I haven't posted a diary on Kos since shortly after the election of Barack Obama, when I criticized his choice of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state. That was two years ago. But it feels more like a hundred.
A little background first.
I was a fairly late convert to the Church of Obamalogy. Early in the race, I was one of those who felt he lacked experience and "gravitas." I liked John Edwards (OK, so obviously experience and gravitas weren't that important to me) and Joe Biden. But I came around to Obama. He won me over with his intelligence, his unflappability and his strong communications skills. And when he picked Smokin' Joe to be his VP, well, that was just icing on the cake.
It was nice to have a president we could be proud of for a change. A man of intellect and accomplishment. A man who had written more books than his predecessor read. Not only that, but the first African-American president as well. It seemed like our country was finally moving forward.
So what the hell happened?
When I think about the last two years, I keep coming back to the opening line of Allen Ginsberg's Howl: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." That's what it feels like in America lately -- absolute madness.
Looking back, I think we seriously underestimated how conservative white America would react to having a black president. From birthers to the Tea Party, it's been ugly. Some people have called it racism, but I'm not sure that's 100% accurate. Matt Taibbi, in his recent Rolling Stone article on the Tea Party, described them thusly:
It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.
It's not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It's just that they're shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid.
They really do feel that middle-class white America is under siege by an alliance of liberal elites, poor urban dwellers (read: blacks) and illegal immigrants. Never mind that it's not true. Never mind that the people they should REALLY be pissed at are the very people funding their Nitwit Revolution, the billionaire bankers and business interests who have been bleeding the country dry for decades. Never mind that. They feel how they feel, and no one is going to tell them different.
And, if we're being honest with ourselves, we haven't exactly given them reason to embrace liberalism. As a party, we Democrats have always been bad at communicating both our goals and our accomplishments in a way that people can understand. We never miss an opportunity to say in five paragraphs what should have been said in one sentence. As a party that embraces thoughtful debate and policies based on reason, we are at a disadvantage in a world of sound bites and Twitter feeds. We view the catchphraseocracy with disdain, and so have refused to acknowledge its importance or master its tactics. Instead we cling to the increasingly discredited hope that reason and intelligence alone can win the day. I don't think it can.
Let's face it: The Obama administration has been disappointing. They came to office largely on the strength of their communications skills, only to seemingly stop communicating altogether. They have failed utterly to highlight their many successes, not least of which was saving the economy from total meltdown. Instead they have sat meekly by and allowed the Republicans to characterize the stimulus as another example of failed tax-and-spend liberalism and government run amok. They saved Wall Street's ass, then let themselves to be painted as the villain for doing so. In fact, they sometimes seem almost pathologically intent on letting their successes be used against them.
And then there is the health care bill. Frankly, I think it's a disaster. Yes, there are some excellent things in there, like not allowing insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. But the centerpiece of the law, the individual mandate, is a travesty. It appalls me that I agree with the likes of Mike Pence, but God help me, I do. I believe it is unconstitutional to force people to buy a private company's product.
If the goal is universal coverage, then the only fair way to achieve it, in my view, is a nationalized single-payer system. Personally, I would have liked to have seen Obama draw a line in the sand on this, and even stake his presidency on it. At the rate things are going right now he may well be a one term president anyway.
That's not a forgone conclusion. As has been said time and again in recent months, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had lower approval ratings at this point in their presidencies. And both took major losses in the mid-term elections. These things are true, but they are also intellectual salves that we use to make ourselves feel better. We cannot depend on the cycles of history to return us to power. We're not just along for the ride here.
Things have gotten meaner. Meaner even than they were in 1994, when Newt Gingrich ushered in a new era of narrow-minded prickery and we all thought "it can't get any worse than this." We were wrong.
In all likelihood we are looking at a Republican takeover of the House, and they have made it very clear that they will not only oppose every new initiative that comes out of the White House, but try to roll back much of what has already been accomplished.
So, yeah, it's ugly, and it's going to get uglier. We're going to take some knocks. But two years is still two years. This presidency and this party can make a comeback. We can -- the question is whether we will. To do so, we need to stop taking half-measures and not be afraid to stand up for ourselves. And we will have to learn to learn to play a lot harder in a world where madness is apparently the new normal.