If you don't like it, leave now.
This is now declared a "free for all" per Kos rules. Grab the saddle and hold the fuck on, oh and don 't forget to pull up your bootstraps.
I'm linking diaries, I'm linking comments and am offering opinion on any number of subjects so there is the fair warning. Stop here if your heart or mind is weak.
This is where we begin.
Specific criticism...
...with specific suggestions for a different approach is our job as progressives, whether the leaders being criticized are insanely right wing, conservative, center-right, center-left, left-center, or whatever.
When it's our choice in the Oval Office, we have a duty as progressives both to have the president's back when he is unfairly or prejudicially attacked, as the current president has been on a whole range of issues, to hold his feet to the fire on issues that he has said he agrees with us on and to argue he should take another approach on issues where we think he is wrong.(I am using "we" and "us" here, but do not claim that all progressives agree on all the issues and should be in lockstep on them.)
What I don't get are those who say "holding his feet to the fire" is somehow a diss of the president, somehow not our role. Such activism is not new. Civil rights leaders had to push the Kennedys. Unions had to push Roosevelt. Gay activists have had to push Obama. Abolitionists had to push Lincoln. That's how progress is achieved.
The other part I don't get is the sneering attitude that emerges when someone says the president should use the bully pulpit to convince Americans on important issues. In fact, Obama has done this on issues that matter to him. He's a master of it. Why should we not urge him to use this skill he is so adept at to spur progress?
But two things really bug me about some critics.
I think criticisms should be balanced by praise. Obama has moved us forward on a range of issues, done things not just that would not have occurred on any Republican president's watch but on that of other Democrats as well. He has, to give just one example, done more than any president (including Jimmy Carter) to boost alternative energy, promoting (and spending vastly more federal dollars on) research, development and commercialization of renewables than Carter, something the Clinton-Gore administration failed miserably at. He should get ample credit for this, and numerous other matters.
The second thing is the predilection of some commenters here—a relatively small but annoying number—who cannot seem to stop themselves from popping into every diary on a subject that includes anything Obama might be even peripherally connected to and dropping some contentless and gratuitous poke in the eye for no purpose other than poking. It's irksome, it derails productive conversations and it pisses off people who might otherwise be persuaded by a reasonable critique to join those who are seeking to push Obama in a new direction on a particular issue. Users here who engage in this kind of drive-by diary contamination deserve all the opprobrium they get.
Sounds good huh?
From the same thread...
"[I]tshould have been obvious then ... (26+ / 0-)
... that we didn't have the luxury of being critics and moving Obama to our purposes."
A version of this remark was made from the minute the first criticism arose in 2009 right up until the middle of 2012 when all but the most avid progressive critics of the president zipped our lips and worked to ensure his re-election.
It's too soon to criticize now, we were told in 2009. He's only been in office for less than a year (during which he ordered the double-surge of 68,000 American troops to Afghanistan). It's a bad year to criticize now, it was said in the election year of 2010. It's terrible to criticize in 2011 given the disaster in November 2010, we were told. It will just give the restored Republican majority in the House comfort and ammo against him. And, of course, 2012 was reelection year, so criticism was out of place there as well.
I believe I have been quite measured in my criticisms and quite sensitive to the timing of them. But, except for narrow windows, the now-is-not-the-right-time-to-criticize theme is malarkey.
Now let's read the rebuttal...
Yeah it hasn't been pretty
But when we look back at 2010, do we now wish we had worked harder to elect more and better dems, or held more of their feet to the fire? Was endless discussion about the horrors of the ACA or blue dogs or the corporatism of Obama more important than keeping a gavel in Nancy Pelosi's hand for the upcoming redistricting? It's not even close, and it should have been obvious then that we didn't have the luxury of being critics and moving Obama to our purposes.
There is exactly the point where you lose. If what the people voted for was enacted it have taken no "work" to keep the sheep.
Then there is this simple fact...
First of all
liberal criticism on blogs such as this played very little, if any, role in the outcome of 2010.
Second, what's important for redistricting is having control over state governments, not Congress.
Third, there's always an election around the corner, so if we didn't have the "luxury" of criticism in 2009-2010, when would we have it?
But someone brings it home...
Are there any guidelines we can use to determine when criticism is helping or hurting? When are people helping quicken progress versus hurting electoral chances?
When I started this I had full intention of calling out those people that dive in without masks but after reading joe's comment I found someone that had the answer and thought,... You know what I'll put it in the hr jar.