[lbo-talk] Tea Party Numbers (and Chomsky's citation of polls)

[Marv Gandall]

Obama was never going to win the racist and reactionary right - ever. The point was to isolate them, and that required maintaining the energetic coalition of liberal Democrats and younger and independent voters he had drawn to his campaign and who had propelled him into power. It's a measure of how abysmally he's isolated himself instead that he's been unable to even hold onto the influential liberal intelligensia, his own milieu, represented by Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz, Galbraith - even Martin Wolf of the staid Financial Times, for god's sake! It's been his bad fortune that FDR and the New Deal preceded him. It's provided the benchmark for contemporary liberals for to how to tackle the neanderthal right in an serious economic crisis, and he's been found deeply wanting by that standard.

On 2010-09-03, at 12:31 PM, c b wrote:


> CB: That's a very good take on what the internal WH strategy might be.
> I can see this. Politically astute people understand that you don't
> knee-jerk in response to every little provocation from your opponents.
> 
> But even given this analysis, Obama has been very tepid even for a
> mild-mannered, centrist politician. He's had very few press
> conferences. You would think that he'd employ his wit and intelligence
> more. Maybe I'm not seeing this because I never watch the news.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> ^^^^^
> CB: Yeah, I don't watch the news much either, but I heard about few
> press conferences. I don't know if wit and intelligence would work,
> but a large quantity of "replies" maybe, something. especially by now.
> I sometimes wonder if he's really got full Presidential control with
> soldier Rahm in the WHouse and all, etc.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk