This is a trial balloon...we're near a deal.
Well, the deal is awful for anyone who believes in progressive politics.
Those who know me here know that I am a staunch defender of the President. I think he's working against a right-wing propaganda/money machine unlike anything I ever believed possible in the United States.
This diary is more for the people who SHARE my beliefs than those who have been, well, much more cynical (justifiably so?).
So here's my call out on a dismal Sunday...
SCREAM! Call and SCREAM!
I called Senator Kerry's office. I met him before - he was the commencement speaker and I was receiving an alumni award at one of Massachusetts' state colleges. We had a chance to talk. Reasonable, affable guy.
I couldn't get through, but I'll be calling again. My message is simple: If you won't protect us from Nordquist, you don't deserve my time, my money or my vote. Grover Nordquist and the teaparty DO NOT represent my views, nor the views of the vast majority of Americans, and for the Democratic Party to wring its collective hands and so capitulate can only mean one thing to me...you're using the batshit teaparty in order to keep the money flowing from the moneyed interests backing the teaparty.
This is all preliminary, of course: the reports are a trial balloon. I still think, and hope, we get to a 14th Amendment moment by the President, because only then will the debate be crystallized enough to sink in to the average American who does not watch cable news or read blogs.
But the only way to deal with a trial balloon is to hit it...with a freaking ice pick.
So call and scream, fellow Obama supporters. Present your bona fides - refer to your diaries here and in other places where you've defended the President on many previous occasions...and then not-so-politely explain that those days, well, they are over if this deal is half as awful as it looks.
SCREAM!
Do NOT personify this onto the lap of President Obama - that is the WORST thing we can do. If something awful happens, it has to be with the complicity of the DEMOCRATIC Senate, and will certainly need DEMOCRATIC House votes to get through that body. Blaming this on "the caver-in-chief," or whatever other disparaging moniker you want to throw out there because it makes you feel good does nothing but provide cover to hapless Democrats in the House and Senate.
Call and SCREAM! NOW!
Grover Nordquist on This Week today looked very much like he had swallowed that canary - he knows that his side paid half the "peasants" to kill the other half, and it's working. And it will work unless the other half stands up, right now.
Paul Krugman, excellent as usual, was arguing against Nordquist, when George Stephanopolis stepped in and emphatically said that the President had no leverage because the teaparty Republicans wouldn't budge. George sounded desperate, flustered and frustrated, flailing as if there were no answers.
So there you have it. We need to provide counter leverage, with Democratic Congressmen/women who will become EQUALLY INTRACTABLE over such a one-sided
"compromise." We can't ask the President to win this one for us; we need to DEMAND that the Democratic Party wins this one for America.
SCREAM!
Echoing the excellent thereisnosppon here:
Call (202)224-3121 and ask to speak to (or leave voicemails for) your Representative and Senators--particularly if they're Democrats. Tell them you don't want massive cuts to spending that will throw us even deeper into recession even as corporations are making record profits but not hiring Americans.
It may not be much, but it's worth a shot. It's certainly more valuable than screaming helplessly into the online ether even as austerity mania consumes the nation alive. Do not go gently into that goodnight.