I'm a democrat, a progressive and I'm sure by the end of this diary I'll be called a troll, traitor and apologist for the evil Obama. But, I am also a pragmatist.
We have one issue facing this country -- ONE, we have an imminent financial trainwreck underway that will not just cripple our way of life but completely gut our hard won victories on the proper social safety net. Let me say it more clearly: the US (and most of the developed world) is out of money - we have used up the tricks at the Fed (largely), If the US (and many developed countries are in worse shape) were a business we would have to contemplate bankruptcy. We must keep GDP growing and make some dramatic changes to spending and increase tax reciepts. It is very hard. There are few degrees of freedom and lots of ways to blow up the world economy.
If we don't radically change our spending (while keeping GDP growing) we quickly hit a wall. We simply have to reduce spending -- and that means precisely cutting some aspects of the costs of Social Security and Medicaid. We can not avoid the crisis without including these cuts in the solution. It is mathematically impossible. Please know that of course we simultaneously need to raise the corporate tax rate (we are the lowest in the developed world), raise taxes on the wealthy and super wealthy, AND reduce defense costs among other things. But to think we can get to some level of solvency without including our pet progressive agenda is naive or ill informed. Yes I'll be pissed if we don't see a balance in whatever solution is to be struck, but we'll have to give too, sorry.
Of course we want better social security, healthcare, regulations, etc. but it is a disservice to the awesome intellectual capacity of this group to discuss this in a vacuum without considering the costs and particularly the simply unsustainable increases that occur automatically to Medicaid/SS. Unfortunately compromise is required to get us to solvency. We can't all have our ponies while denying all ponies to the other kids. If you think that Obama should go down in a blaze of progressive glory now when we have a chance to get back Congress in 2012 and have 4 more years of pragmatic DEMOCRATIC leadership -- I couldn't disagree more. The independents matter and frankly he is making tradeoffs that must be made to avoid financial calamity. If we weaken him we end up with Romney or worse. Obama isn't perfect by any means, but he is doing some phenomenal things and I've got his back.
I love DailyKos which is a multiple time per day affirmation (on most days) that there are other sane people out there who want what is right for the country (and the world). But it is just incomplete to think we can cooly dissect the great social problems of the country without taking into account the financial impacts. The amount of diaries that balance the progressive agenda with the realities of where Bush left us with our budget deficit are near zero.
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