Howdy. I'm one of the people on the left who had been very, very critical of Obama over the past two years.
I have also been one of the people who has called out the knee-jerk supporters of Obama -- I call them Obama Cultists, because I find their conduct generally to be that of indoctrinated fanatics -- who will support Obama no matter what he does, even when they criticized Bush for the same conduct.
I have pretty much drawn my lines in the sand on various topics. Anyone who is interested is welcome to follow me below the fold for the laundry-list of the things that I'm angry about, and very little of that has changed.
The reason for this diary, however, is to give props to Obama where I think they are due. While I'm not happy with the fact that Obama had to compromise, I think that the compromise that he struck was appropriate. I'm pleased with the outcome, and I think that many criticisms from the left are overblown. My thoughts are below the fold, for any who care.
Let me being with my usual laundry list, which has changed a little since last summer. I used to bitch that Obama had made promises on abortion and DADT that he broke from the beginning of his presidency.
I've also been appalled at his reversal on closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, his use of military commissions, his assertions of the state secrets privilege and executive privilege, his economic policies which favor making huge payouts to large financial institutions but have afforded virtually no relief to common people (that is, people with incomes of less than $250,000 per year). I have been angrered deeply by his administrations belief that american can be arrested and detained, or even ordered killed, without a trial (or held indefinately after trial because they are too dangerous to release). I don't like his willingness to contunue war, perhaps indefinitely, for what appears to be no good reason.
I've been disgusted with his health care reform, which I believe was a sell-out from the beginning. I've also been appalled with his attempt to pretend to listen to the left, all the while selling them out. In my opinion, Obama would do well to stop treating the Progressives as if they were stupid -- for example, he spent two years pretending that he did not have the power to stop DADT prosecutions, when anyone who read the statute saw he did in fact have that power. And I've been particularly upset by his decision to agressively prosecute selected leakers or those who protest his policies -- holding Bradley Manning in pre-trial detention naked and in solitary to break his will, or prosecuting as felons those who chain themselves to a white house fence to challenge DADT.
From my perspective, his greatest betrayal to date has been the asinine cat food commission, which he stocked with people who want to radically reform social security, in an attempt apparently to give him cover for a sociual security "reform" which goes utterly contrary to the principles of the democratic party. I've also indicated that the two areas which are my lines in the sand are Social Security "reform" which results in a substantial decrease of benefits and any compromise of women's rights, particularly on the topic of abortion.
So, that's where I stand. This is a pretty big list, when you look at it -- and it was bigger before the repeal of DADT. No one, reading this last, would assume that I am a knee-jerk Obama supporter.
And so, it is with some surprise that I note that I don't think Obama or the Democrats did particularly bad in their negotiation over this fiscal year's budget. Obama and the Democrats need, at a minimum, to offer up concessions to show that it was the Republicans who were being unreasonable. They did so, and the cuts made -- while not what I would have wanted in any sense -- reflect about what I wpould have expected anyway. The cuts are certainly painful, but they made it such that the Republicans would have looked utterly insane if they shut down the government. That strategy worked -- and the Republicans knew it.
The Republicans responded by trying to defund Planned Parenthood -- that was their demand, remember. They probably would have been willing to cave a little on this -- cut the funding by half and starve the organization into submission; kill it the next time round. Obama responded by saying no, this issue was non-negotiable, cuts to Title X were not on the table. And the Republicans blinked. They tried to push on this issue and got nowhere. They sat looking at Obama and Obama stared them down on women's rights.
I gotta tell you: this makes me feel a bit better about Obama. He made some small cuts which will certainly be painful to many people, but on an issue of principle -- women's health -- he said no.
I'm still mad about Gitmo. And detention. And Bradley Manning. And the way that health care reform went down. And the lingering threat to social security. And lots of other things. But I can now say two things about President Obama -- he managed to pass a statutory repeal of DADT, and he did not give up on women's health, and was willing to go to the mat on that issue. That's pretty important to people like me.
So: am I happy with Obama? Am I going to stop criticizing him? Am I going to ignore his policy failures? No, no, and most vehemently, no. But I'm not going to say that he did wrong by his compromise on the budget. I think he did pretty well. And if I'm going to criticize what i think he did wrong, I must then also praise what i think he did right.