``Clinton antagonized the left by putting deficit reduction (under pressure from Wall Street) at the top of his policies and supporting NAFTA against the wishes of the AFL-CIO and the majority of Democrats. The Gingrich Republican Revolution of 1994 was due to a demobilization of the left. The Republicans got the same (I repeat the same) number of votes in the 1994 congressional election that they got in 1990 (the previous non-presidential election year). Large sectors of the grassroots of the Democratic Party that voted Democratic in 1990 stayed home in 1994. Something similar could happen in 2010 and in 2012. We could see a strong mobilization of the right and a very demoralized left...''
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I thought this was an excellent essay. Thanks for posting it. Doug had somebody from Black Agenda (Bruce Dixon?) on his Saturday radio show who discussed Obama and the Democrats in similar but more scathing terms. The guy on the show knew Obama and worked under him in some Chicago based voter registration org. He said, Obama knows what's going on in your head...meaning the way the `left' thinks. Dixon went to explain that Obama and David Brooks know each pretty well exchange emails, etc. This was certainly a bummer to hear.
For the moment, I want to focus on what the Republicans are doing. They are very politically astute and know damned well Obama and the Democrat's failing support from the `left' is the key to their own re-ascension.
Here is a speech that Newt Gingrich gave to a GOP fund raising dinner this summer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1XaQ7tz8uM
The the far right of the Republicans are going to have conference in late September in St. Louis called How to Take Back America:
http://www.howtotakebackamerica.org/?page_id=229
Read the names and the agenda topics. Many on lbo might not recognize Lt.Gen. William Boykin. He was Rumsfeld's undersecretary of defense intelligence. Boykin was the lead in creating the secret military prison system that included Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Camp-X ray at Begram and other places. He was the one who had responsibility for enlisting Blackwater and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. He believes the US is in a holy war against the Muslim world and its righteous for that reason alone. (see Blackwater, Scahill, 376p)
If you can stand it, read up on the Council for National Policy, CNP.
Okay. Now back to Obama's mistakes. There is another mistake, that hasn't been mentioned. What is going on with Obama and lead Democrat's refusal to investigate the crimes and abuses of power in the Bush administration?
Here is why I don't understand it. The way to completely discredit the Republicans and their far right agenda is to hold Watergate styled public hearings to present the legal evidence about the acts, and behavior that Bush, Cheney and others did that were criminal and unconstitutional.
If Obama had given AG Holder the assignment, with a recommendation for congressional hearings to follow, we would be watching guys like Boykin stonewalling, obfuscating and lying on the nightly news. Instead, he gets to give speeches that advocate these crimes as policy at the Republican re-constitution party in St.Louis this fall.
The way to discredit these rightwing fascists is to publicly smear and excoriate them with the truth about what they have done.