Frankly, this is just sad--I sometimes wonder if we expected too much after the 2008 landslide, but the more I see, the more I think we were just hoodwinked. We are talking 300,000 teaching jobs gone, an end to extended unemployment compensation, less police and firefighters--versus hedge fund managers (all of whom played a huge role in the mess we're in) getting taxed at a bullshit rate, that's considerably lower than most of us pay (Robert Reich--can we elect this guy President?--has an excellent analysis). And the Democrats are just slinking away, when they should be screaming about it from the roofs of every building and home in America. Is this the Democratic Party that I signed up for?
Obama has become the second coming of Bill Clinton--complete and utter mediocrity, without the pure shit luck of a dot.com boom to help us forget how mediocre his leadership has been. Healthcare reform has its bright spots (an end to lack of coverage for pre-existing conditions, kids kept on their parents' insurance until age 26, an end to recision), but I have a hunch that the individual mandate unless markedly changed is going to come back and bite Democrats in the ass, and without, at the very least, the public option the whole exercise was pretty much futile. Financial reform is a joke, as nothing with any teeth has passed and without serious safeguards we're setting ourselves up for another disaster at some point down the road. I mean, what exactly have we gotten for our troubles in getting these people elected? Stem cell research and the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act. Woo-fucking-hoo.
Yes, I know that things would be considerably worse under McCain, but if we can't take bold action after winning a huge majority in Congress and the White House in a landslide after the worst financial crisis in 80 years, when the fuck can we? Where are the courageous leaders of our party who are going to stand up and essentially say, for example, "Deficits my ass! We need to spend to keep the economy going, we need to spend to keep the unemployed going, we need to spend to make the necessary repairs to our infrastructure..."? Or "Wall Street? Fuck them--they're going to pay to make Main Street whole again...." Or "BP stands for Better Pay Up...." Apparently they only exist in an alternate universe (or our fantasies) because there certainly aren't any of them (at least with any serious clout) in the Democratic Party now.
I've tried all day to come up with the proper adjective for all of this, but the best I can do is: pathetic.
One thing's for sure--my money this election cycle is going for books and CDs. At least then I'll get something of value for my hard-earned cash.
Peace,
emaycee
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I know you're a busy man, and you have no time to read it, but Brownstein's The Second Civil War would probably help explain Obama's, and Democrats', politics. I think what they have been aiming to do is to bring an end to the hyper-partisanship in American politics. Brownstein actually recommends, in his repetitive and long last chapter, a lot of what we've seen Dems try to do. However, none of it has worked as Brownstein imagined.
ReplyDeleteI think we all thought that with the majority Obama won with, and the majorities he got in the House and Senate, that we could have our Bush-esque years. We thought we could push through our agenda. In the end, we got an actual "uniter, not a divider." And I suppose I wanted our agenda pushed through, but isn't taking a higher road what tends to make us Democrats?
I'm not suggesting that we should stop pushing our agenda. And when a large majority of the country thinks something needs to be changed, like DADT, we shouldn't have to ram through any agenda. Further, as I've stated in my blog, this administration is bad at message. They need to start with left leaning policy before compromise.
I've probably done a bad job of saying what I'm trying to say. But, simply, I'm pissed at Dems, too. I wanted the same thing you did, but I don't think it was the worst thing in the world to try to bring the country closer together. However, it's failed. Perhaps they'll move toward more progressive policy now. Though, I'm not gonna hold my breath.