What to make of an allegedly Democratic president who rejects a Mitch McConnell offer of a clean debt ceiling bill (with attendant posturing)? Who instead is determined to pursue deep cuts in social security and other assistance to the elderly, the poor and the needy? Who rushes to embrace some vague effort by a handful of Senators which also promises unspecified deep cuts (while looking to insert themselves for publicity and attention)?
Those watching the inside baseball game rightfully know that counting to 60 is what matters. McConnell isn’t really a Minority Leader anyway. But did Obama even try to work with McConnell to find the few Republican votes to make it work? No. Instead, Obama reverted back to *his* preferred position, which is deep cuts, including the social safety net.
We get little satisfaction observing the Boy King’s most ardent Kool Aiders and apologists in shock. Apparently the Minneapolis NN 11 or whatever it’s branded these days featured some distraught kidz. Some netroots (Netroots? netRoots? – can’t keep up with them) blogs are positively effusive that Obama’s actions are “concerning” (when did that become acceptable grammar?) .
We in turn could say we told you so. Long time. Since 2007. And just did. Doesn’t change the Accommodationist Hell he’s foisted on us all.
The Senate group’s [new] plan, modeled on the recommendations last year of a bipartisan fiscal commission established by Mr. Obama, calls for both deep spending cuts and new revenues through an overhaul of the income-tax code.
But while its sponsorship by staunch conservatives as well as liberals suggested enough flexibility within both parties to get a deal eventually, it would be all but impossible to turn it into detailed legislation — at the moment it is a four-page outline — and pass it in less than two weeks.
Of course, the Boy King’s own actions caused him to grasp at 4 pages of talking points fluttering in the wind. Obama, more than the Movement (Grover, insert whomever here), created this manufactured political crisis. This was inevitable when he granted the Movement’s extension of the extravagant Bush tax cuts earlier this year. Without exacting *anything* meaningful in return.
That exceedingly tactical act embodies the expediency underlying Obama’s political frame. His poll numbers went up briefly. But at what cost. The tax cut concessions to the Movement a microcosm of Obama’s utter failure to understand power, how to wield it effectively or even his current political circumstances. The last is most unforgivable. 2009 is eons ago.
His apologists may proffer that Obama eschews the dirty process of politics, preferring the grandeur of vision and aspiration. A backhanded way of saying he’s out of his league politically and self-absorbed to the point of systemic paralysis.
If you’re reading this, you know the unpalatable choice in 2012: (a) the Boy King; or (b) some variant of (pre)modern Rightist extremism. For those of you resigned to the former, how much of your core beliefs and ideology are you willing to jettison, realizing Obama will toss away still more? The real question? Whom to hold in deeper contempt: an Obama apologist in 2011 or an unhinged Movement AgitProp artist?
Karl says
@Redhand
that was obvious from your braying
Redhand says
@Karl
So, Franklin “a Traitor to his Class” Roosevelt was in fact “a stooge of Wall Street”? Fascinating. I didn’t know that.
anxiousmodernman says
I often half write comments here and then delete them, without posting. Don’t know why.
Comment says
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/budgetary-deceit-and-amer_b_907684.html
“As I shuttle …” Sachs always telling people how noble he is and how much he helps the world. But doubts persist.
DrLeoStrauss says
Infiltrating the Republican primary process may be other only concrete physical act left as you note. Certainly, demonstrations or acting out dissolved into Jon Stewart’s politically pointless fluff.
A more harder edge, one that actually threatened to shake incumbent power would be met by the full retributive force of the Apparat. Besides, Americans aren’t good at that. They’re more used to sitting in Starbucks with a latte tweeting about brown people taking on their governments.
sglover says
Re: FDR. Yeah, I’m kinda nostalgic for a guy who steered us away from fascism of either the Red or (more likely) the Black variety. Call me silly.
I take back what I said earlier about voting. I think registering as a Republican and voting for Romney in the primary is actually a useful thing to do. Probably the **only** useful thing to do in the political context — a tiny stab at damage control.
Karl says
@Redhand
A “new FDR”? So you assume FDR was a hero, and do not realize he was a stooge of Wall Street?
How interesting.
The myths are powerful, I guess.
The Heretik says
Great. Obama is ready to shoot the hostages. Tom Tomorrow has it right with Middleman mentioned above. Oy
Redhand says
@Karl
Seems to me our “debate” is meaningless, as in “Was he a Trojan Horse?” all along, or someone so weak by nature that the Repubs were bound to roll him no matter what.
What I feel about Mr. Hope-n-Change is that the soaring rhetoric of his campaign has nowhere been matched by his deeds. To me that makes him a lying-sack-o-sh*t regardless of root cause. I voted for what I hoped would be a new FDR, and all I got was this nebbish.
Karl says
@Redhand
So, wonkery is “proof” for you? ‘Cuz I don’t see any proof there.
Redhand says
In what way is he “accommodating the Right” and not doing what he planned and wanted to do, all along?
See Middleman and the Debt Ceiling Debacle.” His execution is so abysmal it is hard to imagine it was planned at the outset.
Karl says
@Redhand
In what way is he “accommodating the Right” and not doing what he planned and wanted to do, all along?
Where is the proof supporting the idea that he’s bent, bowed, swayed by others not from the Donkey Party? Where is the proof that the Donkey Party is effectively different from the Elephant Party?
I’d sorta like to see that proof, rather than the optimism of having our First Black POTUS and the attendant assumption that he’s a noble, pure man of the people who has been corrupted by the Evil Rethuglicans.
I’m finicky that way. I like proof more than fantasy.
Redhand says
After all Obama’s prevarications, betrayals and grotesque accommodations to the Lunatic Right, I can’t see myself voting for him again, under any circumstances. 2012 will be another election to sit out, because there is NO choice.
sglover says
I always liked ‘Bush the Lesser’ (vs. Bush the Elder, not Greater).
The Heretik says
I had previously ascribed boy king to that Bush Kid, but your feeling in the current age is shared.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@sglover
Yeah, felt vaguely ‘French’ when writing that phrase. You’re right; the language is different.
Looks like the fighting over the conch has a ways to go yet.
sglover says
Hard to imagine that anyone can use terms like “grandeur of vision and aspiration” about Hope’n’Change. But then I visit some of the believing Dem websites…..
Anyway, no unpalatable choices for me, I think: I’m done with voting in national elections. But I’m still hoping the Republican corporate wing — money trumps everything! — will get the jacobins to settle down and accept Romney, who’s completely interchangeable with Obama. In fact, probably slightly better: Would he have waddled into the Libya idiocy?
Karl says
“That exceedingly tactical act in a microcosm highlights Obama’s utter failure to understand power or his current political circumstances.”
Or, alternatively,
it reveals just how craven is Obama, because he truly does appreciate how power works in Washington.
Which conclusion I find far more likely and far more consistent with his adult working life, his storybook CV and his rise to power.