| One of the excellent, new b'bird bloggers - Duganz - already touched on Obama's remarks from his Rolling Stone interview, in which Obama that progressives "need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up....If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."
It's not the first message from the White House chiding lefties to get over themselves and come back to the polls in November. In Madison this week, Obama urged students to vote in the mid-terms. "The biggest mistake we can make," said the President, "is to let disappointment or frustration lead to apathy and indifference." And, of course, V-P Biden urged Democrats to "remind our base constituency to stop whining," saying the president has done "an incredible job."
Well...er...hm. I now turn to Peter Daou who, in a post excoriating the Obama administration over its invocation of state secrets in request to dismiss a lawsuit against the assassination order out on US citizen al-Aulaqui, explains why it is liberal bloggers and progressive activists don't "stop whining":
Virtually all the liberal bloggers who have taken a critical stance toward the administration have one thing in common: they place principle above party. Their complaints are exactly the same complaints they lodged against the Bush administration. Contrary to the straw man posed by Obama supporters, they aren't complaining about pie in the sky wishes but about tangible acts and omissions, from Gitmo to Afghanistan to the environment to gay rights to secrecy and executive power...
As president, Obama has done much good and has achieved a number of impressive legislative victories. He is a smart, thoughtful and disciplined man. He has a wonderful family. His staff (many of whom I've worked with in past campaigns) are good and decent people trying to improve their country and working tirelessly under extreme stress. But that doesn't mean progressives should set aside the things they've fought for their entire adult life. It doesn't mean they should stay silent if they think the White House is undermining the progressive cause....
From gay rights to executive power to war to the environment, the left increasingly believes the Obama White House lacks the moral courage to undo Bush's radicalism. If anything, the Aulaqi case is an indication Obama will go further than Bush to "prove" his strength.
When the Obama administration appeared to collude with BP to bury the Gulf spill, squandering a historic opportunity to reverse the anti-green tide, it was a moment of truth for environmentalists. Now, it is dawning on some Americans that Bush wasn't an aberration and that a Democratic administration will also treat fundamental rights as a mere nuisance.
Point.
We'll let Kevin Drum take the counter-point:
If you're, say, Glenn Greenwald, I wouldn't expect you to buy Obama's defense at all. All of us have multiple interests, but if your primary concern is with civil liberties and the national security state, then the problem isn't that Obama hasn't done enough, it's that his policies have been actively damaging. There's just no reason why you should be especially excited about either his administration or the continuation of the Democratic Party in power.
On the other hand, if your critique is the broader and more common one - that Obama has moved in the right direction but has been too quick to compromise and hasn't accomplished enough - then I think you should take his defense of his record way, way more seriously. It's all too easy...to convince yourself that he could have waved a magic wand and gotten a bigger stimulus and a better healthcare bill and stronger financial regulation and a historic climate bill. But honestly, you have to buy into some pretty implausible political realities to believe that (Olympia Snowe would have voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus, there were Republican votes for a climate bill if only it had been a bigger priority, healthcare reform could have been passed via reconciliation, Harry Reid could have unilaterally ended the filibuster, etc.). The votes just weren't there and the president's leverage over centrist Dems and recalcitrant Republicans just wasn't very strong. Maybe he could have done better, but the evidence says that, at best, he could have done only a smidge better.
Putting aside Drum's creepy, amoral dismissal of civil rights as a "primary concern" for a few dedicated individuals, he's got a point. The real stumbling block of reform and institutional change has been the Senate. When the Obama team pats itself on the back for its accomplishments - a stimulus bill, the bailout, financial reg, healthcare - it's because it was d*mn hard to get those bills passed. And they did it.
But...assassination programs against US citizens isn't nothing. Foot-dragging on DADT isn't nothing, nor was his administration's offensive defense of DOMA. His near absence in the healthcare debate wasn't nothing - some pressure here and there might have got us a public option. But that's assuming he even supported a public option, and you get the feeling he didn't. And who can forget the sordid back-room deal the administration cut with Big Pharma? Which is to say, these things matter, and they haven't been entirely out of Obama's hands.
And then there's Drum mulling over the alternative:
Well, if the prospect of ripping apart healthcare reform, shutting down the government, deep sixing START, slashing social spending, and reliving the glory days of investigations over Christmas card lists isn't enough to get you motivated, I guess I'm not sure what is.
Whee. |
