This diary is not about Obama critics themselves, it is rather about very specific examples of dubious reasoning that really need to be debunked before I read the hundredth repeat of the same misled and counterproductive diary; this is about sky-is-falling fits a random few people fall prone to time to time (like a virus, sometimes spreading so fast that it even makes rec list on occasion) - fits based on theories that, despite their dubious reasoning, are repeated with certainty over and over again like a computer stuck in an infinite loop.
One theory that illustrates this phenomenon is the assumption that one can rely heavily on the analysis of soundbites; this is reflected perhaps nowhere better than in a perpetually recurring trend of diaries, some posted as recently as last week, reacting to the soundbite media's coverage of the President's stance on health care, a stance which the record shows has been entirely consistent all year: he supports a public option but would support a co-op if it accomplished the same ends.
Media quotes Part 2 of that statement as their soundbite in an article, and everyone freaks out; media quotes Part 1 as their soundbite in the next article, and we all relax. And a few days later, we do it all over again.
More below the fold...
Some clarifications, before I am wildly misinterpreted.
- I believe in pressuring our public officials about major issues like as health care, I encourage it, I fight for it myself. It makes a difference.
- I also believe that - while Congress should be our main focus - such pressure should also include the White House, by contacting them via letter, e-mail, and phone to politely but firmly let them know we support a robust public option and nothing less, as well as posting diaries to reflect and reinforce that perspective online.
- I AGREE that it is our job to pressure Obama from the left and say the things that he cannot say, in order to pull the political center to our direction, and perhaps even give him the room to say exactly the things we are saying but just a little bit further down the road.
I believe in all of that.
What I don't believe in is going in the following circle over and over again:
Media quotes Part 2 of Obama's position as their soundbite in an article, and we all freak out; Obama has changed his position and has sold us out to the insurance companies! Media quotes Part 1 as their soundbite in the next article, and we all relax; whew, it's a good thing we pushed Obama by calling him a sell out, and got him to reaffirm his support for the public option.
Then next week, it happens all over again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And nobody gets suspicious for a moment, preferring to think of these as nothing but examples of successful online activism in action, despite the fact that all evidence suggests we are essentially standing in a corner having a conversation with a soundbite, playing a game of solitaire in the mirror and envisioning ourselves a big player in the highest stakes poker.
I believe in successful online activism in action; I've seen it happen again and again on this site, which is one of the main reasons why I continue to read and post here.
The diaries I describe are NOT an example of it.
How many more weeks do we have to go through the same kabuki dance before we finally see the sun's glare on the puppetstrings?
Let me just ask you to consider a crazy hypothetical question, for some perspective: If you snapped your fingers and were President Obama right now, how seriously would you take those who would go through this kabuki dance week in and week out? How seriously would you take their arguments and their concerns? Really.
The fact is that the kinds of diaries I refer to are NOT progressive activism as intended, but bad soundbite media analysis, and worse, an example of us being manipulated by the very traditional media forces that are against a public option. All the traditional media has to do is present a partial quote to create a riot in the progressive blogosphere; do we REALLY want to be so easy to manipulate?
Of course we have to be cautious of anyone in DC given the power stacked against our interests, of course we have to be vigilant and not blindly loyal to ANY politican, of course we have to watch our backs if history has taught us ANYTHING - but watching the exact same motions gone through over and over again here have made it clear to me that that's not what going on in these situations at all, despite the fact that it's the good-faith intent of the people writing the diaries.
But it's even worse than that. Most of the time, it's not even any intentional manipulation by some insidious force, but rather our inability to recognize the the most basic manifestations of the soundbite media's inherant structural flaws despite the fact that we see and gripe about those flaws every day. In plain English, many journalists rationalize to themselves that they simply don't have time to quote Part 1 and Part 2 of Obama's stance in the editorial constraints of their brief article, because they have to quote other people, yammer on about something else for a little while - perhaps draw a ridiculous conclusion if they have one in mind - so consequently there's no room for more than a few words from people in the government WHOSE SUBSEQUENT AND IMPENDING ACTIONS ARE THE POINT OF THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. So the media quotes part 1 in an article, we sit down, they quote part 2 in an article, we stand up, as if in a creepy game of musical chairs; reflexively moving without fail, not even as a result of conscious manipulation, but simply responding to the systemic farts of a sick organism that we admit is sick yet we continue sniffing.
However, all this I could probably just put aside, and keep my long-winded rant of peculiar metaphors to myself - except that this behavior actually hurts an effort a lot of us are working very hard for, and are depending on:
Ask yourself this - does representing Obama's support of a public option with diaries that imply he's changed his position strengthen the political standing of the public option, or weaken it?
Think about that for a moment.
Does anybody bother to ask themselves this question before posting these diaries?
Please, to those who would rush to write repeat #46985 of the same diary the next time the MSM rings its Pavlovian bell, OPEN YOUR EYES, put out the fire in your hair, and go to a town hall to support a public option; THAT will make a difference (I went to one last week for the first time in my life, and it was an amazing experience). If you don't have one coming up in your area, then continue to call, write, and e-mail Congress. Keep fighting.
And - if you're really worried about President Obama's support of the public option in particular, do as I initially suggested and let them know constructively by contacting them and continuing to post diaries supporting the public option; don't base your assessments entirely on soundbite statements that come from publications whose only interests are to sell more copies, and who use a format that inherently relies in reporting incomplete if not outright misleading quotes.
Some will point to the President's position and state that his openness to co-ops is unacceptable; I only would ask them to read that statement more closely, as he only is open to a co-op if it would achieve the same ends as the public option, which we know it cannot. Since we know it cannot, why do we read this as a threat? It's like being threatened by the statement "I'd fly unicorn to work if I had one", and reporting the incident to air traffic control in order to prevent any potential mid-air collisions. Obama's refusal to come out and directly say "no co-ops" is all a part of a reverse-Clinton strategy of not butting in on the Congressional process until he's decided to make his move, which recent reports (Mike Viquiera a few days ago on MSNBC) suggest will be October 15, where any bipartisanship compromise must either reflect the core principles that the President campaigned on and the public voted for, or it will be tossed aside in favor of moving forward through reconciliation.
Some will still continue to argue, I have no doubt, quite eloquently and convincingly: what's the price of being overly vigilant; the President should have a thick skin, and getting screwed over by entrenched power yet again is the price of us not being vigilant enough - that's the only real threat, with no comparable counterforce.
But is it really? 57andFemale puts it better than I ever could:
With the vehement hatred stoked by Rush/Glenn/Drudge et al. and the failure of the Republican party to speak against these tactics, we have a very different dynamic that is ignored by progressives. We continue to act as if there isn't this level of danger and we hold Obama "accountable" with our criticism. If we truly had passed some racial threshold, if we truly didn't have an alarmingly dumb portion of the populace, we would have the luxury of holding Obama accountable to a progressive standard.
We tacitly feed the wingnuts by not standing by our president as a real alternative to conservative rule. We just look like we're just as unhappy with him, and we feed their statistics.
I'm not saying our president right or wrong with blind fealty. But every time we write him off as a corporate stooge or withhold our support because the timetable isn't to our liking, we help the bad guys.
We can preface every criticism with an acknowledgment of the enormity of the tasks facing him, or his boldness to tackle health care and a crumbling economy that is the direct result of conservative rule over the last 30 years. And then give our reasons why a more progressive approach, legislation, etc. would help the country. Then we are showing that we believe in our president, and we take wind out of the conservative sails.
I hope for and expect nothing less than for healthy criticism of the President's policies to continue.
I want to make sure that is more clear than anything.
I only ask for some perspective as we do it, weighing what he has not done yet against the long list of things he HAS accomplished:
- We went from losing 700,000 jobs a month at the beginning of the year to losing 400,000 jobs in June to losing 200,000 in July. Tens of thousands of state employees still have jobs, and services are maintained because of his stimulus. He provided unemployment, food stamps and a 65% reduction in Cobra for those who lost their jobs, and more jobs will be created in transportation when rest of stimulus kicks in in 2010.
- He stabilized the markets, so 401Ks are starting to slowly come back and we are not about to meltdown anymore; we went from a tailspin under Bush to stabilizing at a 6000 Dow, climbing up to 8000, stabilizing there, and gradually climbing up ever since. He saved the American auto industry (cash for clunkers is doing great too, both for the industry and jobs, and for the environment.) GDP went from 6.5% shrinkage to 1% shrinkage since Obama has been in office. A significant amount of the bailout money is being paid back.
- 95% of Americans are receiving a tax DECREASE.
- He has cut 2 trillion from the budget over the next ten years.
- He has taken on healthcare, the most difficult thing to pass in the US. He ended the abstinence only thing, and the law that said a pharmacist could refuse to give birth control pills to women if they so chose.
- He has taken on energy, the second most difficult thing to pass in the US and it has already passed the House; he set new emissions standards, and protected wilderness land set for oil leases.
- He put pressure on the Taliban in Afghanistan and also got Pakistan to agree to fight the Taliban in their own country, which Bush never could; the top leader of the Pakistani Taliban was taken out this week. He got the 2 NK journalists out and saved the American captain taken hostage by Somali Pirates. He got the non-proliferation treaties going again, and he will chair the next meeting; already an agreement exists to reduce Russia's and US's arms.
- He nominated and got confirmed the first latina Supreme Court Justice in history. He signed Equal Pay for Equal Work, Children's Health Bill and Credit Card Reform. He has a first time home owner's credit, a modification of mortgage plan in place. He has made it easier for students to get college loans (UMass just gave a 1500 rebate to all students because of the stimulus money.)
(h/t to jonnie rae for most of that data)
While one can argue that all those are things any ambitious and hard-working Democrat - had they won the Presidency in 2008 instead of Obama - would have done in their first six months, there is an additional list of Obama's accomplishments in the first six months which strikes at the heart of the DC establishment that both parties have been beholden to for decades, including the military industrial complex in particular.
- ending torture
- immediately ordering Gitmo and CIA black sites around the world to be closed
- cancelling the CIA assassination program the moment it was discovered
- firing Blackwater by not renewing its government contract in Iraq before it expired in May
- announcing all combat troops out of Iraq in a year and all troops by the end of 2011
- reaching out diplomatically to Iran without preconditions and sending a Norooz speech to the Iranian people containing a line of Farsi
- achieving a 48% favorable - 20% favorable in polls of the Muslim world, unthinkable for a US President at any other time in the last sixty years, and placing him as more popular than any of the leaders of Muslim countries
- personally admitting the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in a speech to Muslims
- personally acknowledging the understandable sense of a double standard when it comes to who can and cannot have nuclear weapons while giving a speech to Muslims (implying America and Israel, the latter of which's nuclear weapons capacity is a major admission historically, even when made implicitly) and addressing that inequity by advocating nuclear disarmament for all countries
- insisting Israel recognizing Palestine is as important as Palestine recognizing Israel
- pressuring Israel to dismantle several of its key checkpoints in the West Bank
- pledging no permanent bases in Iraq or Afghanistan in front of a Muslim audience
- eliminating Pentagon no bid contracts and waste
- pulling all troops out of Baghdad and all other Iraqi cities before the June 30 deadline
- striking the perfect tightrope balance of non-interference and supporting human rights after the suspect Iranian elections
These each represent a sledgehammer to the foreign policy consensus in DC for years, in some cases for decades; interestingly enough, many of them represent progressive actions that Obama never even mentioned to progressives during the primary when they could have improved his own standing, and yet is taking nonetheless (setting a final withdrawal date not just for combat troops in Iraq but all troops in Iraq; no permanent bases in Afghanistan).
Don't get me wrong.
I will NOT BE SATISFIED until:
- A real and robust public option is signed into law
- There are trials, convictions, and life sentences without parole or pardon for 1) the people at the top who ordered torture, 2) those near the top who violated the Constitution on an almost daily basis to allow it to happen, and 3) those who crafted the legal opinions to let it happen
- Questions about Bagram are directly issued to, answered by, and dealt with by the President
- Marijuana is decriminalized and reasonably regulated
- Public financing becomes the law of the land - or at minimum, a $100 cap on campaign donations replaces the $2,300 cap, leveling the playing field
- The death penalty is abolished
- Corporate subsidy giveways end, allowing small businesses compete on a level playing field, including those that sell organic food and offer an alternative to the increasingly processed corporate sludge we are forced to eat otherwise
- Energy reform revolutionizes our technology
- Education reform revolutionizes our potential
- The military industrial complex is stripped down to accomodate only the needs of: intelligence, training, efficient and relevant gear, troop and vet benefits - eliminating all waste and patronage which could create a financial interest and consequently a catalyst for future wars under future Presidents
And that's just ten off the top off my head.
Our work is nowhere near done - it's just getting started. However, a little perspective would help.
The sky could always be little more blue. But it certainly isn't falling.