Obama and progressives

Obama and progressives: what will liberals do with their big election victory?
With fights over social security, Medicare, ongoing war, and other key progressive priorities looming, what will they do with their new power?
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday 7 November 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/07/obama-progressives-left-entitlements

The greatest and most enduring significance of Tuesday night's election results will likely not be the re-election of Barack Obama, but rather what the outcome reflects about the American electorate. It was not merely Democrats, but liberalism, which was triumphant.

To begin with, it is hard to overstate just how crippled America's right-wing is. Although it was masked by their aberrational win in 2010, the GOP has now been not merely defeated, but crushed, in three out of the last four elections: in 2006 (when they lost control of the House and Senate), 2008 (when Obama won easily and Democrats expanded their margins of control), and now 2012. The horrendous political legacy of George Bush and Dick Cheney continues to sink the GOP, and demographic realities – how toxic the American Right is to the very groups that are now becoming America's majority – makes it difficult to envision how this will change any time soon.

Meanwhile, new laws to legalize both same-sex marriage and marijuana use were enacted in multiple states with little controversy, an unthinkable result even a few years ago, while Obama's late-term embrace of same-sex marriage seems to have resulted only in political benefit with no political harm. Democrats were sent to the Senate by deeply red states such as Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, along with genuinely progressive candidates on domestic issues, including Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, who became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. As a cherry on the liberal cake, two of the most loathed right-wing House members – Rep Joe Walsh of Illinois and Allen West of Florida – were removed from office.

So the delirium of liberals this morning is understandable: the night could scarcely have gone better for them. By all rights, they should expect to be a more powerful force in Washington. But what are they going to get from it? Will they wield more political power? Will their political values and agenda command more respect? Unless the disempowering pattern into which they have voluntarily locked themselves changes, the answer to those questions is almost certainly "no".

Consider the very first controversial issue Obama is likely to manage, even before the glow of his victory dims, literally within the next couple of weeks. It is widely expected - including by liberals - that Obama intends (again) to pursue a so-called "Grand Bargain" with the GOP: a deficit- and debt-cutting agreement whereby the GOP agrees to some very modest tax increases on the rich in exchange for substantial cuts to entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare, the crown legislative jewels of American liberalism.

Indeed, Obama already sought in his first term to implement sizable cuts to those programs, but liberals were saved only by GOP recalcitrance to compromise on taxes. In light of their drubbing last night, they are likely to be marginally if not substantially more flexible, which means that such a deal is more possible than ever.

In other words, the political leader in whose triumph liberals are today ecstatically basking is likely to target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days. With their newly minted power, will they have any ability, or even will, to stop him? If history is any indication, this is how this "fight" will proceed:

STEP ONE: Liberals will declare that cutting social security and Medicare benefits – including raising the eligibility age or introducing "means-testing" – are absolutely unacceptable, that they will never support any bill that does so no matter what other provisions it contains, that they will wage war on Democrats if they try.

STEP TWO: As the deal gets negotiated and takes shape, progressive pundits in Washington, with Obama officials persuasively whispering in their ear, will begin to argue that the proposed cuts are really not that bad, that they are modest and acceptable, that they are even necessary to save the programs from greater cuts or even dismantlement.

STEP THREE: Many progressives – ones who are not persuaded that these cuts are less than draconian or defensible on the merits – will nonetheless begin to view them with resignation and acquiescence on pragmatic grounds. Obama has no real choice, they will insist, because he must reach a deal with the crazy, evil GOP to save the economy from crippling harm, and the only way he can do so is by agreeing to entitlement cuts. It is a pragmatic necessity, they will insist, and anyone who refuses to support it is being a purist, unreasonably blind to political realities, recklessly willing to blow up Obama's second term before it even begins.

STEP FOUR: The few liberal holdouts, who continue to vehemently oppose any bill that cuts social security and Medicare, will be isolated and marginalized, excluded from the key meetings where these matters are being negotiated, confined to a few MSNBC appearances where they explain their inconsequential opposition.

STEP FIVE: Once a deal is announced, and everyone from Obama to Harry Reid and the DNC are behind it, any progressives still vocally angry about it and insisting on its defeat will be castigated as ideologues and purists, compared to the Tea Party for their refusal to compromise, and scorned (by compliant progressives) as fringe Far Left malcontents.

STEP SIX: Once the deal is enacted with bipartisan support and Obama signs it in a ceremony, standing in front of his new Treasury Secretary, the supreme corporatist Erskine Bowles, where he touts the virtues of bipartisanship and making "tough choices", any progressives still complaining will be told that it is time to move on. Any who do not will be constantly reminded that there is an Extremely Important Election coming – the 2014 midterm – where it will be Absolutely Vital that Democrats hold onto the Senate and that they take over the House. Any progressive, still infuriated by cuts to social security and Medicare, who still refuses to get meekly in line behind the Party will be told that they are jeopardizing the Party's chances for winning that Vital Election and – as a result of their opposition - are helping Mitch McConnell take over control of the Senate and John Boehner retain control of the House.

And so it goes. That is the standard pattern of self-disempowerment used by American liberals to render themselves impotent and powerless in Washington, not just on economic issues but the full panoply of political disputes, from ongoing militarism, military spending and war policies to civil liberties assaults, new cabinet appointments, immigration policy, and virtually everything else likely to arise in the second term.

Indeed, nobody takes STEP ONE in that depressing ritual even a little bit seriously. Nobody believes the declarations of progressives about what is "unacceptable", about what their "red lines" are, about how they will refuse to go along with what they are given if it contains what they declare intolerable. That's because STEPS TWO THROUGH SIX always follow, and until that pattern is broken, STEP ONE will continue to be viewed as a trivial joke.

With last night's results, one can choose to see things two ways: (1) emboldened by their success and the obvious movement of the electorate in their direction, liberals will resolve that this time things will be different, that their willingness to be Good Partisan Soldiers depends upon their core values not being ignored and stomped on, or (2) inebriated with love and gratitude for Obama for having vanquished the evil Republican villains, they will follow their beloved superhero wherever he goes with even more loyalty than before. One does not need to be Nate Silver to be able to use the available historical data to see which of those two courses is the far more likely one.

Election Day Scoreboard

John Tully
TullyCast.com

Obama re-elected, winning every swing state (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Virgina.)

Democrats gain seats in both the House (preliminary: +6) & Senate (+4 from 51 to 53+2 Inde.), retaining control of the Senate. The Dems had 23 Senate seats to defend while Republicans only had to defend 10. Not only did they SWEEP all 23 Democratic races, but they picked up two more.

Maryland, Maine, and Washington all voted FOR Marriage Equality.

Minnesota upheld their existing law.

Iowa judge David Wiggins who upheld Marriage Equality in his state won reelection despite a concentrated effort to unseat him.

Sherrod Brown retained his Senate seat despite being the most heavily targeted Democratic Senator in the country by the Right Wing SuperPAC's.

Wisconsin elected the nations' first openly gay Senator, Tammy Baldwin.

Tammy Duckworth took out "deadbeat dad" and all-around super-douchbag Joe Walsh.

Washington State & Colorado decriminalized recreational Marijuana.

Massachusetts passes a law allowing medical Marijuana.

Democrats win Senate seats in deep red North Dakota & West Virginia (Heidi Heitkamp & Joe Manchin.)

Swing state New Hampshire elects women to EVERY seat (Both Senate and both House seats.)

The "Redefine Rape" guys, Todd Akin, Roscoe Bartlett & Richard Mourdock all lost... BIG. (side note: Akin & Bartlet were also both on the House Science Committee. No joke.)

Allen West is out (but not gracefully.)

Alan Grayson is back in.

Most women in Senate EVER (18.)

Missouri, Montana, West Virginia elected Democratic governors.

Obama becomes first Democrat since FDR to win two elections with more than 50% of the popular vote.

Obama won 70% of the Jewish vote despite all the fear-mongering over Israel.

Obama won 73% of the Asian vote.

Obama won 71% of the Latino vote.

Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the past 6 presidential elections (2004 being the outlier.)

Moulitsas: Democrats ‘incredibly stupid’ for still backing SOPA

Eric W. Dolan Wednesday, January 18, 2012
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/18/moulitsas-democrats-incredibly-stupid-for-still-backing-sopa

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas on Wednesday blasted the Democrats who continue to support the House’s Stop Online Piracy and the Senate’s Protect IP Act.

Although a number of Republican lawmakers dropped their support of the anti-piracy bills after the largest online protest in history on Wednesday, some prominent Democrats like DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Chuck Schumer still support the bills.

“You had a bipartisan group of people who supported it,” Moulitsas said on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. “Today, Republican after Republican has backed out and abandoned support for SOPA and PIPA — Democrats haven’t. They cling to this fiction that this can be fixed, and not only is this incredibly stupid, its incredible tone deaf.”

“You’re basically seeing a generation of web savvy, web-immersed people who are obsessed with protecting what they see as their very birthright. They’re watching Republicans come out and see the light on this issue while Democrats continue to cling to the Hollywood studios.”

Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift

Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift By Giving Them Credit For Delaying Vote On PIPA/SOPA

Mike Masnick
Tue, Jan 24th 2012
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04252717523/senator-leahy-hands-republicans-gift-giving-them-credit-delaying-vote-pipasopa.shtml

from the do-these-people-have-no-clue? dept

We've noted how intellectual property issues are historically non-partisan. Sometimes, that's good, because it means that debates on the issues don't fall into typical brain dead partisan arguments. Sometimes, it's bad, in that it basically means both Republicans and Democrats are generally really bad on IP issues... happy to give industries greater and greater monopoly rights for no good reason. However, we noted an interesting thing happening on the way to the collapse of PIPA and SOPA: the Republicans were first to come together as a party and decide to speak out against these bills, recognizing the groundswell of public interest. That resulted in Republican leadership coming out against the bills, and Republican Presidential candidates all rejecting the approach in the bill. The Democrats, who have traditionally been considered more "internet friendly," simply couldn't bring themselves to go against Hollywood and unions -- two regular allies.

However, as many more net savvy Democrats have explained, this appears to be a major miscalculation on the part of Democratic party leadership -- potentially losing an entire younger generation of voters to the Republicans. Already, mutliple strategists have been suggesting that the Republican Party use this as a chance to cozy up with Silicon Valley, despite its typically "blue" leanings (though, generally with a strong libertarian bent). It certainly appears that the Republicans are ready to do just that. House majority leader, Eric Cantor recently tweeted about meeting with Sergey Brin.

The Democratic leadership, however, still doesn't seem to recognize the importance of the tech community and the wider internet. Rather than learning anything from what happened last week, PIPA sponsor Senator Leahy is actually trying to blame the Republicans for killing PIPA. It's (yet again) an amazingly tone deaf response. It's as if he's pushing the internet and the tech community right into the Republicans' arms. Perhaps he's making a bet that those constituencies don't matter as much as Hollywood... but that seems like a pretty risky bet to make.

Dems Pass Bill to ‘Eliminate Collective Bargaining as We Know It’

Massachusetts Dems Pass Bill to ‘Eliminate Collective Bargaining as We Know It’
Wednesday Apr 27, 2011
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7242/mass_dems_push_bill_to_eliminate_collective_bargaining_as_we_know_it/
Last night, the Massachusetts House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill (111-42) to strip public-sector workers of their ability to bargain collectively for healthcare. The rhetoric surrounding the bill, proposed by Democratic State House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, is in many ways similar to what Wisconsinites recently heard as Gov. Walker pushed his infamous unionbusting bill.

But how could a state in which Democrats control both the State House and the Governor’s mansion be pushing a bill that attacks workers’ rights to collectively bargain?

The State of Massachusetts currently faces a budget deficit of $1.9 billion. House Democrats say that by limiting the collective bargaining rights of public employees over healthcare they can save the state $100 million a year. Democrats in Massachusetts, much like Democrats in New York, have focused on cutting basic government services and workers’ wages instead of raising taxes on the richest. Thus, House Speaker DeLeo proposed the plan that would limit the rights of employees to collective bargain over healthcare. And many Democrats, who have been supported by labor unions in the state, passed it.

“We are going to fight this thing to the bitter end,’’ Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, told the Boston Globe last night. “Massachusetts is not the place that takes collective bargaining away from public employees.’’

The plan, which now goes to the State Senate, gives local officials the ability of municipal governments to set copayments and deductibles for municipal workers. Only the amount of yearly premiums paid by workers would be on the negotiation table for public workers.

Meanwhile, playing good cop to House Speaker DeLeo’s bad cop, Governor Deval Patrick has sought a more moderate proposal on limiting collective bargaining rights. Patrick’s plan gives unions a limited time window to bargain before local officials would be allowed to impose their own health care benefit plans unilaterally without coming to a collective bargaining agreement.

“This basically eliminates collective bargaining as we know it "says SEIU Local 888 Bruce Boccardy who represents 200 public bargaining units throughout Massachusetts. “This is the first step in a long process to eliminating collective bargaining for public employees in the state of Massachusetts."

Democratic New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Land, president of the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association, told the Boston Globe the plan was necessary, saying “You need this reform now; otherwise you’re going to [continue] to lay off employees to pay for benefits." The threat of layoffs if collectively bargaining rights weren’t trimmed seems to match similar rhetoric coming from Governor Scott Walker (R-Wis.).

The big difference: The rhetoric is coming from a Democrat.

Many have framed the attacks on collective bargaining rights as a tactic for Republicans to eliminate the Democrats base. However, this simplifies who is attacking public employee unions. At the time when Obama called for a federal wage freeze in November, I wondered on this website whether it was Obama’s PATCO moment, which opened up the door for more attacks on public workers. (In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization en masse.)

While Democrats have been less brazen in their attacks on public employees' unions, they have still attacked public employees unions. Why is that? It's because it's often less politically risky for Demcorats weary of taking on the rich to go after unions than to call for higher taxes on the rich.

Obama Kicks Base In Teeth

From Salon.com:

Rachel Maddow last night issued a very harsh and eloquent denunciation of Obama's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission at Guantanamo rather than a real court. At the end of her monologue, Maddow focused on the contrast between how the Republicans treat their base and how Democrats treat theirs, specifically emphasizing that the White House announced this decision on the same day it kicked off Obama's re-election bid. About that point, Rachel said this:

A Democratic President kicks his base in the teeth on something as fundamental as civil liberties -- he puts the nail in the coffin of a civil liberties promise he made on his first full day in office -- and he does it on the first day of his re-election effort. And Beltway reaction to that is. . . huh, good move. That's the difference between Republican politics and Democratic politics. The Republicans may not love their base, but they fear them and play to them. The Democratic Party institutional structures of D.C., and the Beltway press in particular, not only hate the Democratic base -- they think it's good politics for Democratic politicians to kick that base publicly whenever possible.

Only the base itself will ever change that.


How will that happen? How can the base itself possibly change this dynamic, whereby politicians of the Democratic Party are not only willing, but eager, to "kick them whenever possible," on the ground (among others) that doing so is good politics? I'd submit that this is not only one of the most important domestic political questions (if not the most important), but also the one that people are most eager to avoid engaging. And the reason is that there are no comforting answers.

One thing is for certain: right now, the Democratic Party is absolutely correct in its assessment that kicking its base is good politics. Why is that? Because they know that they have inculcated their base with sufficient levels of fear and hatred of the GOP, so that no matter how often the Party kicks its base, no matter how often Party leaders break their promises and betray their ostensible values, the base will loyally and dutifully support the Party and its leaders (at least in presidential elections; there is a good case that the Democrats got crushed in 2010 in large part because their base was so unenthusiastic).

In light of that fact, ask yourself this: if you were a Democratic Party official, wouldn't you also ignore -- and, when desirable, step on -- the people who you know will support you no matter what you do to them? That's what a rational, calculating, self-interested, unprincipled Democratic politician should do: accommodate those factions which need accommodating (because their support is in question), while ignoring or scorning the ones whose support is not in question, either because they will never vote for them (the hard-core right) or will dutifully canvass, raise money, and vote for them no matter what (the Democratic base). Anyone who pledges unconditional, absolute fealty to a politician -- especially 18 months before an election -- is guaranteeing their own irrelevance.

It was often said that Bush/Cheney used fear as their principal political weapon -- and they did -- but that's true of the Democratic Party as well. When it comes to their base, Democratic leaders know they will command undying, unbreakable support no matter how many times they kick their base, because of the fear that has been instilled in the base -- not fear of Terrorists or Immigrants (that's the GOP's tactic), but fear of Sarah Palin, the Kochs and the Tea Party. Rachel herself made this point quite well before the 2010 election:

I talked at the top of the show tonight with Gail Collins about how one way to motivate your natural base for an election is to make your base afraid of what the other side has to offer. And that is true. That works. That works on both sides. It works for conservatives about liberals and it works for liberals about conservatives.

But one less soul-sucking way to motivate your base and to win an election and to keep winning elections and to, frankly, have history look kindly upon you, is to get your base to cheer for you -- not just to cheer against someone else, but to see you standing up, not just to bad guys with worse ideas than you, but to see you standing up for what is right because you know it is right, because we know you know it's right, even though you also know standing up for it is hard.


It may be that this fear of Republicans is rational (or, given how many GOP-replicating policies and practices the Democrats embrace, maybe it isn't). But whatever else is true, one thing is for certain: dedicated partisans who pledge their unbreakable, eternally loyal support for any Party or politician are going to be steadfastly ignored (or worse) by that Party or politician, and rightfully so. If you spend two years vehemently objecting that certain acts so profoundly offend your principles but then pledge unequivocal support no matter what almost two years in advance to the politicians who engage in them, why would you expect your objections to be heeded? Any rational person would ignore them, and stomp on your beliefs whenever doing so benefited them...

The impotence of the loyal partisan voter
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday, Apr 5, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/05/democrats

Republicans Abandon Winning 2010 Strategy with Medicare Privatization Plan

David Dayen Monday April 4, 2011
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/04/republicans-abandon-winning-2010-strategy-with-medicare-privatization-plan

As many on the blogosphere have been noting for months, the only policy item Republicans used to win election in November 2010 was an odd defense of Medicare. They accused Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act of cutting $523 billion in Medicare funding to “pay for Obama-care.” They positioned themselves as the defenders of senior citizens. They created TV ads and mailers with this same theme. It wasn’t all that true – but it’s what Republicans used to win the House of Representatives, and it worked. Their base of elderly voters were very taken by the message and came out in force to defeat those they were told just cut their Medicare.

Flash forward five months, and now Republicans are about to unveil a budget that privatizes Medicare. It ends enrollment to the single-payer program entirely within 10 years, and everybody else who reaches the age of 65 gets a voucher they can use to purchase health insurance on the private market. The voucher’s value does not increase over time even as health insurance rates rise, so it will cover less and less of the cost of insurance. These Medicare-certified private plans, ironically, would live on an exchange, much like the private market in the Affordable Care Act. But two things here: one, the Medicare certification would have no standards like essential benefits, annual limits and minimum guarantees, unlike the vision for insurance exchanges in the ACA; and two, this would cost more money overall, since Medicare is much cheaper than private insurance, similar to all single-payer health care systems. The burden of that additional cost would fall on the individual, as the voucher would stretch less over time.

The same people who won election based on a dubious claim about Democrats cutting Medicare are about to eliminate Medicare and replace it with a free market approach that doesn’t guarantee coverage. They hope the invisible hand of the free market will spur innovation and lower costs over time, but the free market in US health care currently is also the most broken, with the highest cost, the highest rate of cost increases, and the worst quality control. Media figures will probably tread lightly over all of these points, but it’s pretty simple: the Paul Ryan budget plans to end Medicare.

The Ryan plan is to get rid of Medicare and in place of it give seniors a voucher to buy health care insurance from private insurers. Now, what if you can’t buy as much as insurance or as much care as you need? Well, start saving now or just too bad.

Now, by any reasonable standard, that’s getting rid of Medicare. Abolishing Medicare. Phasing it out. Whatever you want to call it. Medicare is this single payer program that guarantees seniors health care, as noted above. Ryan’s plan pushes seniors into the private markets and give them a voucher. That’s called getting rid of the program. There’s simply no ifs or caveats about. That’s not cuts or slowing of the growth. That’s abolishing the whole program. Saying anything else is a lie.

Now, is this political suicide? I don’t think anyone has a good sense of how Americans interact with policy debates. I imagine there’s some way this could be sold to them as positive. Maybe “premium support,” the new Orwellian buzzword, will sound good to some people. Everyone likes support! But provided that this gets explained in something approaching clear language – and provided the opposition party actually mounts a defense – I can see this inspiring rage among precisely the people Republicans used to win the election in 2010.

It’s also worth wondering if the tax increases for 90% of Americans to pay for the tax cuts for the rich will be a feature of the Ryan budget, the way it was in the Roadmap.

Obama job approval sinks to 39%, as even Democrats' support melts away

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/11/obama-romney-palin.html

Lowest ever: Obama job approval sinks to 39%, as even Democrats' support melts away
November 23, 2010
Andrew Malcolm

President Obama has passed the Big 4-0 -- going the wrong way.

Turns out voters were not simply satisfied to spank the Democrat and his party in the Nov. 2 midterm elections with historic losses in the House of Representatives.

Obama's job approval rating as calculated by the Zogby Poll has now sunk to 39%, a new low for his 22-month presidency that began with so much hope and excitement and poll numbers up around 70. As recently as Sept. 20, his job approval was 49%.

A whopping 60% now disapprove of his job, up from 51% disapproval Sept. 20.

Obama now trails in hypothetical 2012 matchups against Republicans Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the next Bush, Jeb.

And, oh, my! Lookee here! Obama has even fallen into a statistical tie with none other than Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor.

How embarrassing that is because other polls have shown a majority of Americans believe she is unqualified for the presidency. So it appears many have now decided, on second thought after a nearly two-year test drive, Obama looks that way too.

Obama began losing the support of independents in the summer of 2009, as he responded to polls showing voter concerns focused on the economy by staging 59 town hall meetings on healthcare. Independents were a crucial part of his coalition win in 2008 but have now dwindled to 39%.

Only 6% of Republicans, not surprisingly, approve of Obama's job performance. But younger voters, also crucial in the ex-state senator's convincing defeat of John McCain, now approve by only 42%.

Nearly 7 in 10 likely voters say the country is on the wrong track, rarely a good sign for incumbents.

But, Zogby notes, perhaps most ominous for the president is that he's now losing support among his own party people. His approval plopped nearly 10% in just one week, from 78% down to 72% in Zogby's latest read.

Obama, John Zogby writes, "is failing to please more than one-fourth of his own party’s voters. This is a perilous position for the President.

"Conventional wisdom calls for him to reach for the center and assume that Democrats will stay with him in 2012. But as we saw in the mid-terms, Democrats can't win without strong turnout from the young and minorities, both of which are demographics that need more motivation than others to vote."

Former governor Romney fares the best against Obama (44-38%), then comes Gingrich (43%-39%), then another former governor, Jeb Bush (40%-38%), who says he is not running. Palin ties (40%-41%). Obama does, however, destroy developer Donald Trump (39%-29%) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (32%-13%). (A separate Quinnipiac Poll Monday found Obama in dead heats with either Romney or former Gov. Mike Huckabee.)

Obama Mails Every Taxpayer a $1,000 Check Instead of Tax Cuts

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/11/12/counterproposal-obama-mails-every-taxpayer-a-1000-check-instead-of-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy

Counterproposal: Obama Mails Every Taxpayer a $1,000 Check Instead of Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
Jon Walker
Friday November 12, 2010

I have a counter-proposal to the Republican demand that we must temporarily extend all the Bush tax cuts. They want to include tax cuts for those making over one million dollars a year, for the next two years, despite the fact that it will add hundreds of billions to the deficit I suggest President Obama demand that instead of using the money to extend tax cuts for the rich, that it be used to mail every taxpayer a $1,000 check.

Obama’s handling of this debate so far has been pathetic

How President Obama and the Democrats have handled the fight over the extension of the Bush tax cuts has been a horrible political and policy disaster. In the end, they are likely to fully capitulate to Republican demands and only “temporarily” extend all the the Bush tax cuts. Not only will it be a policy failure to fully give into to this deficit-exploding plan with almost no stimulative effect, but Republicans will also be able to spin it as a victory and take all the credit for extending tax cuts to the middle class.

At least win the politics using a counter proposal

Ideally Democrats should have dealt with this months ago, but according to David Dayen it is likely Obama never had the Democratic votes in the House for his preferred policy.

Now that the election is over Obama has a weaker hand, but he can still at least pull out a real political win against the Republicans with my counter proposal of a $1,000 check to every tax payer.

Obama should say that he agrees with the basic premise of the Republican argument for temporarily extending all tax cuts — during an economic downturn you shouldn’t be taking money out of the system to pay down the deficit. But he should point out that giving hundreds of billions of dollars to those already incredibly well off will do very little to help jump start the economy. That is why he is offering a “compromise”: instead of extend the tax cuts for the wealthy for the next two years, he will take that roughly $140 billion and use it to mail every taxpayer in the country a $1,000 special tax rebate check.

Have Obama make this announcement on national TV. Have him actually pull out the $1,000 check that “he will mail you in the next three weeks unless the Republican insist on playing games with the middle class.”

The debate would instantly be reframed

It is no longer “extend tax cuts for the rich or raise taxes on the rich.” It is “give tax breaks to the rich or give regular Americans $1,000 to help jump start the economy.”

In the unlikely event Republicans fold to this counter-proposal, Obama declares victory and finds creative ways at every opportunity to mention that check “he and the Democrats” sent everyone. While an imperfect stimulus, it should help increase demand in the economy much better than tax cuts for the rich.

If Republicans refuse to go along, Obama can say what a shame it is that they have chosen tax cuts for millionaires over help for regular people. Even if Obama “loses” he can clearly position himself on the side of regular Americans and make the Republicans the party of millionaires. Make it clear that it was the Republicans who won’t let him mail that check he held up on TV.

I don’t think my counter-proposal would “win” but even in defeat Obama would be victorious. Making it clear with a very simple fight that Republicans are craven defenders of the rich, who are willing if need be to take money from regular Americans to enrich the wealthy, would be a huge political victory for Democrats.

Note: How I came up with the figure of a $1,000 check every taxpayer: According to the CBO extending the tax cuts for the rich for ten years would cost roughly $700 billion (PDF), which is about $140 billion for two years. According to the IRS there are 138 million tax filers. $140 billion divide by $138 million tax filers is roughly $1,000. The size of the checks can easily be adjust based on CBO score of the cost and defining who would qualify for receiving the check

Low turnout by youth voters hurts Democrats

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110304486.html
Low turnout by youth voters hurts Democrats
Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2010

The young apparently haven't seen enough hope and change since 2008.

Voters under 30, who overwhelmingly voted for President Obama two years ago, not only showed up in much lower numbers on Tuesday, but were also less willing than in the last election to strongly support Democrats.

Exit polls showed voters ages 18 to 29 made up 11 percent of the electorate, a sharp drop from the 18 percent in 2008 and the lowest percentage in two decades. And these voters, who backed Obama by 34 points in 2008, backed congressional Democrats in 2010 by only 16 points. (The percentage of the electorate is used as a measure because turnout is always smaller in congressional elections than in presidential elections for all groups.)

The drop-off was even more substantial in some key states. In California, one of every five voters in 2008 was between the ages of 18 and 29, compared with about one in 10 on Tuesday.

To be sure, voters under 30 still gave Democrats a boost. Every other age group favored the GOP, including a whopping 18-point advantage for Republicans among voters over age 65. But the numbers suggested Obama's aggressive appeals to young people in the last month before the election, as well as the rally of comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert over the weekend, did little to inspire young voters.

"Turnout for young people is always lower in a midterm election," said Michael McDonald, a government professor at George Mason University who studies data on voting and turnout. But, he added, "there was some Democratic disillusionment in this election."

There was a slight drop in support from another strongly pro-Obama group: black voters, who made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2008 compared with 10 percent in 2010.

But the plunge among youth added more to the party's woes.

Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, a group that tries to register young people across the country, blamed a lack of inspiration from candidates and the airing of negative ads for turning off young voters.

"The political campaigns and their leadership failed to do their job," Smith said. "Unfortunately, the president was not on the ballot."

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

10 Commandments to Revive Progressives After the November Defeat

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/10-commandments-to-revive_b_777961.html

Please forward this to everyone on your email lists to help them understand what the media obscures and the Dems don't understand about this election and what should happen next! Reading this will undermine despair and misdirected anger.

10 Commandments to Revive Progressives After the November Defeat
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine

1. Don't let the media frame this as a defeat of progressives. Had Obama embraced and fought for a progressive agenda, even if he had passed none of it, he would have entered the 2010 elections as the champion of the huge idealism of the American people that was elicited in 2008 and which would have led the Democrats to an electoral sweep in 2010. Being seen as fighting for the needs of ordinary people -- never letting anyone forget for a moment that he had inherited the mess that Republican and pro-corporate Democrats had created, positioning himself as the champion of those who resented the Wall Street and corporate interests -- his popularity would have grown; he could have won a much bigger victory for the Democrats in 2010, and that would have allowed him to actually legislate the policies of a progressive vision.

Had Obama refused to give more money to the banks and Wall Street unless equal or greater amounts were allocated for a visionary New Deal-style program for jobs and a freeze on mortgage foreclosures; had the Democrats refused to fund the escalation of war in Afghanistan; had they advocated for "Medicare for Everyone" instead of passing a plan that forced 30 million people to buy health care, but puts no serious restraints on the costs that insurance companies or pharmaceutical can charge; had Obama fought courageously for a carbon tax and ended the bargain taxes for the wealthy; had the Democrats insisted on stopping the harassment of immigrants; had the Obama Administration called for a national effort to overturn Citizens United, such as the ESRA -- Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution--this election result would have been 100% different.

Had Obama set up public forums at which his supporters could give him public feedback and used the web creatively to allow his supporters to weigh in, and had Obama consistently spoken honestly to Americans about the constraints he was facing and who was putting pressure on him to do what -- there would have been no electoral defeat. It wasn't the progressive agenda that got defeated, it was the corporate-military accommodation of the Democrats and Obama who couldn't address popular outrage, not only at the economic problem, but at the way we had been manipulated in 2008; and the humiliation many felt at having allowed themselves to hope that someone in politics would fight for what they said they would fight for.

2. Challenge the elitism in the Left. Whenever you hear someone saying that it is the stupidity or reactionary nature of Americans that led to this defeat, remind them of why, absent any other voice that they would encounter expressing their outrage, it was rational for Americans to be attracted to the right-wing voices that were expressing that outrage (albeit with programs that will actually make things worse). When Americans thought they had a chance at progressive change, they voted for it in 2008 -- so they are neither stupid nor reactionary.

3. Challenge the religo-phobia in the Left. As long as the progressive world seems to be aligned with those who think that anyone who believes in God must be either stupid or at a lower stage of psychological development, we will get nowhere with an American public sincerely committed to a spiritual worldview. Allow yourself to explore the various spiritual progressive communities and movements that currently exist.

4. Do not demean those who disagree with us. Act as though every person, no matter what their politics, is created in the image of God or deserves fundamental respect, and only challenge their ideas and policies, but without attributing bad motives to them. And do not demean your own leaders -- stop the back-biting and competition that so often drives the most creative thinkers and activists out of the movement! Make the progressive world focus more on taking care of each other in its meetings and public events.

5. Take time every day to rejoice in the grandeur and awesome mystery of the universe -- and remember that the world is filled with loving people who would be there with us if they knew that we took love as seriously as we take critique. And try the ancient idea of a Sabbath--one day each week totally dedicated to celebrating the universe rather than acting upon it to change it (in my Jewish practice of the Sabbath--in Hebrew: Shabbat-- this includes: no work or thinking about work; no computer, no use of phones or cell phones or other technology; no shopping; no catching up on errands or housework or anything else you "have to do"--just 100% dedicated to fun, pleasure, thanksgiving, celebration of nature, and joy, nothiing else let in. Who has the time? Well, I do, and I also use the other six days to run a magazine, be a rabbi of a synagogue, chair the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and write books. Try Shabbat--it will give you a different perspective on reality, and make a progressive movement that can begin to speak to what is good in the religious world that the Right understands and the Left pooh-poohs to its detriment.


6. Build a unified political movement that calls for A New Bottom Line in American society so that instead of judging institutions, legislation or policies rational or productive only to the extent that they maximize money and power, they are judged by how much they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological behavior and awareness, and the extent to which they tend to encourage us to be more caring toward each other and the earth and more able to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of being and consciousness and to experience true gratitude at being alive.

7. Build within the Democratic Party an opposition to the corporate-oriented leaders of that party, from Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi to Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumner. Create a spiritual progressive caucus in every city. Run candidates in the primaries against that leadership -- follow the example of the Tea Party in their effort to move the Republican party to the Right.

8. Build outside the Democratic Party a separate political party that talks about love, kindness, generosity, and The Caring Society -- Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth. Let that party be based on the notion of A New Bottom Line as expressed in Commandment Six. Let this party talk explicitly about building a world that supports love and generosity! Stop speaking the language of the bureaucrats and the technical manipulators -- start speaking the language of the heart. End the time in which Democrats believe that progressives have "no place to go" and hence will support their corporate-oriented candidates no matter how far they are from progressive ideals.

If the Greens are able to transform themselves to a party that puts love and caring and the language of the heart at the forefront of its public identification, rather than a primarily technocratic, issues-debating, hard-nosed "realistic" from the left, policy-but-not-love-generating social force, then it could be this. But at the moment it is not, and it may be easier to create something new than to reform the inner workings and political culture of the Greens,

9. Create a United Progressive Fund so that all the different progressive organizations stop competing with each other for funding and instead allocate according to how many people belong to any given progressive organization.

10. Don't be realistic! The powers that be in the media, politics and economics define "realism." The most important changes in our country have come about because people were willing to fight for what everyone supposedly knew to be "unrealistic" (e.g. ending segregation, ending ten thousand years of unchallenged male supremacy and sexism, legitimating gay and lesbian lives, building an environmental movement, and the list goes on).

Realism is idolatry -- believing in God is believing that there is some Force in the Universe (some of us call it God) that makes possible the transformation from "that which is" to "that which could and should be." Support a Global Marshall Plan to once and for all end global poverty, hunger, homelessness, insufficient education or health care -- and pay for it through a Tobin tax on all international financial transactions of over $1 million. End the domination of money in politics and challenge the irresponsible environmental policies of corporations -- through the ESRA -- the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Follow these ten commandments and the progressive forces will finally be able to reshape this country before it is too late. If you wish to help us do this, please join and help create a local chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives here. But if you like these ideas but don't want to work inside our organization, then bring these ideas into whatever organization you are already part of and insist that they debate these ideas, align with us in our campaign for the ESRA and for our proposed Global Marshall Plan, and insist that they develop the kind of broad strategy we are presenting here.


Please forward this to everyone on your email lists, paste it onto your Facebook page, put it up on any webpage or Yahoo group in which you are a part. It will help undermine despair!! Thanks.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, a Jewish and Interfaith Critique of Politics, Culture and Society; chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue.
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Democrats Running Scared

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-democrats-running-scared
There should be no mystery to why Obama and the Democrats have failed to stir the passions of the party’s traditional base. Obama flounders because he tried to obey corporate directives while simultaneously “marketing himself as an agent of progressive change.” But Obama has delivered far more to the Right than to the Left. “He truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table” than the rich.

Freedom Rider: Democrats Running Scared
BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Wed, 10/20/2010

“It is the Democrats who are in power and the Democrats who must be called to account.”

All signs point to Democrat losses in the upcoming congressional elections to be held on November 2nd. In 2006 and in the presidential election year of 2008, the decline of the Republican Party as a brand gave Democrats decisive victories in the House and Senate. These are all about to be undone by the usual Democratic propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

President Obama looks like a man running scared, unsure of how to stop the oncoming flood. He has appeared on vacuous television shows such as The View, making his case for Democratic support by chatting with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. Next he shows up at backyard barbecues and in high school auditoriums, and of course he always hobnobs with wealthy donors while loudly proclaiming his displeasure with the progressives who largely stood down and did nothing to oppose him.

The president’s latest sad attempt to stave off the inevitable is a bizarre, whiny interview in the New York Times magazine. The man who tried to straddle the fence of obeying the directives of the corporate interests who run the country while simultaneously marketing himself as an agent of progressive change, is of course floundering. He and his senior staffers claim not to have known that Republicans would obstruct his every move, while also claiming that Republicans will be more amenable to compromise after whipping the Democrats at the polls.

“Obama truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table.”

The nonsense has some degree of logic because Obama is a true believer in political consensus, which favors the powerful. He truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table. The deeply flawed health care bill is but one example of his modus operandi of cutting deals with the conservatives he feels more in tune with, while simultaneously asking progressives to stand down and let him do whatever he wants.

Even as he crisscrosses the country in an effort to pull off an upset victory, his true self emerges. He made this stunning statement at a town hall meeting:

“I set up a bipartisan fiscal commission that is made up of Republicans and Democrats to sit and meet over the last several months to start looking at how we generally start reducing our debt and our deficit so we’re not leaving it to the next generation. They’re supposed to report back to me after the election because we specifically designed it so they wouldn’t get caught up with silly season and would be able to just focus on what makes sense.”

Obama revealed more than he perhaps intended to with this statement. His Cat Food Commission has been designed to release its bad news of benefit cuts after the election. What the president calls the silly season, citizens making informed decisions when they vote, is inconvenient when politicians are planning to take actions which are harmful to the interests of the people.

“Insurance companies across the country are using the health care so-called reform plan to drop coverage.”

While Obama and White House insiders scratch their heads and wonder why no one loves them as much as they think they should be loved, insurance companies across the country are using the health care so-called reform plan to drop coverage. It is true that children cannot now be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies were willing to support a plan which gave them what they wanted, millions of new customers, but they are still for profit companies, and they have responded by dropping children-only plans.

If the Obama administration had worked for a single payer, Medicare for all reform plan, Democrats could now run for office boasting of the good deal their party had brought home to their constituents. Instead there is a patchwork of good and bad and most of it won’t even go into effect until 2013. Democrats in tough races are disavowing the plan, the president and their own party because they have no good news for voters. The smarty pants Obamaites outsmarted themselves, and on election day they will find out just how badly they messed up.

Should the Republicans take control of Congress, there must not be a repeat of 1994, when the Newt Gingrich-led victory over Bill Clinton created never before seen levels of Democratic support for that president. The Obama administration has consistently left progressives off of their agenda and publicly humiliated them with diatribes against the “professional left” and never passing up opportunities to make it clear that their demands will never be met.

“The Obama administration has consistently left progressives off of their agenda and publicly humiliated them.”

Democratic control of Congress didn’t save ACORN from destruction, hasn’t stopped wars, or eliminated the anti-gay don’t ask don’t tell policy in the military. It has given us a health care plan that may be worse than no plan at all, the continued transfer of public funds to Wall Street, and no end to the unemployment or housing crises.

If the Democrats go down to defeat, they should hear a loud “We told you so.” The obsessive interest in Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ought to disappear. It is the Democrats who are in power and the Democrats who must be called to account for the state of the nation and their own inability to provide a platform which gives voters a reason to support them.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.com .

Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/five-ways-democrats-can-avoid-catastrophe-and-pull-mother-all-upsets

October 1st, 2010
Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe and Pull Off the Mother of All Upsets
Michael Moore

The election is one month from tomorrow and, yes, it looks hopeless. November 2nd -- the day the Dems are expected to crash and burn.

Sadly, it's a situation the Democrats have brought upon themselves -- even though the majority of them didn't create the mess we're in. But they've had over a year and a half to start getting the job done to fix it. Instead, they've run scared ever since they took power. To many, the shellacking they're about to receive is one they deserve.

But if you're of a mindset that believes a return to 2001-2008 would be sheer insanity, then you probably agree we've got no choice but to save the Democrats from themselves.

Memo To: President Obama and the Democratic Party Leadership
From: Michael Moore
Subject: 5 Things Dems Can Do to Turn It Around by November 2nd

1. Immediate Wall-to-Wall TV Ads, Internet Videos, and Appearances Hammering Who the Hell Put Us in the Misery We're In.

We Americans have very short attention spans (Quick: Who Won the Oscar for Best Picture last year? The World Series? Exactly.). People need to be reminded over and over that it was the REPUBLICANS who concocted and led the unnecessary invasion of two countries, putting us in our longest war ever, wars that will eventually cost us over $3 trillion. Bush and Co. also caused the biggest collapse of our economy since the Great Depression. I don't know a single person in Hollywood who wouldn't shoot and produce those spots for you for FREE. Dems: Do not pull a single punch on this. Quit being a bunch of wusses and let the bastards have it! The public will be astonished that you've found your courage and your spine. We expect you to be Muhammad Ali, not Ally McBeal.

2. Indict the Criminals.

Announce that the Justice Department will seek indictments against both those who caused the economic collapse and those who became war profiteers. Call it for what it is: organized crime. Use the RICO statutes. Use the basic laws that make fraud of any kind a crime. Get in the face of those who stole the billions, make them pay for it -- and the people will love you. We want Dirty Harry, not Dirty Dancing.

3. Announce a Moratorium on All Family Home Foreclosures.

Last month (August) there were more home foreclosures than in any month in U.S. history. Worse than any month in the worst year ever, 2009. The bleeding hasn't stopped -- it's only gotten worse. And now, this week, two of the largest crime organizations who are throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes (GMAC and JPMorgan Chase) have been forced to momentarily stop doing this. It turns out, they don't really have the paperwork to prove they actually own these houses! It's madness. So if you do one thing for the middle class this week, do this. It will take an hour of your time to draw up the decree and issue it. We'd rather watch "It's a Wonderful Life" than "Poltergeist."

4. Announce a New 21st Century WPA.

"Who's hiring? THE GOVERNMENT IS HIRING!" Put together a simple plan to hire enough people to repair our roads, fix up our aging schools, and rebuild our infrastructure. Fund this by taxing the richest 1% who have more financial wealth than 95% of Americans combined! Unemployment will drop to 5%. Can you pass it? Well, you sure can't unless you try! And as you're trying, announce that you will force the Republican senators (who until now simply have had to say they "intended" to filibuster in order to kill a bill) to have to actually filibuster! Make them stand on the floor of the Senate and read from the phone book 24/7. They won't last a day. And America will see them for who they really are.

5. Declare That No Democrat Will Accept ANY Wall Street Money in the Next Election Cycle.

Pick a day in the coming week. Have all your fellow Democrats in Congress stand in front of the Capitol (with President Obama) and pledge that if America allows you to retain control of Congress, none of you will take a penny from Wall Street for the 2012 election. Instead, promise to accept donations of only $2, $5 and $10. You will also pledge not to take a job as a lobbyist or lawyer for ANY corporation for ten years after you leave Congress. The message will be a powerful one to the average American fed up with corrupt political hacks. Act like Honest Abe, not Fast Freddie -- and see what happens.

And here are two bonus suggestions: Use what sense of humor you have and go after these candidates and their agenda with all the hilarious ridicule they deserve. And quit complaining about "the base" not doing enough to help you. You want help? Do something this week to earn it. I've offered five suggestions. I'm sure the rest of "the base" has a few more.

Hectoring the Base: It’s Not About GOTV, It’s About Laying the Blame

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/28/hectoring-the-base-its-not-about-gotv-its-about-laying-the-blame/

Hectoring the Base: It’s Not About GOTV, It’s About Laying the Blame
Jane Hamsher
Tuesday September 28, 2010

Obama is at it again, this time in Rolling Stone:

The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Yes, for those wondering, this guy actually did win an election in 2008:

OBAMA: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.

I’d like to set the President’s mind at ease here. Even if the GOP wins both houses of Congress, he’ll still be President. And they’ll still need his signature on those bills.

But all of this “hippie punching” isn’t about turning out voters. To do that, as Obama well knows, you have to inspire them. Notice that nobody actually running for office is wagging their finger at voters and scolding them like a bunch of children.

No, this isn’t about GOTV. It’s about setting up a narrative for who will take the blame for a disastrous election. And once again, the White House doesn’t care if they make matters worse in order to deflect responsibility from Obama.

Consider:

October 23, 2009, Creigh Deeds — Ten days before the general election, from the Washington Post:

Sensing that victory in the race for Virginia governor is slipping away, Democrats at the national level are laying the groundwork to blame a loss in a key swing state on a weak candidate who ran a poor campaign that failed to fully embrace President Obama until days before the election.

January 17, 2009: Martha Coakley — Two days before the Massachusetts election, from Ed Henry, CNN:

Sources: Obama advisers believe Coakley will lose

Multiple advisers to President Obama have privately told party officials that they believe Democrat Martha Coakley is going to lose Tuesday’s special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy for more than 40 years, several Democratic sources told CNN Sunday.

The sources added that the advisers are still hopeful that Obama’s visit to Massachusetts on Sunday – coupled with a late push by Democratic activists – could help Coakley pull out a narrow victory in an increasingly tight race against Republican state Sen. Scott Brown.

However, the presidential advisers have grown increasingly pessimistic in the last three days about Coakley’s chances after a series of missteps by the candidate, sources said.

May 18, 2010: Arlen Specter — ABC News:

White House distances Obama from Specter

The White House is seeking to distance President Barack Obama from longtime Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter as the Democrat faces shaky election prospects in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary.

On the eve of the election, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that while the president was following the Pennsylvania race – as well as primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky – he wasn’t watching that closely.

That’s a far cry from a year ago, when Obama said Specter would have his “full support” after the Republican lawmaker switched to the Democratic party. The president appeared with Specter at a rally in Pennsylvania in September, telling the crowd that Specter came to Washington “to fight for the working men and women of Pennsylvania.”

[]

On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary a poll shows the race too close to call, with Sestak claiming 42 percent of support among Democrats likely to vote and Specter with 41 percent, according to the Quinnipiac University survey released Monday.

June 7, 2010 — 1 day before the Arkansas election, Sam Stein in the Huffington Post:

Obama Disengages From Race As Blanche Lincoln Slips In Polls

The White House is still formally supporting Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s re-election bid as the Arkansas Democratic primary approaches its runoff vote on Tuesday. But over the past few weeks, as the incumbent senator’s prospects for holding onto the seat have became more unsettled, the president and his team have been noticeably silent about the race.

[]

Aides won’t go there on record, or even on background. But they don’t correct the assertion that they’ve stepped back from the race. The evidence is obvious. Save a perfunctory, donate-to-Blanche-email signed on June 2 by Vice President Joseph Biden, the type of formal campaigning that team Obama rolled out prior to the first vote (with radio ads and robocalls) has been completely non-existent.


I can tell you without fear of contradiction that in the last days of a tight race, or even a not-tight race, short of the FBI finding a stash of kiddie porn on your laptop there is nothing worse than the headline-grabbing news that the head of your party, the President of the United States, thinks you are a shitty candidate and his aides are privately saying you are going to lose.

It could easily shave 5 points off your total and mean the margin of defeat. It threatens to instantly suppress all those difficult-to-motivate 2008 “surge” voters the Democrats have been chasing, and which Obama’s support was supposed to deliver.

In the case of Specter and Lincoln, that support was promised in exchange for their votes on measures Obama is now crowing about. He tells Rolling Stone he has achieved “70%” of his campaign promises. That’s a bit far-fetched, but be that as it may, Lincoln’s vote for his health care bill cost her dearly, and without Specter’s vote for the stimulus, it never would have happened.

Now I don’t feel the least bit sorry for either of them, but it doesn’t say anything good about Obama that he would abandon them in the clinch like that either.

But this is a clear pattern with the Obama White House. Insulating the President from blame for electoral losses is paramount, even at the risk of triggering the loss. Setting up the narrative, pre-election, that the campaign was doomed anyway and there was nothing Obama could do to save it was considered more important.

So when people scratch their heads and wonder how a campaign based on hectoring the “professional left” expects to turn out voters, the answer is, it doesn’t. And you don’t see anyone who’s actually running for office this November engaging in it. They well know that your job is to inspire and energize voters in advance of the election. Obama did too — when he was running for office himself.

But now that he’s not running, and it’s someone else’s butt on the line, he’s turning the Democratic base into Martha Coakley and setting them up for the blame for any electoral failure in fall. The people who showed up to vote for him in 2008 “just weren’t serious” if they “now want to take their ball and go home.”

There is no internal consistency to the narrative that the “professional left” is suppressing turnout by criticizing Obama, but Obama is not suppressing turnout when he scolds the voters who aren’t clapping loudly enough for his achievements. But few in the professional punditocracy find their way to that obvious conclusion.

This isn’t about GOTV. It’s about setting up a fall guy for November. The headline should really read:

Obama Distances Himself From Democratic Voters

Democratic voters are all Martha Coakley now. And if shielding Obama from blame makes matters worse for those who are actually running in November? Well, that’s the price of protecting the President.

Vote for Democrats or I’ll Kill You

http://firedoglake.com/2010/09/23/rendell-on-maddow-reiterates-party%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9ccampaign%e2%80%9d-vote-for-democrats-or-i%e2%80%99ll-kill-you/

Rendell, on Maddow, Reiterates Party’s “Campaign”: Vote for Democrats or I’ll Kill You
Gregg Levine
Thursday September 23, 2010

In 1976, the Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, WI, was the number two beer maker in the United States, its roughly $600 million in sales almost equal to that of industry leader Anheuser-Busch. But trouble loomed. The growing popularity of name-brand light beers, increased availability of niche and foreign brews, and a change in Schlitz’s brewing process, done to make its namesake beer cheaper to mass-produce, all were taking a toll on the market share of “the most carefully brewed beer in the world.”

So, in the Summer of 1977, an new CEO at Schlitz abandoned their heretofore successful “Go for the Gusto” slogan, and turned to the ad men of Leo Burnett to craft a message that would help increase the brewer’s short-term profits (the time between investment and payback was apparently too long for new management). What the boys from Burnett produced was a campaign that will live in infamy:

The commercials varied from one featuring a Muhammad Ali-like boxer with a full entourage to a rugged outdoorsman with his pet mountain lion. In each of the four commercials, an off-camera voice asked the lead characters to give up their Schlitz beer for another brand. The commercials, as Richard Stanwood, at the time Burnett’s director of creative services, would later recall, were meant to be “interruptive.”

At the screening of the new commercials, the Burnett people watched as the boxer told a disembodied voice that he was going to knock him “…down for the count” for even suggesting a switch from the Schlitz label. The outdoorsman in one of the following commercials told his pet mountain lion to calm down after his choice of Schlitz beer was also challenged and snarled back to the animal, “Just a minute, babe. I’ll handle this.”

The reactions to the commercials once they went public were almost immediate; people hated them. Burnett officials were appalled at the reaction.

Ten weeks after the commercials first began to air, Schlitz management ordered them pulled. Soon after, the Leo Burnett ad agency was fired by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company.

The short-lived run of commercials would go down in advertising history as “The Drink Schlitz or I’ll Kill You” ad campaign.

Though perhaps just the most obvious symptom of a systemic problem, the campaign sounded the death knell for “the drink that made Milwaukee famous.” Within a year, the company was in the red; by 1982, Schlitz had lost 90 percent of its market share. The company was sold, and sold again, and by the turn of the century, the brand had virtually disappeared from taps across the country.

I wanted to show you an example of these admonishing ads; I waded through hours of YouTubes to find one (I really did), but, alas, it seems that when Schlitz pulled these ads, they really pulled them. Fortunately, as luck would have it, I was watching “The Rachel Maddow Show” last night, and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell did a remarkable reenactment:

We’ve been scared. We’ve been hiding behind shower curtains. It’s time to get out there and campaign about the good stuff we’ve done. . . .The opposition is being influenced more and more by wackos. . . . Our base ought to wake up. And anybody who’s watching this show who thought they might not vote ‘cause they are a little disappointed over this and a little disappointed over that, get over it. The stakes are huge; we gotta get out there and vote.

OK, maybe that’s not quite as good as the Schlitzing we got last week from White House barback Joe Biden (“Get in gear, man. . . . [Progressives] better get energized because the consequences are serious.”), but both spots have clearly been crafted by the same (m)ad men. In either case, the message is clear (OK, maybe “clear” is not the best word, but bear with me–I’ll start again. . . .). In either case, the message is clear: Vote for Democrats, or else!

I don’t believe that Rendell or Biden—or, for that matter, President Obama, who has also gone for the gusto lately—threatened to kill us, or even hurt us all that much (though I hear punching is much in vogue), but they are making a dire threat all the same.

[Bachmann terror overdrive! . . . after the jump.]

Bachmanns and Issas and Boehners, oh my!

What they are threatening is vague—“investigations” of some unnamed sort, “more of the same,” “wackos” and “Tea Party Republicans”—but it is meant to be scary. And what they are saying through these threats is that if any of this terror comes to pass, we’ll know whom to blame: those nitpicky, “glass half empty” voters of the professional and amateur left.

Blame game aside, for argument’s sake, let’s take the Democrats’ strategy at something like face value. Is this, as implemented, a winning campaign?

To begin with, examine the “or else.” “Investigations” and “subpoena power” are probably meant to remind us of Clinton’s second term, when a newly emboldened Republican majority brought the Congress to a standstill with impeachment hearings and a trial. I would be first to express my disgust with what that vintage of Republican majority did–it was conniving, irresponsible, and inexcusable. But, do Democrats really want to remind America about what was at the center of that impeachment? In a year when GOP sex scandals are ripe and bountiful, why give folks an excuse to shrug and say, “Both sides fuck around?”

Then there is the “more of the same” or “reversing back to the same” threat. My first thought—or my thought about what some of the truly disenfranchised might think—is, “Which same? The bad economy from before we elected Democrats, or the bad economy from after?” And there is even a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that says, flat out, that most Americans don’t believe Republicans will do the same things they did the last time they held power.

And what about those “Tea Party Republicans?” Evidently, some consultant has told Democratic insiders that this is messaging gold, because darn near every Dem surrogate within six feet of a microphone has used the term. Meanwhile, everyone from anonymous White House officials to the President himself has told reporters the strategy is to tie Republicans to the “extremist” Tea Party.

Rachel Maddow praised this move in the same show that featured Rendell, and criticized some inside the party who expressed dismay and warned of a backlash. While I will agree with Maddow that you do not need to refrain from calling the GOP “extremists” because you might have some chance of negotiating something with them if you do (nevergonnahappen), I have my doubts about the amount of benefit you will gain from drawing a circle around the “Tea Party” and the GOP.

Plenty of polls show Americans are dissatisfied with the sitting government at near-record levels. While not every race has proven to fit neatly into the “anti-establishment” storyline, it seems clear that positioning oneself as separate or different from the Washington establishment is a consistent talking point. The GOP crashes that have the national media rubbernecking from Nevada to Delaware are the result of a minority, yes, but a dedicated, enthusiastic minority, mobilizing to vote for relative outsiders over more established government hands.

So, why, in a year where being affiliated with any Beltway power structure is seen as political deadweight, are the Democrats falling all over themselves to tell voters that the previously stale, establishment GOP has been taken over by a fresh group of populist outsiders? How is it that we are to automatically believe that this new crop of “wackos” will do the same things as the old-timers that the Tea Partiers worked so hard to replace?

From a messaging perspective, you can see the inherent contradiction. And a contradictory, confusing message is likely a failing one. Confusion breeds inaction, and inaction is not the answer to the Democrats’ all-consuming enthusiasm gap.

That giant sucking sound

I have already gone on at some length about how an election is not a situation where you can hope to win by simply “sucking less” (and it is sucking less that is still very much underneath most of the Dem messaging). You have to leverage your benefits, and those benefits have to be apparent. Voting is not compulsory in the US, and if the choice for many is between “sucks” and “sucks less,” staying away from the polls is a very understandable third option. That leaves the truly motivated, the enthusiastic Tea Partiers, if you will, to dominate an almost certain low turnout election.

In 1976, there were fresh choices for beer drinkers, and Schlitz’s reaction was to abandon their core identity as well as their winning formula. They chose to eschew long-term investment for short-term profit, and when threatened by fast-weakening consumer enthusiasm, they decided to threaten their consumers right back. Threatening consumers did not work for Schlitz, and that was in a category where people pretty much understand the immediate benefits of their choices.

For Democratic leaders, threatening unenthusiastic voters with vague pictures of doom and gloom, when much of what the voters see right now is already pretty gloomy, is not going to “wake up” very many of the rank and file. Promising little else in terms of benefits if Democrats stay in power—little beyond “there’s more to do”—does not provide enough positive motivation to engender enthusiasm.

Interestingly, in 2008, Pabst, the current owners of the Schlitz name, began to reintroduce Schlitz, selling the benefits of its back-formulated, pre-1970s taste. In that same year, Americans elected a president who asked them to vote their hopes and not their fears. That was a winning strategy. Why, only two years later, has that president and his party chosen to ask us (or, more like, order us) to vote our fears?

Why Did the DCCC Lie To Their Members About Health Care?

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/23/why-did-the-dccc-lie-to-their-members-about-health-care/

Why Did the DCCC Lie To Their Members About Health Care?
Jane Hamsher
Thursday September 23, 2010

Carrie Budoff-Brown, writing in Politico, says:

Rarely have so many political strategists been so wrong about something so big. But when it comes to the health care bill, everyone from former President Bill Clinton on down whiffed on some of the more significant predictions.


Well, at least Bubba admitted he was wrong when David Gregory put the screws to him on Meet the Press. Others haven’t recanted:

“If and when this is passed, Democrats will run aggressively on this.” — White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer in The New York Times on March 15, 2010.

Obama told Democrats repeatedly that they would be proud to campaign on legislation as historic as comprehensive health care reform, something that had eluded generations of lawmakers and presidents.

Top Democratic strategists and administration officials, dispatched by the White House, made the case, too. White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told Senate Democrats during a private caucus meeting in November about the electoral ramifications of health reform that it would be important to achieve parity with the opposition on the airwaves and that they needed to “stand for something, go for it and always play offense.”


Recall the beginning of the year. When FDL hired SurveyUSA to poll four swing districts and see what would happen if Democrats voted for the health care bill with the individual mandate. We chose SurveyUSA because of their record for accuracy, and we absolutely did not expect to find that incumbents like Vic Snyder and Steve Driehaus were 19 points down. People in those districts hated the health care bill. It was clear to anyone who had ever looked at a poll before that it was going to cause a serious train wreck for Democrats in the next election.

So what did the DCCC do? Did they tell look at the polling and say “hey we’ve got a problem here?” No:

Dems rip new Hamsher polls
By ALEX ISENSTADT | 2/16/10 5:11 AM EDT

Frustrated by a series of polls detailing the electoral jeopardy faced by a handful of House Democrats, the party establishment in Washington is pushing back against liberal blogger Jane Hamsher, whose prominent blog Firedoglake commissioned the surveys.

This month, at the request of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz issued a memo slamming the design and composition of the Hamsher-commissioned polls, which reported that four vulnerable House Democrats were in serious trouble.

In late January, a prominent Democratic polling firm, Global Strategy Group — which has conducted extensive work for the DCCC — put out its own memo questioning the accuracy of the automated polling firm, SurveyUSA, that produced the results.

Establishment Democrats, including the incumbents who were the subject of the polls and party committee charged with reelecting them, have sharply criticized the SurveyUSA polls.

“Let me just say that with respect to those polls, they are totally off,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO. “We had the opportunity to compare those polls with polls that have been done in a professional manner, [and] the others are very different. So they’re not credible.”


See, and here’s where Van Hollen goes for the “big lie.” The DCCC conducts polling all the time in districts across the country, and with health care undoubtedly the biggest issue the caucus faced over the past two years, they were doing the same thing we were. So I responded to their attacks by asking the DCCC to release that polling. The damage that the health care bill was doing to Democrats in swing districts was so enormous and so patently obvious it was impossible to miss. Van Hollen had to know the same thing we did.

But instead of letting his members know they were in danger, he lied to them. He commenced a propaganda campaign to keep them from finding out the truth: that for many members, voting for the health care bill could very well mean the end of their political careers.

And so the Democratic leadership corralled them all in March, filled their heads full of shit and told them it would be a great thing for Obama, them and the Democratic Party when the bill passed.

The entire party leadership was in on it. It was a “Paths of Glory” moment, where the generals fired on their own troops in the bunkers and forced them into an unwinnable battle that many would not survive.

The question is, why did Van Hollen do that? Why did Pelosi and Hoyer and Reid and those who are supposed to care about Democratic majorities in Congress do that? Because you can not convince me that they did not know better. They absolutely did. Nobody is that stupid. They would have had polling data showing Democrats circling the drain on health care for months by that time.

But as Budoff-Brown writes, no “serious” establishment Democrat wanted to speak the truth until Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post shortly before the final vote “warning the party had deluded itself into thinking that Americans wanted the bill. And as a result, they wrote, Democrats ran the risk of ‘unmitigated disaster’ in November.”

Obama pollster Joel Benenson accused Schoen and Caddell of spredding “Republican myths.” Because that’s always the retort: if you won’t peddle the party propaganda, no matter how mindlessly stupid, you’re “helping the Republicans.”

Of course, that’s bullshit. And as a result, the entire Democratic caucus is freaking out right now because of something that was entirely predictable at the first of the year.

The question is — why did their Democratic leadership lie to their own members? Because members of Congress complaining about “liberal interest groups” who aren’t doing enough to defend them should really be looking at their own leadership, who teed them up for this

Obama Aims Barbs at Liberals, But Catches Moderates in the Crossfire

http://firedoglake.com/2010/09/19/obama-aims-barbs-at-liberals-but-catches-moderates-in-the-crossfire/

Obama Aims Barbs at Liberals, But Catches Moderates in the Crossfire
By: Blue Texan
Sunday September 19, 2010

Although Jane, Glenn and Digby have already weighed in smartly on this little tantrum from the President, I think it’s worth revisiting.

"Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed — oh, well, the public option wasn’t there. [...] And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.)"

This is of course, terrible politics. Ridiculing your base when you’re at you’re most vulnerable — right before the midterms in your first term — is just criminally stupid.

But even leaving that aside, Obama’s chosen poor issues to flog liberals with. He’s unfortunately highlighted areas where the administration has lost the center.

The health care bill is unpopular. And it’s not unpopular because of the “professional left.” It’s unpopular because people really hate insurance companies and they’re now being forced to buy their shitty product, which they can’t afford. The public option, which was a workaround that problem, had broad, popular support – not just among glass-half-empty liberals. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened.

As for mocking the idea of “world peace” — again, this is an area where the White House has lost the middle. The President’s choice to double-down in Afghanistan is deeply unpopular. Unless you think 57% of the country are pacifist peaceniks, it’s absurd to blame “Democrats” for the fact that your central national security initiative is failing with the public.

Americans simply don’t like health care reform and they don’t like the war. By using these two to chastise liberals, the President is also wagging his finger at the majority of the country.

Nice going.

The Health Care Bill Nobody Wants to Talk About

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/08/31/the-health-care-bill-nobody-wants-to-talk-about/

The Health Care Bill Nobody Wants to Talk About
Jane Hamsher
Tuesday August 31, 2010

As Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics notes, it’s pretty obvious that the Democrats’ electoral woes are directly tied to the passage of the health care bill. But somehow horserace analysts like Jonathan Alter, Jim Vanderhei and Mike Allen don’t want to talk about that.

Well, we’ve been talking about it for months now.

Nate Silver describes Jay Cost as an “outstanding analyst.” Looking at the generic ballot average, Cost says:

Partisans on both sides tell themselves stories about why they’re up, why they’re down, and why the other side is where it is. These stories usually contain at least a grain of truth, but they also help encourage ideologues in the face of an impending rejection by the electorate. Democrats ignored the political problem of health care in the fall and winter – arguing that Martha Coakley and Creigh Deeds were bad candidates, that voters had been turned off by the health care bill because of the process, and that they would come around once the many benefits kicked in. Now, they’re pointing to the economy as the only significant reason why the party is in trouble.

It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats’ fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority – Independent voters – began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President’s job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Democrats’ meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That’s when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.


VanderHei and John Harris recently wrote a piece criticizing “liberal bloggers” who were obsessively naval gazing about the Dave Weigel/Journolist incident, and didn’t care about the fact that Democrats could lose seats in the House this fall.

In fact, FDL did polling at the first of the year that indicated that the health care bill was extremely unpopular with independents, and warned that the Democrats were living in la-la land to ignore it.

January 14, 2010: FDL commissions SurveyUSA to do polling in swing districts to try and ascertain how the health care bill (particularly the individual mandate) will affect Democratic incumbents.

January 14, 2010: The first SurveyUSA poll finds that Vic Snyder is trailing GOP challenger Tim Griffin by 56% to 39%, and that the individual mandate is unpopular with 3 out of 4 voters. If Snyder votes for the health care bill with the individual mandate, he loses another 6 points to Griffin.

January 15, 2010: Our second SurveyUSA poll finds that Steve Driehaus trails Steve Chabot in a rematch of their 2008 race, 39%-56%. When asked if their opinion of Driehaus changes if he votes for the health care bill, 55% of Independents say that their opinion of him would go down.

January 20: SurveyUSA polls one of the suburban districts that will be key to the Democrats’ ability to hold the House in 2010, this time Tim Bishop in (NY-01). Bishop holds a 2 point lead over potential GOP challenger Randy Altschuler, who was already up on the air with ads. Unlike Snyder and Driehaus’s GOP-leaning districts, Bishop’s district has a +3 PVI Democratic advantage. Party affiliation in the district is 27% GOP, 33% Democratic and 39% Independent. When asked how they feel about a health care bill which forces them to buy insurance or pay a penalty, 66% of Independents say they are opposed and 48% say they are strongly opposed.

January 21, 2010: SurveyUSA finds that Baron Hill is trailing Republican Mike Sodrel by 8 points if they matched up once again. Again, 60% of Independents say that their opinion of Hill goes down if he votes for a health care bill forcing them to buy insurance or pay a penalty.

February 16, 2010: Rather than thank us for the head’s up that their caucus is going to be slaughtered if they vote for the health care bill, Mark Ambinder reports that “Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is blasting Democratic activist Jane Hamsher for using Survey USA to essentially poll-pressure Blue Dog Democrats into retirement.”

March 13: I talk with a Democratic operative, who tells me that by forcing Congress to vote for the health care bill, Democratic leadership and the White House are like the generals in Paths of Glory, “firing on their own men in the trenches.”

March 17: I wrote “There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against. It will become a rallying cry for the right.”

July 21: A new SurveyUSA poll shows Tom Perriello trailing his GOP opponent by 23 points. Prior to voting for the health care bill, a PPP poll showed Perriello essentially tied with Hurt:

This confirms what FDL has been saying for months: forcing members of Congress like Tom Perriello to vote for the health care bill was truly a Paths of Glory move by House leadership and the administration. As our SurveyUSA polling indicated at the time, the health care bill was hugely unpopular in swing districts.

August 4, 2010: 71% of Missouri voters support Proposition C, which “would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.” It’s a non-binding initiative, but a clear indication of where public sentiment is in a bellwether state.

The DCCC was very good at getting not-so-savvy poll analysts to try and discredit the SurveyUSA polling. (Those same pollsters, ironically, didn’t see anything weird in the Research 2000 polls they were quoting authoritatively at the time, which many now find suspect — though Jerome Armstrong spotted it). Somehow Democratic members of Congress engaged in magical thinking and believed Rahm’s BS about the popularity of the health care bill increasing if it passed.

Rather than focus on jobs creation in a country with climbing unemployment rates, Obama spent the better part of a year focused on passing a health care bill that looks like it will play no small part in the Democratic Party’s upcoming electoral woes.

Well, we warned you.

Obama Mocks Public Option Supporters

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/17/obama-mocks-public-option-supporters/

Obama Mocks Public Option Supporters
Jane Hamsher
Friday September 17, 2010

Obama took the opportunity to mock supporters of the public option last night at a DNC event in Greenwich, Connecticut (per Mike Allen):

OBAMA: Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed — oh, well, the public option wasn’t there. If you get the financial reform bill passed — then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.


Yeah, we know who we are. We’re the people who supported Bill Halter’s primary challenge of Blanche Lincoln, the woman Obama campaigned for. Who only included that derivatives rule in the financial reform bill because she was afraid of losing to Halter.

We’re the people who fought for a year and a half to pass Audit the Fed, which Obama, the Fed, the Treasury and the banks all lobbied against and worked hard to weaken. It passed the Senate 94-0, and Chris Hayes called it “the single greatest act of bipartisanship since Obama took office” on MSNBC. It was part of the financial reg bill, which is the “only popular Democratic act” since the 2008 election, per Gallup.

Obama himself used to be one of us, when he said that “the choice of a public insurance option” was one of his “three bedrock requirements for real health care reform” — when he wanted people to sign up for OFA:

We’re the people whose votes Obama was trying to secure on the campaign trail when he:

•– outlined his health care plan in a 2007 campaign speech, saying “Essentially . . we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services.”
•– promised in 2008 on his campaign’s website that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]
•– signed on to the HCAN principles on October 6, 2008, which includes “a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.”
•– told the Washington Post that his health care plan “creates a new public health plan for those currently without coverage.”
So Obama promises people a public plan, they go out and campaign for him in record numbers, and then when the Senate decides to drop the public option from the health care bill, he says “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

Glenn Greenwald, from February 2010:

As I wrote back in August, the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it). Yesterday, Obama — while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary — finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include? The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted: Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just don’t have 60 votes for it; what can I do?. As I documented in my contribution to the NYT forum yesterday, now that there’s a 50-vote mechanism to pass it, his own proposed bill suddenly excludes it.

Russ Feingold says that the reason there was no public option in the final bill was because of “lack of support from the administration.”

Joe Lieberman, whose vote was used as an excuse for ditching the public option when it was assumed that the health care bill would need 60 votes to get through the Senate, said that he he “didn’t really have direct input from the White House” on the public option and was never specifically asked to support it.

When the Senate decided to go the reconciliation route and only needed 50 votes to pass the bill, and nobody needed Lieberman’s vote any more, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs threw cold water on any attempt to do so, saying it wasn’t a “consensus idea.”

So it’s awfully glib for Obama to now belittle the people who worked hard to get him elected for always seeing the glass “half empty” if they’re disappointed about the public option. Then again, he apparently doesn’t even remember the promises he made to them.

Maybe they’re not being negative, maybe they’re just smart enough to know when they’ve been conned.

One thing is for sure. Obama never would have expressed this kind of contempt for the base prior to his own election. He — and the DNC — are playing Russian roulette with the rest of the party, belittling the very people who show up and vote and do all the campaign grunt work in every race in the country. And for what? It all appears to be little more than an egotistical, thin-skinned taunt aimed at those they feel aren’t giving them the accolades the Democrats think they deserve.

Nobody in the history of electoral politics, and I mean nobody, believes that telling people to “get over it” will get them to the polls. (Well, nobody but Spiro Agnew.) And you can bet your bottom dollar that come 2012, when Obama’s own electoral future is on the line, that won’t be his message.