The latest attack by Obama's apologists against progressives who oppose Obama's habit of consistently giving in to Republicans is an attempt to disparage us with a new label: "emoprog". It's a strategy that's bound to fail for two reasons: Unlike Obama, emoprogs won't sacrifice their principles for policies that do actual harm to our country, and the criticism is completely misplaced. If Obama loses in 2012, it will be because independents, who already are pissed, won't re-elect a weak president.
Emoprogs have tried time and time again to warn Obama about the inherent weakness and fatal nature of the strategy he uses for negotiations. In fact, we tried to explain, back during the health care finance reform debate, that giving in before negotiations had even begun was bad policy that would come back to haunt him later. Now, the only recourse for his apologists is to claim that his hands were tied, a lame excuse they use to try to justify failure after failure after failure.
The result is that Obama has earned a 56% disaproval rating from independent voters for his overall job performance, and a whopping 62% disapproval rating from all adults for his handling of the economy.
That is not because of emoprogs. It's because Obama has failed.
Nevertheless, we'll continue to try to warn Obama about blindly trudging the losing course he has followed, and we'll continue to get the blame for his failures. But that's okay, because if he loses next year, if he and the other neo-liberals in the Democratic Party are humiliated as they were in 2010, then progressives will be ready and able to take the reigns, strengthen the party by actually fighting right-wing Republicans and Democrats, and repairing the damage that they have done to our country.
And the people who don't like us can either deal with the issues or continue to lose, but that's their choice.
Of course, if Obama does decide to listen to the warnings, if he does decide to stand up to Republicans (although it might be too late for him to try that), if he does begin to actually succeed in bringing change and recovery to the country, then he still might pull off a victory next year. If so, then emoprogs will have succeeded in our goal, because our goal is not to defeat Barack Obama. Our goal is to make our country better.
I am proud to serve that role. I am proud to wear the label "emoprog".