Peter Daou diagrams why we are burning precious public discourse time talking about terror babies and Islamic terror citadels of victory in the heart of lower Manhattan while the real problems of the country fester, mostly undiscussed:
There is a simple formula for rightwing dominance of our national debate, even when Democrats are in charge: move the conversation as extreme right as possible, then compromise toward the far right. Negotiation 101. And it’s completely lost on Democrats....
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) will call Tuesday for the mass firing of the Obama administration’s economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House adviser Larry Summers....
In one fell swoop, this becomes the starting point of a conversation....
Perhaps, in the spirit of bipartisanship and meeting the Republicans halfway, the administration will compromise by shedding just half the current economic team. (Not that that, substantively, would be a bad thing; lose Geither and Summers and pick up Krugman and Stiglitz, and maybe the country could get quickly on the road to recovery.)
It’s no accident that in 21st century America, torture has been mainstreamed, climate denial has taken firm hold, book burning, racial dog whistles and brazen religious intolerance are part of our discourse and par for the course. This is how the right plays the game, using Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox, Drudge, blogs, chain emails, talk radio, etc. to shamelessly and defiantly drag the conversation as far right as possible.
This, Daou argues, is the single biggest reason progressives are angry at President Obama. He's not just failed to change that dynamic, he's fallen for it hook line and sinker.
Forget the thousand explanations pundits have offered for the administration’s beef with the left; this is the single biggest reason the left is furious with Obama: that one by one, he has willingly and unnecessarily bargained away the progressive positions that would move the national debate back to the center. After all, the counterweight to the right is not the mushy middle, it’s the principled left.
The principled left, in elected office and unabashedly making the case for why progressive policies are better than conservative ones for the country - wow, there's a concept.
Even if there was no realistic path to getting to a single-payer health care system, stopping the looting of the country by moneyed interests, and holding the previous administration responsible for its excesses and lawbreaking, at least we were hoping Democrats as a party would try to make the case why those, for a start, were good things instead of just giving in. We didn't expect to lose without even trying to put up a fight.