On Christmas Day, the Politico ran a piece that should have rung bells of uniform delight among President's Obama's base. I dare say, it did not.
"Wielding influence in health care fight" was a tough, realistic look at the brutal politics of change -- in this case, of the very change which liberalism has dreamed of, fought for, and failed at for nearly a century: a mandated system of (near) universal health care.
Progressive president after progressive president has struggled with uncooperative Congresses, if not hostile populaces, to achieve this holy legislative grail, and it's not too much to say that those chief executives have since entered -- because of their efforts, though failed they were -- the iconography of a fawning left.
Now comes Obama, who, it seems at least for the moment, has succeeded where others only stumbled. And for this most glorious of liberal accomplishments this liberal president is vilified by many on the left and dismissed as a traitorous fiend.
The additional paradox of all this is stunningly conspicuous: these pertinent points of blurred leftist light have become accustomed to celebrating and enshrining not success, but failure -- a veritably counterintuitive but self-satisfying ritual -- and, by now, will accept nothing less.
This is, in a way, reminiscent of the far right's attitude under the dissonant ministrations of -- yikes! -- Ronald Reagan, who, as far as the far right was concerned, was woefully failing in shredding the U.S. Constitution fast enough or thoroughly enough. Because of this, the far right concluded that Reagan was no conservative; he was, rather, a tepid accommodationist -- he was, yep, you got it, a traitorous fiend.
Reagan easily survived those contemporary fulminations from his right, as, I feel confident, Obama will from his left. The former had his ultraconservative bevy of extremists and malcontents clothed in the philosophical garments of High Principle; in time they came to love the memory of an invented President Reagan who had valiantly tried but failed to right the course of a liberally corrupt America.
As for Obama's dyspeptic bevy -- upset more by success than failure -- I foresee a similar transformation. These things take time.
None of this is to deny the genuinely High Principles of the uncompromising left, as opposed to the right. Principles themselves are not fungible, even though rather nastily extremist dispositions across the spectrum can be, and, indeed, appear to be. Nevertheless when it comes to pure principles, the unhappy left in some instances unquestionably has it nailed.
Which is precisely what the Politico concluded in its piece: A "look at the deals shows the liberals have it right, at least in regard to key reform proposals," such as the public option, or reimportation of prescription drugs.
On the other hand, wrote the Politico in an admirably realpolitik fashion, "the liberal attacks glide past a hard reality": in negotiating what many correctly see as sweetheart deals with health-industry concerns, "Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus holstered some of the very guns that defeated [even less liberal] reform in 1994."
Such as the lobbying colossus of PhRMA, which "will spend nearly $200 million on reform this year -- and clearly it could spend it endorsing or opposing the bill."
A bitter, bitter pill, as they say, was the deal with PhRMA -- which the vocal left, as an unpolitical matter of pure principle, has rightly condemned.
Yet here's another stunning conspicuity that the nobly cranky left neglects: If Obama is such a treacherous, treasonous fiend, does this not also suggest that he'll villainously conspire to knife PhRMA down the road? -- subsequent, that is, to the passage of what in the meantime is still fundamental reform?
Honor in this political deal? Pshaw. That's what the irreconcilable left says. Yet it ignores the potentially honorable upside of temporary dishonor.
Still, all this interior unpleasantness will pass, as the bill most probably will. Particulars will be forgotten, tensions will ease, hard feelings will vanish and the left will uniformly come home in 2012.
Unless, of course ... well, there's still Afghanistan and the troublesome political waters of terror. And those persist in potential as Obama's singularly massive shipwreck.
GOEBBELS and 100% FASCISTS ???
all this talk of GOEBBELS and 100% FASCISTS is beginning to sound (gasp) TEABAGGERish
favorably quoting Politico
is quite a "tell" indeed.
Well said, my lefty comrade.
Well said, my lefty comrade. :)
POLITICAL COMPROMISE IS as old as the NATION
the compromising of a HIGH IDEAL for the sake of a lesser good has been around since the birth of the nation.
JEFFERSON had to edit (at the urging of FRANKLIN and ADAMS) any mention of SLAVERY in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE in order to get the approval of the SOUTHERN STATES.
What compromises? Obama caves in to 100% of fascists' demands.
Since when did compromise consist of retaining half of the former administration, and continuing on with policies within the Executive Branch that Obama swore he would end?
history lesson
You PM Carpenter are the joseph Goebbels of the Vishy government while Barack Obama is its titular head.For people who don't know what the Vishy government was,When germany was conquering Europe,Marshall Petain,ww1 war hero accepted the german offer to lead france under German rule.the idea was it is better to take the crumbs the enemy offers then to let them occupy and run totally your country.This is much like Obama who you keep falsely comparing to FDR when marshall Petain would be a better comparison.Obama and false progressives like you PM Carpenter are willing to take the scraps the enemy throws at you instead of fighting.You are willing to lick the boots of the enemy to get their table scraps.History records the real heroes of france were not the Petain traitors but the resistence fighters who fought german occupation and French collaboration. I could be wrong about you PM maybe your just a Quizzling like Lieberman and not even a Vishyite
Their Treachery Went Beyond Licking The Boots Of The Enemy
Because French collaborators also assisted the German occupiers in tracking down resistance fighters as well as Jews. The red-batting of your detractors below is reminiscent of that period in history.
Are you "liberal" in the
Are you "liberal" in the sense of Stalin or Mao?
STALIN
i'd say STALIN, his type of stridency is what i detect in some of these comments: of such GULAGS are built.
Your name is misleading and you are an idiot
Stalin ordered millions to GULAGS.
There can be no comparison between him and Buzzflash readers. The attempt to equate the two is ridiculous.
some advise: TONE IT DOWN
you're the one with a tank full of VITRIOL, carelessly dropping FASCISTS in your comments.
and you're blind or ignorant if you think the left is immune to cruelty. just check out how the FRENCH REVOLUTION ended.
Did you not read his name?
godblessfdr should give you a very big clue as to the type of liberal he is.
You must have gotten mud in your eyes while trying to lob mud at him from the school yard mud puddle.
Also, Stalin and Mao were not liberals. Liberalism is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. Neither Stalin nor Mao had much use for individual freedom for anyone but themselves. Perhaps you have mud on the brain too.
Carpy, that traitorous fiend (not meant to be sarcastic)
godblessfdr, you are not wrong. Carpy is indeed a bootlicker as well as a MSM putz wannabe.
What I find so puzzling is why does Buzzflash continue to allow Carpy's fascist propaganda crap to be posted on this progressive website?
As long as Carpy is still around, Buzzflash's reason for denying corporate advertising is not valid. Until he is fired, he will continue to drive away progressive readers, as well as drive away badly needed donors.
Get Real
"If Obama is such a treacherous, treasonous fiend, does this not also suggest that he'll villainously conspire to knife PhRMA down the road? " Oh, come on. What are you on? You're twisting a sellout to big PhRMA into a possible betrayal of same down the road? A sellout is a sellout. What good do games like this do for the people who are sick and dying TODAY from lack of HEALTH INSURANCE and affordable medications? Basic health insurance, not the wars and Wall Street corruption. Basic health insurance so people can live. Basic health insurance that would be solved by single payer - cheaper, available to all, deficit reducing, HUMANE health insurance. Progressives ARE the mainstream on this issue. It's the corporations and bought-up Congress that tell us we're the fringe, I guess so they can play their political games. People get sick and need medical care. The solution is simple and clear. The rest is a game. Let's be honest about this.
Change Doesn't Come From Apologism
Making excuses for why things are the way they are doesn't produce change. It merely perpetuates the status quo. Do you think that the slaves told each other that being a slave was the best they could ever aspire to be? That Massa needed them to be slaves to remain wealthy so they should just head back to the fields and get back to work? Like hell! They kept telling themselves and their children that someday they would be free.
The slaves were essentially powerless to affect their condition, and yet they had hope for change that was eventually realized. If they had the means available to the modern American voter, slavery would have ended much earlier than it did. But being unable to directly affect their condition didn't stop them from having hope for a better future.
Those of us who take Barack Obama to task for his selling us out to corporeat profit are exercising our Constitutional rights to redress of grievance. Not to do so accommodates those who would use economics to enslave us. I refuse to be a good little corporate (small n) nazi, now matter how convenient for my self-proclaimed "masters" that I do so. I will not remain seated and shut up just because lazy people like those who excuse the status quo here don't want to take up the cause.
This So-Called Health Reform Is Destined To Fail
And it'll go belly-up on account of insurance company & Big Pharma greed, together with a bloated military budget that will constantly chew away at whatever's in the budget for health care & other social services. What's more single payer won't have a chance because as this insurance company giveaway sinks, the far-righters will be all over the media with "told ya so, told ya so, government's the problem, not the solution". Worst of all the public will buy into this, having been brainwashed by the media into believing such drivel. So when the Republicans regain power in either 2010 or 2012, count on not only health care being gutted, but what's left of the safety net shredded. Thus the lesson from this health care sell-out isn't that the left prefers failure, it's that the left is fed up with failure (not in electing candidates but in their delivering the goods), that the Democratic Party personifies failure, and that it's not only futile to continue to play this electoral game, it's mass suicide, what with time running out & perpetual war + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday.
So Obama's betrayal ...
... of progressives and broken campaign promises is not only justified, but is also evidence of his 12-dimensional chess strategy in his plan to ultimately betray big PhRMA?
How is it possible to get a PhD without a basic Intro to Logic course?
Are you saying Raygun was a "centrist"
who faked the uber-fascists into supporting his "moderate" agenda?
Really?
Well, if so, I guess I--and anyone else with a modicum of historical memory-- can safely ignore you from here on out...
The Progressive Paradox
Like you P.M., I remain confounded by the inability of so many progressives to understand just what it means to be progressive in a democracy. Whether I define myself as "far left", "uber liberal" or "ultra progressive", it all adds up to one thing. I am at the tip of a political bell curve. That means I heartily embrace and promote political opinions that the majority either disavows, is neutral on or only tepidly supports. As long as my political agenda is at either end of a political bell curve, I am not likely to immediately get my way in a democracy.
The only way for progressives to enact a progressive policy, such as the single payer option, is to move the idea from the political margins to the center. But that takes time and hard work. It takes convincing those who are neutral about the idea that it is a good idea. Then those who believe it is a good idea must be convinced that it is an important idea and an urgent idea.
Progressives simply have not done this yet with the single payer option - or with any progressive policy not yet enacted.
Thirty years ago gays and lesbians were objects of derision, often even by progressives. Ten years later (circa 1990), overt prejudice was discouraged by most people, but acceptance was not the norm. By 2000, "Will and Grace" was a hit on TV. Today, GLBT are approaching full rights. Yes, that was way too slow, but it happened. It happened because a lot of people put in a lot of time and effort to change the minds of most Americans. Now, equal rights for GLBT is a centrist idea and no longer at edge of the bell curve. progressives have moved the idea to the center.
So, if you are a progressive, you have volunteered to live your political life as a minority on a lot of issues. Embrace that, enjoy that, and quit whining.
My view is similar but
My view is similar but different, because I see so much hatred being expressed. I say to myself, these people are not "liberal" in their hearts; in their hearts they believe people are bad and need constant punishment to behave themselves. They think like so-called "conservatives", and it taints their politics, however much they have similar specific goals to those of more tolerant and positive worldview.
It is interesting to note how they divide the world into extreme "good" and extreme "bad", just as George W Bush used to do. Dennis Kucinich suffers from this rhetorical illness, I have noticed.
Could not have been said any
Could not have been said any better... Progressives: Quit your whining and get with the program. Change comes in increments, for the most part...not landslides, as we would sometimes like to see...
You could not be more wrong
I could not possibly disagree with you more. Why on earth would the corporatists oppose gay rights? Their useful idiots, the fundamentalist Christians, oppose gay rights, but the corporatists, who actually control our economy and our government, could not care less, so of course progress on that front can result from concerted effort. What has been going on in the US since Reagan's election is a class war, and gay rights is irrelevant to the class war. Government-run healthcare or insurance, on the other hand, is right on point in the class war, so the corporatists are going to fight it with every ounce of strength they have. The Senate bill, supported by Obama and especially by Rahm Emanuel, is offering a fascist solution to the problem of rising healthcare costs and the uninsured. The bill is requiring people to buy health insurance from corporations and what little subsidies are provided will be funded by taxing those who still have good insurance coverage. Any conservative opposition to this is simply based on the politics of it and not the policy. Reagan would have endorsed this bill, though a Democratic Congress in the 1980s, one which had not become almost completely corporatist and corrupt, would never have passed it. This is the corporatist, the fascist, dream of a solution to the health care crisis. Passing the Senate bill is going forward like passing NAFTA was going forward, and Obama is progressive like Clinton was progressive. My gosh, people should be able to identify a corporatist president when they see one.
Please
Please reread my post. This time read what I read and not what your fears and anger projected onto it.
Your first post is clearly misleading
Credible polls show the majority of voters want either medicare for all, single payer or the public option. They are not in the minority as you wrongly suggest. Plus the CBO has proven any of these plans would save money over our current failed system, which is easy to do once you eliminate the blood sucking private insurance industry.
Your comparison to gay rights does not equate. Gays are still discriminated against. And in some areas, the situation is getting worse. So their wait is not over.
But there is no need to patiently wait thirty years for health care reform, if you can live that long. The voters want it now! By not passing meaningful legislation, Congress is committing mutiny against their constituants, again.
Sorry for offense, but I understood
I apologize if I caused offense, though sometimes this political struggle becomes so frustrating.
I understand and I understood that you are preaching patience and perserverance, which are of course admirable qualities and quite necessary. However, you were responding to Carpenter who was trying to argue that the Senate POS was worth supporting, and so one would reasonably assume that you accepted Carpenter's thesis that the bill was a move forward and not backwards. I argued that it was a move backwards. I also implied that by mixing social/cultural issues with economic/tax issues, as most Americans have been taught to do by the corporate media, you were inappropriately concluding that current tactics and strategies were working, albeit slowly, towards bringing about a more progressive world. I could not disagree more. The opinion you expressed is exactly what the corporate media, Wall Street, and the MIC would have you and all those left of center in the US believe -- that the system is working and all we have to do is to continue what we have been doing and be patient. By the time we figure out we are being enslaved, the corporatists are hoping it will be way too late for us to do anything about it.
Don't apologize
The phony progressive Catfish calls you (and those who agree with you) a "whiner" for making points that devastate his urgent support for the inertia of a controlled political show, and then he flutters his hands in offense when you calmly do it again.
If he can tag us as "whiners", he should be able to stand being labeled as a petite bourgeois patsy unable to step outside the fiction that the powerful weave and rely on.
I don't disagree with your premiss...
But I trust you would agree that moving the Center is a rather hard and time-consuming proposition without a champion leading the charge from the oval office. Obama is a reflector of this perceived center/right zeitgeist you speak of, rather than being an initiator of a competing version (such as extolling the virtues of government rather than accepting rightwing anti-govt memes), and honestly, I'm hard-pressed to know what liberals can do to move the center with a limited number of media outlets as compared to the Right. We're left to Hollywood to do our bidding. This is a source of consternation to some of us. But your main point is well put and well taken (unlike the vitioilic column from Carpenter which prompted your reply).
Friends and Acquaintances
The older I get, the more I appreciate the value and power of the truth when spoke to family, friends and acquaintances. I recall in late 2002, early 2003 and forward when it was unthinkable to publicly state that the Iraq War was a bad idea. But I did. I didn't yell, and I didn't scream. I simply said that Al Qaeda was in fghanistan and Pakistan and not in Iraq. When neocons ruled and owned the public square even in living rooms, i would simply state the unthinkable. It was amazing how much that liberated other people to think the unthinkable - the war is a mistake.
why are we waiting on a political messiah? There are millions of progressives who have access to hundreds of millions of people. What if we all take every opportunity to say, "I think we should make Medicare available to anyone."? What if we had a ready response when challenged why, "It will reduce costs 20-25% without impairing treatment."
I don't need Obama to speak for me. I need to speak up and help move the center. Then demand that whomever is president listen to all of us.
No one here is waiting on a messiah
I truly wish people who disagree with my argument would stop using this straw man, but it does seem to have a life of its own.
TC, You strike me as a person who is seasoned and well-read. Your writings are logical and well thought out. However, while I agree that a million liberals speaking that which must not be spoken can have a huge effect, it often isn't enough because liberals (and conservatives) often speak in a bubble, to the ilk of their own political stripes.
You may not need Obama to speak for you, but frankly, that is irrelevant. Obama's bully pulpit is worth a million liberals speaking out. You may not need it because you are politically self-aware, but there are millions of independents that it could positively effect. That is not to say that we should not do it your way as well, it's just that a liberal leader speaking out has a multiplier effect. Sadly, we are not getting that effect from Obama, nor do I see much evidence that we will.
Agreed
I agree with your bubble comment. I meant to address that in my comment, and it is an important issue that is not accounted for enough.
I also agree that a president can use the so called bully pulpit to advance an idea. More often than not the president races to the front of a parade and pretends he is leading it. There is a story about FDR regarding civil rights. Elenor and a group of civil rights leaders met with FDR and pleaded their case for civil rights. At the end, FDR said, "You have convinced me this is the right thing to do. Now go out there and make me do it."
Sometimes, we have to make a leader instead of waiting for one.
KEITH O and SNL
when KEITH O began his SPECIAL comments, i could not believe my ears. WHAT? NBC let him say that? i give KO the credit for being the first one to hit W in the nose (in prime time!!!) and make him bleed. THAT opened up the door.
so, YES, that was a big deal. something i never thouight would happen.
i felt the same way about the first seasons of SNL. wow, they started PUNKINg the sysytem from within.
anyway, as i see it, there's been GOOD change just in the last 7 years.
we gain victories one inch at a time.
i wholly agree with you and CARP's comment (as i often do).
i entered politics with BOBBY's lamentably short campaign, so time and reality have tempered my view of how liberal-aspirations-rubber meets our system's potholed pavement: it's a frustrating and dubious mess!
so, i have run out of that fuel that burns with indignation when high ideals get battered in the process.
and thus i've learned the hard way that the best can be the enemy of the good. perhaps in another parallel universe there is another dynamic at work, but HERE we gain victories one inch at a time.
A Change Is Gonna Come ...
Like the song from the 60s, "A change is gonna come / And it's been a long, long time coming ..." :-)
YES, change takes a LONG time coming!
i've been reading THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND by richard tarnas (highly recommended) : a look-back at 2400 years of TRUE progress, talk about s l o w!
which is why we need to know our history.
also, MOST underestimate the enemies of progress.
they need to ask JFK, MLK, MALCOLM and RFK what it takes to make them yield ANY ground.
Absolutely
You are absolutely correct. Look at what it took to pry the slaves away from the slave owners. Big Pharma and the insurance companies have billions at stake and billions to spend in fighting us. They also have ignorance (in the classic sense) on their side. Did we really believe that they would go down easy? It will take a commitment and movement the size of the abolitionist movement to enact sigle payer.
Actually
All it would take is to vote out the Blue Dog DINO-Fascists in the upcoming Democratic Primaries.
Nobly cranky left
Hey Carpy, without the nobly cranky left, you and Obama wouldn't have any high ideals to compromise now would you?