This is the last straw.
I gave thousands to help get him elected because I believed, but I'm done giving to Obama. Now, I'm looking for a candidate.
It started with health care reform (HCR). As various HCR bills languished in committee, I wondered when the white house was going to take charge. We waited and waited, and as we waited, the legislative branch looked more and more hapless. The approval ratings for Democratic legislators fell. In the end, HCR passed, and we all cheered. Yes, it was a BFD. The fallout was palpable, and we lost the house.
Update To all of you who wish to insult me, please leave comments below. I'm off to bed!
Or you could argue that it started before that with the financial rescue. The stimulus package was too small, and there the financial industry was giving out billion dollar bonuses. The white house wouldn't take the ball and run with it. When it counted, it sided with wall street and not main street. I was looking at my shrinking 401k accounts and a gigantic tax bill that would get passed on to my kids, and I was thinking that if there was ever a time for Obama to find his inner FDR it was then.
But a few weeks ago, this stinking deficits commission was talking about deficit reduction and threatening to make social security cuts, and all of this because Bush 1) started a war with Iraq; and 2) while his attention was on Iraq, he fucked up at Tora Bora; and 3) Osama bin Laden and all his henchmen escaped into Pakistan.
Oh ya, and before that, Bush dropped a ripe turd on us. Tax cuts for the wealthy, a policy so fiscally irresponsible that it's breathless, and we knew it was sitting there waiting to expire. It was unthinkable that a Democratic president should ever find himself in a position of extending it, but here we are now.
The problem here is narrative. Let me tell you the story I now believe.
I am a product of FDR. Go back to the 20s, and the country was as inequitable as it is today. FDR instituted a progressive income tax and the middle class grew. I'm part of the meritocracy that arose from that middle class, just like President Obama. The progressive income tax created my neighborhood, but the super-rich hated it. Ronald Reagan undermined all that, and as I've grown from teenager into adult, the legacy of RR has been slowly eating away at my country. More growth inequity. The sociopathic religion of Ayn Rand.
And then Obama started talking about how he admired RR, and I wouldn't hear him. I didn't want to hear him because I wanted to believe that he really admired FDR more than RR. Now, I'm listening. Obama has always been more RR than FDR. It's hard to say it, but FDR would have never let it go this far.
At every stage, Obama talks about compromise and bipartisanship. Why didn't we start by racking up a long string of victories for the working family? Why didn't we start talking up those victories? Instead, Obama started out talking about bipartisanship and compromise and he got used. He got so badly used that we're talking about asking Democrats to vote to extend the tax cuts that got us in this fiscal mess in the first place. You know, the fiscal mess that's threatening social security?
And all of it is bullshit, because if we focused on the economy and got it growing again, then we'd be in a position to start talking about cutting the deficits. Instead of talking about cutting social security, we should be talking about green jobs, infrastructure projects.
Instead of reaching out to the asswipe Republican Traitors, we should have been telling the American public what low life traitors they really were.
Now, those very same Republicans are holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage so they can get a tax cut for the super rich.
And I don't care if it's just for two years. Where has Obama shown anyone that we'll suddenly be able to pull a victory from the jaws of defeat. Why trust him to do that when he's spent the last two years snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?
So, I hope the White House is listening. I don't want to hear a recitation of campaign promises kept. The legislative victories also go to Nancy Pelosi and congress. The value of the White House leadership on this should have been the value added in getting the victories and winning the hearts and minds of the countries. Instead, we lost the midterm elections badly and we're looking at this fiasco.
It's time for the Democratic Congress to send Obama a message. He's our president or else. It's time he stopped crossing the aisle to compromise with the leeches across the aisle.
Oh, and about that bullshit invitation to hold his feet to the fire?
How?
And it's time for us to start looking for a candidate. I would support Hillary Clinton in 2012, if only she would run.