Is Obama Cannon Fodder?
August 31, 2009 - 12:09pm
Paul Krugman states the obvious in his most recent column, but it bears repeating:
I'm not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they're up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a "transformational" president - but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.
There are mounting displays of disappointment from leftwing activists. Hopefully Obama isn't brought down by "friendly fire".
There are mounting displays of disappointment from leftwing activists.
You betcha! And long may they continue.
As Krugman notes, Obama's health care proposals are somewhere to the right of Richard Nixon's.
@M. Spector: Well, I don't for a moment doubt that Obama desires the most progressive healthcare system achievable. Krugman's point is the forces in opposition to that vision have proven dominant in the debate. Do you think the best tactic for progressives is to attack Obama on the premise that if he only had backbone he'd keep sticking his chin out, or to look deeply within themselves to find the energy and courage to actively engage in the argument for universal healthcare in every forum they can find, on the premise that in a democracy those who show up to vote get to decide?
The Democrats have the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. If Obama really desires the most "progressive" healthcare system achievable, then why is he walking on eggshells? Why isn't he fighting for what he supposedly believes in?
He wasn't afraid to "stick his chin out" when it came to giving a $9-trillion bailout to Wall Street.
His immediate predecessor in the White House didn't hesitate to run roughshod over the Constitution, public opinion, international law, and the basic tenets of human rights. Why can't George W. Obama grow a spine and do what's right if he really is such a progressive as you think?
@M. Spector: I just don't think it is as simple as you portray it. Krugman's point, and I agree with it, is that electing a President who is smart, telegenic, and who has a long record of supporting a broadening of the collective wellbeing doesn't complete the task. It is only a step in completing the task. Further, I am suggesting that it is counterproductive to act on the mistaken belief that is the sum total of the task by then blaming the President when objectives are only partially met. I appreciate the depth of emotion felt, but there has been no betrayal.
Krugman's point, and I agree with it, is that electing a President who is smart, telegenic, and who has a long record of supporting a broadening of the collective wellbeing doesn't complete the task.
Obviously not, if the President in question is George W. Obama. Electing him accomplished nothing if he can't or won't deliver the goods.
How do you see completing the "task"? By biting your tongue as he backslides, or by holding his feet to the fire?
ETA: Hey, I managed to fit in four different metaphors in a two-line paragraph. That's gotta be some kind of record.
And here's what many Americans are hearing about Obama from their "news sources":
Audio here: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200908310007
BECK: If I could just -- if we could just be like Cuba. Let me give you the last piece of evidence that there is a revolution going on, and it is coming. It is -- there is a revolution, and they think they can get away with it quietly.
They think they -- and they -- they -- you know what? At this point, gang, I'm not sure, they may be able to because they are so far ahead of us. They know what they're dealing against; most of America does not yet. Most of America doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the -- the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time.
Some of us knew! Some of us we're shouting out, you were: "this guy's a Marxist!" "No, no, no, no, no, no." And they're gonna say, "we did it democratically," and they are going to grab power every way they can. And God help us in an emergency.
UnionSupporter, why not respond to what M. Spector said:
What now stops Obama from (for example) pushing through a single-payer system?
More to the point, why did he abandon the single-payer concept before the debate even started (where, as you claim, "the forces in opposition to that vision have proven dominant in the debate").
I don't blame Obama at all. I never, for one single second, heard him even promise anything particularly and clearly progressive during his campaign. I debated here with people who wanted to believe (don't know why) that he represented some transformational change.
He didn't. He doesn't.
So to repeat, I don't blame him at all. I blame those who created, and who incredibly continue to create, illusions about what he would "really really really" like to do, only "they" won't let him.
@Unionist: I think it works like this: Those who have an interest in protecting the healthcare status quo, in alliance with the many other interests who see this debate as an opportunity to inflict damage on the President or simply need a guise through which to channel their racist fears attack and own the public debate. Some Members of Congress from the Democrats buckle under the perception of a public strongly against change and withdraw their support for the vision of universal healthcare. Obama no longer has authority to push that vision through Congress.
The status qou own the debate. Do we expect the President alone to turn that around, or is there an obligation to take personal responsibility for that debate? Is it easier to attack someone from behind, to "hold their feet to the fire", rather than face down the corporate interests and racists and our neighbours who regurgitate FOX and to be accountable for how effectively we do that? And if his feet burn, then what?
Obama is losing the health debate - but he can still mobilise and win
We have the Hope. Now Where's the Audacity? by Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz
PBS's Bill Moyers issued a tough critique of the Democratic Party on Friday night on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."
Moyers, whose comments focused on the recent health care debate, said that "too many Democrats have had their spines surgically removed."
Moyers, a White House press secretary during the Johnson administration who went on to win over 30 Emmys and countless other awards during his subsequent journalism career, has been a frequent critic of the Republican Party over the years, making his critique of the Democratic Party on "Real Time" more exceptional.
"The problem is the Democratic Party," said Moyers. "This is a party that has told its progressives - who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform - to sit down and shut up. That's what Rahm Emanuel, in effect, the chief of staff of the White House, told progressives when they stood up as a unit in Congress and said, no public insurance option, no health care reforms."
...
"There's a fear that Barack Obama will become the Grover Cleveland of this era," said Moyers. "Grover Cleveland was a good man, but he became a conservative Democratic president because he didn't fight the interests. ... I would much rather see Barack Obama be Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt loved to fight. He came into office and railed against the malefactors of great wealth, and he was glad to take them on. ...
"I think if Obama fought, instead of finessed so much, he stood up and declared for what is really the right thing to do and what is really needed instead of negotiating the corners away, instead of talking about bending the curve, and talking about actuarial rates, if he were to stand up and say, 'We need this because we're a decent country', I think it would change the atmosphere."
Moyers said that conservatives have dominated the debate over health care lately. "In the last few weeks, the right wing has been winning the debate. How [Obama] lost control of the narrative, I don't understand. Well, yes, I do. He didn't find the right metaphors, as you were just saying, and he didn't speak in simple powerful moral language. He was speaking like a policy wonk to the world of Washington, not a country of people who are hurting. ...
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Thanks, Younge makes a similar point:"The problem is not that the right were organised but that - with a few exceptions like Durham - the left has not been. At the very moment when he needed the "movement" that got him elected most, it appears to have largely stopped moving."
How do you demonstrate support for the President to do the right thing? Send him an email supporting universal healthcare - good, he'll know he has another voter. Bring the same message to your Congressperson - even better. Engage in the debate in your community and take personal responsibility for how others understand the issue and vote - excellent.
"Holding his feet to the fire", whatever that means, may be therapeutic, but does little to advance the project.
The problem is not that the "movement" that got Obomba elected has deserted him. The problem is that he has deserted them.
And since you've now raised it twice, I will say that holding his feet to the fire means telling him, in large numbers, "Give us single-payer public health care or we'll elect someone who will in 2012."
That's what will advance the "project".
And Dreier makes clear the falsehood that Obama has the hammer in Congress: "Obama would like, but doesn't need, Republican votes to achieve his goal. But seven conservative Democratic senators -- led by Max Baucus (Mont.) and including Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Arlen Specter (Pa.) -- oppose the public option as well. So by shilling for the insurance industry, they've made it thus far impossible for Obama to take advantage of the Democrats' majority in the Senate."
I really dislike the term "canon fodder" it is truly dehumanizing, and deflects away from the reality that it is people who are the "fodder".
I know..I know... it is in reference to Obama, but it does not matter, it is a nasty term that needs to fall into disuse.
Buckle under the pressure of losing substantial campaign contributions from the insurance industry is really more like it.
@M. Spector: "...or we'll elect someone who will in 2012." If you have control of that sizeable a majority, then why not simply turn out to the townhalls now, why not dominate the call in shows now, why not show up in the hundreds of thousands to the steps of Congress now? Why wait 'til 2012 when you can taste power now? Show some audacity!
I live in Toronto. Where do you live?
The health care debate is being lost because Obama and the Democrats ain't in it.
And somehow that's your fault and mine, apparently.
Naw, no one is sitting in judgement of the rabble-rousers. We're enjoying the opportunity to sit in judgement of Obama. I am happy to see the discussion move to laying the fault at the feet of all Democrats, not just Obama.
I think that if it was down to Obama's decision as to how to reform US healthcare and the president's decision alone, then there wouldnt be the debate and hub-bub that's happening now. But then there are US congress and senate to consider. Additionally there are lobbyists with access to those doing the voting on reforms. In Warshington, it really will be a collective decision. And it's rigged in favour of those with the deepest pockets and who lobby hardest. Like Jack said about it to Lou Dobbs, Canadians have fought those battles already in this country. Americans will eventually learn that they cant afford to pay too much money to private enterprisers delivering some of the poorest national health statistics in the developed world.
As I said HERE, I agree with this quote from Howard Zinn:
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress....
Except for the rare few... our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be "realistic."
We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.
@ M. Spector: That helps, didn't know you were an anarchist. Cheers,
I'm an anarchist because I agree with something Howard Zinn said?
In the same post I linked to I also agreed with Dr. James Hansen.
I guess that makes me a rocket scientist. Who knew?
I guess that makes me a rocket scientist. Who knew?
I did. Oh, what a wild weekend of us pretending to be rocket scientists. So many failures, so many laughs.
Who's Blocking Health Care Reform Now? Blue Dogs? Senate Dems? House Progressives? Or the White House Itself? (excerpt)
Anyone who can add knows Republicans are not blocking universal health care. The performances of Republican teabaggers at a few town halls notwithstanding, there are just not enough Republicans in the House and Senate to block anything. The president and his party can roll over Republican opposition any time they want to.
Blue dog Democrats aren't to blame for blocking the White House health care bills either. The political careers of many House blue dogs are the creation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dispensed them bags of corporate cash to win primary elections against left leaning Democrats. The interests that owned Rahm, and still do, own his successor at DCCC, so the blue dogs are White House puppies it can rein it any time it chooses.
Senator Baucus and a handful of right wing senators are not to blame either. Some are Republicans, who simply don't matter. They don't have the votes. And the Senate Democrats with their hands on the bill are all choices of the White House, and all dependent on the good will of that same White House for a percentage of their corporate campaign contributions. Senate Democrats are keenly aware that a sitting president of their own party has literally hundreds of ways to exert pressure on any single legislator. None of them is crossing the White House either.
The only obstacle to passage of the president's health care - or health insurance - legislation is the White House itself. Barack Obama knows better than any of us the difference between what he promised and what is about to be delivered. The undeniable difference is dawning on much of the public too, and is reflected in sagging poll numbers for Democrats and the president....
"For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones." Ronald Reagan
Tough answers here in the blog-o-sphere.
So if he's lost the left, right and center, just who does he think is going to be clamoring to give him a second term three years from now, especially if the economy remains lousy for most people in the country, as it's likely to do regardless of GDP or Dow Jones growth?
....
What all this suggests to me is that Obama and his party will manage by 2012 to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and return the GOP -- and probably an even nastier version of it than the Bush-Cheney junta, at that -- to power. It suggests that the Democrats, who were riding high six months ago over an all but destroyed Republican Party, will be switching places with them within three years time, if not sooner -- and all because of their own cowardice, corruption and ineptitude.
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Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform
Obama's "mistake" was to think that he could do a Jefferson imitation in the cesspool of today's ignorant American opinion and Republican vice.
Ta Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:
I think what you saw yesterday was very predictable. Again, big media sets up this narrative of the "Make or break" speech. Again, Obama shoots the lights out. Again, Obama says something innocuous, "no illegal immigrants will be covered." Again, a Republican overplays his hand. The temptation is to say that Obama planned for August to happen, that he baited his adversaries, the way Deion Sanders used to bait quarterbacks. Probably not. Still, the catch-up speed is incredible. . . .
I keep meeting lefties who tell me Obama's "too soft" with these guys, and I keep looking at them like they're crazy. I am going to go out on a limb and say that there is something deeper at work here, something beyond the policy fights. I think a lot of us don't just want Obama to be effective, we want him to exact some measure of revenge. It's smart to understand the difference between the two, and moreover, how the desire for one can undermine the other. A section of conservatives love Sarah Palin because she drives liberals crazy. That she drives a lot of other people crazy too, and hence undermines herself, is beside the point.
Let's not make that mistake. Besides. If it's blood on the walls you want, the GOP is doing fine by itself.
You very carefully edited out these words:
The Democrats have the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. If Obama really desires the most "progressive" healthcare system achievable, then why is he walking on eggshells? Why isn't he fighting for what he supposedly believes in?
And all Democrats will vote for Obama all the time? That isn't how I understand the US system.
If Barack Obama had delivered his speech to Congress three months ago, by now he might well be signing health reform into law. Ted Kennedy would have been alive to supply the crucial senate vote to cut off any filibuster and put the Democrats over the top.
But three months ago Obama and his advisors were eager to avoid the debacle suffered by Hillary Clinton's health plan which, after months of secrecy, she presented to Congress in 1993. So the White House evolved the foolish plan of letting the Democrats in Congress draft the necessary laws.
This summer no less than five committees on Capitol Hill went to work. The contours of reform swiftly became murky, particularly since Obama offered scant leadership. Indeed it was unclear what precise plan he favored and he made the huge tactical mistake of discarding, right from the start, the "single payer" model -- based on the NHS or Canadian health insurance system - favored by the left.
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Well, we can let Alexander Cockburn and Ta Nehisi Coates duel over whether it was tactical genius or plain stupidity, but I think the point Krugman was making still stands. Transforming America will require less armchair time and more doorknocking, fundraising, telephone banking, envelope licking and townhall attending. And a great measure of faith. No reason why it should be any different than here.
And it will require someone far more courageous and farsighted than Mr. Obomba.
When the opposition's like this, how courageous and farsighted do you have to be?
The opposition has always been like that.
A Senate committee has approved a bill to reform US healthcare, a key step in President Barack Obama's attempt to overhaul the system.
Senators voted by 14 votes to nine to pass the bill, with one Republican joining Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee in voting in favour.
Senator Olympia Snowe became the first Republican to back the proposals.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8304375.stmWell, we can let Alexander Cockburn and Ta Nehisi Coates duel over whether it was tactical genius or plain stupidity, but I think the point Krugman was making still stands. Transforming America will require less armchair time and more doorknocking, fundraising, telephone banking, envelope licking and townhall attending. And a great measure of faith. No reason why it should be any different than here.
Krugman's right. Where is everyone who got out the vote for Obama? Did they think that everything they hoped for would simply unfold on inauguration day? Or maybe they suffer from movement fatigue? What they need are more pitchforks, and fewer pitchmen. Only in America! Here too, perhaps.
No pubic option! Ha! (Moran!)
So health care reform is moving through to the next stage....
It passes the first hurdle. I'm not sure how far Clinton's reform attempt proceeded before it was scuttled.
What a great day, the Senate finance committee passed a bill that will FORCE all Americans to buy insurance from insurance companies plus it gives those companies almost a billion dollars of government money. That is the kind of reform the industry has bought and paid for.
When the opposition's like this, how courageous and farsighted do you have to be?
There can't be more than 50 people in that picture.
Obama needs to get a public option passed to have any credibiity as an agent of change.
The Baucus-Braly-Blue Cross Bailout
Ten or so years down the road, the unsustainable and well-scripted healthcare reform plan crafted by team Baucus-Braly and all its supporting cast of characters will have to be redone. A gruesome sequel of sorts. I wonder if we'll have someone writing the new script that hears the cries of the people and actually acts on that suffering. Because the current cast will be long gone having claimed their victory and safely off counting their riches.
obama recently increased the emergency state AmeriKKKa's been in sicne 9/11 it was up on the whitehouse website.
He aint for shit like M Spector said he hwas a huge majority he could do it if he wanted.
That's the key word though.
Bun dis sellout.
This thread title makes no sense.
cannon fodder
Soldiers, sailors, etc. thought of as being expended (i.e., killed or maimed) or expendable in war
Obama is a toady for corporate America, but he will be duly rewarded for his services once he's turfed out of office, and thus cannot be said to be "expendable."
The insurance profiteers put out a paper last week, claiming the Senate Finance Committee bill shepherded by Obama's buddy, Max Baucus, would cause premiums to go up 18 percent or more. President Obama then put on his angry face, and threatened to withdraw the insurance industry's exemption from anti-trust laws. It sounded like a throw-down of epic proportions, but it's just sound and fury, signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say. The health care battle has devolved into a charade; the game has been fixed since early on in the Obama presidency.
Obama made his deals with the hospital corporations, the drug cartels and the insurance companies back in the spring. He promised the insurance racketeers they could have what every gangster craves: a captive market of consumers who would be forced to buy their shoddy products. The so-called "individual mandate" is the biggest prize any monopoly-seeking industry could ever hope for. It was a centerpiece of Hillary Clinton's health care platform during the presidential campaign. Back then, candidate Obama opposed forcing everyone to buy into private insurance schemes. But President Obama was soon singing Hillary's tune, and it was sweet music to the insurance profiteers.
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