Organizing for America, the group that runs barackobama.comand which sends out emails signed by Mirtch Stewart asked that supporters watch a video of President Obama's justification for the "Compromise" and to then submit a comment.
As my other diaries demonstrate, I am usually supportive of President Obama, and often try to identify a silver lining or at least a strategic goal whenever he has dissapointed me. However, the cumulative effect has put me near the edge of dropping my support, and as a cry for help, I wanted to at least send out a warning since I think I typify many other liberals. I may have gone overboard, but I could not resist the invitation to list my concerns. What I wrote is below the fold.
I am not pleased with the President’s compromise on taxes, and I am now considering my options. I know from my immersion in political periodicals and blogs that just as the Republicans’ poor performance engendered the Tea Party, the President's disappointing performance is creating a left leaning insurgency. The disappointment did not suddenly arise from what happened during the past few days. Rather, we Democrats have had to absorb a litany of right wing actions embraced by the President. Irritating examples include:
(1) The President’s decision to escalate (rather than end) the war;
(2) abandoning net neutrality;
(3) waiting until the last minute to bring up important issues like the current tax issues and the START Treaty;
(4) supporting Democrats who took positions that the conservative Republicans loved (e.g., corporatists like Blanche Lincoln);
(5) accepting a watered down Stimulus Package and watered down Wall Street regulations;
(6) failing to investigate and prosecute any significant Wall Street miscreants (i.e., at AIG, Goldman, and BOA) while allowing the Attorney General to making a big deal about prosecuting penny ante, insignificant violators;
(7) failing to even consider investigating Bush Administration war crimes, let alone prosecuting them;
(8) approving some of the Draconian measures of the Deficit Commission that would further enrich the wealthy while making the middle class pay the greater price;
(9) failing to do anything meaningful to stop foreclosures while ignoring legal precedent and wrong doing when rescuing banks;
(10) giving banks billions of dollars in interest free aid and allowing them to use those tax dollars to buy interest paying Government Bonds - thus increasing our debt while not doing anything to stimulate the economy;
(11) failing to demand that tens of billions of dollars be put to work on infrastructure and Green Energy projects to attack unemployment, especially where similar sums were given to rich people as tax breaks, and to banks and financial institutions as supposed incentives;
(12) failing to have the SBA and other agencies spread out money in poor and lower middle class communities when the barriers for starting a new business were lower due to the timidity of established businesses - thus depriving the country of a chance to augment the middle class with minority businessmen and the employment boost they would provide;
(13) failing to pass any immigration reform, or to even put a plan on the table thus jeopardizing the Democrats attraction to the immigrant voters;
(14) delaying the implementation of the most meaningful health reform measures so that insurance companies had a chance to game the system and build in inequities while simultaneously, holding out a false promise to those who needed the reforms to be implemented immediately;
(15) failing to use the bully pulpit to pressure vulnerable Republicans in Congress and to call them out on the treachery of their positions; and most of all,
(16) not having the courage to deviate from the war, tax or financial policies Bush put in place.
The President has rightly been accused of taking for granted his supporters who worked the hardest to get him elected. There is reason for the President to feel confident when his opponent is someone like John McCain since from my own point of view, for example, I would sooner vote for the pet goat in the book Bush was reading to the school kids on 9-11 than for McCain or his ilk. But we in the Democratic party have a window to replace the President as a candidate, and if our buyer's remorse is not abated promptly, you can expect us to look for a credible alternative. I was heartbroken when LBJ decided to not run for a 2nd elected term, and I am heartbroken every time I hear this President offer his supporters an alibi for the gratuitous concessions he has repeatedly made to the Republicans in Congress. In fact, to be candid, I regret my ardent support for the President, the many thousands of dollars I contributed and raised for his primary and presidential campaigns, the huge number of people I convinced and brought to the polls to vote. I cannot help but conclude that the President has become a sell out artist who appears to be afraid of a fight or a defeat- and he is afraid therefore to lead.
Before giving up and giving in, the President should have determined if the Democrats were willing to live with the consequences of a failed negotiation with the Republicans. We Democrats are patriotic Americans and would gladly be willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of the country. The President apparently does not know his base very well and confused us with the selfish Republicans who are indeed interested in only what is good for them. In short, the President had no reason to assume Democrats are unwilling to make sacrifices to achieve a proper result. Compared to the sacrifices our troops make, the middle class would not even register on any scale. If the President asked us to give up a temporary gain for a valuable end game, we would stand with him; and if he asked us to give up benefits for the sake of the less fortunate amongst us, we would rally to that cause as good citizens. Moreover, the sacrifice would not be great since the actual amount of the tax cuts vel non will be likely to not change anyone's life.
The President’s "compromise" is insidious and contrary to the altruistic platform he ran on. For example, the "compromise" ignores and abandons the 99ers who will get no unemployment insurance starting on their 100th week even though they want to work, and will suffer the poverty and fate of those in the Third World. Where is your 11th hour compromise that saves them the misery that awaits them; and I heard estimates that by February there will be more than 5 million people who will have been unemployed more than 100 weeks. Worse, giving the Republicans every last thing that they demanded in exchange for illusory Republican inspired things such as the family credit and other tax cuts (since all tax cuts are favored by Republicans) that the President must now falsely disguise as things he wrung out of the Republicans (and Brer Rabbit said to Brer Bear, "Oh please don’t put me in the briar patch"). The President can sugar coat and put lipstick on these so called concessions from the Republicans, but the fact that they themselves advocated them is in the public record.
To avoid admitting to the castration he and our Democratic Party have been subjected to, the President today exhibited false bravado and threats of a fight. But it is quite common to hear a coward scream, "let me at em" after the fight is over and the other guy walked away a clear winner. Does the President think the Democrats just fell off a turnip truck?
Sadly, I feel we are leaderless and rudderless. As a trial lawyer, I have been fighting and strategizing for clients since 1972, and I can usually recognize by style, tone, timing and content when my opponent in the courtroom is not a veteran of battle, is not scarred (and made wiser) from belligerent interactions with a hard ball player, and is therefore naïve. I fear the President's earlier career lacks the kind of confrontation and hard ball skirmishes that train even the most ordinary trial lawyers.
It is an embarrassment to see the President, a man I view as the most brilliant and talented of all of modern leaders in the civilized world, be bested by the robotic, backwards thinking, clumsy Republican leaders in Congress.
Perhaps the President needs a whole new team who will put him in touch with reality and help him embrace a Realpolitik approach to dealing with the Republicans in Congress who are more than his opponents- they are his enemies because any thing other than a hard right agenda is inimical to their financial supporters and the idiotic, rank and file right wing sheep who are motivated by ignorance, bigotry and ill will. To hear the President describe Republican leaders as if they were good Americans who just have a different point of view is so wrongheaded, it makes me ill; and if the President believes that kind of approach will win over the undecideds, he lacks any insight into why those people are undecided: they do not care about civics or politics, and view elections like football games where they will vote for the novelty or if there is none, the candidate that looks the strongest. In other words, they want to elect a warrior, not someone who sounds like a soft spoken family therapist.