[lbo-talk] what makes the Dems so great

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Fri Oct 2 11:28:15 PDT 2009


Good lord, CB. Sure, Obama didn't run as a leftist. At the same time, he clearly encouraged people to believe that they were going to get a qualitatively different set of domestic and international policies and that he was going to publicly call the Repugs on their BS. If you haven't noticed, it is not only the left who is pissed off at the namby pamby and lamely pragmatic kind of power politics the Obama administration has run - most obviously on the health care thing... and the banking thing... and the auto thing... and the rendition thing...

His national popularity hasn't fallen 14 points because of dissatisfaction on the left, it has fallen because liberals and independents who thought his administration would be more proactive, more calculating, more careflul, more dynamic and more aware of how the Repugs were going to play the game have seen - beyond a superficially good, but foundationally weak, speech - nothing like that. Folks here on the left has a different agenda and is going to make different arguments so we're going to be more snarky, more snide, more rude and more vituperative... it can't possibly be surprising that such stuff is here, its the LBO list after all, eh?

Look, there's no question Obama's not Bush. But the way he's mis/managed this health care thing - which anyone with half a brain knew was going to be brutally hard (and therefore necessary to play with brutal hardness, even if only behind closed doors - hello, hello, Lyndan Johnson calling, eh?) is just staggering. I didn't expect single payer but I also didn't expect this pile of crap.

I feel the same way about Granholm, who has yet to call the MI Repugs on their BS, and Dillon, leader of the Dem House, who's policy these days is: Well, maybe if we play the Republican Senates game and cut everything good for the people out the state budget, maybe they'll be nice to us and allow us to raise tiny amounts of money so that we can give a tiny bit back - but not to the most needy.

A

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:53 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Dennis Claxton
>
> So what is a smug question like you're asking intended to say?
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Something like that smug , facile comments like yours above and
> elsewhere are like "boos" from the sidelines by college sports
> fanatics who don't sign up for the team to try to make a difference on
> the field of play.
>
> Ok . I admit I'm talking pragmatism, vulgar materialism. It's hard to
> always be a fancy, dialectical materialist in the real world.
>
> Did the people who elected the Dems to office really have your
> political ideology ? Are the Dems pictured not performing the "job" of
> passing a health care bill ? I mean I know it stinks from the
> standpoint of the clean left, but Obama didn't really run as a
> leftist, as is the silent assumption of much of the claims that he is
> "betraying" us, ya know ? Truly. When he was running many of us
> pointed out that he wasn't running as a leftist. So, it's a bit "smug"
> to claim he's betraying the left.
>
>



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