Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Midterm Miasma: Two Bowls of Sh*t

It's been a while...

Back in 2007/8, Obama personified and promised the change we desperately wanted. Now, not so much. We've had two years of faux progressivism and tin-eared determination to "reach across the aisle". And for what?

It might be unfair to say nothing has been achieved since he got elected but, from a liberal perspective, it's painfully true. True too that he seems to have gone out of his way to deliberately piss off liberals and screw over the people who elected him. Crappy healthcare reform, ongoing wars, no middle class tax cuts, no real Wall Street reform, no real help on the housing crisis... man, we bought a f*cking ringer.

So as the midterms draw nearer, the pundits yammer about impending Democrat rout fueled by widespread liberal disillusionment. Amazingly, the really, really bad Republicans are in with a shot of being Kings of The Hill again. Wow. How can we be so pissed off with Obama we'd let that happen? Because, as Lewis Black once quipped, our elections are a choice between two bowls of sh*t. And that's never been as true as it is now. Who really gives a damn? If I stay home and the Rethugs get their golden opportunity to cripple government and dig us all deeper into the ditch, will it really be so much worse than giving the Dems another two years to dither and pussy out?

TPM claim that a quarter of us folks who supported Obama in 2008 are planning on "defecting to the GOP or considering voting against the party in power this fall". But in line with the two bowls of sh*t principle, "just as many people who backed Republican presidential nominee John McCain are either supporting Democrats now or still considering how to vote." Has this country ever seemed so exhausted and disillusioned with its democracy?

Now I'm not dickish enough to switch my vote to GOP just because I'm pissed with Obama. Worst case scenario, I'll just sit this one out or, maybe, turn up and put a grudging 'x' next to whatever Democrat loser appears on my local ticket. And I'd guess American progressives aren't really set on a Jones Town-style mass suicide pact. We might tell pollsters that we ain't voting Democrat any more but I doubt we mean it. We're just doing the only thing we can to try and effect change from a management that doesn't appear to be listening: threaten a strike. But it ain't working. Obama hasn't even thrown us a bone on DADT, marijuana in California or any of the prog-friendly quick fixes he could sign off on before the midterms.

Hell, he could at least sprinkle a little cilantro in one of the bowls of sh*t... we can't even get that.
Share/Save/Bookmark

6 comments:

  1. "Crappy healthcare reform, ongoing wars, no middle class tax cuts, no real Wall Street reform, no real help on the housing crisis... "

    Only because of Pres. Obama have we made any progress on all of these items. We have democrats in congress who are afraid of doing anything that might be perceived as negative by their electorate, we have republicans who will vote against ANYTHING proposed by ANY democrat.
    WTF do you want him to do. He busted his ass for healthcare reform and the best congress could deliver was what we got despite the fact the the voters wanted more. They got scared by republican corpo-fascists. Wall Street reform was proposed and some was enacted. . . in fact, quite a bit considering the fact the congress was bullied by the corpo-fascists into thinking that any reform would result in erosion of investor confidence and another dramatic crash of the market. Help for the housing crisis basiucally involves bank takeovers. Again, the corpo-fascist republicans refuse to budge and enough democrats are afraid of them . . . tax cuts? We've got the lowest taxes we've had in over 60 yrs. We need tax increases on the upper money classes, but that's not going to happen since again, the corpo-fascist republicans will cry bloody murder and throw themselves on a sword before agreeing to such things.
    The money has been hoarded at the top. There's not enough to go around anymore with it all up there.
    If he suggested redistribution he wouldn't make it past 2012.
    Again, WTF do you want the President to do? He has zero republican support and little real commitment from the democrats.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hear ya and I respect ya. But... Obama went from singlepayer to next to nothing on healthcare in a little over a year. That, in my book, is doing nothing and letting down his own supporters. Imagine how LBJ pushed thru civil rights and what a fucking Herculean task that was given the opposition from the GOP and the Southern Dems. But he did it because he believed in it and busted balls. Seems Obama's either unwilling or unable to kick ass either in his own or the other party. That's a big fucking failure as far I'm concerned.

    WTF do I expect him to do? Sac up, stand up and fight and quit valuing the opinions of blue dog dems and Rethugs above those of your own base.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LBJ had one HUGE thing going for him. . . bipartisan support. There were a large number of repubs who were with him.
    O HAD to get something passed and he got what he could. If he had caved and nothing had gone through you could have buried it for the next 12 years. At least now there is osmething out there to work with. Ok, so it suck. At least there is something to fix.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You kidding? Passing civil rights was one of the last genuine, apolitical things a president ever did. LBJ knew damn well that the Southern Democrats would get pissed, become Repubs and, like he said at the time, the Democrats would lose the south for a generation.

    But Obama made a purely political, self-preserving (he must have thught) decision on healthcare. He didn't want to look like a socialist so he backed down on making it universal. LBJ had the guts to go beyond politics. He didn't care if the racists called him a 'nigger lover'. But, I guess, Obama is too worried about being called a socialist to work for the people.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Isn't there other parties you can vote for? I've given up on the socialists and started voting for the Green party myself.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nothing is "apolitical."
    But yea, LBJ fought hard for civil rights because he believed it was the right thing to do. Obama believes that universal healthcare is the right thing to do.
    LBJ had bipartisan support in his effort. That made a HUGE difference. Obama has bipartisan obstruction.
    You know and I know that the dems were on tract to lose the south anyway. We were evolving as the progressive party in America. The south wasn't going to stand for that in any way shape or form. It wasn't that much of a gamble for LBJ.
    The other thing LBJ had going for him was that he was a genius politician. He'd been there a long time and he knew how things would evolve before it happened AND he wanted to have a legacy. That is why he bowed out in 68 and that is why he responded the way he did to the public outcry in the north and west with civil rights.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.