The following article from Huffington Post summarizes a lot of my angst, and it is truly angst.
Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator
By Drew Westen, who is both an academic and something of a expert on the middle ground in American politics as he has published The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
It is anything but easy for me to declare that I am giving up the ghost on this President who seemed to offer so much potential and represented an important victory over racism, something I have dedicated most of my professional and personal life to opposing at great cost.
It is important to note that I never expected Obama to be anywhere close to representing people from my end of the political spectrum, but I did expect him to listen closely, make the best informed judgment and act respectfully towards towards us. Apparently, that was too much to ask.
At this point, I cannot even articulate what he would need to do to win me back. I am entirely unsure that he could. My cynicism is at an all time high, and I do not operate out of a cynical perspective. Optimism is a much healthier stance, but my optimism about this Administration has complete evaporated.
I firmly believe that while my politics are not mainstream, my reaction right now is mainstream. Obama has turned off both the left, as in the base and it really was his base, and the center as Westen explains. My friends are rapidly joining me in their disquiet and distrust of what he has done and is doing. Frankly, if Obama had put a fraction of the effort he put into getting elected into the health care debate, we would have a decent bill right now, not a perfect one, but a decent one. Citizens are turning off their televisions when the President appears. Westen correctly reports on this phenomenon. I have done it. Friends have done it.
A perfect storm is developing which will take down the Democratic Party for the conceivable future. I wouldn't have predicted it even six months ago, but there it is, staring us in the face. The longer we deny it, the more devastating the storm will be.
Here are Westen's major points which neatly summarize most of my disquiet and disillusionment:
What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.
What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.
. . .I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.
I would have to say the idea that Obama cares more about special interests than average Americans is demonstrated in program after program. Need I detail them here? The financial reform bill passed out of the House is another scandalous bow to the fat cats. The mortgage relief program is a total failure. One out of four of us is underwater in our homes. After jobs, this is the most unstable issue in the economy at the moment.
Leadership, Obama Style
Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.
. . .
Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely
, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas.
. . .Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the President on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn't stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can't stand them because I realize he doesn't mean what he says -- or if he does, he just doesn't have the fire in his belly to follow through.
This is my reaction. After watching Obama closely for more than two years, I cannot bear to see him on television. This, more than anything I can say, think or do means he has lost me.
No Vision, No Message
The second problem relates to the first. The president just doesn't want to enunciate a progressive vision of where this country should be heading in the 21st century, particularly a progressive vision of government and its relation to business. He doesn't want to ruffle what he believes to be the feathers of the American people
. . .The problem with the president's strategic team is that they don't understand the difference between compromising on policy and compromising on core values. When it comes to policies, listen all you want to the Stones: "You can't always get what you want" (although it would be nice if the administration tried sometime). But on issues of principle -- like allowing regressive abortion amendments to be tacked onto a health care reform bill -- get some stones. Make your case to the American people, make it evocatively, and draw the line in the sand. That's how you earn people's respect. That's the only thing that will bring Independents back.
And that's where the problem of message comes in. This White House has no coherent message on anything. The message on health care reform changed even more frequently than the interest rates on credit cards last Spring, and turned a 70-30 winning issue into its current 30-50 status with the public.
. . . To be honest, I don't know what the president believes on anything, and I'm not alone among American voters.
The Politics of the Lowest Common Denominator
Unfortunately, what Democrats just can't seem to understand is that the politics of the lowest common denominator is always a losing politics. It sends a meta-message that you're weak -- nothing more, nothing less -- and that's the cross the Democrats have had to bear since they "lost China" 60 years ago. And in fact, it is weak.
Want health care reform? Let Congress work it out, and whatever comes out, call it a victory.
. . .If the president had simply placed appropriate blame on the health insurance industry for its pre-existing conditions, it's cutting off care for breast cancer victims in the middle of treatment, and its doubling our premiums and co-pays during the Bush years, he would have harnessed populist anger and pushed this bill through six months ago, and it would have looked like the change we were told to believe in. But if you cut backroom deals with every special interest who is part of the problem and offer the American people no coherent message while the other side is messaging straight out of the messaging memo written by Frank Luntz ("government takeover," "a bureaucrat between you and your doctor"), you can expect half a loaf.
I don't call it half a loaf. We might survive on half a loaf. We are being served a slice. We will starve on a slice.
And his conclusion:
Obama, like so many Democrats in Congress, has fallen prey to the conventional Democratic strategic wisdom: that the way to win the center is to tack to the center.
But it doesn't work that way.
You want to win the center? Emanate strength. Emanate conviction. Lead like you know where you're going (and hopefully know what you're talking about).
I don't honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn't figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he's not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he's going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they're seeing right now is "liberalism," and they don't like what they see. I don't, either.
What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass.
You bet it matters that Obama has lost me. By the time he figures it out, it will almost certainly be too late.
P.S.
Before you start making assumptions about who I am and flaming me, I will tell you some basics. I am 62, which makes me a leading edge baby boomer, Latina and a leftist. To be more exact, I am a radical Democrat for my entire life from a family of working poor and working class Democrats. I am not a liberal, have never been a liberal and never will be a liberal. Those of you old enough to remember the 60s and 70s 'liberal' was a dirty word and stood for largely middle and upper middle class white people who would talk nicey, nicey when it came to civil rights and anti-war issues, but never back up their words with action. Even though I am only the second person in my family to graduate from high school, began teaching at a university when I was only 22, went on to teach community college, earned a Ph.D. and now have tenure at a Big T en university.
Please do not bother to call me irrational or not sufficiently reality based or unable to construct an argument with proof. I know how to do all those things. I will not respond. You will be wasting the planet's energy. Even more importantly, trying to argue with Kossacks as if you can force them back into the Obama camp with insults is absurd. Westen's work explains clearly that politics is not a rational game. From time immemorial, humans have followed leaders who could inspire them in their gut and whose moves demonstrated that placing trust in them was warranted. You cannot change that dynamic by browbeating, flaming and banning those of us who are in touch with both the facts and that reality.
In addition, my near gold standard Blue Cross, Blue Shield coverage has garnered me over $ 36,000 in out of pocket medical expenses in the past three years and counting. When they start taxing those benefits, I am in real trouble in my home with its underwater mortgage and
I worked harder for Obama than I have ever worked for any candidate and gave more money than I could afford. I became the co-chair of a collation formed in May as a response to OFA's call for house meetings to kick off the health care reform campaign. Our local and state OFA leaders know me by name. I risked my fragile health to do what I should not as I am partially disabled and fighting to remain well enough to continue to work now that our corporatized government has made retirement impossible for me and millions of others. Don't tell me about incremental progress either. Time has run out for me and the planet. If we don't step up now, it will be too late for the nation, my generation, your generation and many of Gaia's children.
P.P.S.
While I was writing this diary, I was also in a live chat room with Rep. Anthony Weiner. This is his sign off message:
we had more than 2200 folks on this chat and over 4000 questions submitted. sorry i couldnt get to all of them. i am going to be getting to some more on countdowntohealthcare.com and i will be reading them all. i want to say that i am very proud to live in a country where so many people care so deeply about the direction of their government and its policies. i am not going to give up on fighting for you. i may not get everything right, but please know that im committed to raising my grandchildren in a nation that provides humane cradle to grave health care for all its citizens. merry christmas and happy new year.
The overwhelming number of questions and comments came from people just like me, whatever their particular political bent. The average American is very disappointed in the health care debate and these bills.
You can go here: countdowntohealthcare.com to review some of it yourselves.