Yes, as the committed activists tell us, correctly seeing that apathy is unacceptable, we must find the most optimistic ways of moving forward.
We must also find the most effective ways to express anger when those who purport to represent our interests fail to do so. It's an act of optimism, in fact, to convert anger into a goad to clarity.
Polls might indicate that Democrats marginally approve of the debt/deficit deal. However, for the Democratic leadership to conclude that "open-mindedness" is a good message to set the stage for Super Congress makes me incredulous but even more angry. How should I express it? Not by claiming we are already screwed; we're not. We do have opportunities for effective action.
Yet it would be a mistake to put aside the fact that Democratic Party leadership has allowed the minority party to set a maliciously reckless economic agenda against all the lessons of the 1930s. By itself that is an infuriating fact.
In the era of Super Congress, if the point of the debt/deficit bill 'triggers' is to force out a truly productive bill, then there really would be no better time than every week the 12 meet to educate Democratic voters about the insanity of social security and medicare cuts--neither of which have a causal role in the current debt/deficit. Not enough light was shined on the CatFood commission meetings as they failed to reach any consensus and failed to issue any true report. That can't happen again. The scrutiny needs to be harsh and unrelenting.
Some facts going into Super Congress are: 1) Republicans have obstructed productive economic actions of the Keynesian kind because they do not want the economy to improve under Obama; 2) Instead of calling Republicans on that basic obstruction, Obama has allowed it to stand and even legitimized it by conceding the political agenda to them in the form of the entirely insane focus on debt/deficit reduction in the middle of--let's face it--the second Great Depression.
As has been observed repeatedly during the past 6-10 months, doing nothing, taking no action, letting the Bush cuts expire, would mostly solve the deficit crisis. That's how that issue should have been handled while, on the contrary, Obama talked about jobs. With that in mind, conceding the political spotlight to debt/deficit wrangling, letting the Republicans set the goddam national domestic agenda with it, and all the while letting the hypocrites get away as unaccountable for a debt/deficit they themselves created with their political majority during W's administration: These are utterly outrageous political failures from a president who promised change.
He didn't have the congressional votes, you say? That's no excuse for the action he's taken and the action he hasn't.
If in an alternate reality Republicans made Obama's first term the Big Gridlock, even if the result were a public image of President Obama as a talker who can't get things done, it would have been preferable had he faced the stone wall with unrelenting determination and advocacy for the people who put him in office.
Democratic voters, one might expect, would not like seeing good plans, doggedly proposed, dashed by Republican ill will; especially after watching the base Republican constituency feed at the trough like Orwellian pigs just as Obama took over.
Obama instead has followed a course of pointless compromise that I inspires (in me at least) fierce distrust of his leadership and judgment.
I hate Obama for that. And the truth that Obama did put the medicare cuts on table, without clearly explaining them, and without attempting to assure the vast population that depends and will depend on it that he will fight against the Republican commitment to dismantle it. Medicare cuts impact you if you're on Medicare looking for a good doctor who takes Medicare. And Republicans know misleading noise is rewarded in the election circus.
Democrats already lost the House by being successfully if falsely branded as would be Medicare slashers. The political stupidity of tee-ing up another round of Democrats-Cut-Medicare, besides the insane policy itself of allowing Medicare into the negotiating room, boggles.
