Yes, on all fronts where real measures were needed the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress quite simply chickened out. Maybe they did not know the dire circumstances Republican rule had really created, or maybe they did not want to rock the boat too much. However, either way constituted a failure in leadership and vision. One thing is for sure. There is simply no need in having Progressive ideals that you know are right if you are too timid to fight for them.
As Paul Krugman recently pointed out, despite a huge mandate from the American people that is unfortunately what we got, and Progressive vision was never employed:
If Democrats do as badly as expected in next week’s elections, pundits will rush to interpret the results as a referendum on ideology. President Obama moved too far to the left, most will say, even though his actual program — a health care plan very similar to past Republican proposals, a fiscal stimulus that consisted mainly of tax cuts, help for the unemployed and aid to hard-pressed states — was more conservative than his election platform.
A few commentators will point out, with much more justice, that Mr. Obama never made a full-throated case for progressive policies, that he consistently stepped on his own message, that he was so worried about making bankers nervous that he ended up ceding populist anger to the right.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I mean, these folks would not even fight for a Public Option in healthcare when 2 out of 3 Americans wanted it. They ceded the argument to the most extreme and zealous among us in a desperate attempt to placate the bankers. The very bankers that had been bailed out.
Then, when it came time to bail out working America, all of us the Administration and Democrats in Congress once again ceded the argument to the very zealots who had caused our problems. The stimulus was not the problem the problem was that by trying to "reach out" to the greediest and least patriotic among us they passed a stimulus that was not nearly enough as they had miscalculated just how bad the mess they inherited really was. Hence, from the beginning the stimulus was doomed to fail and the American people do not realize just how bad things could have been without it:
To avoid this fate, America needed a much stronger program than what it actually got — a modest rise in federal spending that was barely enough to offset cutbacks at the state and local level. This isn’t 20-20 hindsight: the inadequacy of the stimulus was obvious from the beginning.
What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus has been a political catastrophe. Yes, things are better than they would have been without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the unemployment rate would probably be close to 12 percent right now if the administration hadn’t passed its plan. But voters respond to facts, not counterfactuals, and the perception is that the administration’s policies have failed.
What is really the most demoralizing on a few fronts is the fact that the failure of the Administration to fight for Progressive vision will now cause that vision to be unfairly scapegoated. While the bleeding was stopped the policies that would have improved our economy simply weren't enacted because John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who were so instrumental in causing the mess got some say in the process.
The most frustrating part however, is that Americans are so enamored with the shiny object in our soundbyte driven culture that they care nothing about the facts, and taking the time to discover them. It is much easier to be mad at things you really do not understand and listen to those who know nothing about what they speak. Now, our country is poised to make a monumental mistake that will put us back at the brink of the abyss by rewarding those that caused the problems for not allowing the problems to be fixed:
The resurgent Republicans have learned nothing from the economic crisis, except that doing everything they can to undermine Mr. Obama is a winning political strategy. Tax cuts and deregulation are still the alpha and omega of their economic vision.
And if they take one or both houses of Congress, complete policy paralysis — which will mean, among other things, a cutoff of desperately needed aid to the unemployed and a freeze on further help for state and local governments — is a given. The only question is whether we’ll have political chaos as well, with Republicans’ shutting down the government at some point over the next two years. And the odds are that we will.
Which brings us back full circle with plenty of folks to blame. Republicans are to blame for causing the problems, blocking the solutions and clinging to a failed, disgraced vision that has been tried and failed. Democrats are to blame for their cowardice in not standing up for what they knew was right all along because they were timid to anger a group of people that would have hated them to begin with. And the American voter is to blame to, for being to distracted by slogans and other garbage to really find out what has happened and shoulder some of the blame for electing a horrible Republican President twice and giving him a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that allowed all the destruction in our economy we now face.
One thing is for sure. Our country is at a crossroads and we are setting ourselves up for much more pain in the next few years. For folks like me who are barely hanging on, cannot find a better job to improve themselves, still cannot get health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, and hope to have a future that includes a home and a family and all the components of the American dream, the future of our country is indeed very dark.
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