A blast from the past and a reminder about the future

Already the neolibs at kos are pissing on all over 2016. http://www.dailykos.com/comment/968738/41249967#c59

Obummer is a daley machine dem and they have always thrived by marginalizing real liberals from the process, through demoralization and hectoring tactics. Read Boss by Mike Royko.

“Obama is a disaster, who is making things worse, not better. He’s just making it worse more slowly than a Republican.”

Quoted for truth.

I should also add that if only half of the 50% of eligible voters who sit out elections instead voted third party, it would change the political landscape forever.

Better to take the hit sooner than later. Normally, I’m not a worse is better adherent, but the events of MI, OH, WI, and elsewhere convince me there is more countervailing force out there than we believe. If the Ds win again, they’ll decapitate all that, exactly as in 2008…

Yep.

I have to disagree with Ian that Obama is less lead-footed on the accelerator than the Republicans would be. And that is why I think he is very likely to get re-elected, Lieberman-style (i.e. they’ll run an unelectable crazy against him), if there is no major crisis between now and Nov 2012.

He’s leading the Dems into Nixon-goes-to-China territory of entitlement “reform” and the very serious pundit class seems to summon the panty pudding for his “bipartisan” capitulation to Republican demands. Even if his alleged base stays home on election day, I think his prospects are pretty good. Buscheney never got close to that territory. Obama has led a Trojan horse full of blue dogs inside the city walls.

But the fact that the Dems are following him over a cliff, and most meek liberals are still mumbling about the lesser of two evils is kind of dispiriting. How are we ever going to get people to realize that we need proactive liberal policies and regulation to restore prosperity when they still believe that everything that has happened for the last 30-some years of dismantling regulations has just been mild policy adjustments at the margin that somehow produced extraordinary prosperity for a generation (which they fail to notice has benefited the rich almost exclusively)?

One change I have noted over the last 2 years is that pessimists like myself and Ian no longer get “if that’s what you really believe, why don’t you just move to Montana and become a survivalist” lecture nearly as much as we got before 2009. Or at least the bloggers I read are not as dismissive of defeatism/realism as they were before.

Of course if/when the next financial shock brings on Too Big to Save, all bets are off.

And there’s only one Democrat who could win in 2012. One Democrat who a lot of people who defected to the tea party voted for in the 2008 primaries. Those people were thwarted by a bunch of snobs who do not understand what average Americans are going through. Those snobs are standing in the way of resetting the clock and standing firm against the onslaught of movement conservatism.
If the country falls apart after 2012, I won’t blame the average American whose only choice was between Obama and a nutcase Republican. I’m going to blame the snooty, sexist Democratic activists who couldn’t bring themselves to do the right thing when the country needed them most.
I’m voting Socialist. No one in the Demicratic party has the right to tell me I have nowhere else to go.

>>Whether Obama or the Republicans take the presidency, it does not matter. You are screwed either way. Take care of your friends and family, participate in your community, and brace for impact.<<<

This is precisely my own sentiment. To be sure, Obama is a disappointment to put it mildly and basically lacks a spine. But, I think it's unreasonable to expect that Obama could turn things around given the amount of money that controls the system. Save for perhaps healthcare, I really don't think there would have been much difference in where we're at now if Hilliary or McCain had won. The reality is that there's a powerful cabal that controls the economic and foreign policy of the nation from behind the scenes and it really doesn't matter which party is in power. Look at Obama's foreign policies–expanded drone attacks in Pakistan, the expansion of the Afghan conflict, the attack against Libya. If you closed your eyes, you'd think he was Bush.

Our political system is analogous to Plato's allegory of the cave. We're locked in our seats and assume the shadows on the wall are real, but we don't see the puppeteer behind the scene. I'm convinced that the battle between the parties is a purely a staged event. How is it that the republicans can come out hard against Obama's domestic policies, but fall totally silent on Libya? How is it that both parties basically close ranks on both foreign policy and economic policy, as managed by the Federal Reserve yet we have to see a spectacle over the budget that is totally meaningless (I'm referring to the proposals put forth by Obama and Ryan) ? How is it that the parties are mostly in a knock down drag out fight over minutiae, while the truly significant doesn't enter the public debate?

The whole system is a scam; an outright scam.

I should also add that if only half of the 50% of eligible voters who sit out elections instead voted third party, it would change the political landscape forever.

Augh. Why do people assume that nonvoters are nonvoters because they are politically malcontented in some way?

The US is going to have to go through Great Depression II in order to have any chance of shaking off the plutocratic oligarchy. The tentacles of money are wound too tight to pry off. The present system is corrupt to the core, both parties, because it is not possible to conduct a successful campaign for national office without accepting (legalized) bribes. In addition, the US media is a propaganda machine. Add to this the fact that well over half the electorate is mentally unbalanced, superstitious, undereducated, distracted, or just plain stupid, and it is hard to conceive of meaningful change. Even if there is change catalyzed by another great depression, the likelihood of another FDR is probably less than that of another Mussolini.

BTW, it’ll surprise no one who regularly reads here that I think this whole thing is a terrible idea that has far lower chances of leading where Ian thinks it might have a smidgen of a chance of leading than re-electing Obama in 2012.

But, who knows. Things could change. The change that I would watch for is a floor appearing under the Bottomless Well of Crazy, which is the real problem here and the enormous unbearable dead weight on the American political spectrum. If there’s a limit beyond which the right cannot really push, then it makes a lot more sense to let a Republican get elected.

Add to this the fact that well over half the electorate is mentally unbalanced, superstitious, undereducated, distracted, or just plain stupid, and it is hard to conceive of meaningful change.

whatever you want to say about the general public, every public opinion poll i know of shows more compassion and sanity than anything i’ve seen from dc or wallstreet.

it seems to me that our own overt liberal elitism is as at least as significant a barrier to positive meaningful change as anything else on your list.

maybe jmo, but i think there’s something to be said for solidarity.

Is there anything left to say? After years of eloquence, erudition, and prescience; what’s left unsaid?
Anybody? Really! What’s left?
Action? From where? From whom? To what end?
I’m, personally, at my wit’s end. Checkmate as near as I can tell…

Let me understand this premise, Dems won’t show spine unless there’s and R in the White House? Otherwise they don’t do anything?

So, let an R take the White House in 12, then put try another D in 16? The DNC will not allow a primary challenger to Obama. If Obama is already Bush-lite, why not keep Obama in until 16 and then a different D in 16? No way Biden is going to make a go of it.

The “burn it to the ground now” approach isn’t necessary. You know better than that Ian. Another moneyed interest will just step in power. If it wasn’t for the money and visibility given to the far, far right R’s, I think Republicans would have seen a fracture long ago. They’re on the verge of collapse. Polling of center-left and left concepts shows the public strongly in favor of these options, but the message gets so contorted over the radio and TV.

You will always have people who get conned into voting against their own self interests. I think the nation is at an all time high on that front. The national stage isn’t the place to watch. It’s the state-level stage. Watch what happens to the crop of demolition governors. That’s the tell. It’s closer to home, literally. People are reacting to it.

whatever you want to say about the general public, every public opinion poll i know of shows more compassion and sanity than anything i’ve seen from dc or wallstreet.

Double augh! Why do people think that people’s policy opinions, devoid of context, actually have any effect on whether they are “compassionate” or “sane” or how or why they’ll vote? The evidence is strongly in favour of there being no direct relationship.

Republicans make this mistake often enough, but whatever you think of what Obama actually did in office, he did NOT engineer or preside over the bailout. That happened in 2008 – he was elected in November and took office in January 2009. In fact, Obama didn’t even preside over the 2009 budget that so many conservatives and liberals hate. That was voted on in October 2008.

Go ahead and hate the current president, but at least keep the dates straight.

PS – I voted for Nader in 2000, because I felt Gore had abandoned his base. The point was to “send a message.” I am quite, quite sure that only Republicans got that message, and they took it as, “We can do what we want and the left will splinter over climate change solutions.” I feel terrible about the years 2000-2008, and I actually think the 2005 tax cuts, budget, medicare donut hole, student loan reforms, continued presence in Iraq and so on, might have hurt the country so badly we can never recover. I’d do a lot to take back that vote.

Shocker – it turns out politicians pay the most attention to the people who vote FOR THEM, and likely future supporters. Doesn’t mean it’s foolproof in terms of getting what you want; there are, after all, a large number of other people who also vote. But it’s a better bet than what I tried.

Liz, Ian explains here that if not for Obama’s support, Bush’s bailout would never have passed. He owns it just as much as Bush does.

“No one who is running as a lifelong career politician in an extremely hierarchical political system wants a base that is fickle.”

That explains why Republican politicians are telling the Tea Party to get lost, instead of pursuing policies they want. Oh, wait…..

The left has proven it can win an occasional election at the local level and even elect a few members of the House and a Senator or two. It has less success deposing Blue Dogs and far less success at the White House level.

When Donna Edwards is your signature victory it shows weakness. Donna’s great but …

In contrast, the Club for Growth drove out normal Republicans without even winning elections. They simply kept running until the RINO retired early under pressure. They made it hard for RINOs even with a lot of seniority to operate within the Republican caucus.

Rove’s framework for Texas holds true. Control the Courts and feed your business sponsors and control will inevitably come your way.

“And there’s only one Democrat who could win in 2012. One Democrat who a lot of people who defected to the tea party voted for in the 2008 primaries. Those people were thwarted by a bunch of snobs who do not understand what average Americans are going through.”

By all means, let’s draft Hillary. If Obama gets to make war on Libya, Hillary deserves her chance to “obliterate” Iran. And outside-the-box ideas like her proposed gasoline tax holiday sound like just the ticket to fix the country’s economic problems.

Seriously, your cult of personality for that corporatist war hawk has been as intellectually crippling for you as the one for Obama was to his supporters.

Go here now: Liberals Against Obama : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Liberals-Against-Obama/130002417050997

Obama is more Republican than any Blue Dog. His economic policies are pretty much guided by Reagan, his foreign policy as Ryan Lizza cites from a WH adviser in the latest New Yorker is “leading from behind,” which means he doesn’t really have any views on foreign policy, but wars and indefinite detentions and domestic spying are not a problem for him. He is equally lacking in principles on social policy. He’ll do what the Washington establishment consensus advises him to do, which currently wants to go right. He likes being popular, so he’ll keep trying to reach out to the conservative middle class who haven’t shown him much love. The establishment Republicans (not necessarily the tea partiers) know that Obama is a closet Republican, and they would like to have him for two terms. That way, they get to run a two term Republican in 2016 and potentially lock in a 24 year long Republican dynasty to kick off the new millenium. Obama needs to lose in 2012 so that true liberals can take back the country in 2016.

..Democrats may regain the House in 2012 and keep the Senate, and lose the White House.

From what I read months ago, the Senate is very likely to go Republican, given the demographics of who’s up for relection and so on.

>>>The game is over. We lost. The corporate state will continue its inexorable advance until two-thirds of the nation is locked into a desperate, permanent underclass. Most Americans will struggle to make a living while the Blankfeins and our political elites wallow in the decadence <<<

And that is the deal. That's why I've become a political atheist and am turning my attention to what I need to do to prepare for a crash landing. That ain't going to be pretty and it's probably going to catch millions totally unprepared.

Ian, do you have any way to research how many Americans have emigrated to Canada since Jan. 20, 2009?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/keeping-them-out-or-keeping-us-in-why.html

Those proverbial tits on a bull describe the utility of national politics of the current era to address urgent problems facing society, in other words, politics as it is now practiced is completely useless, even in its own preservation. There is a possibility that the population can retreat to exercise their power in local and state level politics but even this is not assured, the corporate corruption can easily overcome whatever defense against it by its power of deep pockets. The only citadel remaining for preserving the interests of the citizen lay in the scorched earth of total economic collapse which carries with it the substance giving power to this despotic coup d’état on the republic, but, the walls of that citadel will remain intact only if the public is able to preserve and conserve the nature of the edifices that empower the body politic.

One of the greater dangers to the prospect of survival is unrestrained emotional reaction that carries all before it to destruction; a political tidal wave unable to discern and distinguish artifacts of value from those of dross. Two examples: elite and wealth. If it were not for the “elite”, there would be no civilization worth the having; medical doctors are elite as are the teachers who taught them, the farmers who fed them, the weavers of cloth who clothed them, as well as the cobblers who shoed their feet, the miners who gathered the coal to heat their home and cook their meals, not to mention those who go to sea, both the gatherers of fish and those enabling commerce with others. Wherever any of these efforts are made, there you will find elites involved, not the elites of faery tale walled within their castles, but the real elites. Wealth also is portrayed as adverse to the public interests. Nothing could be further from actual fact. Wealth is nothing more than conserved, uneaten (unused) income derived from participation in the economic process, and great wealth is only a matter of degree, there being no natural level for demarcation. Wealth, as unused income must be invested into substances having and maintaining economic value: land (resources), economic tools of production, mediums of exchange (money), or debt (finance) that produce (directly or indirectly) a return on the value invested. Since any population can be divided into two complementary groups; one having money (income) remaining at the end of the month, the other having month remaining at the end of the money, two distinctly different outcomes arise in addition to the bitter jealousy the later carries toward the former. Social wealth is the aggregate balance between these two groups and how the social game is played; if the game is zero sum, the outcome is either winner or looser, however, if the game is greatest sum, the outcome then devolves to aggregate benefit. The question then becomes how the social game is played, is zero sum providing greater social benefit and stability than the results of a game of greatest sum. It is only from this perspective that decisions can be arrived at that can give effective direction to the employment of scarce economic resources and ultimately the welfare of citizens. Should evidence of this be required, it is readily available in the comparison of “Socialized” Europe and the aggregate wellbeing of its population as compared to the “zero sum” conditions that prevail in the North American hegemon. Tis your choice, choose well (and do give the PUMA/Obama thingy a rest, it is nearly forgotten history of little redeeming utility).

http://www.youdecidepolitics.com/2008/10/01/obama-mccain-both-vote-yes-on-senate-bailout-bill/

This is not about the U.S. Just saw it at Kos this morning. Looks intriguing. What’s going on up there?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/25/970154/-Ground-shift-in-CanadaNDP-now-running-second

“The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you have another chance to get it right, and the less decline the US will have suffered.”
And if we must have a Republican, let’s make sure the least offensive one gets in: anti-war candidate Ron Paul. In fact, I’d say Paul is much better than we could hope for. He’s better than a pro-Israel, pro-“humanitarian war” Democrat, anyway.

@dcblogger: There were 9,723 folks from the US who became Canadian permanent residents in calendar year 2009, down from 11,216 in 2008 and 10,449 in 2007. Statistics for 2010 have not yet been released – I would expect to see them in June. Given recent policy changes I would also not be surprised to see them tick up from 2009 levels.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2009/permanent/10.asp

“that is not only the fault of money, but a cultural defect in the left being played out right here, right now”

That’s for sure. I’d really like to know why the left is so defective, and how to change that. It amazes me, for instance, that Obama has delivered so much less to his base than Bush yet has only lost a little bit more of that base than Bush did at a similar point.

There may be a lot of ruin in a nation, as Keynes said…

It wasn’t Keynes who famously said that.

“‘Shocker – it turns out politicians pay the most attention to the people who vote FOR THEM, and likely future supporters.’

“No. They pay attention to preeminent financial backers. Clinton’s pro-business mentality was evident before his election, and his NAFTA / deregulation schematics were introduced in his first term. Those that voted for him opposed these measures; those industries that gave him financial support approved of these measures.”

Yes. It’s patently obvious that Obama isn’t paying attention to his voter base. Out of Iraq in 2010, meaningful health care reform, close Guantanamo, stop torture, stand up for civil liberties….

As Rahm Emmanuel said, the left can be ignored because it has no where else to go. Ergo: we gotta find somewhere else to go.

I have to say, if Obama is the candidate in 2012, it doesn’t matter who wins or loses. Obama’s candidacy signals that the Dems have doubled down on the guy whose only function is to be a salesman for their 1%-favoring policies.

If our choice is between Obama and Romney in 2012, can anyone honestly tell me what the difference would be between the two? I don’t see that Obama would go any faster or slower in destroying the country than Romney. They are practically twins – right-wing Republicans under the guise of “centrism” and “reasonableness.”

To me, it doesn’t matter whether Obama wins or loses. It only matters whether the Democrats run him or not. My preference would be for the Democratic Party to regain its sanity and dump Obama for Hillary (yes, she’s the only one who could win). A long shot indeed, but one that at least has a chance of happening, unlike a primary challenge.

As for the alleged “left” activism in this country, I see no evidence whatsoever of this happening, and I’ve been looking very hard ever since Obama was elected. (I even tried to create an activist group in NYC to get things started.) What I do see is reactions against Republican overreach by Democratic institutions, like unions.

For example, the activism in OH, MI and IN is union activism, yet there has been ZERO union fight against the anti-union activities of our Democratic Governor here in NY. If this is “left” activism, why would it matter which Party is the source of the anti-union activities?

Nope, sad to say, our only hope of saving our democracy is that one of the two Parties will start fighting for the bottom 99% again. Obviously it won’t be the Republican Party, so the Dems are it. Perhaps if that happens, the “left” (whomever they are) can begin their takeover of the Democratic Party, the way the wingnuts took over the Republican Party after Nixon.

If it doesn’t happen, we are totally screwed. The fascist state will be well underway, and there may not even be a 2016 election to worry about. Batten down the hatches and learn to grow your own food.

What is this insane talk about 2016? We won’t even make it to 2012 without a collapse.

Wake up folks!