In Light of the Budget Deal: Obama’s Personality

Lambert: No, clearly he’s part of the “pure” left! Everything must be perfect for him! 100% or else! Doesn’t he understand that Obama plays 11-dimensional chess and he’s just one move away from a multi-dimensional checkmate?

…;P

Wait a minute. Did you write that in 2006?? How come you’re smarter than I am?

Well, actions speak louder than words. And if you look at Obama’s personal history, you see a guy who has no interest in taking a stand or getting things done that benefit ordinary people. Like Bush, he literally has no accomplishments to his name. As president of the Harvard Law Review, he was AWOL and allegedly published only one unsigned note. As a guest lecturer, he didn’t publish, didn’t keep office hours and was too lazy to show up for most staff meetings. As an attorney, with a Harvard law degree, working at a civil rights law firm IN CHICAGO, he did not lead on a single suit and participated in no precedent setting cases. In fact, we don’t even know who his clients were or what he did at the law firm. As a part time state senator, working approximately 55 days per year (that’s it, folks), he initiated no legislation that ever passed. In order to have a resume to run for the US senate, Emil Jones grabbed legislation that other senators had worked on and written, sometimes for years, and randomly assigned Obama’s name to it. He didn’t have a single piece of legislation ready to go when the state elected a Democratic governor. As a US senator, he seems to have contented himself with forcing lobbyists to stand whe they eat with legislators.

He’s an incredibly lazy, entitled and not terribly bright human being. Good riddance to bad rubbish,

“Is Lori telling the truth, or something close to the truth?”

Well, there are news stories about his work in the IL state senate… So without doing the research, I’m gonna guess Lori’s rant comes from the PUMA “Democratic” nutjobs.

(That said, I broadly agree with Ian’s take on Obama believing in compromise as an end in itself.)

I wish more people had read Obama’s words rather than listened to them. I’m not one swayed by oratory, but I do know many people are. I do understand the kind of mass psychology that takes place, too, at big speeches in big venues. But when you sat down and actually READ the text of the speeches — there was so little there. And when you read the text of the debates — there was so little mastery of … anything.

And when you read his own writings — his books — what was present was a very muddled reading of history and a very naive idea of politics. (Though that naivete really is shown to be false by his history of dirty politics.) Actually: they revealed a man whose thinking was clearly shaped by maturing during the years of Reaganism and by reading a whole lot of David Broder, and that more than anything is probably why the media so fell in love with him (assuming the directive didn’t come on high from the corporate masters.)

Still, I often hear from people that they are tired of “partisanship” and tired of all the “partisan bickering” and many thought Obama was a cure for that. I think too many people really fail to understand that politics, at its basic level, is about power and competing interest. Though I’m really not sure at all what they DO think politics is about.

The solution to “partisan bickering” isn’t less partisanship, it’s stronger and more effective partisanship. If there was one reason for supporting Hillary, it’s because she understood the nature of Republicans better than Obama did. She’s the one who named and called out the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

But over and over I was told that no — that kind of “fighting” makes us as bad as “them.”

Anyway, yeah: Obama was there for all to see. He explicitly stated that he believed Social Security should be cut. He explicitly stated that he would expand the war in Afghanistan and into Pakistan if necessary. He explicitly stated that he viewed Iran as a dangerous and immediate threat the US had to contain. He explicitly stated that he did not believe it was the President’s role to lead on the issue of gay rights. He explicitly stated that he did not support the mental health exception to the ban on third-trimester abortions. He explicitly stated that he would expand Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives beyond its at-that-time scope. He was never a progressive, or even a liberal.

He genuinely dislikes people getting worked up over issues. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants everything and everyone to be “nice”.

If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise…

Can someone provide an example of Obama compromising on something after taking a public position? I do not know of any. He starts from an essentially republican position on any issue, get resistance from the nominal republicans, who want to hold chair positions in congress, and then he marches along unchanging. Compromise? Ask Kucinich. Ask Feingold. Ask any retiree after the election in November about cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

And which Obama did people listen to? Congratulations to Ian Welsh for listening to Obama’s actions in 2006, but most people listened to the candidate after he announced and started making speeches. As has been pointed out, that candidate’s modus operandi was not to compromise, compromise, compromise, but to lie, lie, lie, especially up until he got the nomination. Tell the primary voters many lies that he thinks they want to hear, and then disregard them on the Wednesday after the first Tuesday in November, 2008. (Remember the whole “There’s only one president at a time” spiel — this would only happen if you don’t strongly disagree with any policies that are in place. Otherwise, you tell people how those policies will start being changed the day that you get in office.)

Still, I often hear from people that they are tired of “partisanship” and tired of all the “partisan bickering” and many thought Obama was a cure for that. I think too many people really fail to understand that politics, at its basic level, is about power and competing interest. Though I’m really not sure at all what they DO think politics is about.

I find that most people—especially Americans, and especially American liberals— have an “engineering attitude” toward politics. There is a Correct Solution that satisfies everyone (Sesame Street morality), good people can always get together and find an answer, so any acrimony must emerge from incompetence. Combine that with a huge amount of conflict avoidance and the practice of jingoistic silencing, and you see why people claim to be tired of “partisan bickering.”

“If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise, because he believes in it – not as a means, but as an end.”

Right – except with anybody not a citizen, anybody who is serious about the constitution and related oaths, anybody who insists on habeas corpus, rule of law, and an end to torture.

This used to be the Incompetence Dodge: Bush is not an evil mastermind, he is just stupid. Then it became: The Democracts are just spineless and weak. Now it’s: Obama does not like conflict.

Bullshit. This should rightfully be called the Diminutive Dodge – uttering demeaning words about those who have absolute power over your life, in a futile attempt to belittle their power along with their alleged shortcomings in using it. The people who are doing the dodging are the sovereign – those that cannot muster the outrage and the will to end the Catch-22 that holds them, their children, and their children’s children.

Hostis humanis generis. Obama is perfectly capable of intrigue, pressure, blackmail, and brutal Chicago-style politics – lo and behold, he is capable of murder, torture, deceit, and a complete abdication of his sworn duties under and to the constitution. Ignore the words, believe the acts.

Ian,

I think you misdiagnosed obama in some ways. The “compromise” schtick is just a cover for his plutocrat servility. He only “compromises” in one direction and that’s toward what the republicans want, which not so coincidentally is what the plutocrats want.

Z

The Lord knows John Edwards had his own problems (dude, if your wife has terminal cancer, instead of impregnating Camilla Parker-Bowles older sister, run out the clock as the loyal husband, after which no one in the world would blame you for marrying a much younger woman) he was the candidate who understood what the next President would be up against:

“Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don’t. I think the people who are powerful in Washington — big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies — they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power! The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them!”

Edwards was the candidate that I backed in the primary. I think he would have had a good chance of winning the nomination too if he would have been faithful … I think that led to him leaving the race earlier than he wished to … and obama hadn’t hijacked the Change theme from him, which obviously obama had little intention to actually effectuate.

Z

I don’t give a damn what Obama says, or does. In my mind, he’s irrelevant. He’s a Cheeleader, not the Decider.

So long as the majority of you believe otherwise, well, either you suck it up, or look for someplace else to live….like another Universe, because you are pretending that Power resides with Obama, and that you can somehow appeal to and persuade that Power. In both cases, you are wrong.

Abso-fucking-lutely. Same conclusion I reached back then, too. But people will project what they want to believe.

In 2008, I voted for Kennedy but got Carter (only not as effectual.)

We know who and what Obama is. What’s really demoralizing are all the people who still, at this late date, refuse to believe their lyin’ eyes. The last time he caved, Obama said we could trust the Republicans not to hold the country hostage again, and of course they did, and now here’s Obama bragging about how much he cut the federal budget by and what a great deal is… and most Democrats still think he’s on their side. There is more partisan blindness on the left side than the right, which I never would have expected 4 years ago.

I’ll ask again: anyone heard any rumors of a primary challenge to Obama?

Obama doesn’t compromise left except under extraordinary pressure (the gay lobby, for example).

1) Not “for example”–DADT is the only example.

2) Only for social issues. No compromise for economic/financial issues–issues that would affect who benefits and who pays. On those issues, he is pure right-wing, or, if you prefer, neo-liberal. And I haven’t seen any light between his foreign policy and the neocons’.

Ian, back before the primaries were settled, when it was pretty clear it was between Hillary and Obama, you wrote that whoever got the Dem nomination would disappoint his or her backers.

I never fell under Obama’s spell, and once I learned about how he acted as a politician, what little actions there were, I knew I could not support him as president. But, I gotta tell ya, I had no idea he would be as bad as he has turned out to be. I’m still somewhat astounded he does things I now can predict he will do. Shudder.

I can’t even listen to him any more without getting a strong insula reaction. I can barely stand to look at him (btw, he seldom looks as he is enjoying his present job, why won’t he just go away?).

Oh, and people who think things are better now for third parties really have got to be smoking something. Just wait until the debt ceiling vote.

Ian and KS,

The obama-white liberal “love” … I’ll call it self-love … is something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. I didn’t understand at first why his liberal supporters would squint their eyes at me in hate when I criticized him … why they looked at me different as we argued. I’ve concluded that the reason that these folks look at you with such intensity and anger when you criticize their darling obama is that they are looking at you in finer detail; they are looking for the racist in you.

And very broadly speaking of the left … and I’m sure that there are plenty of exceptions … I agree with KS on this for the most part: it is tied to their vanity, they are so proud that THEY voted for a black man that obama has become a shining beacon of their moral superiority over all those that don’t support him. His race was such a large part of why they voted for him … the largest emotional reason why they voted for him, which for most people is the largest reason of all … and they are so very conscious of his race that they assume that you don’t like him becoz of his race. That’s the first thing that comes to their mind. And they WANT to believe that you don’t like him becoz he is black becoz that supports their ego-enriching feelings of moral superiority … and inflates their belief in their virtuousness.

And this is the mind set of a lot of liberals in the u.s.: they want to feel morally superior … they are eager to feel righteous. And what may have once began as guilt, now has “metamorphisized” into something more selfish and emotionally rewarding. And now that their emotional investment has been shown to be placed upon such a faulty foundation, they are aggressively defensive and protective of it. But, again, it’s primarily all about their arrogance and egos.

And obama is EXTREMELY intelligent and realizes that and recognizes the vacuity of it which is likely why he has so little respect for the left … why he has such contempt and disdain for them … and why he considers the right to have more substance. For many on the left, his race was the biggest reason that they voted for him. So he plays the left, he has no respect for them … their adoration of him is really of themselves … and he feels no guilt in using it to his advantage.

Z

Since the phrenological crystals are out in force, deciphering and auguring the display of Obama’s political innards, looking for reason and cause and course; it may as well behoove to use a looking glass instead, focused on the time, place and circumstance of Obama’s upbringing.

It was exceedingly uncommon for inter-racial marriages in covertly racist Kansas in the early 60’s, even for relatively “liberal” Wichita. Wichita at the time was also home to a conservative Democrat banker, George Docking who ran for governor against the entrenched Republican edifice so successfully that the Republicans despaired of ever unseating the Democrat through electoral politics. The secret to Gov. Docking’s winning ways? He was able to out-Republican the Republicans. It is easily conceivable that this approach was not lost on Obama’s mother and transmitted in her mother’s milk, reinforced as well through her own parent’s guardianship and nurturing of the impressionable child. As Geo. Docking out-Republicaned the Republicans, Obama has learned the political ability to out-Democrat the Democrats, to the same maddening effect.

It appears from certain perspectives that the ideological purges of the Republican establishment have driven both the liberal and centrist positions of that party into the wilderness. Instead of forming their own political position, something improbable in a two party political monopoly, these positions found a ready home in the Democrat’s “Big Tent” and in relative short order were producing political officeholders in favorable local and state positions. Clinton is an obvious example who established the DLC as the dominant force, politically as well as financially, of the Democratic Party, supplanting and replacing the tattered remnants of the historical FDR coalition with compliant apparatchiks. What was the historical Democratic party has ceased to exist as a political force, being supplanted through political legerdemain and stealth. Carter was the first “successful” offering from this factor, taking only as long as from Goldwater’s initial steps towards ideological purification of post Eisenhower party (aided by the surreptitious John Birch Society machinations). Political realities can radically change, the camouflage of perceived identity is kept conveniently in place, no more telling down from up.

I don’t know why Arc put Democratic in quotes in reference to PUMA nutjobs. I don’t know why ArC considers the PUMAs nutjobs since we were and still are correct in our assessments.

I was there when the term PUMA was born and there was nothing right-wing about it. We were real Democrats: pissed, disillusioned, and hurt that our party was just as evil as the Republicans we’d spent our (long) lives fighting against.

The original meaning of the term was Party Unity My Ass, coined after the DNC stripped Hillary of votes that were rightfully hers and gave them to Obama. We were further exasperated when the party refused to hold a floor vote at the convention–which is, after all, the purpose of those conventions.

The original PUMAs were the kind of Democrats that showed up and worked, ringing doorbells, stuffing envelopes, answering calls, and donating. We still called ourselves Liberals instead of the more trendy Progressive. Netroots called us dried up bitter dead-end holdouts. They said we were working class and uneducated and post-menopausal. Obama and Donna Brazile said we weren’t needed. The right wing simply exploited the hole and co-opted the term PUMA. But we’re still here, we’re still liberal, and we’re waiting for some grown-ups with common sense to take the party back.

I think there’s more to the moral superiority story than just racism. They played the race card because it worked. It was a classic Rovian tactic: strike at the opponent’s strengths. If you recall, black voters didn’t immediately warm to Obama and Bill Clinton was enormously popular with that demographic. The only way to take that away was to kill it dead. I think playing the race card exceeded their expectations. Take a look at B0’s “Bamboozled” speech. He looks like Harry Potter using his want for the first time and marveling at its power.

No one mentioned the money–that all of the so-called A-List netroots blogs were on the Obama payroll had an enormous effect on their inability to see what was right in front of their faces: that Obama was a fraud and an empty suit who was in over his head. But when you’re bought you’re supposed to stay bought. I guess in that respect, netroots had integrity.

They did everything and anything to keep Hillary and her scary female parts out of the WH. She wasn’t liberal enough, they said. After all, she voted for AUMF and Obama voted against it. (Never mind that Obama wasn’t even a Senator when the vote was taken–this was just one of many rewrites of Obama’s history to suit their narrative.) Obots were told they were younger, more educated, that they belonged to the creative class, not the working class and whatever else they needed to hear. That campaign was the most divisive campaign ever, pitting blacks against whites, young against old, male against female, and the netroots people not only refused to see it, they were willing and paid participants.

Those who feel duped but still refuse to concede have taken to saying that Hillary wouldn’t have been any better. Oh really? Like showing up for work and, you know, actually working, wouldn’t have made a difference! Hillary was our chance to clean up after the Bush years and Obama was their chance to keep them going. We (original PUMAs) told you that early and often. We got banned from the so-called A-list sites. We got hacked when we went off on our own. We got called names and, as it happens, we still are. (See “Democratic” nutjobs above.)

Thanks,
Visiting PUMA

KS, I agree there was a lot of liberal white “vanity” or narcissism that lead them to support Obama blindly (“I don’t care what he’s done or will do, or about any of those failures he has awakened a whole generation to empower themselves and become politically active”, as if his inevitable betrayals wouldn’t have the opposite effect).

But if you supported anyone else, it sure didn’t take long to get tarred as a racist. Very quickly. Basically as soon as they ran out of any rational arguments for Obama or against your candidate, they played the race card.

While I am impressed with Ian’s early take on Obama (I paid no attention to him until early 2008), I think the disturbing trend is exactly what we saw with Bush (I lived in Austin in the ’90s). After his father lost to Clinton the dittoheads hated the Bushes and it seemed like the coffin was nailed shut. And besides, W was regarded as an incompetent with a history of drinking and drugging and was unelectable. Suddenly within 2 years he’s the governor of Texas (which is not really much more of a credential than community organizer). Then within a couple years he’s portrayed in the national media as someone with miraculous bipartisan support (how do you have bipartisan support in a one party state like Texas?). Obviously he was just a puppet for the unelectable Texan Cheney, just as Schwarzenegger was just a puppet for Pete Wilson who killed his own chances to be governator).

My question is: who is the real power behind the callow Obama? Obviously the banks are. But is there any one individual besides Jamie Dimond? I guess I’m just uncomfortable with the conspiracy theory aspects of this without an obvious puppetmaster like Cheney or Wilson. (Although “conspiracy” is hardly the right word anymore since it’s practically in plain sight)

Sophie:

Thanks for the lols. I remember very clearly in 2007-08, watching Hillary and Barack debate, and thinking: there’s no difference between these guys. They were quibbling over insurance mandates. They were both warmongers, both had a history of monied fealty. Hillary was not a racist but her opportunism certainly made her attuned to the racial divide (e.g. hard-working, white Americans). Everything else–would she clean up after Bush? (doubting it)–is purely speculative.

Until the floor of right-wing thinking in the public is found, it won’t improve.

What constitutes “the floor” of rightwing thinking? Fascism? Civil war?

There are some similarities I have noted between current politics and the politics of the antebellum era, in particular to the wingnuttery of both eras. Like conservatives today, Southerners of that era got their “news” from highly partisan and biased sources that were more interested in propagandizing than reporting facts. Republican and abolitionist newspapers and journals weren’t allowed to circulate in the South, so there was no counter-voices that could compete. This being the case, Southern newspapers could and did report as “news” out-and-out falsehoods–like Lincoln’s program in 1860 to free all the slaves and have them marry white women. On the political fires of that era, Southern newspapers poured gasoline, which explains in part why many poor white Southerners who really had no stake in the slaveowning issue were willing to fight.

Another thing is that Southerners, despite their being the minority, didn’t fear their opposition physically. Southerners (like the fascists of the 1930s) congratulated themselves on their culture of violence and firearms and told each other that “one good Southern boy can whip ten Yankee hirelings” composed of pasty white factory workers or small businessmen. Today I think the right despises the left but doesn’t fear it, because it thinks the left is composed of a bunch of pansies (DFHs?) who cower and submit in the face of cold steel.

The “moving the goalposts” and radicalization aspect was also evidenced in the discussion of slavery in the territories. An opinion like Stephen A. Douglas’s might have been adequately “conservative” and pro-Southern in 1830 but wasn’t good enough for Southern fire-eaters by 1860. By that time, Southerners were demanding that a slaveowner have the “right” to take his human “property” to any of the territories and even to free states and have that right recognized and protected. The latter insistence meant that if so, there couldn’t be any free states–because if they too had to support slavery, then what did it mean to be “free”??

—

The only cold comfort I draw in such parallels (and it really is cold comfort) is that when the Right has made these assumptions, they have always shown to be gravely in error. It was the South, not abolitionists, who started the Civil War thinking that “one good Southern boy can whip 10 Yankees”. It was Hitler and his fellow fascists who attacked the US thinking that, as members of a “soft”, “decadent”, liberal democracy, the US population would not fight. Quite the contrary–when pushed to conflict, the left usually (as J. F. C. Fuller has written) fights more effectively than does the Right.

The only other thing I will mention in this stream-of-consciousness post is that the left, being influenced by the examples of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, has embraced the tradition of nonviolent resistance. This is all well and good, and overall I support this too. However, to win a struggle using nonviolent resistance requires a free (and often sympathetic) press willing and able to report the facts on the ground to John Q. Public–else you just get crushed by the police and the goons and, like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if there’s no one to hear it, it didn’t fall. Similarly, while most people (including Tea Partiers and most common folks on the Right) are at heart decent people who have been propagandized into believing in human devils, and when confronted by those “devils” in the flesh realize their error at least in that particular instance, the leadership of today’s Right is composed of altogether a different sort. They are ideologues (who advert their eyes to the painful reality of the application of their ideology and convince themselves it’s not real) or sociopaths (who actually enjoy watching the pain inflicted).

In short, I don’t think that Gandhi’s or MLK’s tactics work all the time. Sometimes you have to be willing to hit back.

StewartM

Dirac said:

I remember very clearly in 2007-08, watching Hillary and Barack debate, and thinking: there’s no difference between these guys. They were quibbling over insurance mandates. They were both warmongers, both had a history of monied fealty.

Dirac, if you saw no difference between the two, then we weren’t watching the same debate. The first thing that should of stood out for you was her command of the issues: depth and breadth. Secondly, her health care plan is the same plan enjoyed by our Congresscritters. His plan, well, look at it. As you might recall, he argued against a mandate, but he gave us one anyway. No single payer, no public option. Just a guarantee to the insurance companies. Her mandate was based on a single payer system, which is just good economic sense. Her economic savvy should have stood out as well.

I don’t know how you decided that she was a warmonger. Did you even listen to her speech before casting her AUMF vote? That she is intensely protective of America and Americans is not warmongering–it’s having the balls to stand up to the opposition and that is the next difference that should have stood out.

from → Barack Obama

As long as the discussion is about one person, it is a distraction from the real problems and the central fact that the duopoly and the socioeconomic class that supports it are responsible. I look forward to when Ian Welsh gets back on topic in future posts.

Dirac, if you saw no difference between the two, then we weren’t watching the same debate.

As far as what Clinton might have done had she been elected, she has had ample opportunity to show her discontent with Obama’s policies, but has chosen not to. Her speeches? Her promises? They don’t offer much weight compared with her actions accepting a position in Obama’s cabinet and staying there. Obama is a liar and has been carrying out essentially a third bush term. Why is Clinton going along with this? It doesn’t matter what the answer to that question is. What matters is that she is.

If Clinton believes differently than Obama, then she should resign and restart her campaign. It could be argued that she would definitely lose, but as James Galbraith has said:

What is at stake in the long run? Two things, mainly, in my view. First, it seems to me that we as progressives need to make an honorable defense of the great legacies of the New Deal and Great
Society — programs and institutions that brought America out of the Great Depression and bought us through the Second World War, brought us to our period of greatest prosperity, and the greatest advances in social justice. Social Security, Medicare, housing finance — the front-line right now is the foreclosure crisis, the crisis, I should say, of foreclosure fraud — the progressive tax code, anti-poverty policy, public investment, public safety, and human and civil rights. We are going to lose these battles–get used to it. But we need to make an honorable fight, to state clearly what our principles are and to lay down a record which is trustworthy for the
future.

(emphasis added)

An alternative to setting the floor on wingnuttery is getting the rest of the population engaged against it. Unfortunately the American left shows little interest in what actually motivates the Median Voter.

There’s actually little wrong with traditional Democratic messages and proposals–they’re still popular when explained in opinion polls, often by wide margins. The problem is, the conservatives have a media bullhorn with which they can essentially dominate the political discussion. With about half the media (considering all sources) in sis-boom-bah, rah-rah-rah, GO TEAM GO! mode on behalf of the Republican Party, that’s some messaging obstacle to overcome. And if they can’t come up with even flawed arguments against your message, they’ll simply tell outright lies about it and outlets like CNN will then host “debates” between your position and the outright lie, in the typical he-said-she-said reporting which is considered “fair” nowadays.

So the big messaging problem boils down to a lack of access, which in turn boils down to a lack of money. When these are overcome, the message can be very popular (witness Micheal Moore’s films).

But not only does the right have the Bottomless Well of Crazy, it also has a huge investment in understanding and selling to the median voter.

But I would argue that’s an advantage the right will always have. The origins of liberalism and conservatism lie in the Enlightenment and of the application of the scientific, empiricist approach to solving the problems of political and social and economic life–the left is for that, and the right against. The right’s advantage is the enormous cultural overburden that we all (well, nearly all) grow up absorbing. Our homilies, our cultural imagery, our cultural biases and prejudices are much more readily adapted to the Right’s messaging than to the left’s–and the Right wants you to react to political issues emotionally, because that’s where all the hot buttons are, while the Left wants you to *think* about issues intellectually.

So our politics will always consist of the Right can push the hot buttons, and the Left trying to calm people down to look at the facts of the situation more dispassionately. No wonder at least in the short-term the Right has the advantage with the Everyman voter who isn’t particularly well-educated or well-informed. But he still has the cultural overburden.

The problem with the OW is that it casts left and right as two sides on the same level, playing a tug of war with the placement of the window.

Well, all descriptions are inventions that have their limitations, but lately I’ve been thinking that our left-right descriptor isn’t half bad. Take the Koch brothers, for instance–they’re described by Wikipedia as being “libertarian”. So why aren’t they spending hundreds of millions against repealing the Patriot Act and against our foreign adventures and against the erosion of civil liberties, which are just as much if not more “libertarian” issues as much as low taxes and busting unions? It’s clear that *those* aspects of “libertarianism” they must consider to be less important. So whatever their whole views, they act on the right-left axis.

StewartM

Sophie,

Not to pile on, but it’s misleading of you to mention clinton’s speech in regards to the aumf vote without also informing the reader that she actually voted in favor of giving bush the authorization to invade Iraq after the damn speech. And that whole noble pragmatism narrative that she voted for it for other reasons rings real hollow becoz it never did require her vote to pass anyway (it ended up passing 77-23) and that was well–known going into it.

Z

Z, Dirac, stevo67:

Amazing how you keep picking at asinine reasons why Hillary isn’t perfect enough. Nope, you fell for the the biggest scam and now you’re not happy with empty suit. Rather than acknowledge your role in the demise of the party and the country, you’ll just dream up more reasons why it’s all Hillary’s fault.

Hillary’s frickin’ stellar. She was the best candidate we had. The kind of perfection you want only exists in fantasy and that’s exactly what you got. Unfortunately, those of us who knew better are being punished for your lack of judgment.

And Z, I said she voted for the AUMF earlier in the thread. Thanks for reading.

I don’t intend to stop fighting 2008 until the Democratic party stops eating their own. Here–take the napkin–you got some donkey on your chin.

Sophie:

I am not a member of the Democratic party nor was I in 2008 (NOR EVER) because those fools in the DLC were neoliberal warmongers not concerned with the real priorities in America. There’s no donkey on my chin because I never had an interest in either cult of personality (seems like Hillary/Obama foil is alive and well though). So…don’t blame me for primary issues. It’s OK that you love(d) Hillary. I get it. Easier to live in the past than to see what needs done in the present (blaming is not one of those things). I had no such intense feelings because–as stated before–I thought they were the SAME, tribal adulation for either notwithstanding.

I thought that Obama was very astute about the kind of rhetoric and image that a politician needed to use to appeal to American voters in the early 21st century: “I know Americans are good folks; I believe in compromise; I won’t waste time on the usual petty bickering; I can heal partisan wounds; I can bring the country together”–all that is effective political language, and Obama presented himself brilliantly.

But it seems that for Obama, the sort of phrases I mention functioned not as rhetoric but a sincere description of his actual intellectual foundations–he believed this stuff! A peculiar mixture of arrogance and naivete, largely responsible for the utter failure of his presidency…

sigh, late to the party once again. but fwiw: i will say that i do understand what Ian is saying, and specifically as a mixed “race” person like Obama, who is also from an upper-middle class background like he is.

the bottom line is that people like, sort of “brown” but with lots of upper and middle class white friends, learn early on: please your white friends. it becomes habit. not because of self-hatred, but because inclusion into that world requires it. white folks love to say they have brown and black friends, but only when they can show their white family and friends those darker folks are, you know, “civil.”

obama is the embodiment of this. you and i don’t matter to him, nor even his daughters’ dark skinned (if rich) friends at school. no, what matters to him is being “liked” by the members of the Carlyle Group or Xe. you know, the rich fascists ruining the world right now. obama is so selfish and self centered, the only thing he cares about is being the next Tony Blair ‘third way’ pol to get invited into the oligarchs’ “post elected official/our Boy” club. and he will, no worries. the sad thing is, he’ll still feel like he needs to prove why he should be ‘popular’ among that set, for all they will never, ever accept him. UChicago grad speaking here; i learned what he didn’t when he was at Haaavaad. wake up man; rich white people will *always* look down on us.

CD, thanks for your comments. I hadn’t thought about Obama’s background in that way before, but it makes a lot of sense.

Mandos, I agree with everything you say, particularly how doomed the “dispassionate calmers” approached is. You’re probably familiar with psychologist Drew Westen, he’s made similar points before, most notably in this 2009 piece, “Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/leadership-obama-style-an_b_398813.html