The Obama Factor. Republican Presidents United Democrats: Democratic Presidents Divide Us.

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Thank you for the excellent post, Mark. This needed to be said, and I will continue to support Buzzflash.

Personally, from the start I was suspicious of Obama, thinking him to be a media creation specifically tailored to quiet down the Groundlings before we could rally around anyone who might champion substantive progressive reform. It's not like there were not other solid, progressive candidates out there with much more impressive, proven track records of fighting for working class interests.  I don't believe the man is even that great as an orator, in terms of content or delivery. We can thank Shrub for setting the bar particularly low on that score.

I did think, though, that after the election the crumbs that would be thrown to the working class would be a bit more substantial than what we are seeing. The "debate" on health care reform has been a showcase of tremendous arrogance and corruption that should be shocking everyone.

Dear Mr. Karlin:

Thank you for your integrity, sacrifices, and informative comments. I see the division that you have outlined. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction in America with our current political system. We need a third party. We need election reform and other changes. But, we also need a facilitator to guide the process. Can Buzzflash fill that role?

Sadly, while we want to be a principled party, we also need to be a practical party. Infighting without the ability to negotiate differences leads to lack of focus and diffusion of energies.

But, because Democrats and Progressives etc. could not unite, we let neo-conservatives gut this economy and defund the American Public which means we do not have the monetary means to finance a political party with the same resources as the two current parties.

Also, again, we need a plan to take over the political machinery from the local election boards to city and state elected officials just as the neocons did. Which means we need to run for office in great numbers. We need to build the party from the ground up and from the inside out.

We need to plan to be in the fight for the long-haul.

I will help in whatever way I can.

Thanks, m

On, 12/15/2009, I alerted my elected officials that "Due to the lack of leadership skills within the Democratic Party, I am changing my party affiliation to "Unaffiliated."

Democrats need to do this in great numbers. We need to show the Democrats we are strong and principled and will not support or stand by and watch dictators take over our country.

If Progressives and Independents do not unite and form a party with power -- we will enter a era of dictatorship by International Corporations and we will all be slaves.

We need to follow the Neo-conservative plans and playbook by getting seats on local boards such as election boards and education boards. We need to be in this for the long-haul. We need to run candidates in every election possible for every government position possible. This is war. Progressives need to show they can fight against evil.

The title of the article almost sounds like a spy novel. 

As for following BuzzFlash on Twitter or Facebook, the answer is no, at least, not now.  I've learned enough new technologies to last for the rest of my life so I still prefer to access your website through the 'headline' email that I receive.  I'm just burnt out on computers and computing after 40 years of this technology.

And premiums, I buy them when I can afford them!

Now for Obama.   I still see him as a community organizer.  I finished reading his first book, Dreams from my Father,  before he entered the White House.  I purchased the book after I heard his 2004 speech at the Democratic Party convention, because I believed there was every possibility that he would be the next president after GWB.  I hadn't heard anyone so eloquent in years that seemed to have vision.

The first evidence that he was still community organizing has been the health 'care' reform.  He never once put forward to Congress his ideas about what he would like to see in the bill; instead, he let the buffoonery composed of 535 congressional idiots with 535 different ideas put together the bill.  (Basically, with no direction home.) 

This is what a community organizer does:  gives the people the idea and then, helps them get the tools that allows them to deal with it. These are community problems which the community needs to solve.  Not true with something like health 'care' reform which will affect every American.

This is not the way it should be with the legislature, but because they have lost or given away a lot of their own power, they no longer seem capable of real leadership.  Just more bloviating.  The Republicans would never have put up with the kind of crap that the nation has just witnessed with the four above-mentioned buffoons.  There would have been no stepping out of line.  Look what happened to Arlen Spector when he jumped ship.  Lieberman should be stripped of his committee assignments immediately.  After all he isn't a democrat.

Harry Reid is about the most pathetic excuse for a Senate Majority Leader that I have ever seen.  Even though I hated both Frist and Lott as Majority Leaders, they did seem to get the legistlation passed.

I do have to give Pelosi a passing grade as she seems to have gotten stronger about getting legislation passed, but then the Democratic Party is the majority.  At least, for now.

As for SCOTUS, the people are screwed until they all decide that they are old enough to retire.  Nobody should be appointed for a lifetime appointment.

I am waiting to see what happens with the compromise legislation between the two houses before I completely quit the Democratic Party. 

Thank you for your piece.  I agree with you.  Obama is a corporate Democrat, not a Liberal/Progressive.  He and his staff will do anything to stay in power.  The Democratic leadership sold their souls to the corporations starting in the 1980s.  They are not interested in real reform.  They are not interested in making the case for true change.  The Senate HC bill that Obama supports is an example of so many efforts by him (education, military contractors, et al.) in which he carves out a major place for the corporations to have control over our lives.  Just look at the majority of his appointments to a wide variety of agencies and jobs.  No matter which sector of the economy or institution of our nation he and his administration addresses, he/they refuse to stray outside the lines of  establishment thinking.  It is true that governmentally he is brining greater competence to the agencies, but the ideas are not transformative.  I don't think he's niave or a chess player.  I think he has always been a corporate Democrat and that power to him is more important than principle.  The country and the world are in a terrible place. Obama sticks to the letter and spirit of the Republican project with a few flourishes around the edges, that is to foster the aims of corporate America, continue with our messianic foreign policy and devotion to the idea of American exceptinalism, destroy the New Deal, and fragment and atomize the forces working toward a social compact.  Yes, there are a few good things he has done, but overall he is cementing corporate power over the government and over the lives of the American people, a really terrible thing.  This is what we have Republicans for.  Yes, the Republicans wouldn't have given us health care of any kind and there are other examples of that, but in the end the Third Way that Obama espouses just doesn't work out that well for the country.  To cite Professor Wolin's phrase, we have Democracy, Inc. (in his book of the same name) instead of democracy.  It didn't begin with Obama but he is running with it.  No member of the leadership or the Congress has comprehensively critiqued the Republican project nor articulated an alternative vision for the renewal of democracy and the essential need for a social compact based on humanist values and shared sacrifice, nor critiqued our obsession with militarism and fundamentalist economics and the deleterious outcomes they have had for our nation and the world .  Yes, I know some have spoken up over this or that issue, but the disagreements now existing between the leadership and the activist base of the Democratic party are central to the future of the nation, whether that future will be one under growing corporate control, or whether we will be able to renew our country and its ideals from the bottom up and assure a future in which we will be able to have a say in how we are to be governed.  And of course, what he is doing with respect to the wars and the war on terror and civil liberties issues (indeed with respect to the rule of law in general, even on civil and non-war related criminal cases) is very often unconstitutional, unjust, and inhumane.  It is not clear that he has given up on torture, even.  He talks a good game, that's all.  With respect to leaders of all kinds, watch what they do, not just what they say.  Your principled stand deserves our support.

I said if Democrats didn't vote for kucinich this country was doomed during the primary season.I voted for obama not out of conviction but as the lesser of 2 evils.Shows how wrong you can be.I refuse to vote for him again,I will not vote again except for a third party that's not libertarian or Republican or Christian   

       The only solution is as many and myself for the past 6 months have stated is to form a new third party.the one gentleman who says since Clinton the Democratic party has been swinging right is entirely correct.As a history major I can honestly say,at one time the Democratic party was as right wing as the republicans of old.We are there again.Too many democrats don't want to face the truth.Keep up the great writing Mark karlin you are an excellent counterpoint to fake liberals like PM Carpenter.

Mark,

I was never on the Obama bandwagon until the after the Democratic convention. Hitherto I held reservations about Obama that despite of his ethnicity he was merely another suburban coordinator class triangulator of the Bill Clinton mold, the reason I rejected Hillary Clinton out of hand. Yet as the campaign progressed I warmed to the once and future president.

Let me put it this way, Obama's rhetoric won me over and I wanted to believe. Yet like the kid whose belief in Santa Claus is dashed when he spies his father donning the Santa-suit, I am disillusioned with this Democratic president.  

Of the four progressive splits you outline, Mark, the only one I reject is the third. I do not see the president as a masterful chess player luring his enemies into a trap where he will spring a brilliant checkmate winning the game at the eleventh hour. No, I now see the president as I first saw him during the early stages of the Democratic primary, essentially a slightly more principled member of the Democratic Losership Council, putting the agenda of the suburban coordinator class to the fore. The health care imbroglio is a good example for I am sure many earnest, young, college-educated suburban, white collar, coordinator class Obama-Democrats are engaged in the health care industrial complex. The Massachusetts-style Romney-care bill currently being pooted out the Senate's rectum will undoubtedly be of great benefit to that segment of Obamacrats.

I shall never forget, and to this day it sends a chill down my spine, that on election night an MSNBA corespondent, and I do not remember if it was Keith Olbermann or some one else, interviewed a Harvard professor identified as then president-elect Obama's greatest mentor, who said, "When I first met Barack and Michelle Obama they were so conservative I thought they were Republicans."

ET Spoon

Phil in Vermont

Being a boomer,and becoming aware during the '60's,I was no big fan of LBJ's,primarily because of Vietnam,but upon reflection,we sure need him now!

It's probably a long shot, but what would happen if all the truly progressive Democrats like Franken, Sanders, Boxer, etc. started a new party? Maybe call it the "American Party" and instead of a donkey or elephant make the symbol the Eagle, or even the American flag... (What the heck, it works for the Repugs!)

You might not get enough of them, to sign on, but the again, if the public all came out with rave reviews... who knows? Think it could fly? Just a thought.

Right on, BuzzFlash! You won't lose any of us who actually believed oBOMBa during the campaign and are now disillusioned by his actions. Keep doing what you're doing. Those whose hearts are in the right place have nothing to apologize for.

Haha.  Now you progressives are feeling exactly like what us conservatives felt from Bush and McCain.  Neither party represents what they "stand for", and all you will ever get by voting for one of them is no change at all, just more of the same mindless partisanship fighting, corporate buyouts, and no real debate about serious issues like healthcare, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.  Here's to a unified progressive party and a unified conservative party, so we can skip the crap and get to finding out who's right about how to fix America.

But I must wonder; if far left breaks off from the Democrats, and the far right breaks off from the Republicans, won't we eventually just have two new parties that will become exactly like the Democrats and the Republicans?  Just a thought.

I could not agree with you more on position 4. I too believed that we finally had a man that would lead us out of the dark and into the light. His rhetoric is the best ever given in many a decade (in spite of Reagan being called the "Great Orator" he was a wuz compared to Obama.) After watching Bill Moyers, I don't think we'll have Obama to worry about next time, I just wish to hell there was SOMEONE with the backbone to do the job they beg us to elect them to do.

You phoney; left of left indeed. I read BuzzFlash everyday. I contribute when able.  I voted for Obama  then learned , after he eliminated his campaign advisors for neo-cons, that he is a corporatist in the mold of Reagan, Bush I and II, and Clinton I and II. Rahm Emanual is an ass; so are Tim Geitner and Larry Summers. I will not vote for Obama ever again. Let Sarah win and bring the Empire to its knees.  But know this: I will still contribute to BuzzFlash.

Progressives Need a Party. The far right is well on the way to either form a new party, or to reform the Republican Party. The conventional wisdom seems to be "Omigosh! If we don't pass this turd of a health care bill it will spell doom for Obama and the Democratic Congress!" I have a worse scenario: Obama and the Democrats are reelected and maintain control. That means worse health care, further inattention to climate change in these critical times, and more of Wall Street riding rough-shod over all of us. The fix is in. We lost our last best hope with Obama and the 111th Congress.

We need a new party. We need to recruit the Greens and the progressive, non-corporate members of the House and Senate: Anthony Weiner, Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson, Barbara Boxer, Al Franken, Russ Feingold, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, etc.

If we don't run the corporatists from both parties out, our country is doomed.

The style of our President is to get something done using small, mincing steps, like a cat slinking up to a mouse, then pouncing.

This is something new to me, and it may or may not work. The uncertainity is unnerving and annoying, but maybe I'm just impatient and expect things to happen instantly. Getting a GOOD health care bill passed will almost certainly save lives in the short term and benefit everyone in the long term.

The ONLY reason that quick, decisive action isn't being sought by Mr. Obama is that the greedy psychopaths he's up against are DANGEROUS, EVIL, and RUTHLESS, and wield too much power to be met head-on.

If this is the case, that power should be taken away from the crooks with all possible speed, and NOT gradually.

This entire internecine bitterness was evident back in the 60s and 70s. We united against the war and against Nixon but the New Left fought among themselves. There was a divide within Mobilization against the War and SNCC, there was a divide within Vietnam Vets against the War resulting in a schism within that organization that exists to this day, and, as a result, the right was able to unify around our ineptness.

Whenever it seems we are going to be in positions where we can effect change, the infighting starts and we become caricatures, ineffective at governing because we're too busy trying to decide who's going to get credit for being the smartest guy in the room while the walls are crumbling down around us and the ceiling is falling on our heads.

Our fighting gives the opposition the ammunition it needs to prove to everyone else that we don't deserve to be in power because we haven't quite left the sandbox level of discourse among ourselves.

My guess is that he's the consummate chess player. While the senate healthcare bill is a disaster, Obama felt that by passiage of a garbage bill he'd be moving the process along, and that some of what has been lost will be regained (a) in conference, (b) in reconciliation, or (c) further down the road.

Although there are arguments that can be made for all of your 4 views of the president, I think there is a 5th alternative which doesn't match the others, but which is my vote for the second possibility, and which may in fact coexist with the chess player scenario.

That he is simply not a "progressive" or "liberal"; he is somewhat to the right of progressives or liberals, but slightly to the left of Bill Clinton. And perhaps a little more focused on principle and less on polls than Clinton was. While he is in favor of giving the insurance companies some competition, he is not in favor of putting them out of business. While he is not in favor of "fat cat" bankers paying themselves large bonuses when they have failed, he is not going to treat them as harshly as they deserve, either. While he finds mountaintop removal distasteful, he's not willing to stop it altogether.

In my opinion, Obama has been revealed to be little more than a very articulate salesman.The first inkling came during a speech by Bill Clinton at a rally for Obama when he quoted Obama as saying "Just tell me what you want, and I'll sell it" (referring to the economic crisis as I recall). There was no reaction by anyone visibly, but the statement shocked me. It now appears, after his many capitulations to the Right and the occasional bone tossed to Progressives, that Obama is Slick Willie 2.0. Fool us twice, shame on us.

Obama can't do what he campaigned on.  If he did, corporate bribes to Democrats would dry up in a heartbeat.  Washington thrives on bribes and until we the people can pony up MORE cash than the corporations, health care reform is off the table, the wars will never end and our taxes will continue to rise so corporations can continue their free ride. Republicans and Democrats support the highest bidder.  Greens don't accept corporate bribes.  Vote Green for change in 2010.

I, too, have become increasingly disillusioned with Obama.  My spouse, who voted Green, keeps reminding me of what a gullible fool I was to actually hope in a Democratic presidential candidate, once again.  He claims they are all corporatists and it will never change... I no longer know how to reply.  I'm depressed and finding it difficult to stand up for Obama.  I will support Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Grayson, and a handful of others, plus whoever runs against Lieberman in his next election.  I do not know if I will ever support a Dem presidential candidate again.

I support Buzzflash with premiums whenever there's a book or DVD I want that Buzzflash offers. Just as I support my local bookstore rather than saving a few dollars here and there buying from Amazon.

I don't see not agreeing with everything and everyone on Buzzflash as any reason to abandon the site.

Anyone who hasn't gone over to the dark side and become a Republican should be working together on common principles. I don't have any insight into why Democrats/progressives/liberals often act like medieval scholastics doing battle over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Why should we act politically like a bunch of religious wackos who would rather be ideologically pure than practical.

Cooperation is a fundamental human characteristic. So let's cooperate on common endeavors. Can we not disagree without calling each other morons?

Bush II was elected by a razor thin loss and then handed the presidency by the Supreme Court. But he never looked back and then had his political ass saved by 9/11. The Republicans talk about "bipartisanship" just often enough to keep the media and the public satisfied but they don't believe their own rhetoric and go on and do as much as they can get away with. That house of cards began to fall apart in 2006 and collapsed completely in 2008.

I don't know if Obama is a smart man but a weak leader or whether he is more tempted by the trappings of power and is therefore sabotaging the very success he craves. It's not a pretty picture, but the Republicans are much, much, much worse. Can't we agree on that?

The lousy health care bill should pass because otherwise the Democrats are in for big losses in 2010 and maybe will lose the White House in 2012. That's insane and would be terrible for the country. We cannot afford to let the idiot, no ideas Republicans scuttle health care reform. It's better to take a baby step forward than to jump off the cliff and take along with us the millions of needy people who need a few bites of bread rather than continuing to starve.

We can start working right away on improving health care reform and figure out how to begin to step on the fingers of big pharma and the health insurance industry. Not everything will be done at once but we should get started.

Colleen Clark Cambridge, MA

Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel along with the ghosts of Rove an Cheney it seems, have inspired this President to get/buy votes in any manner possible to pass legislation most appeasing to the biggest lobbyists and donors in the country.  And our Senators, now nothing more than parasitic growths of those lobbyist and donors happily obeyed. 

More astounding though, was the fearmongering they now use to explain/cover their asses for last 5 months of unnecessary torture they put America, and the Democratic party in particular, through.  Threats of bankruptcy, eternal damnation and death to America, if we dared to stop them or to get them to do the right things.

It's horribly sad and ironic to note that after the bold and brave Governor Dean came along to end 12 years of Republican control in congress and 8 years of Bush, thanks to the ultra pro-business capitulations of Emanel and Clinton, we now see Dean insulted and shunned for his continued bolness and bravery by those who now benefit greatly as a direct result of his actions.

How obscene politics has become!.

You idiot, I’m lefter than left but I too want Obama to ignore the left, because you childish morons are given the opportunity to make healthcare a civic institution, something available to all, and you have this opportunity with the blessing of the party’s right wing, but you scream because you couldn’t have everything you wanted.

I swear, you people are incompetent voters, who listen to a candidates words but hear your own ludicrous fantasies, without naiveté or simplicity as an excuse – only immaturity and petulance. It is embarrassing to have to share the labels ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ with such infantile adults as you.

To make matters worse, you publicly regard your ability to get people to stop reading you as a sign of your goodness, thereby confirming what PM Carpenter wrote here recently, that you regard yourself as liberal purity incarnate. You embarrass yourself despite the implicit warning of your own columnist.

there is a simple rule in the reality based world: If something seems too good to be true, it most certainly is. I felt this was applicable to Obama from the first time I heard the corporate media gushing over him. Its so obvious that most people are blinded to the fact that the media, and the corporations who own and support it, revel in their ability to choose who we ultimately get to vote for. Why wring your hands now? You fell for it hook line and sinker, again! I watched for decades as the media in this country deliberately and systematically destroyed every true liberal candidate for president since Carter. They brand true leaders like Dennis Kucinich as looneys, and spend years marginalizing them, while elevating to celebrity status mallable dimwits, like Palin and Reagan, and self serving pols, like Clinton and Obama. My rule is simple: If the media creates and gushes over a candidate, they are not for the people. Period. End of discussion. I knew Obama was a phony from day 1. Myself and lots of other people more resistant to madison avenue advertising, were villified by Obama sycophants, right here on this site.  We were called racists! Im sorry, but democrats brought this on themselves. Its pretty clear that the right wing in this nation has been infiltrating the democratic party for years. Do you think its an accident that there are always a few "centrist" democrats in congress who stop all progressive legislation in its tracks? I doubt it. It seems to be a well planned strategy that is now bearing its final fruit: Election of a right wing president disguised as a progressive democrat, and the utter division, and destruction, of the pale shadow of whats left of the democratic party in America. The destruction is almost complete, and the way is almost clear for an open takeover of the government by corporate interests. This "healthcare" bill, will be a big step on the way to just that. The final lesson is, the next time you hear the media spend hours talking about how a candidate "saw a flying saucer once", or play a loop of film showing a candidates demoniacal scream, over and over, THAT is the person you want to vote for. If you ever get the chance to vote that is. Welcome to fascisim.