Which is worse?

21 months after Bush’s departure, and we’re still at war with the White House.

What is it with Democrats using their own base, and even union members’ own money, to attack workers? Not only is President Obama trying to use Organizing For America’s vast e-mail list to gin up support for freezing the salaries of government employees, but NY Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo might actually use union money to attack unions:

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

I’m suffering from a dashing of hope these days, and Paul Roget Loeb’s book Soul of a Citizen just might help me recover.

President Obama and Democrats in Congress have accomplished some truly amazing things. The economic recovery package, health reform, Wall Street reform – all of these things are big f*cking deals. And yet, I and many others are still feeling betrayed – the economic recovery wasn’t big enough, health care reform by all rights should have been much more progressive, and Wall Street reform doesn’t nearly go far enough. Why the feeling of betrayal? Because we were promised so much more than just “reform.” President Obama promised this country transformational change. And we have not been given transformational change.