste of glory and he liked it. He’s as big a fool as Biden but far better at masking it.
Lerner for being such as a socialist as you mention Ron is for some reason not above the hucksterism in selling his own books etc. I guess its okay if its for the cause -him. He has to be the most egotistical a@@hole of all the new age people.
It’s difficult to be certain, but my impression of the prevalent attitudes on the Left at this time suggests that Lerner is “flapping hard” to “get back in front of the V.” His opinions as cited here might well be sincere, but he’s not so much trying to lead his fellow leftists and their preferred political party as trying to position himself as a relevant spokesman for them, once again. That is, after all, the way of the egomaniac: “Show me which way the crowd is going, and I will lead them.”
you know, there are community college textbooks citing every leftist in existence, including why they want to go to Harvard?
I would donate to his cause. I would bring ammunition to any Democrat circular firing squad.
I’m hoping for a Pelosi-Waxman ticket, with Bernie Sanders for National Security advisor, and Leahy for State.
By all means PLEASE … nothing could be greater than to have the far left jump into the Demo fray for 2012. What an outstanding idea!
unless the comments were edited I must say I am astounded not to see jew-hatred in the comments- and instead comments are directed at this man’s ideas. Thanks you PJM’ers.
This Lerner is a very mixed up man, like most left/Dem JEWS in USA- he calls himself a ZIONIST yet supported GAZA withdrawl. He knows it was a failure of epic proportions and yet he still supports two-state (code for destroy Israel piece by piece)and doing moreof same things that nver worked in fact escalated the conflicts, and expected differnt results—-> definition of insanity.
These are the JStreet JEWS, the ones who think “working with” (those who wish to destroy you) or “land deals” or concessions (from one side only) will somehow change the goal of Hamas or Iran.
It is insanity, I am sure, nothing else can explain how a person who KNOWS the score in Israel can still boldly advocate for Dem Obama or Left. This man, I hesitate to call him rabbi (though we can learn from him how not to act)- KNOWS the flotilla was sponsored by the people he and Obama think can be talked out of their most precious dream of no ISRAEL at all, by talking, appeasing, crawling, begging, selling OUT our fellow JEWS in Israel- it’s disgusting to me. It violates the promise of NEVER AGAIN (will we watch as JEWS elsewhere are being destroyed)
Lerner needs to be tethered to an organ-grinder to make the picture complete.
me thinks they protest too much.