There is currently a diary up that advances the thesis that the people responsible for the wave of GOP attacks on labor and working people are the fault of...progressive critics of President Obama! How are we responsible? Well, we voiced our opinions of the President's abject capitulation to corporate interests. And because we did this in diaries and comments on liberal blogs, millions of Americans sat home or voted for Tea Party GOP legislators!
While it is touching and flattering that this diarist feels that our words had more impact than the actions--and inaction--of President Obama and the Democratic Congress, it is a thesis that calls for a rebuttal.
A President and his political party spend two years breaking their promises and disparaging an important part of their base.
The President totally caves on the moral commitment to restore civil liberties and the rule of law.
While telling auto worker retirees that their contractual retirement benefits don't mean squat if their industry is to be bailed out, the President and his bankster-loving advisers--see "Inside Job"--allow the greedy hogs who crashed the economy to keep their bonuses because--wit for it, wait for it--contracts are inviolable. Not even making an effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. An open door and open phone lines at the Treasury Department for banksters but an "if you don't like it, lump it" for labor.
More war. More blowing up peasant children with Hellfire missiles shot from Predator drones.
A complete ideological unilateral disarmament to the GOP within weeks of taking office. How so? By valorizing "bipartisanship"--yeah, like that was going to work--over passing the program he had campaigned on and bringing the substantive change he promised. Never in my lifetime has a President and a political party so quickly and unthinkingly wasted a precious political mandate.
A complete unwillingness to use his political power as party leader and the power of his office to push recalcitrant and obstructionist Blue Dogs to support key elements of his program. (Yet the President and his staffers have no problem leaning on progressive Congress members.) The result? A stimulus that's too weak and larded with tax cuts (got to have those two bipartisan votes!). No public option even though polls showed it was one of the most popular features of the proposed health care reform package.
Yes, and what about the public option? Here is where the President showed how he really felt about many of his most fervent supporters: He lied to us. It's called "bad faith." As late as the early fall, Obama was still telling crowds how he wanted the public option to be part of health care reform. But he had sold it out to the for-profit hospital lobby in July.
Here is a fact that some folks seem to have a hard time understanding: When people are consistently lied to by a political leader (and party) they trusted, when they are played for fools and patronized, they will turn off and stay home. Throughout the previous two years, those of us who were dissatisfied with the fact that Obama obviously valued the opinions of Blue Dogs, Republicans and corporate lobbyists over the need of working people and the middle class to be out from under the yoke of Reaganism warned that there would be a political reckoning. All those people who stayed away were not likely blog aficionados. I voted, and voted Democratic (albeit while holding my nose), and I also did volunteer phone calling and lit drops. But I'm a political animal. People who aren't likely looked at the lay of the land--Obama and his party promised change and yet it is the same game-playing as usual--and thought "why bother?" Completely predictable and, in fact, predicted.
The fact is that it was Obama himself who opened the door and allowed the GOP back into the game. It happened because of his willful refusal to refute the ideological premises of Reaganomics and Reaganism. In fact, within weeks of his election, by choosing Summers and Geithner, he demonstrated that he had a commitment to sticking with Reaganism.
Because he couldn't or wouldn't saddle conservatives and the GOP with responsibility for the mess they had made--over and over again, because that's how you win political battles--the public was left confused. And into the breech in the summer of 2009 came the astroturfed populists of the tea Party while OFA was twiddling its thumbs (and Obama was letting Brainiac Max Baucus handle health care negotiations, insurance lobbyist at his ear).
Transformative Presidents like FDR (for the better) and Reagan (for the worse) know you have to draw lines and press your political advantage. So FDR blamed "Hoover Republicans" for the Depression and Reagan successfully hammered "tax and spend liberals" for the problems at the end of the 1970's. People could understand those stories (even when, as in the case of Reagan's fable, it wasn't true).
Obama was handed an opportunity to tell the American people the truth about the plight of the middle class and working families. But in order to do that he would have had to fundamentally challenge Reaganism and Reaganomics and its adherents (including those in his own party). He told us when campaigning that he would come to us when he needed support for fundamental change. He didn't do that. Instead, he hired the Geithners and Summers (and almost no strong voices from the fighting progressive wing of the party) and cut backroom deals with hospital and insurance lobbyists. His administration's refusal to hold any banksters to account and, in fact, to let them get away with their unearned wealth resulted in the appearance that he was responsible for Bush's bailout of the rich while millions of workers continue to suffer from unemployment.
He still refuses to challenge Republican talking points on things like the deficit and jobs. He echoes them. He pretends that they are reasonable negotiating partners. They are not.
And yet his apologists blame his progressive critics for this situation. His apologists write diaries detailing the horrific actions of the newly empowered GOP legislators and governors--and they are--and yet somehow forget that the President has consistently echoed--and validated--GOP talking points about the priority of balanced budgets. That the President has consistently portrayed his vicious ideological opponents as reasonable people. He has more of a bully pulpit than we have.
Yet even when the President has public opinion on his side--as was the case with not renewing the Bush tax breaks for the rich--he refuses to press his advantage (and I'm talking with the Reaganites in his party before the 2010 election and the GOP afterward). So he gives away $700 billion to the rich which will be paid for by, among other things, his unilateral cuts to things like low income heating assistance.
What if, instead, he had done what the TV entertainer Jon Stewart did with the issue of health care for 9/11 first responders? The issue was dead but Stewart--who has far less of a bully pulpit than Obama--humanized the stakes and shamed both the mainstream TV media and the GOP. Are you seriously telling me that it was not in Obama's power to bring a group of selected unemployed people to the White House to tell their stories and put a human face on the issue of the need for extended benefits, the economic tragedy? It really wasn't possible for the President to put the GOP on the defensive on that? Jon Stewart could do it on the 9/11 first responders but it was beyond the capability of the President?
We were warning the President and the Democratic Party that they were walking toward a cliff. When they fell, it wasn't because we warned them. It was because they didn't change direction and bring real change and jobs.
(I will be away from the computer for much of the afternoon but will try and respond when I can.)