We have been called "Obama haters", and we've been accused of "magical thinking" all the while when, I must remind those "name callers" that we were the very ones who canvassed, made calls, fund-raised, knocked on doors - sometimes in hostile neighborhoods and environments and registered voters for the historic campaign to elect our first Black President, and yes, what we thought at the time was our best Democratic hope.
We have been accused of ignorance of his record, and even of lying about and maligning the President, to what political, emotional or otherwise end, I cannot even begin to fathom.
So I wish to make it very clear that my frustration with the President stems primarily from the fact that I think his centrist/moderate Republican ideas are a) not only bad for me, the economy, for left wing ideas but also indeed for the country and b) also will cost him his re-election, cost us a loss down ticket as well and that will be definitely tragic for us all, cuz I honestly believe that Obama was elected at a historically opportune time with a mandate to provide new left wing ideas and I argue that he still indeed has time!
The President himself implied that we do not understand or care about deficits, when he stated, - and I paraphrase - that we "liberals ought to also be concerned about deficits" and I just want to point out that I am indeed concerned about deficits. I just happen to believe that the way to resolve the deficits is not through painful cuts to essential services especially at a time of such dire economic straits when the government needs to be the spender of last resort, but rather to end ALL of the Bush tax cuts and not just the upper level cuts for millionaires and billionaires as reversing these alone would not be enough. I argue for reversing all of the tax cuts because the extra one or two thousand going to the average American family simply cannot cover the cuts that the current tax cuts have resulted in.
We've been accused of not being capable of being pleased by anything that Obama would do or has done, and expecting or requiring that anything less than total socialism would make us happy, or god knows what, cuz I'm sure we are not all Socialists (I am just for the record).
That is not at all the case... Please follow me after the jump for a small list of practical proposals that I know would definitely make me happy and I believe many other of his critics, but also would re-motivate me and encourage me to work for and do all the same things I did for this President in '08.
First and foremost, with the Recovery Act, the Prez went to the GOP with a request for what he thought the Rethugs would give him, instead of going to congress and asking for slightly more than economists were telling him he needed, which was closer to 2T according to some accounts. Further, not only did he go to the GOP with only what he thought they would be willing to give him, but he also watered the bill down even further making a 1/3 of it tax cuts to appease Rethugs. Well, of course they opposed him on it, while celebrating the tax cuts, they have attacked him for bailouts that don’t work, despite the fact that TARP was not even done by him, and indeed they can, because the bill not being big enough. It did not do enough to turn the economy around and create a recovery that also included sufficient job creation.
What I would have liked to see would have been a President who went to the negotiating table with some cards up his sleeve, rather than coming to the table trying to just get Rethugs to just roll over and say yes. We have two parties for a reason! If the GOP did not oppose Obama, they would be abdicating on their duty to their electorate – that 1% that get all the tax cuts and corporate welfare!
Obama lamented months later in an interview that he was surprised and disappointed that the GOP didn’t just roll over and say yes sir; we love your ideas and your plans. He is a student of history (to a fault in my opinion and I’ll explain later), and you would think that he should have known that the GOP never just lies down and accepts anything, displaying a naiveté that I find surprising in such a seemingly smart guy. Indeed it is a naiveté that he has consistently continued to display in coming to the table again and again with offers that include goodies for the other side, leaving the other side in a position of not needing to negotiate for anything, refuse to play ball, and still get their agenda passed. The result is what I think has been a highly successful GOP agenda that you might only expect if the GOP had major majorities in both houses as well as the Presidency.
Obama is constantly lamenting GOP obstructionism as if that is new. Lyndon B Johnson, did not get the Civil Rights Act passed by having Rethugs roll over. Bush bullied Dems to vote for his wars and his tax cuts despite their unpopularity, particularly Iraq. Clinton had a highly obstructionist House of Representatives, and Reagan used his oratory to appeal directly to the American people. Obama threatened that he would be going to the American people while negotiating with Cantor during the debt ceiling debacle, as if somehow going to the American people to sell his agenda isn’t actually in fact the only part of the Presidency that is indeed his main job when it comes to legislation and his only power other than the veto pen.
Secondly with regard to Healthcare, all I wanted was to see the Prez fight for the public option, which I may remind you, was his idea. It may still not have been part of the bill, but at least, I would have wanted to see the prez fight for it. Instead what Obama did was fight liberals in congress against his own proposal, favoring instead, the GOP idea of the individual mandate, which is now the basis of the appeals against the bill, and which is in fact a lousy aspect of the bill. If healthcare was cheap enough, I wouldn’t need to be forced to buy it or face fines. I would have also liked to see Obama allow for the negotiation with pharma for cheaper drugs, as well as allow for the importation of even cheaper Canadian drugs.
My biggest beef with Obama however was his pushing of Dems to pass an extension of the Bush tax cuts during the lame duck session. I believe that the Bush tax cuts are single handedly the most damaging piece of Bush legislation that could have been undone. I wholeheartedly believe that they are the reason we are in the mess we’re in with federal, state and city jobs getting cut and thus making it impossible to make dents in the unemployment rate. The raid on the treasury that was the Bush tax cuts has left us in the deficit mess that is the reason for the recent budget and debt ceiling debacles.
Obama and Dems (and in this I fully blame both houses of congress for going along), were afraid of getting attacked by the GOP a) for raising taxes and b) for allowing the expiration of the extended unemployment benefits. I would have liked to see Obama and Dems stare Rethugs down, allow them to expire and let the public decide who ended UI extensions. Further when the GOP house came back, Obama could have and should have then pushed them for an extension of UI, and negotiated with them and allow them some of the tax cuts but not all.
There is a reason that the FBI and all law enforcement does not negotiate with hostage takers, and that is because if they were to start, they believe that it would encourage even greater levels of hostage taking. It is a basic rule of dealing with hostage takers. By blinking and showing that Obama will not stare down the GOP on anything has made the GOP very bold, knowing that they can take hostages in any situation and win because Obama makes it clear on every occasion exactly what his cards are, and what they are not. With the debt ceiling debacle for example, Obama made it clear that he had no intention of evoking the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling! Why tell your opponent while negotiating exactly how much power they have over you?!
I was a 99er myself btw for the record, and I am still of the view that ending them was worth allowing the treasury to start to raise the necessary revenues that would have allowed the government to continue the very necessary aid to states that would have helped stem all the public sector layoffs that have continued during Obama’s presidency, and with that the multiplier effect that comes with greater economic stability, and greater spending power of the American worker/consumer! With the extension of the treasury raid, we certainly need the UI extensions unfortunately!
I didn’t actually get too flustered with the budget negotiations, except for one thing which is that we should not have been discussing deficits in the first place. As far as the cuts, both those negotiated in the budget talks, as well as the in the debt ceiling debacle, most of them are superficial especially given that no congress can be held to the budgets of any previous congress, and as such in reality, as long as the immediate cuts were minimal, which they were in both bills, the rest is really just hot air.
The thing that bothers me about these negotiations however is that the prez in listening to GOP criticism, has constantly fallen into their traps and constantly allowed them to set the agenda of what we are focusing on and talking about. The prez is so eager to appease and stymie the GOP’s attacks on him that it seems he takes whatever actions they demand from him, falling for every single one of their tricks, giving them policy triumphs, but also laying himself bare to their attacks. I argued this during the primaries and this confounds me in that he seems to have still not learnt that when he is fighting on his opponent’s turf, he is fighting a losing battle, because as long as one is fighting on their opponent’s agenda one will be playing defense!
Even with this most recent debacle over the jobs speech. The prez simply fell into the GOP’s trap, where they kept demanding “where are the jobs” very conveniently while they were out of power. Now that they are in power, they have changed the tune to deficits – always placing Obama against the ropes. The reality is that in fact, Obama was focused on and has been working on the economy from the day after he was elected! (although not in the way I thought would have been most effective)
The very fact that he fell for it, and decided to go ahead and appease them by “pivoting” to jobs, leaves him bare to the criticism and ridicule about why it has taken him all of three years to start focusing on jobs, and how can he ever argue with those attacks when he has just gone ahead and validated them by going ahead and stating that in fact he is now starting to work on job creation?! And make no mistake about it, the ridicule and criticism has already begun. Just watch the glee with which tweety harps on about how he was not focused for over a year dealing instead with healthcare as if healthcare isn’t one of the biggest economic challenges of this country!
Once I got over the sheer stupidity of falling for this trap, I was routing for the prez hoping to see him go big with a bold proposal. I couldn’t believe it however, when I saw the spat with Boehner developing and it was so clear that Boehner was going to say no as the day progressed, which was a clear example of what I have often criticized as the amateurism of this White House’s communication’s department. I was mad to see him agree to go to congress on the day that Boehner agreed to rather than what I would have liked to see which would have been the prez going ahead and making the speech form the oval office, or even better from some other public venue.
In the grand scheme of things however, the spat is minor and I am still willing to hold out hope that on Thursday Obama will come out with a solid and robust infrastructure program that he will seriously go out to bat for. This along with a direct federal hiring plan that would create public sector jobs along with extra money to stem the current hemorrhaging of public sector jobs would renew my faith and would leave me feeling again, enthusiastically motivated to work doing all the same things I did for this prez in '08.
I am of the view that Obama came in to power at a time when the American populace was really ready, waiting and anticipating for new left wing progressive ideas to turn the country around. I honestly believe that he could have instituted a windfall tax on Wall Street bonuses over, say, half a million, or even possibly lower, as well as windfall taxes on oil and energy companies with the usual attacks on Dems as hostile to corporations not being able to stick and the people would have stuck by him.
As it is, in his fear of GOP attacks, he instead cozies up to Wall Street at a time when Wall Street is so unpopular, succeeding to piss of populists on both sides from tea baggers to socialists, all while getting hammered by the GOP and even Wall Street!
I even believe the prez could have proposed a measure such as they took in the UK where the government gave grants to nonprofit housing associations who bought most of the homes facing foreclosure, and then renting them out to their previous owners in new rent-to-own schemes and thus ensuring that no family with young kids or any one else with vulnerabilities lost their homes. As it is, all programs aimed at helping homeowners were put in the hands of banks, which have only used them for their own profits, and still left homeowners with no help.
I said earlier that I would explain Obama being a student of history to a fault and it’s because I truly believe that he has been so busy reading history and been leading based on old fights that he has missed his own moment and the very special circumstances in place during his own time, missing the great opportunity to make his own history in even greater, more dramatic ways. He has been so busy trying to avoid George Bush’s mistakes of say “mission Accomplished” failing to tout his own foreign policy successes. He has been so busy trying to avoid being seen as out of touch such as the senior George H. W. Bush, as well as McCain’s “the (American) economy is fundamentally strong” that he has constantly talked down the economy. He has been so busy trying to emulate Clinton and make third way compromises, and missed the fact that I honestly believe after 30 years of right leaning economics that are clearly not beneficial to the average American, even if at times they can be seen to be great for GDP growth, the American people were ready to try a new left leaning course! I believe that Obama was so loathe to face the usual anti-Dem attacks of anti-corporatist that he would not go after the banks, or the oil companies or attempt a truly effective homeowner package. This I think is one of Obama’s shortcomings, which is why he has often seemed so out of touch. He is at his very heart, an academic, and he uses academics to guide him in his leadership style – it seems.
His other shortcoming as per Axelrod is that he is highly sensitive to attacks and what others say about him, which would explain why he is so busy trying to appease the GOP!
I believe that Obama was elected with a mandate by a country ripe and ready to be re-centered back to a more left wing sensibility and defining a clear and positive role for government, the same way that Reagan re-centered the country to the right, and re-defined the government as useless. He has chosen not to take on this mantle, choosing instead to go down the non-confrontational route.
I believe that team Obama has determined that he must never be seen as the angry black man, and I honestly believe this is the one thing he could possibly never recover from. That said this man has confounded me numerous times, including the many during which I wrote him off during the primaries, and especially including his rebound from the ranting reverend. My frustration with his unwillingness to confront the GOP however stems from the fact that as a seemingly smart man, with clearly amazing rhetorical abilities, he could take the GOP on, by going directly to the American people without ever missing a beat or losing that famous grin!
8:15 AM PT: O.K. O.K, I removed the shiny object line about jail or fines for failure to purchase health insurance, and I stand corrected - with regard to the jail part. Now can we debate on merit?!
Are we liberals incapable of fighting with one voice for our own aims, which as far as I can see are mostly the same progressive principles for all of us?!