After our devastating losses on election day, the last thing that I expected this morning was to hear White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that the president will be open to extending the upper-end Bush tax cuts for one or two years as part of a broader compromise with Republicans, when in the past both President Obama and Timothy Geithner has been definitively against extending these tax cuts for the wealthy.
I think it's time to face the truth, it is way past time for giving President Obama a free pass, on the Fraud to Cover Up the Fraud, on his obvious cozy relationship with Wall St./the Bankers, on the endless Wars that are draining us dry, and on many other issues.
The Rules of Engagement have changed people: the Republicans are savages, and their only agenda has always been the same: to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct and to defeat and destroy President Obama. What part of that doesn't President Obama get? Why is he sending out olive branches at this point in time?
I know what a real Democratic Fighter looks like:
The late great, and Honorable Teddy Kennedy, who on his death bed gave his final blessings to President Obama over the Clintons:
And the day before the election, Michael Moore, nailed it and came right out and stated exactly what he knew the President Obama would do after this devastating loss:
Again, the Republicans are total and absolute savages, and the rules of engagement have changed. Apparently President Obama didn't get the memo, or perhaps we are just going to have to face reality: We may have to rethink our own party and who the hell we are going to elect in 2012.
Passive/aggressive capitulation is not cutting the mustard, and neither is abandoning the most basic precepts and the original platform of the Democratic Party.
Another Democratic that 'gets' it, was the one the Obama Administration threw under the bus, Congressman Alan Grayson (as they did Russ Feingold). So please stop the bullshit about electing new and better progressive Democrats, if we aren't going to support them, and even our own President does not.
Ousted Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, one of the most outspoken, liberal members of the House, said Thursday that Tuesday's election was a "national disaster" and a repudiation of the Democrats' "strategy of appeasement." In his first interview since losing his seat, Grayson upended conventional wisdom about his party’s 60-seat loss in the House, saying that if Democrats had been more progressive in their policies, Democratic voters would have gone to the polls.
"Our strategy for two years has been appeasement, and look where it got us," Grayson said on MSNBC. "I think Democrats want to see a fighting leadership, they want to see a fighting president — somebody who actually accomplishes good things for constituents." As examples of what Democrats should have focused on, Grayson listed the Employee Free Choice Act, immigration reform, civil rights and women's rights.
Grayson also took a direct shot at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, recommending that Reid read William Butler Yeats's "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," which contains the line "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." Grayson did not rule out another run for his 8th District seat, despite losing by 18 points on Tuesday to GOP challenger Daniel Webster. "If that's what the people want, then I'll be back," Grayson said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
And Congressman Grayson is right, our strategy (the President's, Senate and House) strategy has been appeasement. But the appeasement has not just been to the 'savage Republicans,' it has been the appeasement to our 'Corporate Overlords,' and the continued Fraud.
We are a nation that is dying from moral rot from within, because we have lost our moral compass, and that is what a great leader, a great President is all about.
Let me give you another reminder, of what a Democratic Fighter, looks like, what moral leadership really means at the heart of our party that now finds itself in chaos. What stunned me about this video of former Governor Cuomo, was how true his words are today, as they were all those years ago:
I was reading RobLewis Diary today about year old Drew Westin article about President Obama, and his continued inability to define himself as a leader. And that has been the central problem with our President. He refuses to define himself, clearly and articulately, so that the American people knows who and what he believes in. He hides behind smoke and mirrors, sending out trail balloons, playing rope-a-dope with his own base, he continually sets on the fence, and allows the Republicans to consistently steal the narrative and define him, because our President refuses (or is incapable) of honest confrontation, so that would at least be able as a party, to understand which side he stands for and who he is fighting for...Wall St./or Main Street.
President Obama, wants it all ways, he wants his cake and he wants to eat it too. But it simply does not work that way, and it never will.
From the Drew Westin article:
But you have to believe something.
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. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November.
There were three comments from fellow Kossacks that struck me as, what is at the heart of this problem for our President and our party. The first comment is from Nippersdad (and yes I love him to death, for his honesty and amazing breath of truth telling and knowledge...sue me):
So when Obama rubber stamps conservative ideology in his incessant search for compromise and bi-partisan solutions he is actually confirming the leftmost boundaries of failed conservative political thought as being the liberal position; when it is clearly anything but.
I could not agree more with Nippersdad on this. And again, President Obama wants is all ways, but again, it simply does not work that way.
But what I've become fully convinced of at this point, is that President Obama may indeed be incapable of true Leadership and Confrontation at all, and let me say this about confrontation:
Confrontation includes the basic ideal of having the courage to stand up for what one believes in, where you stand, what your true ideological ideals as a leader are, it includes based on those beliefs, what defines you as a human being, and from that point, comes the ability to confront the differences to resolve those differences.
Again, I think our own Party needs to own up to President Obama's unwillingness to define who he is, and what he really stands for, and whose fault is that?
Is he a fighter? I think not. Can he lead? I think not. Does he really expect his own base to support him, when he refuses to define who he is, and what he really stands for.............again, I think not.
Another comment that struck me as true was this, and again, defines my own intuitive and reality based feelings about where we are heading in 2012:
I agree, too (62+ / 0-)
I get the sinking feeling that Obama's political hero is Neville Chamberlain. Faced with opposition, he immediately seeks to appease those opposing him, never seeming to understand that all that does is encourage them to demand still further concessions while at the same time demoralizing your supporters and saddling you with a share of the blame for your opponents' bad policies. I can't for the life of me figure out how someone so intellectually gifted can be so politically stupid, but we're already seeing that he's going to keep doing it: This nonsense about being "open to compromise" with people who state, in public, on the record, and on camera that they will never, never compromise with him. Obama's problem must arise from something out of whack deep inside him.
by dricey on Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 09:53:29 AM PDT
This was another comment which speaks to the truth of the matter:
The fact that we're two years into his term (30+ / 0-)
and it cannot be said what he actually stands for or believes is the problem.
Now where did I put my shot glass?
by aztecraingod on Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 10:30:53 AM PDT
Again, and again and again, the same message over and over again: President Obama refuses and is perhaps incapable of defining who is he, and what he stands for, and as much as I love this community, and my party, we can no longer deny that, but I wish to take this one step further, because this is very important too. One more comment from a great Kossack:
i agree. (6+ / 0-)
Obama knows how to fight. he isn't. that means he's getting what he wants and that appears to not be what we want. Obama is going to lose in '12 unless he starts actually being a peoples dem and not a corporight dem.
"Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear." Gladstone, Me 8.88/7.08
by zedaker on Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 10:51:17 AM PDT
And I want to thank all those quotes I used from other great Kossacks, and to RobLewis for his excellent diary today.
What this proves to me is our party, which I am a very very proud member of, still is healthy and understand that the greatest thing about our party is to remember that dissent is the greatest gift we can gift one another.
This quagmire we find ourselves in as nation, is a result of many complicated issues, but as I've stated over and over again, the 'rules of engagement' changed and they changed a long time ago.
The Republicans are savages, they always have been and they always will be. They already have 'investigations' and have blatantly refused to take 'Impeachment off the Table.' And don't think for a fucking second they will not use that knife in the drawer. Reagan did it with Jimmy Carter during the Hostage Crisis...they did it with Bill Clinton again, and Chimpy, George W. Bush, did it again, with Al Gore.
THEY ARE FUCKING SAVAGES.
At this point, what I am not sure of is our own President, who refuses over and over again to tell us his vision, to stand up for his beliefs, and to come out of the smoke and mirrors, and shadows. That is the real problem here, so stop blaming other Democrats, for that. Stop being an echo chamber of the Status Quo when on the table is our last fucking safety net. Coming up, are the reports by the Cat Food Commission, and the insane crazies up for 2012:
Haley Barbor
Sarah Palin
Mike Huckabee
Mitt Romney
or even worse.
We are indeed in a deep state of what I can only call the one party Oligarchy system, and some of us keep saying we 'eat our own' but that has never been what I have felt about my own party. My own party came from the poorest, and those that were in the greatest need, and the great leaders of our past understood that, but they at least had the dignity and grace, to stand up for who they were, what they stood for, who they stood for and we as a party have had the great ability to learn from our mistakes.
If President Obama doesn't get that message, and refuses to define who he is and who he stands for, then its time for him to move aside, and for us to find a real fighter again in our party. So stop blaming that on moving further and further and further to the right and center, (as I disgustingly watched McConnell and Boehner preen their feathers, lay down the their arrogance and swords on the table today) as President Obama opening had the fucking gall to offer them an 'Olive Branch' for the Bush tax cuts for the one percent of this nation that now own 90 percent of the nation's wealth.
I'm sooooooooooo over that shit.
He isn't fighting because he does not want to fight, and that is the real truth of the matter. Perhaps we need to find that truth inside ourselves, because we were the ones that elected him into office, and what I find saddest about this, is how much President Obama talked about Abraham Lincoln who said:
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
16th president of US (1809 - 1865)
It's time for President Obama to finally stand up for what and who he believes in, or move the hell aside. There is too much at stake here, and if the Democrats, do not realize that the 'Rules of Engagement Have Changed' then perhaps we will all get exactly what we deserve, won't we.
One more real fighter that knows how to fight:
Thanks Anthony for showing us what the great leaders in our party stand for....and what we stand for and who we are about.
And thanks to the great Kossacks who gave their great ideals today, to lead us back to sanity and dissent, which is why I love my party, and BTW, why I still love my President.
The greatest thing about my party today, is how alive we really are, how engaged we really are and how worthy we are now, for those leaders that came before us. Unlike the Republican 'savages' we still have room to grow, the real question is does our new President?
Ms. B.