Julio Huato:
> wo, have the leftists who supported Obama's election suffered a
> political defeat? At most, we can say that leftists who supported
> Obama's election are suffering from a frustration attack, because
> their best hopes haven't been realized yet and may not be realized any
> time soon (or at all under Obama). But that is not a defeat. In my
> book, defeat means that your forces have been decimated and
> demoralized, that your ability to fight has been impaired for some
> time to come. As weak and fragmented as it is, the left remains active
> and in fighting mode. It's definitely not politically weaker now than
> it was 5 or 10 years ago.
Hard to say - the left, such as it is, looks extremely fragmented and weak to me. That aside, the more "mainstream" left - the unions, interest groups, etc. - are all completely flummoxed by Obama and the Dems' health care scheme. As PNHP's Len Rodberg put it on my show the other week, they don't want Obama to lose this one because they think it would ruin his presidency. So they're either silent or supporting it, despite its awfulness. That's a major defeat of some sort, no?
Doug