Repudiating Liberalism or Obama

No, you were right, it wasn’t hard to see, even before TARP (FISA sealed the deal for me). The guy kicked off his campaign with a homophobic militant christian, and all the Obamabots told me don’t worry, he’s really a liberal. “You’re such a cynic”. Before he even announced his candidacy Obama ben Liebermen was his well earned nickname in “cynical” circles. Americans are just fucking stoopid, and really there is no way to save them (or all of us) from themselves. I thought I’d get more satisfaction watching the idiots take it up the ass, but it’s really sad. Just tet a sixty something mover/truck driver who lost his house, lives in his truck, and will never be able to retire. He blames liberals/liberalism for his problems. I guess it was liberals that forced the banks to lend money to idiots like him. He really deserves his fate, but in person it was incredibly pathetic to see up close. Hopefully as I meet more people like that, my unfortunate liberal empathy will die out completely. Or maybe I’ll become a shut in.

It does look like a chrystalnacht moment, and liberals are the new demons. Bet it does not end like “The Lord of the Flies”.

Hominds. The United States is already in one of its authoritarian moments. It is not headed there; it is in it. Now, this has one upside: the situation is probably not going to get much worse. Unfortunately, it is already bad.

I’m not so sure the Republicans are going to retake the House. The core of tea-party-ism, the convinced believers, are a tiny elderly group. Their ideology is being pushed out through the media and, for the moment, a larger minority believes, but come the next election, that belief will be gone, and it may not even dominate this election. The only reason tea-party-ism has become even this “popular” is because a huge amount of money is being pumped into propagandizing it. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, the deep-pocketed contributors will decide they aren’t getting what they are paying for, and will give it up, if they are not outright bankrupted. (I also like Jane Hamsher’s “Top 10 Reasons the Democrats Might Do Better In 2010 Than You Think,” here. The Republican leadership is also capable of fumbling the moment.)

This does not make for a good situation for progressives, though. I think there are some parallels with the early Truman administration, when progressives were marginalized, and the country fell into an earlier period of authoritarianism. In the coming decade, the radical right believers will age and lose much of their influence. It is to the following decade and the younger voters, I think, we must turn. We must, especially, begin to construct convincing political arguments for our side. There is rich material for this: radical-right “capitalism” has failed dramatically.

Time to get started.

@The Raven – Nate Silver gives the Republicans a 73 % chance of taking the house, see the graph on the lower right.

Also you wrote: …now, this has one upside: the situation is probably not going to get much worse. Unfortunately, it is already bad.

Oh, I could see it getting a LOT worse. As bad as thing are, a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas still costs about the same as it did last month. The food trucks still keep the store shelves well stocked. As armed to the teeth as many of its citizens are, there isn’t open warfare with live ammo being exchanged between the various factions in the US. I still feel relatively safe where I live.

I think the problem with Ian’s idea – if this really is a problem – is something Mandos hit upon. There is no obvious alternative on the left, apart from maybe Kucinich, not even considering whether the alternative would succeed or not. Without a viable alternative, it’s easy to be paralyzed by the “Republicans are so much worse” fear, and cling to Barry as Our Only Hope.

To me, the critical point isn’t even winning the election (although that is important), it is repudiating the whole conservative philosophy of Reaganism. This is the reigning philosophy that’s been programmed into most people’s heads for the last 30 years. It’s the assumptions and rules that everyone, including the Democrats play under. Until someone comes along and can provide a serious challenge to this narrative – and deprogram the population – it’s all uphill regardless of who comes in.

This is my own particular disappointment with Barack Obama – not his policies, not his BushLite stances (as bad as they are). But it’s his inability or unwillingness to use his tremendous oratorical and intellectual gifts to up-end the disastrous dogma that’s so obviously failed, and yet which has most of the country in thrall, to this day.

Conservatives learned decades ago, that to control a country, you have to control the stories that are being told. It doesn’t matter whether stories have any basis in reality. There may be great progressive ideas out there, but they’re no match for the stories that people believe about the country.

“…for basically the whole…”

[1]To me, the critical point … is repudiating the whole conservative philosophy of Reaganism.
…

[2] it’s Obama’s inability or unwillingness to use his tremendous oratorical and intellectual gifts to up-end the disastrous dogma that’s so obviously failed, and yet which has most of the country in thrall, to this day.

Gee, 2 might be related to 1 somehow …

“Really? He deserves to inhabit a terrible economy because, why–he told the financiers to gamble our country’s money on credit default swaps?”

He deserves to inhabit a terrible economy because he is a mindless twit who believes what faux news tells him. Who took/takes advice from idiots on CNBC, such as buying a house he could afford was a good idea and there was no bubble and real estate is a great “investment”. Because he believes that the rich are taxed enough. Because he believes we can afford to wage two endless wars, but we can’t afford to provide universal health care. And that’s how he votes too, so yes, he put his blessing on all of it, or at least as much as his little pea brain could wrap itself around. Yes he deserves all that and more. And more should be showing up here any day now.

Alyosha cites Nate Silver on a huge potential Democratic loss. Think about pollster’s articles is that they’re a little like financial reports: sometimes the most interesting things are the qualifications at the bottom. In Silver’s article we have:

It is also important to remember that there are some factors, like the fact that many pollsters do not include cellphones in their sample, that could potentially result in the polls underestimating the position of Democrats. Our model assumes there is a chance that the overall “consensus” of polling could be off, which could affect the results in a great number of individual districts. This is one reason that it thinks such disparate outcomes as a 70-seat Republican gain or a mere 30-seat gain are not exceptionally unlikely. But such systematic bias in the polling could run in either direction.

Problem is, we no longer know how to poll. So there’s a lot of uncertainty. Also, the Dems (it is said) are going to go negative in the last two weeks of the campaign and, well, the teabaggers have plenty of negatives. Even more uncertainty.

I’m afraid Obama could not have been more effective in handing the country over to the crazies if he had been an actual Manchurian candidate. Ian is right: Obama is Herbert Hoover, if not worse. In pretending to service both traditional Democratic liberalism and the memory of Saint Ronald Reagan, Obama trashed the former and gave pride of place to the latter, and governs with a complacency that suggests my worst fears: in all that talk of transforming the way Washington does business, candidate Obama knew on some level that president Obama planned to do none of it. What contempt both those Obamas must feel for regular Americans.

But Mandos is right too: you think the last twelve years were bad, just wait: privatized national parks, an end to legal abortion, mass disenfranchisement of people of color via Justice Department-sponsored “voter integrity” scams, Christian religious symbols displayed in public buildings, Lindsey Graham as attorney general…well, I’m sure everyone here can fill in the blanks. Just don’t underestimate what’s coming, folks. Government by the crazies is going to be very, very bad. And it will come to us in no small way courtesy of Obama himself.

We do need to differentiate (and rescue) liberalism from Obama-ism. They’re nothing alike. We also need to become fighters, and back fighters to win. We also need a simple, clear, cogent, compelling, morality-based, fairness-based set of principles to stand on: perhaps that can evolve over time. (We all “know” what that means, but a central set of core principles to run on, in PUBLIC, is yet to be received widely enough to gain traction.)

But Mandos is right too: you think the last twelve years were bad, just wait: privatized national parks, an end to legal abortion, mass disenfranchisement of people of color via Justice Department-sponsored “voter integrity” scams, Christian religious symbols displayed in public buildings, Lindsey Graham as attorney general…well, I’m sure everyone here can fill in the blanks. Just don’t underestimate what’s coming, folks. Government by the crazies is going to be very, very bad. And it will come to us in no small way courtesy of Obama himself.

It’s not really the specific details that matter so much to the trends that rightly concern Ian. Even with Obama, we are getting some measure of these things, though at a slower rate (which is not to be discounted). But the direction of the trend is the same. What is different is the way that people think about it, and that’s the most important thing of all.

I do think there’s something to the point that until the left repudiates Obama, it won’t have a candidate to run. Politicians are basically opportunists. So long as Obama looks like he’ll win in 2012, nobody will challenge him because it will be seen as political suicide. But the weaker he gets, the more likely he’ll get a challenge. If you want it to be from the left, then it’s better the left be the one to weaken him because that’s where the opportunity will seen to be. If we simply sit back and let the GOP do it, not only do we continue to let Obama’s actions undermine liberalism, but it makes it more likely he’ll be challenged by someone from the right – because that’s where his weakness will seem to be.

I’m all for building social movements outside of the Democratic Party. But for folks who want to try to take back the party from the inside, it has to start with taking down Obama. So long as Obama is in charge, too much of the rest of the left will follow him.

Sorry for the spam, but I meant to include a link to Chris Hedge’s piece March to Nowhere. I’ve linked to it a couple of places, but I don’t think I’ve done it here. The basic thrust of it is that, to the extent the left wants to save America, it can’t do it so long as it embraces the Democratic Party. For starters, nobody is going to listen to a movement whose primary advice in the face of a complete failure by our elite class is “more and better Democrats.”

What’s really difficult in discussing putative progressive candidates to challenge Obama is that they almost have to be WILLING TO LOSE–i.e., to care more about what’s good for America than what’s good for themselves. They’d need to be willing to run on, and advance, straight progressive principles, articulate them fearlessly and endlessly, and pretty much assume they’re going down the tubes on election day, simply because the machinery of elections in America gives the mantle to major party anointees–that’s just how it works.

Slightly off topic but maybe not: there’s a documentary on Hubert Humphrey making the rounds on PBS stations, and worth watching because folks: THAT’s what a fighter looks like. I disdained Humphrey at the end of his public career because of his fervent embrace of pro-war policies–but prior to that, his spirit, intelligence, and guts were responsible for landmark social legislation usually credited to Kennedy and Johnson. But watch him–THAT’s what a fighter looks like. I don’t know that we have one of those right now. Grayson, maybe–but is he willing to take a beating to keep the message pure? I fear not, and I think that’s part of the qualifications for progressive candidacy these days.

Growing up, I used to wonder how Herbert Hoover, in the face of the Great Depression, could continue the policies of his predecessors. I love Hoover as a man — very intelligent, saved millions of Europeans from starvation following WWI, a really nice guy. (A fellow Iowan, in fact.) But he was committed to the conventional economic wisdom. Like a current president you have mentioned.

Don’t know who our FDR might be. Feingold? Franken? I wish it were Krugman, actually.

yes the speed to the cliff is the only difference between the R and the D. and Obama is a R!! anyone who praises Reagan is no Democrat. That was enough to foretell the end of the Republic.

the Zombie messages of the St. Ronnie’s era are deep within the minds of the idiot Americans.
only a great crash, like the Great Depression will cause enough pain to allow for any re-thinking.
the willful ignorance of the American public is beyond grasp of most of us “thinkers.”

unless there is a great divide between Obama and the LEFT of whatever name, the Democrats will be seen as the cause for all the problems the Republicans gave us through St. Ronnie. That St. Ronnie started this whole paradigm shift is clue to the depth and gravity of the situation. and Obama praised him in his victory speech.

not like anyone on the right cares about anything or anyone. The Republican party is the Free Lunch party. No taxes , no Government, no Society, nothing that would include the “other”.
Nobody matters in this Right wing world except themselves. they worked for it and this is their Due! the Free Lunch is what the rest of us give to them that allows them to never pay into or for the Society they once were a part of. until we stop giving the Republicans the Free Lunch to destroy the world we ALL live in we are screwed.

here in America, we are their LUNCH. and have been for the last 40 years. so i would like to get this meal over as soon as possible. we are feeding them by upholding the pretense of the sham of an opposition called the Democrats.

but the PR campaign and the zombie messages are so incalculated into the subconscience of the ignorant idiot Americans, so much so it is not ever apparent anymore.

Peace through War, and all those oxymorons. oxymorons for morons. fits perfectly in the Madison Ave war on the “us vs. them” campaign of buying cars, TVs, houses, clothes, food. the whole nine yards.

talk about good PR campaign, YOU BETCHA!!!

What Eureka Springs said. A primary challenge from the left is no threat to Obama. He knows that. We know that. It’s a nice, deserved slap in his face, but it serves no one. Beyond that, it’d continue to sublimate the left’s estimable talents and energy (not to mention correct policies) beneath the duopoly’s stranglehold on power. We can either begin building a movement outside existing institutions of power, local to national, or remain passive whingers observing the lovely cratering of society.

You want to challenge Obama, get an articulate, likeable liberal with great resources to run as an indy/green etc. That’s a fucking threat, people. Split us off from the bourgeois dems-first, and the GOP walks into the WH.

A primary run might make him shift L temporarily, only to rapidly resume Reagan’s perch in the oval office Jan 2013. A 3rd party challenge presents a clear and present danger that might cost him his legacy, and nothing spells fail like one term.

Frankly, I think there aren’t that many liberals in the blogosphere. They are merely rooters for the home team, which happens to label itself with a “D.” If they had Principle 1, they would have repudiated Obama after the FISA vote. I agree that FISA was the biggest brick that could have dropped on their heads, and yet, they refused to see it.

What I would love to see is the Democratic Party leadership recognizing that Obama is a complete failure, and requesting that he not run again in 2012. And yes, I think they should ask Hillary to run instead. No matter what people believe, if you look at her policy proposals from 2008, she was very far to the left of Obama on domestic issues. (She was against the TARP and proposed a completely different approach to the mortgage crisis, for example.) She would definitely yank the Party back around to the left.

I also agree that liberalism and Obama need to be separated. It will probably take the blogosphere another couple of years to do it, though, and by that time it will be far too late.

amazing. the idea that since the Right is going batshit fascist, the Democrats “need” to become “right” to fill the gap. Now that is truly an awesome thought, in and of itself. lol. Keep Republicanism alive, damn the torpedoes!!!

an Eisenhower Republican or Lincoln Republican would work in their own eras. this concept of being the “savior of Republican ideas” is not what i view as “humane.” lol. getting rid of the Republicans would allow common sense, as in “humanity” to begin to be an acceptable concept, once again. hello… anyone home!!!

Society has been declared an unfit, unwelcome, leech on the body politic. whether the D’s or the R’s herald the concept of destroying Society in the name of Greed/Altruism, is not the kind of society i have in mind.

the visions of Ayn Rand and the Rugged Individual is what the Republican party represents.
a Calvinist version of Christianity is being used to weed out those who fail to meet “party guidelines/weak, unemployed, gay, black, latin, muslim, female… etc.” buying into that anti human version of society led us to where we are today.

the real irony here is the use of Left Wing ideas by the Right to cull out the weak and poor and discredit the Left. this is so “Christ like” i often wonder if the Taliban aren’t more Christian than some of those who carry the tag American. the ability to use the lie over and over has led us into this path of anti social anti moral: My way or the Highway, used famously by John Wayne.

the Branding of the Left was not just a Republican success story. the D’s helped by running away as they do now. Getting rid of that kind of D would be a step in the right direction. that won’t happen cause they are part and parcel of what is wrong with Congress/ America today.
Clinton proved the D’s were for sale to the highest bidder, too.

the Left is and has apparently always been like herding Cats, as i quote Will Rogers. the D’s need to stand for society/humanity; humane, social, community building concepts rather than the “I got mine, go Fuch yourself,” aka the Republican way.

whatever the labels of these concept of social integration are, society is what has made America and other countries stronger. that old “united we stand , divided we fall” maxim comes to mind.

if you are willing to live in a “Lord of the Flies” society vote Republican or Blue Dog or Obama. i’m not willing to endorse the abrogation of the human societal community contract. i therefore choose not to endorse or absolve anyone, like Obama, Blue dogs or Republicans, that chose such a selfish, unChristian, anti-human, anti social conglomeration of Alpha males/females, becoming sub-humans, cause that group of individuals won’t have any reason or capacity to stand together as a society or nation. the force of the Gun will have triumphed.

any wonder the NRA is so popular in America. in America society is viewed as a unwelcoming, unwanted blemish that must be “permanently fixed.”this is but one result or effect of the “Rugged Individualism” so highly regarded by the Libertarian, Ayn Randian, and Republican way. I read Ayn Rand and wondered what world she lived in to come up with such “disconnected and antisocial” heroes. Heroes that belittle others. Power makes right is her bottom line. kill or be killed.

Geezam people. the Native Indians acknowledged the Web of Life. that all things were interconnected. to break one part of the web would cause the whole to unravel. of course such wisdom couldn’t be tolerated as it was in contraindication of the “American Experience” at that time.

It would help if the American “left” would stop discrediting itself all on its own, too:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dustin-reid/beyond-left-and-right-why_b_757568.html

What I’d like to know is, where in the US is there a solid working *voting* majority that would agree – in advance! – with left-wing economic – not social – policies? (By which I mean only the most uncontroversial Keynesian type stuff, or rather what ought to be uncontroversial but is now apparently unknown and incomprehensible…) The “in advance” part is important because they have to be inclined to think, “Yes, that’s a good idea, let’s try it” first to give you a chance to put the policies in action. Then the policies succeed and you get more support and so on. But it has to start somewhere. People want to see it working, they’ve been told for 30 years and more that it’s all foolishness and poppycock, with precious little dispute.

Which is to say, one of the biggest problems we have is that people simply just don’t agree with us about stuff. Yet, at least. How do you bypass television and constant BS and convince them otherwise?

spin me a scenario where the Republicans never get control again.

The Democrats take over the conservative position on the political spectrum and the People’s Progressive Libertarian Party takes over the liberal position. The Republicans dwindle to a radical-right minority party in the Southern and Mountain states.

…now, we need to make it happen!

And if you’re going to claim that I’m wrong, then please, link to an assessment of her entire voting record that proves she’s a fairly reliable vote for corporate interests. Without that, the claim is just one more tired talking point from the Obama camp.

Actually, you are the one who made the claim so it is your responsibility to prove it. You support it with links.

But as was stated here – she’s the face of Obama’s foreign policy; if she was as lefty as you think she is, she wouldn’t be.

“he told the financiers to gamble our country’s money on credit default swaps?”

I’m failing to recall anything he did in the Senate that said he would stop it. Oh yeah, he co-authored a deficit reduction bill with Coburn.

He also voted for Iraq and Afghanistan funding every time it came up, which is the other part of the crisis.

Obama is good at implying he deplores what he is about to do.

Paul Rosenburg discussed his Cali precinct, which is 70% non-Anglo, and why we won’t stop Obama.

Ezra Klein, that worthless hack, directly precedes his confusion over Obama saying “There are no shovel ready projects” with a post on Isabel Wilkerson’s Warmth of a Other Suns

I might say that “liberalism” has been redefined to exclude class analysis and economic justice but I don’t believe liberalism was ever anything but enlightened class privilege.

Screw liberalism. Screw Democrats. I’m a socialist.

“Hillary Clinton is our FDR and unlike Obama, she has the personal resume to prove it. Further, she brings with her the working class of America, who trust her. ”

This is a joke, right? You do realize Hillary is serving in Obama’s cabinet as the current Secretary of State . Sorry, unless she resigns and goes after Obama like a duck on a June bug on every economic issue from now until 2012, she has no credibility, zero. And you also forget she’s married to the same corporatist (first name, Bill) who gave us NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Steagal. We are not going to find any progressive leadership from the inner circles of the Democratic Party.

Lori thinks it’s a vicious lie … created by misogynists, no doubt … that hillary clinton can’t walk on water.

You’ll have to excuse her, she’s got cds … just not her definition of it.

Z

The hillary lovers are part of the problem with this country becoz hillary herself … and her husband … is part of the problem.

Z

The hillary lovers are part of the problem with this country becoz hillary herself … and her husband … is part of the problem.

Yeah, that peace and prosperity thing just about ruined this country.

Bill Clinton’s peace and prosperity:
1. dot-com bubble
2. the peace dividend from the end of the cold war

Bill Clinton can be called many things, but liberal is not one of them – at least without the neo- prefix.

Nice trick, mixing two different comments together. I never said Bill Clinton was a liberal.

Bill Clinton’s peace and prosperity:
1. dot-com bubble
2. the peace dividend from the end of the cold war

Yeah, sure. The longest sustained economic expansion in our history was nothing but good luck on the Big Dawg’s part. That’s why the gap between rich and poor shrunk for the only time in the past 30 years.

And the children in Iraq who were being slowly starved to death, or having cruise missiles lobbed at them might disagree as to the whole peacefulness of Clinton.

Do you think Poppy and Dubya Bush had better solutions to the Iraq issue?

Who is YOUR superhero president? Who should we have elected instead?

We paid for that “prosperity” later …

The “clinton” economy benefited from the initial stimulus of cheap goods imported into the US from the free trade agreements… the exported jobs would take more time, the explosion of consumer credit, greenspan’s irresponsibility in nourishing a huge stock market bubble, and wall street being set lose in a major way on the world’s markets. Workers fell further behind during those wonderful clinton years in wage inequality …. even behind what they were during the republican dominated 80s.

“Both the average wages for non-supervisory workers and the earnings of those in the lowest 10 percent of wage earners,” notes Robert Pollin, “not only remained well below those of the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations, but were actually lower than that even than those of the Reagan/Bush years. Moreover, wage inequality — as measured by the ratio of the 90th to the 10th wage decile — increased sharply during Clinton’s tenure in office, even relative to the Republican heyday of the 1980s.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Street0929.htm

Yeah, clinton did a great job with his secretary of treasury deregulating everything in sight, carrying out polices that led to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children, passing welfare reform, increasing the H1-B visa limits, relaxing the limits on media ownership, preventing college students with marijuana possession convictions from getting federal financial aid, and passing The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which helped lead to this wonderful growing police state we live in and increased the amount of inmates by 50% during his reign.

The delusory “healthy” clinton economy was the results of easy credit, the technology boom, the initial benefits of cheap goods from the free trade agreements that he couldn’t do enough of, his abhorrent secretary of treasury, rubin, talking greenspan into exploding the money supply to reflect the “productivity miracle”, and the consequent stock market bubble. In the end, we all saw how real that was when many highly capitalized dotcom companies never developed viable business models and went bankrupt with wall street walking away rich. It was mainly based on bullshit and it started to fall apart even before the abominable bush came into office. And, also, that initial wave of corruption that finally surfaced from enron and worldcom and the like in 2002 or 2003 … that didn’t start the moment bush came into office, it started when clinton was president. It obviously got a lot worse under the worst president in our nation’s history, but the economy did not just start to fall apart in January 2001.

Z

mary,

Did you not read the thread? Did you not read lori’s post veering this discussion towards hillary clinton being the savior of the democratic party?

Silly you, I guess …

Z

“Lori made one comment as far as I can see. You’ve made at last five on the same topic.”

So? Are you writing her bitching about how she was initially off-topic? No … and that’s probably becoz she has a point of view you agree with … and with mine, you don’t.

In case “silly you” hasn’t noticed, these discussion boards frequently go off-topic; often that’s a strength of these boards. If you are going to take on the cause of keeping internet discussion board comments on-topic, then be consistent about it. That is if that’s what you’re really concerned about … and not just comments that you don’t agree with.

Z

mary,

I answer the questions I want. And I have an open and active mind; I’m not not one that is willing to be herded into the liberal or democrat camps. If you are sincerely so interested in my opinion on obama, go to some other threads concerning him and do a search for Z.

Z

Shit, someone even denied that Bill was a neoliberal.

Whatever he was we need more of those.

Myi … whatever,

I debate points that I want to debate. I have little interest in debating whether or not the liberals should disown obama … I think about the whole damn country should disown that piece of garbage. He’s a disgrace and a terrible person to boot and I’ve made my beliefs about him very clear in past posts.

As far as being a troll and not wanting to debate, I wrote a big post above that was primarily in response to your clinton glorifying nonsense; which you have not replied to. Instead, like much of the clinton fandumb, you prefer to parrot out short slogans like “what didn’t you like, the peace or the prosperity?” And then when someone points out the evidence that the clinton economy was not all that it was banged up to be by people like you and your hero, many of you come back with childish accusations of being inflicted with cds. But that’s becoz you basically have nothing to say in response to any of that and all you can do is resort to short slogans … that you’ve been fed … or point to someone worse and say that he is better than them, although that was never the point of contention to begin with.

And I think it’s becoz that most of you are arrogant, first order thinkers that are unable … or unwilling, due to your arrogance … to look beyond what happened during the clinton years, when the credit bubble first got blew and the economy took on the chimera of a healthy boom when it was anything but. His corporate sellout polices led to a lot of economic problems later on … something you folks never want to look at or even consider, which is why so many of you are not much better … if at all … than the obamabots and the bushites. You only find principles when your heroes aren’t in power.

And here you are now, posturing about principles and how obama has betrayed them. Your principles about obama IMO are completely conditional … you only found them when you beloved corporatist dlc queen, that hired mark fucking penn as her chief campaign strategist for fuck’s sake, lost the nomination …which is to say that you don’t have many, if any. principles in those regards. And if she was doing the same shit that obama is doing, you’d very likely be throwing around the same childish insults of misogynism or cds at people that spoke out against her … that DO have principles … just like you do now. Becoz again, there’s little difference between you and the obamabots and the bushites. You’re fakes and that’s why I don’t like you folks.

Z

myiq … who came from nowhere as far as I can tell … writes an awful lot like a coward that I know that runs corrente …

Z

Just a sidenote – myiq2zu and lambert strether are not the same person. The former is part of The Confluence blog while the latter is, as you state, part of Corrente.

I just wandered over to riverdaughter, and this comment thread was discussed.

PUMAs are amusing.

The prime sufferers of CDS are the Clinton worshippers.

If you are opposed to neoliberalism, then you should oppose it regardless of which politician you like. NAFTA was not good for the US. Repealing Glass-Steagall was not good for the US. The rampant militarism was not good for the US. The dot-com bubble was not good for the US. Bill Clinton was not good for the US, even if he was popular, or “better than Bush.”

Better than Bush – like being the world’s tallest dwarf.

To: The true cdsers

This is going to be difficult for you to wind your brains around becoz it is a concept that is so foreign to you … so hang in there and try to follow, maybe even read it a few times if you must.:

I just want to point out to you that one can simultaneously dislike bill clinton, hillary clinton, george bush, and barak obama. And that it is also possible to dislike bill clinton and not give a damn about the monica lewinsky situation. That’s all entirely possible if you place your principles above candidate, party, and your own personal arrogance and don’t allow that arrogance to stunt your cognitive development and impede objectivity.

Z

dancingopossum,

I don’t agree that the writing style and phrases used by the myi poster above and lamberts over on corrente differ much at all.

lambert is a coward IMO that threw around a lot of provable falsities about Jane Hamsher and Gleen Greenwald in a recent post … most unfair and damaging towards Hamsher … and couldn’t back them up so he avoided the debate and slinked away hiding behind snark. He … she … whatever … is a coward in my book.
https://www.ianwelsh.net/leftists-should-take-credit-for-bringing-down-democrats/#comments

I have nothing against people that once liked clinton … fuck, I voted for him once … but I do with those that are too arrogant to re-examine their beliefs and try to stifle debate in regards to him by responding with silly phrases … that they’ve been fed … and snark.

Z

Dancingoppossum,

But I was wrong when I wrote with certitude that the myi poster and lambert from corrente are one in the same. I obviously have no way of being absolutely sure of that.

Z

Z:

I posted your words – I didn’t mischaracterize them because they speak for themselves.

Your comment at TC got deleted because you were rude and insulting. I gave you the opportunity to repost your comment minus the insults but you chose otherwise.

Boo-fricking-hoo.

You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do. Try spending more time reading and less time displaying your ignorance and obnoxious attitude. A little maturity wouldn’t hurt either.

I can either be a liberal or a Democrat?

Either/ or, huh? That sounds like a fallacy to me. How about a third option like “none of the above”.

Evidence has it Obama is guilty of many war crimes. He’s a Company man, stoking the Company war machine. Like him, the Democratic Congress loves the Endless War and is largely bought by the bank$ters, too. Don’t give me all that silliness about Hillary. She, and her Big Dog before her, were simply slicker than Obama. Don’t forget who brought Larry Summers to the table in the first place. Don’t forget who started blowing the financial bubbles in real estate, with the help of Cisneros.

But I voted for that Dog twice, and Al Gore, too, although I think Al Gore is a fraud. But I’d vote for him again, or Hillary, if she ran against a Republican.

Yes, voting for the Democrats is simply putting off the day the Republicans get control of the national $ecurity state again, voting the Democrats in will only allow the fascists to tighten their grip unnoticed by the main$tream.

Why do I want to vote for the Democrats? Over Republicans?

Because the deterioration of society accelerates faster under the Republicans. Because it really is the economy, silly. Because with time under Democratic administrations a greater fraction of the people are able to feed their kids. Because this isn’t a perfect world, and although I’d damn sure vote for one if it was out there, I think the $ystem is owned by the Company.

I don’t think you can be part of the $ystem if you aren’t.

There is a real difference between politicians who know they’re evil, rue it, and try to muddle through the best they can, and politicians who are simply ignorant and evil, or intelligently sociopathically evil.

FDR lied us into World War II and brushed aside civil rights. He also helped create jobs that fed a desperate nation, regulated the bank$ters, planted a billion trees as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, effecting a massive ecological change that likely kept the midwest from becoming the same kind of desert as the middle east and (unbeknownst to him) delaying global warming.

Or maybe he only slowed down the inevitable- the feudalization of American society, the pauperization of a nation, the decay of the environment. Maybe we should just lie down, slash our wrists, and let the crocodilian Republicans devour us.

I think the way to avoid the inevitable is to, you know, avoid it.

Vote Democratic in November. Maybe we’ll pithe the big reptiles when they aren’t looking.

kelley b:

Hmm … Obama is no FDR or LBJ, though.

I’m not so sure that D administrations are even marginally better anymore, on balance. Because there’s the “only Nixon could go to China” principle at work as well. Any congressional opposition to Catfood Commissions and corporatism in general and murder overseas is more neutered.

Additionally, if we’re to get very utilitarian and anti-Kantian about it — allowing the stipulation that the moral odiousness of voting for murderers is not a factor in this argument, in other words — it seems to me that the following is still the case: Fascism breeds the fastest under “liberal” leaders who are not in fact liberal.

I suspect that the total discredit to “liberalism” that ordinary people will be and are coming away with from this administration is as dangerous as the marginal relative evilness of the Republicans.

One thing I will say is that I lived through the Clinton years and anyone who did–perhaps Z is too young–remembers those years as a kind of Golden Age. And for good reason. Clinton (both Clintons) have many faults but the Clinton years were incredibly good years to live in this country. Bill Clinton was hamstrung by a rightwing-Repub Congress and a 24/7 hostile press, under which circumstances even the slightest progressive advances were remarkable achievements. Those were facts, and they remain facts, just as Hillary’s record of achievements that helped ordinary Americans remain real and historical fact.

To deny that is equal parts ignorance and CDS in my opinion.

Obama has absolutely NOTHING in his record pre- or during his presidency that indicates anything remotely resembling a non-rightwing bent. So Z, do you denounce Obama as vehemently as you do the Clintons?

Again, neoliberalism is bad for ordinary people. Clinton was a neoliberal. Clinton was bad for ordinary people.

Don’t fall in love with politicians. Love is blind.

Pepe writes: “Clinton was bad for ordinary people.”

This is false in fact. American Prospect:

The real wage for the typical worker rose by 6.6 percent in the Clinton years. By contrast, wages have risen by just 1 percent in the Bush years and are now falling. At the current rate of decline, real wages will be lower in January 2009 than when President Bush took office in 2001. The typical family’s income rose by 15.3 percent under Clinton and fell by 1.6 percent under Bush.

Needless to say, Obama’s worse than Bush in this regard.

One shouldn’t mistake Clinton’s ability to deliver concrete material benefits during his term for the general failure of the neo-liberalism as a project. One might consider the Clinton wing of the D party as “neo-liberalism with a human face.” Sadly, the human face isn’t on offer with The Big O.

neoliberalism with a human face.

Clinton’s policies were castles made of sand.

But at least you had a good smile back then.

I wonder if the people that can’t get welfare right now thanks to welfare reform, which bill clinton very much drove (just like his secretary of treasury and summers drove the repeal of glass-steagall), have dental insurance? I wonder how their teeth are doing? Yeah, it’s too bad that the corporate lap dawg wasn’t able to hold together his deal with gingrich to “reform” social security. I’m sure that would have worked out well for seniors’ teeth too.

Oh, those higher order effects, they’re so confusing to the clinton fandumb …

Z

Pepe (and Z) have and can have, of course, no response to the factual point that real wages rose during the Clinton era (see above for link); rising wages mean that, on the whole and on the average, people were better off in terms of concrete material benefits then, as opposed to now. Apparently, Pepe (and I assume his tag team partner, Z) define “bad for ordinary people” as a bigger paycheck. Perhaps they’re closet Austerians?

In any case, to speak to Pepe’s especially loathesome crotte of snark about a “pretty smile,” see this from a review of Unemployed in America:

According to Sered and Fernandopulle, people who lack or lose access to health care become a separate caste. They use the word caste deliberately and in its traditional sense to describe a group of people who are characterized “by the absence of mobility” and by “recognizable external markers.” When health affects employment and appearance, people lose the middle-class markers that define success in this country:

In a broader sense, the death spiral serves as a metaphor for the deep changes taking place in American society as the demarcation between rich and poor — a traditionally fluid distinction in our society — hardens into a static barrier between the caste of the healthy and the caste of those who are fated to become and remain sick.

Teeth are one of those caste markers. Healthy, white teeth are a sign of middle-class success. Almost everyone in the book said that if they were suddenly given health care coverage, the first thing they would is go to the dentist.

Please, deliver me from a “left” that thinks delivery of concrete material benefits to ordinary people isn’t important, and that mocks those who can’t afford dental care!

I see Ian’s post has been hijacked by the usual suspects again in their infantile nattering of pseudo and intellectualistic nabobery (h/t Spiro T. Agnew).

A mature cognizant reader recognizes opinion when encountered and accords that opinion whatever weight it deserves toward the tendered post, dismissing those opinions of little consequence.

Not so, this covey of jejune jerks, wrapt in self-importance and self-esteem, gnawing on fleshless bones and old grievances as if their growling mattered. One suspects it is the sound of their rattling keyboards that motivates their endless, pointless fracas; the rattling keyboards giving meaning to their dull existence.

The mature reader quickly discerns their “its all about me” and tries to keep, not always successfully, the distraction they create from deflecting the object of the original post. The consequence of these endless assaults is the commentator whose observations are made, many times of significant value, but overcome in this onslaught of needless, and sometimes worthless words trying to validate insignificant opinions.

Most of the foregoing comments are nothing more than a waste of Ian’s valuable bandwidth. Please show the host some manner of consideration.

lambert, my love: you’ve made it. you officially have crazies making up conspiracy theories about you. damn. i’m sort of jealous.

hey Z: talk about lambert’s questionable sexuality. and how much money he’s making f4om the republicans. also: his asian hareem of sex slaves. he’s got all that too. get serious about your oppo research, man.

Pepe, thanks, yes, I’ve done my due diligence on dental care.

Yes, there were losers in Clinton’s policies. On the average, “The real wage for the typical worker rose by 6.6 percent.” Not nostalgia, since the material concrete benefits were real. I agree that NAFTA was teh suxx0r — yes, neo-liberal policies were responsible, and the Clinton administration is on that spectrum.

As for the dot com bubble, one difference between that bubble under Clinton and the real estate bubble under Bush and Obama was that there was actual value produced during the dot com bubble (as there was during the railroad and canal bubbles, say, and not during the tulip bubble, say). Google, et cetera, aren’t negligible achievements (though they aren’t on the par with the achievements of the industrial era). But the real estate bubble is just out and out control fraud — elite criminality. I don’t think it’s the nature of the economic team that’s makes the difference, but a transition from normal ruling class rapaciousness to out-and-out looting in broad daylight. I think that has a lot to do with our ability to come out of the recession — “we” literally can’t clean up the balance sheets of the big banks because if we do, a lot of banksters are going to jail. Can’t have that. Not the case in 2000.

Just wandering by. I counseled, like you, early on opposition to Obama. Obama was not only not progressive. He was anti-progressive. Yet progressives were going to be blamed for him and his policies. It was such an obvious case of us being left holding the bag. I would say the one thing that has changed about this is that we can extend Obama’s anti-progressivism to the entire Democratic party, at least all of its officeholders.

This brings up a point I have been trying to press. The liberal orgs and liberal orgs have not gone into opposition because if you look at who runs them you will find many Democrats. Obama and the Democrats can’t really control the hoi polloi but they do effectively control these groups. There may be some grumbling and some opposition to some Democrats but not an outright rejection of them all. Obama and the Democrats can’t use the considerable organizing capabilities of these groups to energize the left. That’s a sell even these groups can’t make. Obama and the Democrats are just too obviously not progressive. But what they can do, and have done, is neutralize their ability to organize against them via the large Democratic representation in the leadership of these groups.

As I have written elsewhere, look what a few Tea Party kooks have done on the political scene, and then compare that to the near absolute absence of anything similar on the left, despite all of these great political organizing groups and the huge potential they represent.

It’s not that the liberal orgs and elite blogs are unaware. It’s that they are co-opted and tied into the Democrats. How then can they oppose them, except here and there, on this issue or that candidate?

I am gonna chime in on the Clinton Era and then on Obama. I know in my personal experience is that wages rose, I started as a I.B.E.W. apprentice in the late 80’s. Seen both of my parents lose jobs in manufacturing during Reagan and Bush, and knew that if I couldn’t afford college, I had to either go the trade school route or into a factory that would be iffy at best. So went to trade school and because I am a woman got into the apprenticeship pretty easy. I put my time, watched and learned a trade, worked and made a decent living, but construction is hard on a body. Construction work is iffy also, but if you got a trade you could make a bit on the side if times are tough. I figured if it don’t work out, I would know what to do at my own house, wouldn’t have to hire someone and trusted that they did a good job.

So, well in the trade, during the Clinton years, it was booming, worked local, mostly car plants at 7 days a week 16-18 hours a day I was tired with a nice healthy saving account, in 94 our local did a fine job on the contract, we would be making $21 an hour with retirement added another buck in benefits ( $2 in retirement an hour with time in half and double in holidays and sundays and anytime after midnight which would be $4 an hour) so in real terms we were doubling what our retirement benefits would be and five bucks in wages during the three year contract. The first year we would receive $2, the following $1 and the final year $2, the old timers said that was about what they received before Carter cut the unions throats. My dad who worked for the Teamsters agreed with what the old guys were saying. So, for me, as a Union Member, actual wage increased which were flat or had cuts just to stay working. Every one I knew was working overtime, and was pretty happy with being able to buy a new car or just go to the store and buy what they wanted. Now, its pick and choose what you really need and what is a want, and you get what is NEEDED. There is no going and buying crap just to buy. So, this bullshit about Clinton era is just that, there were real concrete wage increases. What people need to remember is we had a Republican Congress that had the members to override a veto in some of those years. The Dems only had the house for the first two years of the first administration. Call Clinton a DLC, call him anything you want, but be honest, people did make increases in real wages, and that the job market was a employee not a employer market. If you wanted or able to work there was a job, period.
Now onto Obama, he is a conservative, and its all about him, its not party its about Obama. I thought well the worse will happen is that he is another Carter. Not a total fuck up, just kind of blah, kind of like you just can’t catch a break, not that he would fuck up attentional just his I am above all the bullshit type of thing he does. Was I so wrong, its like he sold his soul to the banks, investor class, and the super rich , the billionaires because millionaires are not even close to the uber rich. I figure he do what they require and he will get his pay day after he is out, to me the tell was when he said he rather have one good term instead of two dismal terms or something like that, was on 60 min. and I thought fuck, were screwed.
So a garden was put in and all my cheapness came out, I can squeeze every penny out of a dollar. Sure its hard, and it sucks to be poor, but then I have a house paid off and only one car but it will be paid off in two years. I don’t know if I will be able to afford another car, I am kind of out priced on things now. I buy union and american when ever possible, not much out there anymore. Growing up, you bought american made products, my dad would say, the job you save might be your own, this is what we lived by.

strether,

Laying any portion of the real estate bubble on obama is utter fucking nonsense.

Z

Another amusing tale told by the true cdsers: clinton played little role in the welfare reform and the repeal of glass-steagall becoz the bill that hit his desk was veto-proof. Clinton made welfare reform a PRIORITY … and ran to “end welfare as we know it” … and I find it highly doubtful that the welfare reform movement in congress veered very far off of what he wanted and that he couldn’t have pressured enough congressional dems to stop it from reaching those veto-proof majorities if he really wanted to. He was pretty proud to sign it.

robber rubin was very much involved in the repeal of glass-steagall and yet so much of the clinton fandumb wants to pretend that the bill just hit bill’s desk out of the blue and went down similar to this:

clinton: Oh, what the hell is this? The repeal of glass-steagall? Who would have thought that? I wonder why bob didn’t tell me about this? Ah, he’s been so busy hanging out with sandy weil lately, I guess he just didn’t get around to it. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it now.

Hell, if you want any accounts of clinton’s deceitful deals with the congressional republicans … and against the best interests of the people … clinton’s odious and unnecessary deal with gingrich over social security “reform”, aka cut benefits to seniors, is fairly well chronicled at this point. It appears that only the corporate lap dawg’s personal political survival, that was endangered due to the Lewinsky affair, got in the way of that.

Z

Z burbles:

Laying any portion of the real estate bubble on obama is utter fucking nonsense.

As we have come to expect, Z is full of — let me play at being Canadian here — merde.

Obama is playing the end game (that being “any part” of the real estate bubble). By whipping for TARP, Obama ratified and consolidated the bailouts that Bush’s Treasury and the Fed had already performed in 2008. And by refusing to recognize accounting control fraud by the “savvy businessmen” banksters, Obama is allowing them to escape with their ill-gotten gains.

Youth or inexperience may excuse ignorance of the past; but surely not ignorance of the present?

strether,

By the way, I don’t need a tag team to defend myself against your dreamer team. And I don’t think pepe does either. The vast majority of the facts support our positions. In contrast, you true cdsers need a tag team that consists of:

lori, who actually believes hillary, of tarmac infame, knocked on reagan’s office door and talked him out of cutting a legal program for the poor. Note that the other principals are dead, Reagan and Vincent Foster, and can’t refute hillary’s likely fable. But who knows … it could have happened, though it sounds an awful like a chopping down a cherry tree story to me and it takes a true cdser to outright take that at face value and buy into it as fervently as she does. Especially since, again, the same heroine in this story also was a “heroine” in another story involving a tarmac that was demonstratably false. But I guess that so many bullets have whizzed by hillary’s ear that she’s done lost track of where they all occurred at. lori also never answers retorts to her nonsense such as hillary took a stand against the iraq war … while voting for the aumf (which didn’t require her vote to pass, but she voted in favor of it anyway in a valiant, pragmatic … AGAIN, IT DIDN’T REQUIRE HER VOTE TO PASS … attempt to maintain leverage over the bush administration’s lust for war … even though she voted against another bill that would have been more effective in insuring that, which hillary, graduate from yale law school, claims she misunderstood (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02check.html )). And she buys hillary’s claims that she was against nafta when she was actively working to promote it. (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/hillary-clint-1.html). She has no response to any of this, becoz ideologues are known to have a profound distaste for facts that don’t support their position.

Silly little mary, who postures that she is taking on the cause of keeping internet boards on-topic while blissfully overlooking lori’s opening salvo in this argument. Of course, like most true cdsers, her principles are entirely based upon whether or not someone supports her hero, hillary. She then runs over to a pro-hillary board and writes about how she can’t believe the irrationality of the clinton haters over on Ian’s board. Well, at least she stayed on topic on that post becoz …

myiq goes over there and initially posts my response on the board and completely mischaracterizes my position as being one of those “lefty purity trolls (who) HATE Bill and Hillary more than than they dislike Reagan, Bush, Bush II or Bush III.” Note that this hillary enthusiast pulls out the old lefty purist troll canard … just like the obamabots do … to characterize those that stick strong to their principles. But, again, there is little fundamental difference between the hillary fandumb and the obamabots and the bushites … it’s just a different brand of the same bullshit … except that the clinton fandumb uses misogynism insults instead of racism in the case of obama and cds instead of bds in contrast to the bushites. Myiq then yanks my clarification to my position and then comes over here and denies mischaracterizing my position and saying that he only posted what I did … I guess his aforementioned comments at the end of his post slipped his little mind.

And then, of course, bringing up the ass end of the clinton fandumb caravan comes lambert, who once argued that clinton deserved a huge hand for winning elections fairly … well, there was that little scandal about the Thai temple fundraising and foreign funds being funneled in thru there, though it is hard to quantify how much those illegalities effected the election and I personally doubt that he would have lost against the corpse he ran against anyway … and that clinton also deserved credit for discrediting the right wing nut jobs during the Lewinsky scandal. Some discreditation there, they somehow recovered from the corporate lap dawg’s bite and went on to capture the oval office twice … well, at the very least, they got close enough to steal it … and then went on to gain majorities in congress from 2002 to 2006. And now he thinks clinton deserves credit for putting a smiley face on neo-liberalism. Oh, boy …

So yeah, it’s quite a crew you gals and guys got there, but I don’t need any help from any tag team to hold up against your coalition … whose arrogance is only usurped by its ignorance … that is heavily armed with delusion, but very weak on facts, objectivity and cognition. Collectively, you comprise a very simple, single mind.

Z

Ian,

Sorry, it was primarily my fault … I started most of it. I’ll lay off the insults.

Z