Thanks for the post Cenk! I wish I could argue against your points, but I think you’ve nailed it pretty solidly.

Obama’s tipping point won’t happen until we get someone to Primary him or run third party. Obama’s tipping point happens when Obama realizes that compromise won’t get him Righty votes because yes many Righties are racists and the Left is willing to not vote for him.
We do have somewhere else to go even if we don’t have a candidate we can stay home.
He who is willing to destroy a thing can control a thing.
Obama’s tipping point occurs when he realizes this and starts going Left to get our votes.

Obama is doing Wall Street’s bidding, that’s the job he hired on for.

So we’ve all heard by now of the ‘Arab Spring’?

London is now living through the West’s Long Hot Summer. Keep up the Austerity Programs, the phony Debt Crises, the phony Inflation Worries, keep dodging putting the Bankers in jail, Taxing the Rich, Taxing the Corporations, and above all, keep pretending there is nothing in the world that can be done about the “Structural Unemployment” while my neighborhood fills up with Masters and Doctorate level H1B and J1 hires for corporations that are selling hot gadgets reviewed in the nightly news and made in China. The headlines for the London riots should read:

Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You.

This isn’t Obama’s Tipping Point. It’s the Nation’s. Throw out the extremists, Bust the Bankers, and start over. Or burn the place to the ground. If that isn’t the choice now, Europe is showing the sneak preview that it’s gonna be.

“Did you know it turns out centrists decide elections?”

Centrists are just folks who find someone strong to follow. It doesn’t have much to do with ideology. I’m a layperson, and I know that. Why doesn’t the Democratic Establishment?

You sure Obama hates conflict? He loves to fight and insult ‘purists’.
Come to think of it, the guy hates Democrats in general.

I see obama abandoning everyone but the rich and I wonder why I should vote to re-elect him.

Because a republican would be worse? Really? Let’s look at the BIG picture of what obama has done for the middle class.

Mandated insurance with no cost controls
Social Security tax holiday to weaken SS
peterson foundations catfood commission
Pushing for s super congress

And since he’s the “leader” of the democratic party not many in his party will stand up to him and us for us.
It occurs to me the democrats might fight for us alittle more if a republican was President.

BUT I’M NOT VOTING FOR THE REPUBLICAN, I’LL WRITE IN.
I’m not sacrificing my principle to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

Look at the great Depression people kicked out moderate governments and elected FDR, Hitler and Stalin. They did not vote in compromise moderate candidates the economic crisis calls for bold action.
The Right would be wise to compromise now the majority of the people already support taxing the rich more, ending both wars, hate SS and Medicare being cut.
The Right’s dream of using a Shock Doctrine event to recreate Hitler seems to be fading with the decline of Americans supporting the Tea Party in the polls I want to see Tea Party polling numbers after the deal to cut SS and Medicare took effect. The Tea Baggers are happy SS and Medicare got cut that won’t play well with voters.

Um, we should have all seen trouble when he invited Rick Warren to participate in his inauguration. If there was a sign of what was to come, boy that’s it.

I’m not sacrificing my principle to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

Happy people with a prosperous future don’t protest, let alone riot.

I am one progressive that has voted in every election since I became legal. Most of the time voting for every Democrat available. If I ever vote for a D or an R it will be on a write-in basis ONLY.

People will stay away from the polls because they perceive the betrayal and have shattered hope. That was planned and purposeful. Especially if you are a partisan D and are afraid of the TeaBags or the Wing-nut R’s, WRITE IN Barry’s name. You can vote for him and protest at the same time. If the number of write in ballots are not significant then your vote will not even be counted achieving the stay at home result some are choosing.

The streets of London are coming here.

London rioters: ‘Showing the rich we do what we want’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

Actually, it was FISA, IMO. Should have seen it coming…

Doesn’t parsimony suggest that Obama is not actually a weak negotiator? How many times have liberal pundits claim that O has been “rolled.” Isn’t it more likely that he has different priorities? Even if Obama is a bad negotiator, is everyone working in the WH also a bad negotiator?

Claiming that Obama is a bad negotiator implies that he has good (progressive) intentions, doesn’t it? Isn’t that just vanity?

“The better able a ruling class is to absorb the natural leaders of the oppressed, the more solid and dangerous its rule.” — Karl Marx

Cenk, you are far too concerned with Obama’s stylistic attributes to make any sense of his Administration. The task of neoliberal government in this era is to prop up the profit rate for each government’s most powerful clients. Obama is merely doing his job, and to concentrate on whether or not he displays “compromise” or “conservatism” is to make great hay of trivialities.

The guy can’t open his mouth lately without volunteering to cut Medicare. A guy who won’t defend sick old ladies, isn’t going to worry about you. It’s just a farce. Financial corruption beyond any person’s ability to even comprehend, corrupt media, corrupt politicians, pervasive cowardice in all institutions and his answer is to cut Medicare. Medicare may be a future problem but Medicare did not cause the super failure of our government to deal with the global heist of the American Dream.

Sadly, you nailed it, Cenk. Most of us have lost interest in Obama. I can’t hardly listen to his speeches anymore, since I almost know every turn of a phrase he owns. But, I’ll take issue with one thing you said: brains. I challenge anyone who repeats over and over again that a family is just like the economy and since families have to tighten their belts so does the government. This, in spite of 16% unemployment. Ignorant.

The FISA vote was my cue. But when Rick Warren showed up, I was pissed. Tone deaf much, Obama? Or he was signaling to all the world who he really was.

Obama is a right wing, conservative “Christian” who kills people at home so he can continue to kill people of color in the Middle East and Africa. He not just ineffective. He is as dangerous as Bush or Reagan or Nixon. He has a spine. It just has nothing to do with moral courage.

At the present rate of decline for the Tea Party and the American public moving even more Left of Obama either the economy improves now…or by the time Obama runs for President the American public very well might be calling for full blown Swedish Socialism.
The Right’s big fear is Socialism works for Nordic thats code for ( White ) people we should support that look at how much better things are in the Nordic countries.
The Right loses the Racists next election they are toast.
I support Socialism myself and think that if we got Socialism it would reduce the economic inequalities that drive some people to racism.
But still just how much longer can the racist ignore what White countries are doing?

And?

I wish the majority of the so-called Left agreed with you. There is no hope for the so-called Left until they (the voters) are willing to abandon the Dems.

Cenk,

Thanks for a solid review of Obama’s behavior and actions of late. I’ve been slowly tipping over the last year to a no vote for him in 2012. I’ll be supporting my democratic state Representatives and Senators, but working to primary Obama. So many opportunities compromised away and the “negotiated” bi-partisan results? Screwed us- royally screwed us.

Obama’s tipping point happens when we get London, Israel, Greek, Spanish, Arab Spring riots in America and he and the GOP both decide they need to end both wars to bring the troops home to protect the rich people.

Well, he’s even got my very own Senator Harvard repeating the stirring and visionary mantra “balanced approach”. I wonder if those guys who volunteer to die in our pointless wars do it for a “balanced approach”.

I voted for Obama as well, Cenk, but this isn’t the right analysis of why he has failed us. He’s not running from conflict – for crying out loud this guy has more wars going on, innocents being slaughtered, than any of us care to imagine. He ‘s not running from conflict on the local political scene either – notice how the Grand Bargain and payroll tax cuts keep popping into everything he pontificates. He’ll go down with the ship and not just sitting passively atop the mast, he’ll be waving his neocon banner as he disappears beneath the waves. Don’t think Neville Chamberlain, think Ahab!

Give it time I want to see the polling after we get details on the debt deal and SS, medicare cuts I have a feeling the poll numbers will give us hope.

Finally, nearly every progressive commentator is talking about his profound weakness, if it even is that and not something worse (some have started to question whether he even wants to win on progressive issues or if he is fundamentally conservative).

He’s fundamentally corporatist, not conservative. Those two are not the same. I’m pretty sure that if most conservatives knew about ALEC, they would be furious.

Obama not leading the charge against ALEC, and his not leading the charge against Citizen’s United vs. FEC (i.e., corporate personhood) tells you all you need to know about his priorities.

So, I second your @4. I hope the MOTU give up austerity before the really bad stuff starts happening.

Vote for Eugene Debbs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M

Surrender is not compromise.
Obama thinks he looks adult, when in reality, he looks weak.

http://www.bgladd.com/PresidentTwylaPivots.jpg

The more unhappy people get and I think the cuts in SS and Medicare will make more people unhappy the Tea Baggers older White Males well those expecting to retire soon at the very least will desert the Tea Baggers and maybe even the GOP completely assuming they have any intelligence at the very least this won’t help the GOP win elections.
If 5% of the Tea Baggers stay home because they were expecting to retire and collect SS and Medicare soon but can’t retire or can’t find jobs the Right is not going to get the numbers they need to keep control of congress.
However we are pissed at Obama so its a race to see who has pissed off their base more.
Which side will stay at home more.
However the stay at homes are who we recruit for a third party promising Government will create jobs, end both wars to pay for the jobs and restore our SS and Medicare benefits.

I’m pretty sure that if most conservatives knew about ALEC, they would be furious.

I have conservative family members and they are all in favor of the actions by the repugs in Wisconsin. Shut down dmv’s so you can’t get you ID to vote? Great idea they say. etc etc Winner takes all and you have to cheat to win.

And the third for me was appointing Hillary Secretary of State because the only reason I voted for Obama in the first place was to oppose her embrace of the neolib wars. I mean he essentially had no reason at all to run against Hillary. His only reason was personal ego so it’s no surprise that every decision is made to make the way safe for his reelection but he failed to factor in that there are no safe choices when the nation is in crisis.

Can anyone name Obama’s principles? Something he will not bend on? A progressive priority he will defend to the end?

It’s not a progressive priority, but state secrets are something he’s never bent on. Not a single USA PATRIOT Act provision has been rolled back, many have been expanded. His administration has gone after whistleblowers more strenuously than even Bush. He’s extended torture to US citizens (Bradley Manning). And it seems every action by the DOJ challenged in court has been shielded by the “can’t reveal state secrets” ploy.

He needs new advisers, but the time has passed to be able to talk sense about health care. The right thing to do would be to attack health care costs, but where are the jobs going to flee to? He started a green energy initiative, but never passed climate change legislation, and that meant that most of the initiative in green energy still is in subsidizing non-innovative energy sources. That doesn’t create enough jobs to replace the medical devices industry. That’s the industry that needs to be attacked to bring down health care costs. So he has no place to go to bring down entitlement costs. Because the Democratic Party is too into control. It doesn’t trust new people, and it hadn’t been in power often enough to have seasoned people. So we got uncreative talent in the administration.

That’s the essence of why we have no real jobs plan from these guys other than paving streets or aping FDR, neither of which will work on the current labor market. We need to take care of large sectors of displace people in order to shift priorities in large areas: We need to end dependence on imprisoning people, then we need new jobs for the prison industry. We need to lower health care costs, then we need new industries for the medical devices people. We need new jobs for the previous jobless recovery in high-tech, we need jobs for the housing industry which demographically should not come back. There is nobody in this administration who has been concentrating on creating that much new manufacturing or service, or thinking about opening new fields. So he’s stuck and somebody else has to do it. He literally doesn’t know how to create new jobs and neither do his opponents or his allies.

He never hired advisers to think of groundbreaking initiatives and he needed a lot of them. The only one he launched was ARPA-E. And he offset it by virtually cancelling NASA.

2008 really was six of one candidate, a half dozen of the other. I never understood the vitriol between the two camps. We were going to get the same philosophy whether the candidate was Hillary or O.

Cenk I really miss you. You aired in my area at 5pm and to date I go to turn on the tube at 5pm and then remember your not there so I turn it off …or watch CNN.

Essentially we have an Oval Office filled to capacity with Wall Streeters, Bankers and the Filthy Rich.

Time to kick their asses out of our house.

I don’t even pay any attention to Obama anymore. He is a lost cause. I keep looking forward to who we can get excited about in 2012…I know its not too late. I cannot shed the thought that the Unions are the key to wiping this bad dream out…….because they have the money and manpower. I have mentioned that before here at FDL but never received any comments which tells me that maybe our members are not to keen on Labor Unions???

Everyone around Obama is functionally a Wall Street and corporate lobbyist plant by design, including Geithner and Bernanke. The only compromise we’ll ever get from Obama will be between Bohner and the Tea-GOP.

What I don’t understand is how he retains support among those who opposed the triangulating Clintons. Hope and change were lies. All he does is try (and fail) to triangulate. You can triangulate the trivial. You can’t triangulate war, economic collapse, and attacks on the safety net.

Sorry, I think all of the evidence points away from this theory about Obama being too enamored of compromise and terrified of conflict and confrontation and so on.

Obama has shown not the slightest hesitation at being in open conflict with progressives, who “need to be drug tested” and all the rest of the attacks that have come out of this administration, and compromise is never something he’ll display in that direction, only arrogant patronizing lectures.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with compromise, your passage about compromising by agreeing to sell for $1 when what you were asking is $10,000 was a good illustration of the problem. If a Republican compromised by agreeing to only draconian cuts to social security, rather than eliminating it altogether, it would certainly still be compromising. The problem is, with whom.

Barack Obama is like virtually everyone else inside the Beltway, the world is divided between the extreme right and the right. And he says “look, I got a deal midway between those points!” and wonders why others are unhappy about it.

He’s probably genuinely shocked that people on the left are so angry about it, these guys live in an essentially conservative bubble in which someone like Rahm Emanuel is considered to be a liberal.

Excellent brief commentary. The question–as always–is what is to be done.

Is there anyone who doesn’t have the feeling we’re almost out of time? It speaks volumes that in the crucial matter of civil liberties, Obama is far worse than Bush ever was. That’s not an incidental item: it says something about the core of O’s character, politics, and what he would achieve if reelected.

Which Republican will you vote for in 2012—Obama or the other one?

Cenk,

Hope you get a gig on Current TV. From what I read they are going to build programming around Oberman. Miss seeing you on MSNBC.

I’m starting to wonder if an Obama second term is a good idea. It’s a lot easier for Democrats in Congress to say no to wacko ideas coming from a Republican President then to a Democratic President who wants to do the same thing.

This President wants to win arguments with logic. You can’t reason with crazy people and calling them sane doesn’t change a thing.

I think the men and women who enlist in the military are doing it for a variety of reasons, among them a paycheck. Some for patriotic reasons, but for a “balanced approach”? I don’t think so.

Cerek: “And he (obama)would never take on an issue where he did not have overwhelming support. It’s not in his nature.”

That’s nonsense. The majority of people are against raising the eligibility age and decreasing benefits for medicare and ss, but he advocated for that.

Z

Agreed.

Most of this post was wasted space till, ‘he is fundamentally conservative)’.
He isn’t a poor negotiator, he is a Trojan horse. He has to find the most circumlocutious way to agree with the republicans and still appear as if he had the dems back. Which of course, he just got finished stabbing.
I will vote to make sure Dems have both houses, but to vote for this asshole only ratifies the four years of betrayal of the votes that put him there.
It is pretty hard to tell just how more fucked we would be by having a republican president and a democratic congress than the situation we have now.
The congressional dems were pussies but they were shaved by a president that preferred a republican house, and got it, and a senate that was stalemated by a republican who could always out play reid.

BHO negotiates very well for his base
the banksters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/09/us-sp-banks-idUSTRE7783SF20110809

Been sayin’ this for almost 2 years: it doesn’t matter anymore what Obama’s motivation is, whether he sincerely is a neo-liberal corporate whore and that he’s getting everything he wants (which is what I believe), or that he’s the sap on “Let’s Make a Deal” dressed in a chicken-suit who picks door number three and wins the giant chair – he has been an unmitigated disaster.

The sooner he is kicked out of office the better.

So, ending DADT and DOMA not controversial enough for you! Seriously, the POTUS’s job is to get things DONE, not satisfy progessives need for revenge. He certainly will NOT exhibit the very behavior you hate from the extreme right. Your criticisms are getting a wee bit tired and shrill!

ANother ignorant comment.

guys like uygur are now part of the problem.

if you think obama is doing anything that he doesnt want to do you are just lost.
uygur you got canned from msnbc and now i see why.

Who might be a viable Primary opponent?

Sure, he could have attacked health care costs but using Medicare as a bargining chip to appease S&P is not attacking health care costs. He just really doesn’t care very much about anything or he’d know where to pick his battles. For that matter, if you are an authentic Democrat who understands the core value of healthCARE in a just society that value informs and drives any discussion on cutting costs. For example, you don’t slash fees to providers and close your eyes to the logical outcome: no providers for the urban and rural poor.

I think Obama is beginning to lose it mentally. He seems even more aimless than usual.

I think the pressure of the situation has gotten to him. I think he realizes more and more that NO ONE cares what he says anymore, and that is causing him to crack up.

He is seeing his self view of “As good as Lincoln and Roosevelt” deteriorating down to “lucky to get out of office with any integrity intact.”

Personally, I am worried that his weakness is getting to a point where it is not just a political liability, but a real world one that is going to invite the assholes of the world–meaning those outside the US–to have a go.

People, for some reason I cannot comprehend, our social programs are the White Whale to neocon philosophy which we have discovered Obama to espouse. He won’t give up on it, nor will any of his advisors, because it is their firm and fanatic belief that if they could just harpoon that whale all their Milton Bradley dreams of economic dominance would come true. If they could only just torpedo those programs!!!!!

The whale is coming at them in the form of popular protest – the people whom they have always regarded with contempt and sought to charm and befuddle. These convolutions of governmental skulduggery have only this purpose, to finally succeed in what Bush attempted at the beginning of his second term, the dismantling of the FDR New Deal. They really believe that will make everything right with the world as they see it, because after all Hoover Dam got built and Bechtel started to climb when everyone was totally desperate for work and willing to die for the chance (many did). It’s a matter of reducing everyone to peonage, to a state of helplessness before the corporate structure.

Please wake up to this, because we don’t want to be electing again somebody who has the same purpose in mind. If we do all bets are off.

The guy is losing it. He’s on a tobaggen ride with no brakes.

Cenk also forgot another controversial change (below link) that did NOT please bankers.
Seriously, extreme left is as equally devoid fact knowledge as the extreme right! As to the person who said he has not paid attention to health care COSTS, OMG what the heck do you think the health care legislation was about- the ONLY health care legislation PASSED since Medicare. Geez folks -get a grip!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html?wtf

Yup, I think FISA was the final tip off.

Thanks for an excellent post, Cenk!

With friends like this who needs McConnell-Boehner-Beck-Limbaugh machine!

The only thing Obama has really done is have an excellent strategy for beating Hillary in the primaries. When the economy collapsed, the Presidency dropped in his lap. Remember that McCain actually led in the polls coming out of the convention. I don’t think America was really ready to put a black man in the White House.

Instead of realizing this and saying “What the HELL.” and governing like a progressive, like George Bush governed like a conservative, he went center right and really didn’t. He should have gone with a $1.5 trillion stimulus. All dedicated to producing actual jobs and no indirect stimulus. He would have been able to let the Bush tax cuts expire and we wouldn’t be in the current mess. No, he had to have Republican ideas, even though the voters entirely rejected the Republican concept of running an economy. That why his job approval rating is in the toilet.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Cenk Uyger:

Greetings from the battlefield of Wisconsin Brother Cenk, I believe that you are correct about the “tipping point” and ObamaRahma reactionary corporate politics…however, I believe that the road to a genuine progressive democratic politics which may mean blowing up the Democratic Party, begins INSIDE that party and will end in the streets of Charlotte in August of 2012. The progressive insurgency has already begun and no matter what the final results are tonight, this fight is only just beginning and will continue through the successful recall of Scott Walker next January and onto the super primaries in the rust-belt and ultimately in the streets in 2012.

We must be ready to commit to working against the corporat fascists inside the Democratic Party right to the end…the orgaization from this effort will be the structure for the anti-fascist front all accross the country north of Mason-Dixon Line. We are in this for the long haul and we must be patient but uncompromising. The common citizens are beginning to figure it out and we will win..there are more of us than there are of them.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND IN A CIVIL WAR!!

Agreed. Cenk needs to wake up. Still thinking that voting in the next man will make things different. Please, the politicians are puppets and replacing one guy with another will not change that. I watched cenk’s show from time to to time, but got fed up with him (like everyone else) filtering everything through dem vs repub false paradigm.

Shocking that you had to leave cenk because people in DC didn’t like what you said, because for the most part you seemed to part of the dem vs repub illusion.

What has been mostly forgotten in all the politicking (but is still in most of us back of the head) is the opportunity lost. When we elected Obama we welcomed real change, mixed in with hope. The election was a loud repudiation of the politics of the past decades, politics which have resulted in the highest incarceration rate, in the greatest social disparity, in growing hatred for the USA in the world. It was also a repudiation of the failures of capitalism which gave us the S&L scandal in the 80′s and then the collapse of this depression (I call it a depression not a recession).
We expected Obama (and the democratic majority in both the house and the senate) to go forward boldly, to affect change in the way we do politics, instead he did what he predecessors have been doing, govern to the next election. He decided to triangulate instead of be the trans formative president we were told he would be.

I think it does matter, stevo. If we don’t understand what this man has been doing and why he continues to do it, we may very well be fooled again.

Obama is simply an obedient servant for the haves and have-mores. He will be richly rewarded.

Obama did not run as a Progressive. That’s the progressives’ issue, isn’t it? You cannot accept that a black man, who brought HIMSELF up by the proverbial boot straps is not a progressive. Well, based on these comments and this op-ed, I would not be either.
FISA FACTS!
http://www.cnss.org/fisa.htm

Citizen Juliania:

ObamaRahma is serving his purpose and we will NEVER be fooled again!!!

Great column. I have one quibble: He’s not THAT bad a negotiator. Nobody could be this bad.

He gets the exact deal he wants to get for the rich, the corporations, etc.

Just like in the Health Care fight: he negotiated away the public option before it even started in exchange for deals with Big Pharma and the Health Insurance Industry. Then he pretended to negotiate the public option away and claim it was a bridge too far. We got the deal HE wanted — there was no real negotiation, only Kabuki theater.

I wish it were true Obama would only go after issues where Obama has big support behind him.

We’d would be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by now. We never would have started whatever you call the Libya bombing campaign.

BP would be paying for the mess it made in the Gulf Coast.

Obama is going after Medicare and Social Security cuts with NO support of the American people.

Obama appears to have all the courage anyone would need to steal the Medicare and Social Security trust fund all by himself with no support whatsoever.

The glimmer of hope that remains is that the conditions that brought O to power in 2008 — stock market crash and the job market falling off a cliff — are happening again. It’s almost like progressives are getting a second chance at having a moment of opportunity to transcend the dysfunctional political system and make substantive change.

Obama is a moderate Republican who is betting that when Americans listen to the Perry/Bachmann drivel on next year’s campaign trail they will realize how fortunate they are to have a timid collaborationist corporate hack rather than the big-time crazy. His only electoral threat comes from the Left and a palpable one doesn’t seem to be in the cards. The best we can hope for is that the public becomes so disgusted that Congress flips and the Senate remains Dem, though the apathy and despair that’s being inculcated tells me that outcome is unlikely as well.

The problem is that he isn’t anything. He drifting around like a boat without an anchor and it has gotten to a point that no body believes a word he says–either on the left or the right.

In that sense, he has truly brought the country to together.

Seriously, the POTUS’s job is to get things DONE

NO the job of the POTUS is to make the country a better place, empty “Wins” mean nothing.
BTW if you were paying attention Obama opposed ending both ending DADT and DOMA.

Wow. I take a HUGE exception to the “progressives need for revenge” statement….

I think Daniel Ellsberg was right on Sunday about the Florida recount. We did not rise up at that moment and refuse to be steamrolled by the Bush Brooks Brothers mob, and the Right smelled blood and has savaged the country ever since.

I think the Super Congress may be a similar turning point. If we don’t stop that dead in its tracks we may be pushed past the point of no return.

I am glad you are still optimistic. I am not. I see ‘them’ using the latest crash to justify cutting social programs. Like Europe and the Middle East has shown us this year, it only takes the raw anger of the people to affect change, and even on that the jury is still out.

Obama did not run as a Progressive.

???
What color is the sky where you live?

Have to agree with you. Obama seems almost bored. Certainly distant. I think he’s lost in the job.

Obama ran on hope and change and then decided to govern as a moderate Repulican. In other words the “change” is a modest course correction and what kind of “hope” do you get from that.

His policies so far have done nothing to narrow the gap between the classes. So far, they have made the disparity worse. I just wonder how much longer it will be till we see riots in the streets like their seeing in London. That’s what happens when you have no hope.

I’m not so sure of that. You are working on the 1968 model. These are different times. The polls come fast and furious. If he is in the 30s, which he will be as the unemployment rate edges up to 12 percent, and the employment rate drifts down to 53 percent, there will be no way out. The best way to get him out is to keep the heat on him. Hate to do the Thugs work for them, since this is what they wanted, but I think even they are (happily) surprised at how weak he is.

I know someone like him. Luckily he was never in elective office. Hated conflict, and always stabbed his supporters in the back when push came to shove.

Cenk,

Thank you for this post. I’d love to believe what you are saying, but I’ve been waiting for Obama’s tipping point with progressives for a while now. Frankly, I am convinced that the Democratic base is not really reality based at all. From what I can see, the Democratic base is still sticking with Obama. Obama proposes to cut Social Security and Medicare for a BS Grand Deal on the debt, and liberals still give Obama the highest approvals out of any demographic group for the final deal?

WTF!

The only conclusion I can draw is that the Democratic base is NOT a reality based community at all. Instead, it engages in some of the same delusional thinking that the Republican base does. I find this all maddening and depressing.

I’m afraid that if the Democratic base ever really does sour on Obama, it will be right before the damn election. Fat lot of good that will do progressives then. Unless someone actually challenges Obama in the primaries, we are stuck with him for 2012. And I don’t think Obama can win reelection, nor does he deserve to win.

No truer words, greenbell.

Obama does not seem a “moderate” Republican to me.
He’s a full blown, red meat Republican.

Heh. Considering progressives totally blew their opportunity for substantive change after the financial collapse of 2008, I’m not all that optiminstic. It’s mildly encouraging that there may be a second chance, though. Wish the economy didn’t have to suck so hard to get a second chance.

Hey Maybe this is what the Mayans are talking about with the end in 2012. The end to Corporate domination and corruption and the beginning of a real Progressive Government!!!! (Just Kidding) NorskeFlamethrower I have been sending money each month to Wisconsin…good luck and we will be glued to the tube tonight.

merlin you are right. I left the Dem Party this year and it was hard because I have caucused with them for 35 years and attended many many conventions as a delegate. But the Dems allowing the Big three to fail tells me there is not much of a party left anymore.

Cockburn had Obama nailed 5 years ago before anyone voted for him for Preznit. The article is called “Meet Senator Slither” and it describes Obama to a T

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12092006.html&sa=U&ei=PWdBTvfpCNPUiALA7LmhBQ&ved=0CBIQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFQWfhCt76v90NxH70BEbNAAL63TA

read it and weep.

Uhhhh…FDR was elected. Hitler and Stalin were NOT.

Hitler was appointed to his “presidency” by the ruling conservative party under former chancellor von Hindenburg in 1937. The Nazi Party never had a majority.

And…Stalin assumed command of the Communist Party in the former USSR after the death of Lenin.

FDR’s rejection of “compromise” was more due to the pressures of forces to his Left, such as the Populist movement (see Huey P. Long) and a still strong militant labor movement. Those forces were more of the key in pushing Roosevelt further leftward.

Anthony

Many of them don’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed. What I hear from them is that “he’s doing the best he can…” You’d think he was your not so bright middle school kid. He EARNED that C-. Don’t compare him to his A student Republican neighbor.

I think if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain the next time around.

B.S. — I didn’t vote in 2008 and I’m proud of it. I knew Obama was a phony, and so should you have known. You’re not a stupid voter, just a lazy one. That’s why you voted for Obama even after he gave a 2007 foreign policy speech in Chicago which proved he’s a neoconservative. Dems were too fanatically anti-Bush that it clouded their thinking about Obama. Pay attention next time, Cenk. Please.

Of course if you don’t vote you have a perfect right to complain. Your non-vote is a complaint!

A choice between Obama and any Republican they can manage to put up (they’re a piss-poor lot as we all know) is no choice at all. Do I vote for the bully who wants to steal my lunch money or the wimp who’ll hand my lunch money over to the bully before he even asks?

I have been saying for a long time now that President Obama is the world’s worst negotiator and has absolutely no interest in fighting for progressive principles

And by God, you’ve been right all along.

Can anyone name Obama’s principles? Something he will not bend on? A progressive priority he will defend to the end?

Ummn, self-promotion?

What do I win?

Lesser of two evils, STILL FING EVIL!

I’m less concerned about Obama these days than the dumbmotherfuckers who keep on supporting this toady of the Oligarchs; this Trojan Democrat. They need help, help, help.

Good article Cenk!! Keep it up. Hope you find a place back on the tube, again. Maybe Current TV?

They’re headed into the 30s in the polls and I don’t think they have any clue how to get out of there.

Well, the country is headed into the dumper and I don’t think they have any clue how to get us out of that either.

You get a pony.
Although I imagine it’s all part of his overall agenda to serve himself and keep him flush for the rest of his life. Just like Clinton poo.

If this is the “best” he can do, he should resign.
But the truth is that he’s doing the best he can do for his true masters – wall street/corporations/the rich, who are now doing better than ever before. What recession?

Someone posted this on Dr. Krugman’s blog.

“All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.” -Mohandas Gandhi

Centrists are just folks who find someone strong to follow. It doesn’t have much to do with ideology.

A great many of them are just weak personalities that need to identify with a winner. That’s why they’re undecided until the last minute – it’s not that they can’t decide on the issues.

“Bust the Bankers, and start over. Or burn the place to the ground.”

NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.

Thank you, Norske; good fortune to you today!

Like Senator Franken who responds that he is for the “balanced approach”. No, Al, your hair is supposed to be on fire. You are supposed to fight them Al, not pretend that sanity is something you balance with lunacy, good is something you balance with evil, right is something you balance with wrong.

((((WISCONSIN))))) Best of luck today, Norske. I’m afraid Michigan needs someone to prove that change can be accomplished by the citizenry.

The analysis is wrong in one aspect.

Obama is not capitulating, or “compromising”. He’s never really done that. He is doing exactly what he intended to do, and has always intended to do all along: That is to serve the War Establishment, serve the Wall Street crooks, serve the International-Banking Oligarchs, and seek out only their phony “solutions” (Austerity, War, Bankruptcy) for the problems that they created.

He wasn’t “compromising” one bit when at the very height of his mandate he chose his “stay-the-course” Cabinet, and White-House Staff. He wanted to create a policy-team composed of Warmongering Neocons, Wall Street shysters, Reaganites, Big-Pharma/Big-Insurance hacks, a pro-Torture DOJ. There have never been any “progressives” ever allowed to sit at his table – hence: none of these results that we are seeing represent any “compormise” at all. It is exactly what he sought and desired from day one.

Obama is simply Clarence Thomas only a little bit whiter. He’s the Multi-Millionaire’s best friend. This is why I’m amazed that no Democrat out there (Russ Feingold, Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich, etc.) will ever stand-up and run against him. Even Ralph Nader is sitting on the sidelines. WTF?

__

At this point, the only hope for this Country is to help Ron Paul break through on the GOP-side and win the Nomination. Ron Paul will really End the Wars, End Torture, End NAFTA, End the Bank Bailouts, End the Corporate subsidies, cut the Military, cut the CIA, End the Drug Wars, and save Trillions and Trillions of dollars (that is currently wasted on Worldwide mass-violence and corruption). Only then, at that point, is there any hope for rebuilding our own Country here at home again. But it can never happen with 5-wars going on and spiraling debt, and the Democrats will never cut-off the funding.

center of the road policies=status quo
more of the same sham,and thievery

I agreed with what you posted…but you lost me when you mentioned skin color. Was that really necessary to your argument?

Here is a quote from that article:

Some Democrats working for Ned Lamont in the recent senate race in Connecticut eventually taken by Lieberman, running as an independent, are exceptionally bitter about the role played by Obama who made the calculation that Lieberman would win, and that he would not forfeit political capital by doing anything for his fellow Democrat, Lamont. (By contrast, Hillary Clinton gets good reviews from such Lamont workers as a politician who did what she could for their man.)

EXACTLY!!!!

You could have included the Raum quote too: Progressives are “F#$%ing Retards”…..

That one really brings votes back to Obama!

There have never been any “progressives” ever allowed to sit at his table –

That’s the operative phrase.

Unfortunately, Ron Paul would also cut all public education, social security, medicaid, medicare, Aid to Children………..

Senator Franken is a bigger disappointment them Obama.

When and how has Obama or his team “aped FDR”? From what I can see, Obama wants to destroy FDR’s programs and memory of his presidency if he could.

I know Obama is a Corporatist, but he also seems to spout a lot of conservative talking points and offer a lot of conservative programs. Neo-Lib may fit him best; however, very few people who aren’t politics wonks know what a Neo-Lib stands for or could name any.

To help the regular voters understand Obama, Conservative just about nails what’s wrong with him, his administration, and his actions.

Please explain. There’s so little MCM coverage of Al Franken that I barely know what he’s been doing since he was able to take his senate seat.

Oh, YES. Best wishes to WI voters and Dems!

first I’ll say I voted for O, have always voted Dem., so nobody thinks I’m a wingnut troll. But, at this point I’d have to say that O is a dangerous person for the Progressive movement. He has the misfortune to wreck liberal ideals through his “poor negotiating skills.” That’s the storyline, but a fictitious story. He’s a conservative Republican and the only reason he chose the Democratic Party is because the other party doesn’t really allow intelligent black people in their club. So, actually he’s just returning to his roots, his base, which is corporate conservatism. All the disgruntled progressives need to start viewing him not with disappointment, but with outright fear. He should be primaried, and any number of progressive candidates could defeat him.. Progressives elected him, progressives can elect anybody else. Even my black friends are starting to fear the guy, and as a group have very little respect for him after this last episode when he tried to go after social security and medicare. People are dealing with their denial or reality and coming out of their depressed moods, and they are ready for a fight. Look at London, that attitude is alive and well here too, it’s just that we can only “demonstrate” at the polls, the streets are not an option with our highly efficient prison incarceration system firmly in place, the system that has the highest percent of their population behind bars of any country in the world.

If the clever guys at the White House don’t realize they’ve hit their tipping point,

And they are almost exclusively guys. My bad feelings about the man began with his patronizing responses to women, backed up by his FISA vote.

I haven’t cared enough about the man enough to follow his pronouncements (I just assume he’s going to say something vaguely positive, slap a few hippies, and go back to his true work of dismantling the New Deal and/or the Great Society). So the statistics about the WH avoidance of getting on record for anything less than 2/3 popularity (outside their core concern – see ND/GS destruction) is new and telling to me. Looks like he only acts for what he’s truly for (and, not being stupid, does it behind the scenes and under cover where he can), and just lets polling define his “positions” on anything else.

Based on what he does, we have a Prez who wants to kill the safety net for ordinary folk, who is very much in favor of having life-and-death power over anyone, and actively attacks any attempts to make him answerable for his crimes (getting tame lawyers to opine in your favor does not make murder or torture any less a crime). Not a good picture I’m seeing.

True, but I bet Obama will be ‘forced’ by his handpicked commission (or the ‘super congress’ to cut social security, medicare, medicaid, aid to children, (cut to education will be forced on the states). It is a time where the policies of both parties are muddled, where it is about serving the plutocracy and getting re-elected.

The incredible disappearing president.

That is why I think the Super Congress Catfood II must be our line in the sand.

I have no idea how to do that.

Cenk, I hope we see you on Current with Keith. Really enjoyed your show and was great how you won’t let Rep. push talking points and outright lies.

Great piece as was this recent article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html

As a lengthy post here on Firedog.
http://my.firedoglake.com/rogershuler/2011/08/09/obama-fails-to-battle-back-against-bullies/

It’s horrible that our only choice is a vote for incompetence no matter what Party you vote for.

I agree with you that the organizing we need to do is through unions.

He hasn’t ended DOMA. In fact, his Justice Department is doing everything possible to delay the inevitable. Congress ended DADT, and just about any living/breathing Democratic president would have signed that bill. President Obama will not let anything favored by his base emerge from the bowels of Congress until he has no choice but to throw a bone to some poor suffering bastards under the bus. He has never worked for anyone other than Barack Obama, and he has been very successful at that game. Very easy for him to do when his only core principle is his own ego. You only set yourself up for disappointment if you imagine that he gives a rat’s patootie about your concerns, if he doesn’t perceive that you can help him help himself more than the other guy (or corporation).

I still remember Bush I and the incredibly clear sense I had that he did NOT want to be President for a second term. He ran. He said he wanted to be elected. He made all the right moves, but there was that something about the underlying spirit of what he was doing that gave me the strong sensation that a second term would just be a bother to him.

Similarly, By The End Of This Month We WILL start to get that sense of whether or not Obama really wants a second term. He’ll collect all the campaign cash. He’ll make all the appearances. He’ll say the right words. But if he doesn’t really want it, I (and maybe you) will get the sense that he doesn’t want the second term.

Thank you LibWing

Well, there is something else too. As long as providers can turn away Medicare or Medicaid patients simply because they are Medicare or Medicaid we will have problems.

That’s why even the supposedly best health care bills with public options made me angry, they made the public option totally voluntary for providers. That’s a formula for high volume, low quality clinics that are few and far between as the only place for care for those on the public option. M & M are already there.

We not only need Medicare for all, we need a much more robust Medicare that doesn’t need a supplemental. Plus providers should not be able to turn away Medicare patients based on them being medicare patients.

PRETZLEDENT i won the Nobel PEACE prize

Obama said during a brief White House speech devoted mostly to the economy and the nation’s fallen credit rating.

The U.S. and its allies will continue “the hard work of transitioning to a stronger Afghan government and ensuring that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for terrorists,” Obama said.

“We will press on and we will succeed,” he added.

ARGH!@#$%^&!@#$%^!@#$%^ he is disgusting…please retire like LBJ

Banning those budget gimmicks just played to the Tea Party. The banks may have engaged in political theater, but they wanted to show a ballooning deficit, after they got their bailout, of course. What else ya got?

Amen brother Amen!

This is what people I know are identifying Democrats with and that is why even-though majority of the country is sad at the state of affairs right now.

1. Mandated insurance for private companies with IRS acting as collecting agents for them. Public Option was used as bait for American people and conveniently discarded later.
2. Social Security tax holiday to weaken SS, everybody knows what this means in the long run and who is driving it of all the people Democrats.
3. Lack of accountability for 2008 financial drama & subsequent foreclosure mess.
4. Ever increasing wars recent one in Libya.

First one is the primary reason what will cost the election because of above all far right concepts first far-right concept is anathema to American values and is precisely the thing fighting against which this country was founded.

Yep FISA was the event that I realized I screwed up. I should have listened to my gut. I had a feeling being from Chicago we would get Shock Doctrine Milton Friedman economics.

Elected Stalin. That’s very funny.

He ran as a liberal until he beat Hillary. He promised to end the Bush tax cuts, close Gitmo, etc., etc. ad nauseum.

Thanks for playing.

remember your not there so I turn it off …or watch CNN.

Fixed.

We all need to vote. Vote for third party candidate or a write-in if one does not find a candidate worth voting for. Skipping vote is totally wrong because if the majority does not speak it is the minority which gets the voice. Then there is no reason to complain for the state of things for next two years.

After a long time we saw Tea Party shaking up the ways of Congress and all this happened because People who were not happy with status quo voted and made a change. If we had this kind of vigorous debates in the congress before we would not have had war in Iraq coupled with illogical tax breaks a decade ago.

Besides that there are lot of local initiatives which directly impact your life-style and their fate depends on your vote.

Ok not elected but he did get power from a popular revolution my mistake the thing is he did get power

2. Social Security tax holiday to weaken SS, everybody knows what this means in the long run

Trouble is, I don’t think everybody does realize this. I think most people see it as a little more money in their pockest (except for the very poor, for whom it was a cut), and don’t realize that it’s the first step in turning SS from an insurance operation everyone has a stake in to a “handout,” which makes it much easier to get rid of – not to mention defund. Hm. A passive attack, using on a seemingly benign action. Seems to be BHO’s MO.

I first saw this pointed out here at FDL. Most people don’t read FDL, and the corporate media sure aren’t going to point this out.

Ha! The power of racist socialism…I bet Marx never thought of that. Well, prosperity is the great cure for hatred, so let’s get to socialism and then worry about the bigots, I suppose.

And I saw upthread that you saying we had the option to stay home? Staying home is the second-worst thing one can do (next to voting for Obama/a Repub just slightly “worse” than Obama). It’s important to get out there and participate…even if you just write-in “Harvey the Invisible Rabbit”, you’re showing that a) you’re involved and willing to participate and b) you repudiate both the Ds and the Rs. Those of us who have moved beyond the parties can’t come together by sitting at home…get in that booth and protest! Vote not “against’ Romney/Perry/whoever, but FOR someone you want. Even if they have no chance of winning and you have to write them in.

Our voice will never be heard if we keep silent. JMO.

Ok I was wrong about Hitler being elected to still he got to power right.

I am one of those citizens that woke up after FISA. I just wanted to say I enjoy your posts and thank you for speaking the truth. Yes we are in this for the long haul. After all it took over 30 years to get to this point. Patience is the key and a virtue. Keep speaking the truth, I am glad I have FDL to cut through the nonsense and lies. My 2 cents from a laypersons point of view.

I agreed with what you posted…but you lost me when you mentioned skin color. Was that really necessary to your argument?

Probably not. But to many people Obama was mistakenly thought to be a “man of the people” because of his ethnic background. And a lot of black people mistakenly thought that he was “one of them“. But he never was that. He was a high-society, Harvard-lawyer with scholarship money dumped in his lap, who was raised within a Conservative, Reagan-loving White, Military step-family. Those are his true “roots”. A red carpet was just rolled out to this man all his life (not unlike George W. Bush). It is easier to understand Obama’s whole “Clarence Thomas” agenda and loyalities within this larger, broader context, which is why I made the reference.

His brief “community organizer” job was just a temporary stunt (which he quit after one year) to give him a false cover as a populist. The truth is that Obama was just another rich-guy, Havard lawyer and member of the Elite Rockefeller-funded Council On Foreign Relations think-tank (which exerts enormous influence on this Country’s corrupt and mass-murdering Foreign Policy). He is also Dick Cheney’s cousin.

More than just a bad Bowler, Obama is and was totally out-of-touch with working-class people all his life. He did not come from that background. We should not be surprised to see Obama fighting for cuts in FDR’s programs, for Reaganomics, and for Bush’s Wars. That’s the same club that he grew up with. The Establishment made him, and that’s his team: the team that he joined, and and the team that he’s fighting for.

I will keep that in mind the idea of voting but writing in somebody else’s name might have value but please bring up the idea again I wonder what the rest of the firepups think about your idea? Your idea needs a full vetting by the firepups.

Shorter Obama is an Oreo

I remember that during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, I was watching it being liveblogged at OpenLeft (since vanished) and when Obama threw in a line about the Citizens United case being wrongly decided (and one of the judges [Alito, I think] reacted to that), one of the livebloggers raved “Did I just see Obama junk-punch SCOTUS?” amidst what were IMO way too many positive comments for various lines tossed out here and there.

And I was reading, thinking “one fucking line, big deal. Doesn’t mean anything unless he follows it up. Where’s the call for new campaign-finance regs? Where’s the declaration that if SCOTUS throws the new regs out, he’ll pass them again and again until the Supremes abandon this “corporate personhood” idea? Where’s the threat to cut government subsidies to any corporation that goes beyond the McCain-Feingold limits?” As Shakespeare wrote, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. That’s all Obama offers us, occasional lip service, unsupported by action. (And even the lip service is getting kind of scarce, these days.)

Unfortunately, Ron Paul would also cut all public education, social security, medicaid, medicare,

Actually, Ron Paul would protect those programs far more than Obama.

1. Ron Paul has stated many times that he wants to cut all the Overseas spending first, before entitlements (saving Trillions, and changing the whole budget equation). He has stated clearly, that he would not hurt people already dependent on social programs, but just begin a transition process for the younger generation. If it is a bad proposal, the Democratic Party will oppose it — yet we still come out with Peace, and Trillions of dollars saved.

2. Unlike Ron Paul, Obama has already setup a “catfood commission”, and now a “Super Congress” (which Ron Paul opposes), to gaurantee that these programs are recklessly cut across the board. And with Obama, The Democratic Party will be pressured to fall-in-line and support it, and there will be no united opposition possible. And with Obama there will be no End to the Foreign Occupations, and global interventions that bankrupt the Country – and make the cuts inevitable.

So understand, in truth, we are far better off with Paul here.

O is more surfer dude than Ahab. Ahab had absolute values and went down because of them. O would rather ride the waves (67% polling), unless it threatens his status with big kahuna finance and political dudes, and his future access to global private ‘beaches’. I mean, what did any one expect from a junior senator who couldn’t commit to a Y/N vote 42% of the time?
Joking aside, I think he was allowed his brass ring as long as he didn’t challenge the status quo and expose the crushing monopolies and giant ponzi schemes (finance, energy, health; & HCR was crafted to cement a monopoly, not to mention the ponzi of ‘modern medicine’). He could tinker around the edges with social issues like DADT, but nothing that truly challenges the money. He has surprised even cynical me, though, with his political hubris dismantling the social safety nets. While my initial response is to stay home and not vote in 2012, I look forward to Legitimate creative voting. I’ve always loved the phrase, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. It’s a good motto when approaching any of today’s myriad of problems.

One quibble with Cenk’s thought-provoking essay. W. has no guts. He simply behaved recklessly because he never has had to face the consequences of his actions.

I don’t think he’s the worst negotiator at all. He’s fighting for what he wants, and that just so happens to not be what any progressive wants. That’s where the disconnect is. The slow realization that he lied and fooled us in the 2008 election. If there’s anything he’s bad at is spin and politics to protect himself from any negative backlash his republican policies are producing.

You’re great Cenk. Love the way you build up then hammer in your points. So despair is the only answer? The logical next step is to primary his ass.

That was certainly the point that revealed the real Obama, at least to me. It was a sterling example of hypocrisy.

Here’s a similar saying: One who is willing to compromise their principles ends up with no principle but compromise.

As I said, I agree with your argument. The problem I have is more general. It seems that the politicians in this country have successfully transformed class warfare into race warfare. Both parties have contributed to that effect as both parties gained from it.
As for comparing Obama to Thomas, I like the quote:
We Wanted a Nelson Mandela; We Got a Clarence Thomas (Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez)…http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/04-4

He only appeared to be a liberal when compared to Hilary’s hawkish campaign, which put her slightly to the left of Crash McCain.

In my opinion Obama’s high flying marketing rhetoric got way ahead of his political reality. He is not the molder of consensus, he is more like a passive and reluctant referee trying to break up a fight. He got fleeced in the debt ceiling debacle by GOP con men to whom he wrongly gave too much credit, a serious tactical mistake. Obama does not want to get his hands dirty in the day to day workings of politics, he’d rather watch dispassionately fron the sidelines and intervene only at the last minute when he recognized his interests were imperiled. This sort of reactionary politics is a prescription for failure because you cease to be a leader, you become a passive and compromised reactionary.

Politics is a tough business and slick and trite marketing slogans do not represent positive and worthwhile actions. If Obama expects to succeed, he is going to have to get a lot tougher and take far more risk. Too bad if he doesn’t like conflict, it’s part of the deal and refusing to deal with it is not a solution.

These are tough times. We do not need a weak and passive non leader who defers the tough solutions to later. Suck it up and deal with it now.

I am keen on unions – my family would have been hurting if not for unions – and I was in 3 unions before I was 21- and noted how much better I was treated than at non-union shops.

But we are down to few unions – and some unions like some police folks support the GOP because they then get exempted from Wis. union busting, and indeed in many states get bribes like retire at 50.

But there is a union radio show on Sirius left (ch 127) Sat radio and we need more. But the unions are not rich and can not do much more – unlike France there is no union major media. Reagan appointed haters of unions and minorities to the agencies meant to protect them and that meant 12 years union busting as the NLRB did nothing, likewise with the equal rights folks. –

of course Reagan’s EEOC’s Thomas got his Judgeship so I guess that was a minority win./s

sigh – there are no cost controls in Obama’s Health Insurance “reform” that cuts a $600 billion welfare check to the health insurance companies via a mandated subsidized sale via exchanges that save no money and have no cost controls.

As to DADT and DOMA,

DOMA is not repealed and the WH has not submitted legislation to repeal it.

DADT was done to stop the Reagan executive order banning gays from the military from becoming law via a veto proof majority of GOP and Dems – it did that, served its purpose, and the courts overturned it, causing a repeal to be passed. Indeed Obama signed the repeal because it did not cost his rich and corporate friends a dime. All Obama has left is what he beat Hillary with in SC – an appeal to “group loyalty” (vote for me because I am black) while saying those that oppose him are racist – but that has gotten old.

I, for one, will definitely not vote for Obama again. It’s a real pity though,that the first black president turned out to be a shill for his billionaire masters. I know it will cause some of you to tear out your hair to hear this- but Ralph Nader was right.

Obama stands for one thing and one thing only – himself.

By the time the 2009 stimulus debate and legislation was over, it had become apparent that this was no liberal champion. Nor an economist. It was far too short on stimulus and far too long on tax breaks, and, although nearly a third of it was to help the states’ budgets survive, all it ended up doing was allowing some states to continue to cut back on their own revenue gathering. Unfortunately, the next year those states were in deeper because they had removed income sources. (sort of reminds you of the Bush tax cuts, don’t it.)

He has dithered and put out lots of pretty words. I defend him when the right is beating on him using false claims and inaccuracies, but often the issue is there, they just didn’t get it right. It doesn’t take lying and misconscrueing things to show where Obama messed up.

We got sold a bill of goods. Perhaps we wanted to be. But issue after issue has shown us that Obama isn’t what he claimed then and continues to act like he is when he wants to quell the voices of discontent. But I stopped buying it by the time HCR came along. The few good things in it are overwhelmed by the bad, especially the giveaways and lack of controls. Just like the financial reform bill.

I don’t know what “grass roots” effort the president thinks he’s going to get. The “Obamabots” aren’t enough. Or is even the call for “grass roots” a subterfuge to make people think he’s not the corporate darling he most certainly is?

I’m lucky. I live in a state where the conservatives are so overwhelming that I could write in “Mickey Mouse” and would have just as much impact as checking the box for Obama. Thanks to the electorial college system my vote has already been rendered worthless here. I haven’t missed an election in 40 years. I’ll vote. But it will never be for a GOP candidate and it isn’t going to be for Obama, either, because then I’d have to feel bad about selling out my principles.

Obama would have cut off his own leg and thrown it, along with Starbuck and Queequeg, to a pleasantly surprised whale, then told the rest of the crew that the whale oil crisis demanded they abandon ship. All this would have happened before they go out of the harbor.

You’re only speaking to one aspect of ALEC. Do your conservative relatives want corporations voting on American laws, before they’re offered up for votes to their elected representatives? How is that “conservative”? They may have gotten enthusiastic because they can see a way to get an advantage against liberal voters, in this one example. Let me guess – they got this info from some Rush Limbaugh type, who neglects to tell them about the rest of their Faustian bargain. But what happens when their parking meters are privatized, they get a rapidly escalating, unjustified fine, and nobody picks up the phone when they want to complain?

IOW, what about when privatization makes their lives hell? Are they going to consider it worth it, because they got over on other, liberal voters, via some voter ID concern?

And what if public assets are simply sold off? Will they still be jumping for joy, having “eaten their seed corn”? On what basis? Aren’t conservatives supposed to be financially prudent? Sorry, I still don’t believe that conservatives will find much to cheer for, in general. I have trouble believing even this for your relatives, if they knew the full story, but feel free to speak to these concerns. You know them better than I do.

///////////////////////

Just had an idea. We need an internet “ALEC TV Station”. This will show the non-ending examples of ALEC abuse and economic foolishness, as they unfold throughout the country. Or maybe a “Fracking and ALEC TV Station”. You know, intersperse the latest flammable water spigot videos, compliments of fracking.

The problem I have is more general. It seems that the politicians in this country have successfully transformed class warfare into race warfare.

You make a great point. We have to talk about the rich .vs. poor injustice in this Country using just that language. And we have to insist that political activists, political representatives, and use this langauge.

When you talk about politics in terms of rich .vs. poor, all of a sudden everyone gets it. People know that they’re being screwed. It’s about time that we tackle this issue head-on directly as FDR did.

EXACTLY. You can take the measure of the man from what he doesn’t say, and from what he doesn’t do.

I remember when I used to regularly refer to the Democrats as “Demo-Cowards”, when Bush was president. All of the GW Bush abuses of power, and pathological level of lying, were not met with any sort of angry, pointed responses by the Demo-Cowards. Oops, Democrats.

I judged them, back then, on the basis of what they wouldn’t do, and wouldn’t say.

I’ve wondered whether there’s some fundamental difference in the population in terms of brain functioning (cognitive styles, if you will) wherein some people (such as myself) are more likely to notice what is missing, than others, and make inferences from that. Noam Chomsky has talked about how people passively internalize a model of reality from the media. So, when the media is filtered (from various forces that Chomsky has described) people will accept something as normally functioning, that is actually defective, ito the public’s needs.

But I wonder if some people are more inclined to see defects and omissions in that model, just because of the way their brain is wired. Certainly, Chomsky’s brain seems more sensitive to “what is missing”, than others.

Shock Doctrine? What do you think the phony debt crisis was? Classic shock doctrine even though in this case the shock wasn’t real. An atempt anyway. But convince people of a crisis so you can ram through policy they would not otherwise tolerate.

No. Lying.

Unfortunately there is racism in Nordic countries, as witness the Norwegian massacre. The anti-Muslim cartoons in Denmark that set off riots some years ago.

The reason why the social programs are the white whale to them is that they work. SS is one of the most successful programs in US history. And all this flies in the face of their near religious faith that gov’t cannot be the solution but only the problem. I learned this from Paul Krugman years ago.

It wasn’t progressives who blew it. It was Raygun Repug Obama.

“It’s depressing to think that we’ll have to endure Obamaspeak for months, if not years to come: a pulp of boosterism about the American dream, interspersed with homilies about “putting factionalism and party divisions behind us and moving on”. I used to think Senator Joe Lieberman was the man whose words I’d least like to be force fed top volume if I was chained next to a loudspeaker in Camp Gitmo, but I think Obama, who picked Lieberman as his mentor when he first entered the US Senate, is worse. I’ve never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.”

I think it’s this habit of slithering that makes people think Obama is weak. So even when he sticks to his guns to do his masters’ bidding, he comes across as being a toady and a wannabe to elites.

“Can anyone name Obama’s principles? Something he will not bend on? A progressive priority he will defend to the end?”

I asked that very question at lunch with some of my friends, and they both said no. As far as they can see, this president is as weak as you (me) say he is. This guy definitely has a problem and they don’t yet get it. They’re still operating with the principle of weakness in the face of rabid obstinence so they can get the independent vote. His political advisors should have been fired long ago. This is the worst case of poltical malpractice I’ve seen in my short years on this planet. How is it Bush’s advisors shined up a turd like him, and yet Obama’s advisors can’t take a man who “seems” as competent as Obama, and turn him in to a strong leader.

These last two years have solidified my opinion; the Democrats are nothing more than babies constantly in the fetal position in the face of attacks from the GOP. They’re useless as a viable political party, at least, their leadership is.

Is there a Liberal finishing school where they learn all these tepid talking points and soggy analysis? Cenk, you may imagine yourself too radical for MSNBC, but this entire line of “Obama is a weak negotiator who doesn’t stand for anything” routine is utterly conventional and even worse, misleading and misinformed.

Look at the way Obama strong-armed Single Payer out of the picture, and how he sharply cut deals to bury the public option. Look at Obama’s hard-edged, arm-bending attack on public education in which the states “compete” for funding based on their compliance with Obama’s union-busting privatization scheme. Look at the heartless way he has gone after whistle-blowers. Look at his gleeful unloyalty as he pulled the chair out from under Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod. Look how he couldn’t wait to put cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table. Look at the savage way he has expanded the Wars.
One could go on and on…
“Obama is weak” No buddy, it’s YOU who are weak for repeating this tedious crapola. “I don’t know what Obama stands for.” How obtuse can you get?

Do people vote for the most reasonable person in the room to be the leader of the free world or do they vote for the one that gives them reason to. What is the compromise position between the truth and a lie? What is the compromise position between tolerance and bigotry? What is the compromise position between slavery and freedom? Just asking.