Despite their grousing about the administration during the Netroots Nation conference, liberal activists and bloggers are relatively happy with President Barack Obama’s performance.
A straw poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research showed that 80 percent either approve or strongly approve of the president more than a year before voters head to the polls to decide whether he deserves a second term.
Obama AWOL – Get Used To It
We always liked working with Jim Moran. He’s like all of us, imperfect (yes, yes, we know). For all of that he’s a straight shooter. So when The Hill says “This is a lack of leadership on the part of Obama,” Moran (D-Va.) “I don’t know where the f*** Obama is on this or anything else. They’re AWOL”, we sympathize.
We also smiled seeing Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) declare “Our caucus will not submit to hostage taking and we will not submit to this deal.” Inslee is a class act and walks the walk. We worked with him and his office on legislation during the Clinton years to overcome the usual Clintonian deference to financial service interests at the expense of consumers. Both Moran and Inslee have seen this movie before, having been in the minority 1994-2006.
But both also know far more than pundits that House Dems are the real Walking Dead. They got bit. Sure, they got bitten in large measure after carrying Obama’s water for two years with no political cover from him. Obama was worse than absent; his political abstinence actually galvanized the Movement’s rise. So House Dems got screwed twice over. Remember how easily Gibbs tossed off losing the House this past summer. Like complaining about remembering to rotate car tires.
To survive the Walking Dead the rules are clear. Self-preservation is the new good, especially if one strikes a moral pose. As Atwater said, once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. Obama knows Moran, Inslee — any of them — are gone. Toast. Like any Walker, they’ll just stagger around aimlessly, lifelessly and pose no threat. Walkers are dangerous only gathered en mass. Like say, a House majority. Even then, as we saw, he didn’t really care anyway.
Over at Kos they’re noting per NYT that Obama’s EPA is already postponing new regulations to please corporate interests and climate change deniers. The Kos folks express a desire for policy based on science. Touching, that hope. How’s that audacity tasting now?
For Obama to flog audacity in 2008 like a Taco Bell jingle, we can be pardoned thinking we’d see some kind of Napoleonic fire. Audacity changed history at Austerlitz. At Marengo. Even Dresden in the end game. Napoleon’s domestic reforms audaciously modernized the French civil code and transformed Europe as a whole. (Obama’s a constitutional scholar, didn’t you know?).
Alas, no. Wrong Napoleon. Audacity? We got a 2 year-long Michael Cera movie. Turned out we got Napoleon III. You know, the one whom von Moltke and Prussia crushed at Sedan in 1870. After capturing that Napoleon, Bismarck went on to forge the new German Reich dictated in Versailles. The Movement didn’t show such military or political genius crushing Obama’s ‘audacity of hope’. But it’s hard not to see Obama today in his own Sedan, surrounded by enemies, surrendering to circumstances of his own making, economy aside.
Of course, permanent government types see Obama’s steely disregard for the Democratic Walking Dead and Rightward lurch as the smart play for 2012. Let’s assume that Obama’s problems are really the economy, not his political abdication and disengagement. Krugman plays it out as a thought experiment. Conceding the initial political premise, he deconstructs the actual economics and timing:
Unemployment benefits aside, all of this is very much second-best policy: consumers would probably spend only part of the payroll tax break, and it’s unclear whether the business break would do much to spur investment given the excess capacity in the economy. Still, it would be a noticeable net positive for the economy next year.
But here’s the thing: while the bad stuff in the deal lasts for two years, the not-so-bad stuff expires at the end of 2011. This means that we’re talking about a boost to growth next year — but growth in 2012 that would actually be slower than in the absence of the deal.
This has big political implications. Political scientists tell us that voting is much more strongly affected by the economy’s direction in the year or less preceding an election than by how well the nation is doing in some absolute sense.
When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, the unemployment rate was almost exactly the same as it had been just before the 1980 election — but because the economic trend in 1980 was down while the trend in 1984 was up, an unemployment rate that spelled defeat for Jimmy Carter translated into landslide victory for Reagan.
This political reality makes the tax deal a bad bargain for Democrats. Think of it this way: The deal essentially sets up 2011-2012 to be a repeat of 2009-2010. Once again, there would be initial benefits from the stimulus, and decent growth a year before the election. But as the stimulus faded, growth would tend to stall — and this stall would, once again, come in the months leading up to the election, with seriously negative consequences for Mr. Obama and his party.
Obama in that case screws himself — and all Non-Rightists, again. There goes the Senate to boot. He will have no one else to blame. Not the Walking Dead shuffling in the House minority. Not his volunteers. Not his financial supporters. Ultimately, not even the voters.
Just him.
Last Stand
Betrayal is in the air. Doubt spreads as Festivus approaches.
Nitpickers pounced right after inauguration. They see collusion in the Citi Corp bailout. They also fail to grok that what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for Goldman Sachs. “Just look at the timeline of the Citigroup deal,” says one leading Democratic consultant. “Just look at it. It’s fucking amazing. Amazing! And nobody said a thing about it.” Typical Hollywood naivete. Why do they hate America?
Throwing It All Away
It is better to be wrong and strong than right and weak.
William Jefferson Clinton
Everyone already knew that congressional Democrats were a craven bunch. Even before 2006. Democrats re-taking both houses merely confirmed details of feckless confusion; an objective congressional observer today can really only shrug and repeat ‘I told you so.’
The magnitude of Obama’s obsessive compulsion to flinch before political forces dedicated to his (and by extension, our) political execution is unexpected. From Putin to Bibi to Mitch McConnell to the Fox apparant, he has caved in measures large and small. Not just once. And like the proverbial weakling with low self esteem, Obama vents his anger and shame on those he can – his liberal and progressive base, and the independents who took a chance and ‘hoped.’
Readers can recall the Stiftung remained highly dubious that a 46 year old with two years in the Senate and no managerial experience at all has sufficient gravitas for this historical moment. Or put another way, he has not experienced enough national-level political combat to justify the absurdly high expectations pushed upon him, and which he passively aggressively courted. Hence, our moniker, ‘Boy King’ at the time.
For a brief moment we retired the nick name. Now, it seems insufficient.
Obama the man is the epitome so far of one who mistakes reading or talking about something with actually knowing or internalizing the experience of something. This we believe lies at the heart of Obama’s foolish jump start of the Movement’s unjustifiable resurgence. He does not ‘get’ active, real world nihilism.
Having spent decades in the bowels of the Movement we are not part of ‘Obama’s liberal Left [sic] base.’ Nor are we wonks on health care policy. But we do know this: (i) the Movement savors flinching; and (ii) independents and others watching both the Movement and Obama will have another gut check on who is the stronger actor. That meta-political snapshot of strength will be the far more enduring and powerful emergent political truth than the technicalities of this bill or that one.
Obama demonstrates that he lacks the necessary internal strength to deal with the Movement, let alone assert a separate positive agenda. Democrats and the clueless commentariat in 2009 who remain willfully stupid deserve the political annihilation the Movement plans for them. Imagine, after Newt in Congress and 8 years of the Warlord, Alter can say this August that it’s all an eye opener. ‘It’s amazing’ to them — I think those were Alter’s words — that the Movement disdains liberal democracy.
One can not engage in serious politics in the 21st Century with such people. The Movement plays for keeps. The Democrats just play. What remains unclear to us is whether the netroots writ large can rebuild a new Democratic Party from within fast enough. Or whether the whole rotten edifice needs toppling in favor of something new, unfettered with ghosts of mediocracies past.
The Stiftung’s major interest is first preserving and then strengthening liberal democracy, knowing that the Movement only may be coaxed into mere participation at best, but does so with no fealty and a hunger to bring it all down. We do not carry here an ideological axe to grind on the current menu list of hot button issues. Our politics are perhaps best be described as classically liberal.
To all of our detriment America doesn’t have a genuine ‘Left’ anymore (the word is our Emmanuel Goldstein as faux boogeyman). We leave reconstitution of a vibrant and healthy Left up to others. They have our best wishes. We worry whether Obama’s weakness also will not bring down at least portions of the progressive movement vested in him. A week is a lifetime and all that. Still we hope they are self aware enough to know that they must jettison him when necessary despite the complicated emotions. Keep eyes on the prize.
All of us can’t afford the Movement’s return to actual power (as opposed to Obama’s incredible gift now of letting the Movement govern by negative implication). We close by asking ourselves for the umpteenth time under the breath, ‘Why are Democrats so stupid?’
Ticking, Ticking Timebomb
And all the timebombs
They’re all dancing to the same song
In a world full of no one
I am a someone
I am a timebomb
An overly mannered, attempted droll reference to our torch-carrying friends in the Movement? Too lazy. Their er, tea bagging and now their subconscious projections via guns and swastikas a boring commonplace.
We resurrect this catchy pop tune because it seems to apply to all of us this August, beyond the Movement fringe. We sense a Nation in the lull before a storm. The latent potential for frustrated expression is not an exclusive trait of our brownshirted irrational Fox Lovers. (We will concede them the franchise on violence, ‘May Pole’-esque reverence for ‘big’ guns and Corporal homages). What strikes us this August is how many non-political acquaintances are openly expressing frustration over dashed expectations. These are the majority of Americans who demanded ‘change’ last Fall but don’t particularly care whether Laurence O’Donnell was chief of the Senate Finance Committee staff, what Wilkerson has to say (on anything), or whether John Dean thinks Pepsi’s new logo is worse than Watergate.
Our view remains that Obama’s best function historically is to stabilize the Republic after 8 years of Christian Socialist Authoritarian misrule. Ideally, he would need two terms to return governing to a non-radical, non-extra-legal meme basis. We do not see it in him actually to roll back the damage. That will be up to one later who can build on a stabilzed foundation with a clearer restorative purpose. We personally are not reacting in this post to all the Rightist August frenzy per se. It’s to be expected. Even a stabilizing caretaker simply counter-flooding watertight compartments in our ship to compensate for huge holes left by the Warlord would galvanize the Movement eventually. Cost of doing business. We just didn’t expect Obama or the Democrats to be so pitifully unprepared.
Why shouldn’t one expect some competency? We’ve debated here in our cozy little corner whether he took on too much at once, had no alternative, could have prioritized, etc. What can not be denied, we believe, is that it is imperative that he be seen as having done something well. At least one thing. We know of almost no one who trusts Geithner and Summers. If Liz Warren, our old acquaintance is skeptical, knowing how her mind works, we are too. We do not share the Obama team’s enthusiasm for war in Afghanistan or a prolonged presence in Iraq. We never understood why so much of the deficit should be for more Republican tax cuts in the pitifully small stimulus when the tax cuts got no Republican support anyway. One could go on. They did handle Swine Flu reasonably (the Biden-on-the-plane-thing merely loopy). But to be this clumsy over 1/7 of the economy after the bailouts?
Should he prove to be neither competent nor progressive it may well be the worst of all outcomes for those wary of the Counter-Enlightenment Will to Power: general disillusionment combined with a radically energized, irrational Movement raging for revenge. His first 8 months suggest a very good ordinary politician feeling his way through a learning curve. But these are not ordinary times. Our biggest disappointment beyond competency? Team Obama shows the Stiftung time and again that at the core they, like Reid, Pelosi and the rest, do not understand the regime they overthrew in Fall 2008 or the shards coalescing for a re-match.
The tissue of American commitment to civil society, civil liberties and liberal democracy has always been more gossamer thin than most suppose. Obama revealed as ordinary tactical pol with mixed competency facing a galvanized Movement? One wonders if the commitment withstands that challenge. Let’s hope Obama doesn’t put it to the test. For our sakes, we hope he succeeds. On at least one thing.
In that sense, we are all timebombs. Ticking, ticking timebombs.