On April 28, 2009, there was a lot of celebration here because Arlen Specter, the then 29-year Republican seniaor Senator from Pennsylvania, had switched parties. In fact, a diary made it on the rec list celebrating this fact. In response, I wrote a diary which I believe was a much needed wake-up call to the progressive base, at a time when the Obama Presidency was still young.
I wrote:
The gloating today has been painful, very painful. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. You never want to peak too early, and Obama is peaking very, very early.
(...)
The economy is badly, badly sick and so far Obama has shown no inkling that he has an idea to fix what's sick with it
Apparently, at the time, this message was too much for some to take. I would argue that I was being prescient; that if the community had seen things my way then, much heartache could have been avoided and more intelligent strategic decisions could have been taken. Expectations would have been tamped down. But the response of most here was to call my diary concern trolling. It was not. But I was even more harsh.
I further wrote:
Do Americans understand the crisis we are in, or the fact that the government has found no solution, or that no one has found any solution?
(...)
Where is Obama on this? What is his idea? A $787 billion stimulus will not be enough. He needs to articulate a whole new economic paradigm, and so far he has been coming up short.
And perhaps most provacatively to some I wrote:
In the end, he will become the most reviled President since Herbert Hoover, if not more so, and all of your gloating today will only look humiliating in proportion to the extent of your present pride.
(...)
How can you celebrate this man before he accomplishes something, at a time like this? How can you celebrate anything? Particularly a senile old turd like Arlen Specter who is a political dinosaur anyway? First black President?
(...)
generations will grow up knowing that the "first black President" who was so greatly feted was a failure.
(...)
Enough with the celebrations. I'll celebrate when we deliver something to the American people. I'll celebrate when Obama gets a grip on the economy.
The last sentence was my conclusion.
I didn't write that diary to "concern troll" or demoralize the community. I wrote the diary because I was looking down the pike that April, and I saw these huge problems coming down them, and at the time, the biggest progressive voices out there weren't yet articulating these concerns. The mood then was still unrealistically positive.
Specter, whose defection was seen as a huge coup that day, went on to get yelled at in a quintessential Pennsylvania town hall, where a man literally screamed in his face and a woman told him that he had helped "awaken the sleeping giant." He went on to lose the Democratic primary to Joe Sestak, who in turn went on to lose to Specter's 2004 Club for Growth-backed primary challenger, Patrick Toomey, albeit by a narrower-than-expected margin.
When I look back on my 'Stop Gloating' diary now, I can't see the tip jar. But I can see 189 comments there to come and attack me. And yet today, now on this site, I see many comments that echo what I tried to say those 20 months ago.