Obama: Eleven Months Later

But saying that he "proved the power of a marketing message" while the economy continued to collapse all around him, and at the same time saying he was given a mandate for change on particulars, like health care, or anything else. does not add up. Tea parties and media porn from the GOP have demonstrated that an ignorant, sheep-like electorate can turn on a dime. He did a sales job and was given a mandate in a moment of disaster.   

Nope, I'm waiting for the polls and the Democrats to support your conviction, FM. I'm old-fashioned that way.  

Does he not have greater access to the media?   If they were all  NYTimes takeoffs, that would have served him very well.

Taking up the sword again after assuming office, depending on the same base of support...?  To do what?  Go out in the streets?  Foment until the next election?  Defy fundamental democratic conventions?  

Are you saying that, like Mark Antony, he had only to appeal to the crowd?  

C'mon FM.  You really were into those Saturday morning movies, weren't you? (But then, you probably appeared on the scene too late to have been influenced in that way. ) Perhaps a leftover of  60s optimism then?   

No, if his following had the same testicular development as his enemies, they would have arranged coffee parties to challenge the tea drinkers. Would have shown themselves a force to be reckoned with in the husting s of the senators and reps.  No, the Obama supporters weren't up to street fighting in that way.  Still aren't.

Basically, your argument relies on syllogistic reasoning, FM..  ie: Orators win elections. Obama is an orator. Therefore (forgetting all the intervening variables ) Obama, still the orator, can again bring it off. Doesn't work that way in a dumbed down, frightened world. Seems to me Aristotle didn't think much of the syllogism, either (my memory may fail me there, but I think he insisted on more empirical evidence. )

Their record lately (this isn't the 60s) indicates they followed a more theoretical bent, for the last 35 years or so, starting with onset of the "Me" generation. Hell, they allowed Bush to take it TWICE. Not bothering to turn out because, well, that's just sillly when it's all such a rotten political game. But I'll bet you know that they ended the lethargy of one-third of a century, ready to emulate the really angry foot soldiers of the reactionary right, right? They were just working up to come out on the streets, eh? And then "the Great Ozbama" let them all down.

Or are they just folks who revert to playing games with people's names, being creative at their keyboards, bringing depth of thought to their protest, without the foggiest idea of how to bring true reform to their benighted country? It doesn't need structural reform to rid it of two centuries of class-based  corruption, to make it possible for "the people" to have the foggiest idea of what's in the cards. No, no, we just elect a good guy at the top who sounds good, and the opposition will slink away, suddenly cowed by the moral rectitude of our case, the obvious wisdom in our proposed policies.

Bet you grew up with heroes  in white hats too, Al.

Exactly. George you whole approach is a rejection of logic. You say: Obama must govern like Sarah Palin because once President he lost the power that came from being a candidate (???), but having Obama govern exactly like Sarah Palin is better than having elected Sarah Palin. George, all due respect, you've lost me.

Fm, please quote me where I say Obama has to govern like Sarah...hers would only be a figurehead governance of course, a Caligula.

Al, you are just lost in space.  Here is Harold Myerson of the American Prospect, today,saying what I have been saying, in dribs and drabs, in response to your ridiculous fascination with Obamba...or whatever silliness you indulge in:

"...if there's a common feature ot the political landscapes in twhich Carter, Clinton and now Obama were compelled to work, its's the absence of a vibrant left movement.

"The United States over which FDR presided was home to mass organizations of the unemployed; farmers' groups that blocked foreclosures, sometimes at gunpopint; general strikes that shut downentire cities, and militant new unions that seized factories.

"Both communists and democratic socialists were enough of a presence in the United States to helop shape these movements, generating so much street heat in so many congressional districts that Democrats were compelled to look leftward as they crafted their response to the Depression

"During Lyndon Johnsons presidence, the civil righs movement...provided a new generation of streat heat that both compelled and abetted the president and Congress to enact fundamental reforms.

"In the United States, major liberal reforms require not just liberal governments, but autonomous, vibrant mass movements, usually led by activists who stand at  or behondliberalism's left frings. No such movements were around during Carter and Clinton's presidencies.

"For his part, Obama won election with something new under the political sun: a list of 13 million people who had supported his campaign. But he has consistently declined to activate his activists to lhelp him winlegislative baqttles by pressuring, for instance, those Democratic members of Congress who have weakened or blocked his major bills.

"To be sure, loosing the activists would have brought problems of its own: Unlike Roosevelt of Johnson, who benefitted from autonomous movements, Obama WOULD BE ANSWERABLE FOR EVERY LOOPY TACTIC his followers employed. But in the absence of both a free-standing movement and a legion of loyalists, Congress isn't feeling much pressure from the left to mvoe Obama's agenda.

"The construction of social movements is always a bit of a mystery. The right has had great success over the paast year in building a movement that isn't really for anything but that has channelled anew the fears and loathing of millions of Americans.

"If Glenn BEck can help do that for the right, can't say, Machel Maddow and Keith Olbermann help beuild a movement against the banks or for jobs programs?

"It might welll be too little too late, b ut without left pressure from below, the Obama presidence will end up lookijng for like Carter's or Clinton's than Roosevelt's or Johnson's."

whoever Meyerson is, he is clearly some kind of communist

"In the United States, major liberal reforms require not just liberal governments, but autonomous, vibrant mass movements, usually led by activists who stand at  or behondliberalism's left frings" (sic)

"mass movements", the essence of communism/fascism.

A quick Google reveals he is, in fact, basically a communist.

Redbaiting?

closing for length