I watched the Last Word, Lawrence McDonald's new show on MSNBC,and he had someone who claimed to be a progressive blogger going on and on about how wonderful Obama is but that he would be so much better if he just fought more. He should have fought for the single payer...and fought for a larger stimulus, et.al., but instead he got in a closed room and negotiate away all these things WITHOUT A FIGHT. I guess the blogger wanted blood on the floor.
I was impressed with the fervor of the blogger, but I came away wondering why he thought fighting was so great if, at the end of the day, you have your head handed you on a platter. I have a rule: never show up at a gun fight with a knife! LBJ said, he never asked for a vote if he didn't have the votes. Our blogger seems to have wanted Obama to die on every hill. What would that prove? What would the headlines read the next morning after the President dies on yet another hill? Wouldn't he soon be called Don Quixote Obama? I can see the cartoon with Obama hanging from the vein of a windmill...done in AGAIN by the GOP windmill. Will that make Obama look stronger? Will it enhance the reputation of the Democratic Party? Will it make candidates stampede to get Obama to campaign for them in their home districts? I don't think so! I have yet to see many fans lining up to get the autograph of the strike-out leader of the team!
Truman was the fightingest president we have had in my lifetime but in 1948 he did not send bills after bill to Congress to be voted down and call that fighting. He got on a train and whistle-stopped all across the country taking the fight to the Congress in the place where fighting matters: in their home district. You fight in Washington by getting the other guy un-elected! Anything else is window dressing.
The blogger seems to not understand the fundamentals of American politics. The President does not elect any of the members of Congress. He cannot cut their pay and cannot fire them. If they vote with him it is because it is in their own political interest. The only fight that matters was on previous Election Day! It was then that we decides who is going to be on the President's team and who is going to be on the bench or on the other side. And the fact is that in 2008 we elected Obama with a landslide but his allies in Congress....well, not so much...make that by a whisker! And the blogger is part of a bunch of malcontents who want to stay home on Election Day so the rest of Obama's first term will be even less productive. That's progressive???
Don't get me wrong. There are a ton of things that I wish were different in the bills Obama got passed, but, I'm from the school that says half a loaf is better than none at all! I chose to see the cup half full. The blogger thinks he is being a progressive by seeing it half empty. That's not progressive. That is kamikazi thinking. And if that is what the blogger believe in, I don't stand in his way...what I will not stand for is challenging his presidency because he does not play Russian roulette with our political agenda and his presidential legacy.