Monday, September 16, 2013

Revoking Obama's Liberal Card

For the past several years, Obama’s left flank has been growling at him to be more progressive. With the need to stay in power, they’ve remained silent as he’s screwed them time and again and made a mockery of their issues. But as I told you, the left will only remain silent for so long, and once it becomes clear that their guy has failed, they follow a predictable pattern: surprise (“huh, why isn't he doing more”), deflection (“the Republicans stopped him!”), anger (“he isn't trying hard enough”), disavowal (“he was never really a liberal”), and betrayal (“he betrayed us from the get go”). They do this every time. It looks like we're somewhere between disavowal and betrayal at the moment. Indeed, according to Politico, several leftists have just “revoked his liberal card.”
● Said Rep. Alan Grayson: “I don’t think that anyone at this point would characterize the president as the progressive warrior that the progressive movement is anxious to see.”

● According to Politico, Dennis Kucinich blames Obama for “poisoning the movement by seeming to support it, while actively betraying it.” Kucinich claims that on foreign policy, national security, privacy, the economy, health care, Social Security and workers’ rights, Obama has “wrongly been perceived as liberal” and has thereby managed to “successfully usurp any legitimate liberal agenda.”
What has these and others so outraged?

Well, for one thing, failure breeds contempt. Things aren’t going well for Obama on any front. His healthcare plan is the “bumbling dead” with bad rates, bad data security and a public who refuse to “end their confusion” and drink the Kool-Aid. Its days are numbered. His economic record is the worst since the 1930s. His foreign policy is a joke, to say the least, and makes a mockery of supposed liberal principles.

Indeed, let’s start with that. Liberalism has correctly claimed that a US foreign policy in which the US wears a white hat instead of a dirty black-spotted hat would benefit the US and the world. Reputation matters and being seen as someone who will always stand for right will pay huge dividends. Unfortunately, liberals mis-define what is right. Rather than standing for opposition to aggression, free markets, individual rights and freedoms, and the isolation of bad actors, liberals want the US to surrender its control to international organizations, to never defend its own interests, and to use the military to enforce certain ticky-tacky things, e.g. stop dictators from killing people, but only if they use “illegal” weapons to do it.

In fact, for decades the left has cited this example as the one time they would absolutely, guaranteed be willing to use force: some dictator in a country where the US has no conceivable economic, geopolitical or national defense interest uses chemical weapons against a minority he has been oppressing. Bingo!! Syria. But now they’ve proven that even that is a lie and Obama has led the way in wishy-washying his way through it.

In any event, here are some other things to consider:
● This year, the top 1% of earners in the US took in 19.3% of all income. That’s the largest percentage taken in by those people since 1927 and is much worse than it was under the evil Bush.

● Obamacare is going to kill the unions. They know this and they are desperate to stop it. In fact, they’ve appealed personally to Obama to exempt them from Obamacare so they won’t face extinction. What happened? The headline from Forbes tells the story perfectly: “White House To Unions: Drop Dead”.

● Remember all those leftists with the signs about Wall Street being full of crooks and how they needed to be held accountable for the financial crisis? Do you remember how they claimed Bush somehow caused Enron and then did nothing about it? The Bush Justice Department put 12 Enron executives behind bars... some are still there. So far, not a single banker has been arrested for the financial crisis by Team Obama.

● Black unemployment in August finally returned to 12.6% (43% for teens), that’s down from a high of 16.5%. That 12.6% percent, by the way, was the worst level reached under Bush in December 2008... at the height of the financial crisis. So blacks were better off every single day under Bush than they have been on any day under Obama.

● Under Obama, the Supreme Court has all but killed affirmative action, it’s established gun ownership as a right, it neutered the Voting Rights Act, it’s so far refused to grant gay marriage... and Obama has done nothing about any of this. Obama hasn't even done anything to reverse the Court's campaign finance reform decision. These are all things the left squealed about, and he ignored them.

● Gitmo, drones, killing terrorists without a court order, spying on everyone and everything... these were “war crimes” under Bush, but are now SOP under Obama.

● Obama’s carbon regulation efforts stop and start with power plants. Whoopee. His green loans program turned into a crony cash machine. He hasn’t killed coal. He hasn’t banned nuclear. He hasn’t stopped fracking. He hasn’t banned the use of oil. All he's done is hold up one pipeline.

● Obama was meant to revive the era of Big Government, yet polls show that the public’s trust in government is at an all time low. According to Gallup, only 42% of the public has faith that the government can handle domestic issues. That does not future socialists make.
This is why the left is outraged and feels betrayed. And as we tip further into the betrayal phase, look for a steady attack from the left at Obama's ties to Big Business and the establishment.

As an interesting aside, leftist blogger Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) was asked to identify liberal leaders right now and he noted that there were almost none in the White House or the cabinet. Instead, he identified Elizabeth Warren (Senate), Luis Gutierrez (House), Rachel Maddow (MSNBC), Dan Savage (LGBT activist), Richard Trumka (AFL-CIO) and Bill McKibben (environmental writer). That’s hardly an endorsement for Team Obama.

42 comments:

Patriot said...

Andrew.......Yet he is still President. If he's lost the far left, never had the right and the middle is ambivalent, he at least has the levers of the federal gov't. He has the DOJ to prosecute, the EPA to regulate, the IRS to bankrupt and a pernicious, overall attitude and approach to destroy the Left's opposition......Republicans and TP'ers.

So, like a wounded, pretty tiger, he is still very dangerous and capable of inflicting lasting harm to this country, it's citizens (on the right) and it's standing in the world.

Betrayed? Maybe on the lunatic fringe, but his vision of transforming (harming) America is still happily accepted by the majority of the left I believe, and will continue once he's gone.

Tennessee Jed said...

nicely presented, although as you point out, hardly unexpected, but rather predictable. In a way, it is similar to the reverse of how Bush was viewed. To many Democrats, Bush was a solid conservative, although that is hardly how he was viewed by conservatives. Almost all presidents tend to run to the base and govern closer to the center. This is more noticeable than ever since the country has been so evenly divided, and we live in a 24/7 world of coverage. What is interesting to me is how team Obama has taken the exact opposite approach from Bush who larely ignored the attacks. Team Obama largely responds to every attack, even if they sound silly. Just look at Jay Carney stating how it was our sabre rattling that caused Assad to blink, or how Obama calls his critics more interested in style points. In the end, I'm not sure if any of it makes a difference. We hav to figure out how to beat Hillary. Unless something changes, she will be waddling around in her pants suits being called Madame President.

Anthony said...

Andrew said:

But as I told you, the left will only remain silent for so long, and once it becomes clear that their guy has failed, they follow a predictable pattern: surprise (“huh, why isn't he doing more”), deflection (“the Republicans stopped him!”), anger (“he isn't trying hard enough”), disavowal (“he was never really a liberal”), and betrayal (“he betrayed us from the get go”). They do this every time.
-----
I agree, but the fact this always happens makes it meaningless. The left will rally around Hillary in 2016 despite the fact they beat her up as too moderate in 2008 (the specter of Nader will keep them from throwing a meaningful amount of support behind a third party challenger).

T-Rav said...

I've noticed it happening too. A lot of liberals I know are putting as much daylight between themselves and Obama as possible.

Too bad. They all deserve each other.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, That's what I'm seeing too. Even the moderate left is starting to disown him. And I'm seeing a lot of anger on the left-left. If a Republican wins the next election and the economy turns around, I expect Obama will get the Carter treatment.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, That's hard to say. I'm seeing any love for Hillary on the left-left, just in the MSM left. The fringe left seems to be looking for a champion right now. I guess we'll see. If they find someone, I could see them splintering off for a while. If not, then they'll probably drink the KoolAid and come back to the fold.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Jed! Bush's biggest sin was to assume that by staying silent, he would be seen as "above" politics... it just made him look speechless.

AndrewPrice said...

Patriot, His power is a lot more limited than you think. Lame duck status and lack of political popularity will do that to you -- especially when you're seen as distracted.

In any event, this is more an issue of how happily the rest of his time in office will play out and what his legacy will be.

Patriot said...

Andrew.....Obama personally, I agree. Yet the anti-conservative/Repub leanings of Dems/Lefties in gov't will continue the long march. They just found their perfect front man in Obama. The destruction of society will continue apace. Even after he's long gone and on the global party circuit.

I think his legacy will be split. The left will spin how awesome he was and how his stewardship of all the problems left by Bush was herculean. The right will document his complete ineptitude in all things domestic and foreign. And just like FDR, his legacy will be mostly hagiographic by those that write these things. I predict..."One of the Top 5 Presidents ever!"

BevfromNYC said...

And the typical anti-war hollywood crowd is taking quite a beating too. At least Ed Asner out and out said that most are really disappointed in Obama and his saber-rattling, but did not want to be perceived as racists because they disagreed with Obama. Oh, okay. They can take the heat from the right being called "major hypocrites", but shy away from their own causes out of fear of being called "racists". Who knew they were actually so spineless? [That is not a serious question, btw]

Speaking of saber-rattling - Not learning from his first 100 foreign policy mistakes, Obama has drawn another red line. This time it's with Iran that better not do that nuclear stuff anymore or we'll show them...at some point in the future...maybe. Take THAT to the bank and smoke it, Iran!

I guess Obama figured that red line stuff worked out so well with Syria, maybe he could get Putin to force Iran to disban its nuclear program too. If we can only get Kerry to make another off-handed remark again. Maybe this time Obama can get Biden to say something REALLY stupid...

K said...

I always suspected there was something "funny" about Kant.

Not as much as Hegel, though.

tryanmax said...

Why can't conservatives have a pattern like the liberals do? Seems like we go straight to "betrayal" even before the pol in question has had a chance to do anything, let alone fail at anything.

------------------------------

Patriot, the impulse to "STOP THEM!" is the most self-damaging trait the right has. If, as you believe, Obama still has the power to inflict lasting damage to the country (a notion I disupte) then the surest way to convice the public of that is to let him. That would then usher in a Republican era with plenty of time and political capital to fix it.

But as long as conservatives are always trying to "stop them!" they look to the public like obstructionists. The public doesn't like obstructionism. Not to mention that is pretty much is obstructionism in the sense that our side never has any ideas. The public will always choose a bad idea over no idea.

Besides, obstruction is a terrible way to lessen the Democrats' influence. Like a muscle, resistance only makes them stronger. They need to be lulled into atrophy. Let them have their way, especially in a time like this when Republicans don't have the strength to actually stop anything. The Dems will expose themselves, implode, and not have the wherewithal to do anything about it.

But by constantly screaming "STOP THEM!" our side offers itself up as a credible foil when the Dems claim the proccess is broken because the Republicans don't want to participate. In other words, we are providing the cover for them to hide their mistakes behind.

Barack Obama said...

I have a warning for Iran: if Iran does not abandon its nuclear program, the next guy in office will definitely have to do something about it.

BevfromNYC said...

Hey, Barack, shouldn't you be in your office filling out requisition forms for more red-line drawing crayons or sidewalk chalk? Maybe for the sake of variety, we can use Homeland Security's old terrorist threat color scale...

Patriot said...

Tryanmax.....I never thought giving up and retreating was a good strategy when in a battle. The prospects for long term would be pretty diminished, unless you were convinced there was no way for you to win the battle. Sounds like what your argument is advocating.

I guess my point was to paint Obama as the "Jim Jones" of the leftists movement in this country, and the petty bureaucrats as his minions who will be doing the scut work long after he's gone. The institutional ideology of the IRS is a perfect example. It's nice when the dear leader doesn't even have to mention that he'd like to "punish our enemies" when the career dept heads already agree and have been using the power of the institution to harass and destroy those same "enemies" all along.

I actually like that Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and the lesser lights are out there vocalizing their opposition to the more egregious laws and regulations this administration promulgates. We must continue to point out the long term harm this type of thinking and abuse can do to harm our country. Hell, if they won't, who will?

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, LOL! That is totally plan... draw a red line, get Kerry to murmur something and hope Putin solves the problem. You aren't privy to confidential Obama Admin Memos are you? :P

I love the Ed Asner thing. He's really put them on the spot where they need to speak up now or get knocked down as hypocrites the next time they try to speak up. "Just like Ed Asner said, you're a hypocritical coward..."

AndrewPrice said...

Patriot, There will always be a left... you can't kill it. And until we offer policies that overwhelmingly win the public (like during the Reagan years), the left will continue to have influence. That's the key: to win over the public to make the left irrelevant.

In the meantime, the best thing to do with the left is to mock them and to help them self-destruct.

AndrewPrice said...

K, Philosophical arguments can get pretty nasty. It was only a matter of time before someone bust a cap in someone's ass over those discussion. LOL!

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, Good question. As far back as I can remember, the instinct on the right is to kill and abandon their own at the first sign of trouble.

As for the left, I agree. Screaming about Obama (or other leftists) only gives them street cred. The best thing to do is to let them have what they want, within reason, and then watch them wither and die as their foolish programs implode. Obamacare is a great example where that's happening for once and that has the potential to expose all the problems with the left.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I still think Obama draws yellow lines in the snow... er, sand.

AndrewPrice said...

Patriot, Nobody said anything about surrender. We're talking about laying traps and going for the real victory. The real victory isn't making our ideologues feel giddy, it's winning over the public. And the public doesn't respond to anger, it responds to promises.

That means to win the people, which is the only victory that matters in our system, you need to offer them ideas that make them vote for you. And screaming obsessive ideological points about Obama isn't something that makes the pubic like you... they don't believe it and it scares them that our side does.

Moreover, what tryanmax is saying is that (1) so long as we keep screaming about Obama, we give him credibility with the left for being on the right track and credibility with the public for actually making changes, and (2) we are constantly saving the democrats' butts by fixing or killing the bad parts of their programs.

If you want the public to learn to fear the Democrats, you need to let them get hurt once in a while so they understand what is wrong with the left. As it is right now, the left gets the credit for the big idea, we are seen as obstructionists, then we fix their programs for them by taking out the worst parts and they get the long term credit for a decent program. If they want to shoot themselves in the head... let them.

tryanmax said...

I never thought giving up and retreating was a good strategy when in a battle.

Patriot, that is a huge part of the problem. I never said one thing about retreating. I'm not even sure how you inferred retreat. And yet, that's what you characterize my comment as. Anyone who suggests something different is a surrender monkey. Frankly, that's bull.

To extend your metaphor, is it good strategy to provide cover for the enemy? Because that's what obstructionist politics does. All it does is delay their policy aims while giving them an (albeit temporary) excuse for not achieving them yet.

What I am saying is that Republicans need to have a strategy beyond just stop whatever the other guy is doing. Obstruction is a defensive political strategy, and a lousy one at that. All I heard about during the Bush years was that the Republicans need to get on offense. So what is this?

But whenever we go on offense, the only "acceptable" strategy seems to be direct suicide assaults. This is the corner we've put ourselves in. We've only allowed ourselves a couple horrible strategy options and declared everything else illegitimate.

As to painting Obama as Jim Jones, I don't know that it would influence anyone who isn't already inclined to think that way. If there's a smoking gun linking Obama to the IRS scandal, great! Otherwise, don't go squandering political capital looking for one (or worse, merely speculating one) when the issue raises enough mistrust of the IRS to generate the will to actually do something. Trust me, if the public thought the IRS was out of control, the Dems would have no choice but to sign onto legislation reigning them in. But that can't happen if the Republicans spend their munitions on other, harder targets.

It's great that legislators are opposing bad laws. That's something they should always do on a non-partisan basis. A bad law is a bad law is a bad law. But opposition to "punish our enemies" rhetoric cannot come credibly from an obstructionist party that only seems motivated to punish their enemy.

tryanmax said...

P.S. - A person can serve as president for 10 years max. It is much better to make lasting structural changes to the government than to score cheap a cheap political victory over a man.

In essence, we had 20 years of Reaganism because Reagan enacted policies that his two successors had to operate within.

T-Rav said...

Andrew, you mean he'll be an ineffectual jet-setting wannabe peace-broker and the face of Habitat for Humanity for the next thirty years? I don't know how I feel about that.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Yep. Only I think he's more likely to do "Golf Courses For Humanity."

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I think the problem all comes back to the idea that there only two types of people -- those who are with us and those who are against us - and idea you hear a lot on the right these days and on the left ten years ago. Thus, a great many people on the right don't even grasp that the public in the middle is the only real prize of politics... instead, they see politics as a from of last man standing fought between two extremes with no middle.

Patriot said...

T-max and Andrew......All good points. Once again, we are all on the same page, some just like to crumple the page once in a while!!

I forget which one of the commentarama commenters here is the history prof (T-Rav?) but my thoughts always go back to De Tocqueville's analysis in the 1800's about the American character, and I realize how much of it STILL rings true today.

And I'm not saying the Left's totalitarian mindset is in anyway new to the 20th century. Heck, Plato was talking about the "philosopher kings" (today's Yale and Harvard graduates?) being the ones who should control society.

So, this battle is far from being won or lost. It is perhaps the big battle of 'enlightened' societies throughout history, and America is just the latest battleground, albeit with a unique charter to help guide us to an orderly, just and "liberal" form of government, with power vested in the people.

Yet.....if I could change the current bastards I surely would.

AndrewPrice said...

Patriot, Yeah, I suspect it's always been this way and probably always will be. There are just too many people who want to control others for there never to be a left.

That said, America still does stand unique in the world and we are also remarkably good at renewing that every decade or so. So there is always hope.

As for this: if I could change the current bastards I surely would.... Yep. I couldn't agree more.

wahsatchmo said...

On Obama's legacy:

The far right, the conservatives, moderates, and the libertarians will rate him as a worse disaster than Carter, each for varying reasons.

The honest liberals will rank him as historic, though not very good, but he tried, didn't he?

The extreme left will rank him as bad because he was too much like Bush and he failed to let everybody marry their gay puppy and he forgot to completely take us back to the Stone Age in terms of technology and power.

The dishonest left (and the media) will rank him as EVERYBODY LIES ABOUT OBAMA IT WAS BUSH'S FAULT EVERYTHING IS BETTER NOW OBAMA MADE EVERYTHING TRANSPARENT AND NOT CORRUPT ANYMORE AND SHUTUP YOU DAMN RACISTS!!

T-Rav said...

Patriot, de Tocqueville made a lot of points about American character so you'll have to be more specific. To be fair to Plato, though, most authorities on his work agree that he was being a bit tongue-in-cheek there, showing how impossible it would be even for philosopher-kings to create the "perfect" society. If Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. missed the point, well, he's not directly responsible for that.

Patriot said...

T-Rav...Here's a few I like:

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom."

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"

"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."

"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."

Rustbelt said...

T-Rav, you seem to know a lot more about philosophy than me. So, I have a question concerning Patriot's mention of Plato.

Do you think Plato was really being 'tongue-in-cheek,' or was he being reactionary after democratically-elected Athenian leaders ordered his mentor Socrates to commit suicide?

Dr. Evil said...

The Coke ZerO of Modern Liberalism.

AndrewPrice said...

wahsatchmo, I think you've put your finger on the dishonest left all right! LOL!

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, The Marxists have missed a lot of points... like anything dealing with human nature.

T-Rav said...

Rustbelt, sorry....I haven't been on the computer for a few hours.

To answer your question, Plato was definitely no fan of democracy in its pure form. In fact, he said that was a civilization's last stage before it degenerated all the way into tyranny. But, I think it would be a mistake to see him as preferring a totalitarian dictatorship over democracy. He would reject the very notion that those were the only choices. He supported an "aristocracy" in its original meaning: rule by those who have virtue. And virtue was something that had to be developed over time. In the ideal city he described in The Republic, members of the ruling class could not hold power until they were fifty, having spent all the time before that being educated in various arts. So he absolutely understood the need to have various checks on political power.

In fact, there's a famous passage in The Republic where Plato (as Socrates) is asked how the ideal city he describes would be established. He answers that the most virtuous philosophers, having established a constitution for said city, would populate it with children age ten or younger, and no one else. They'd have to be separated from their parents, educated in the ways of virtue by the philosophers, etc. Granted, the ancients did weird things sometimes, but this was so obviously outlandish I have to believe it was seen by everyone at the time as an argument that this city would be impossible to develop, and we shouldn't even try; instead, people should use what means they had to make their societies as virtuous as possible.

Long story short, Plato grasped the elusive nature of utopia better than any of our modern-day revolutionaries.

T-Rav said...

Andrew, joke's on you! According to Marxists, there is no human nature! They told me so.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I stand unreformed.

Also, why are you so down on utopia? Surely, it's just a matter of getting the right leaders, right?

T-Rav said...

Andrew, call me provincial, but after the first thirty or forty attempts, I start to get a bit skeptical. I know, I know.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, LOL! You clear don't have what it takes to be a Democrat... and unwavering ability to look beyond reality.

Individualist said...

As to the GOP always yelling "Stop Them", I am trying to understand when this yelling is done.

The left never worries about this. I can't remember Pelosi doing or saying one thing while Bush was President that was ever complementary or that could be perceived as "working" with him. The GOP leaders such as the leading Missouri leader (forget his position) is all to willing to throw a Rodeo Clown under the Bus for a Shtick he had been performing with every other President since Reagan protect Obama.

I think this is a mistake. I think in Politics if you can't use rhetoric to demean your opponent and if you actively shut down anyone who does you handicap yourself. Part of the reason that moderates like McCain see so much grief from talk radio and the Tea Party crowd is that he spends more time lecturing them on how to talk to win then he actually ever does challenging democrats.

Mind you, you don't have to agree with negative criticism. Instead you do what progs do if faced with an indefensible statement. You say "Well, this may be misguided, I am not sure it is misguided but if it is it shows the passion that is against this President" then give a laundry list of why your opponent is the worst thing in the world. etc etc.

Individualist said...

T-Rav

The problem with the Republic is that it puts forward the notion that you can create a virtuous ruling class that you can then trust with power.

One of the telling things that Plato said to do with those children is to censor every story they are told and only tell ones that show them the truth.

This to my mind is the central focus of the elitist mindset of most on the left. They see themselves as educated in the "truth" and therefore it is there responsibility to "rule" because only they have been able to see outside the cave that keeps the rest of the masses in the dark.

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