Kemstone's Journal

Have you ever criticized someone for being a certain way, only to reflect on it later and realize that you’re often guilty of the same thing?

I’ve recently engaged in some political introspection that I think might be worth sharing. I’ve found that what bothers me most about Barack Obama’s leadership style is something I do myself, and much of what frustrates me about the Tea Party is something I’m just as guilty of. I’ll explain what I have in common with these groups, but then defend myself by explaining how in my case, it’s different.

Is your hypocrisy-detector functioning? Then here we go…

Obama and Me

From the very beginning, Barack Obama presented himself as a unifying figure. In giving the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he catapulted himself to national fame with these words:

Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

His desire to rise above petty partisanship and bring the country together was one of the most admirable qualities he had as a presidential candidate, and it’s undoubtedly what drew a lot of right-leaning independents to vote for him in 2008.

The problem is that he actually tried to put this philosophy to practice when he became president, and not only has it failed miserably but it’s resulted in legislation being weakened to the point of impotence. In the name of “changing the tone in Washington”, Obama began his presidency by weakening the stimulus bill and loading it with tax-cuts in order to try and win a few republican votes that he didn’t get anyway. He tried to reach across the aisle on health care reform, and drove his presidency into a ditch by abandoning the public option. He managed to get Lieberman and a few other corporatist Democrats on board, but not a single republican, and average conservatives are still convinced that the bill is the End of America as we know it.

But as much as I want to scream, “No! Don’t compromise! Fight! Fight them with everything you’ve got!” I have to acknowledge that I too have a natural inclination to seek out the middle. When I debate someone, I’m not so much trying to win an argument as I’m trying to explain my position to the other side, to better understand theirs, and hopefully to find common ground. In fact I’ve taken some criticism from Team Left simply for suggesting that we try to reach out to conservatives and work together against the common enemy of corporate influence in government.

So how can I justifiably condemn Obama for a personality trait that I share with him?

The difference: I’m not the President of the United States. When I debate someone, there’s nothing at stake but our own points of view. The strength of the economy is not on the line. No lives depend on the outcome.

And more importantly, I’m usually not arguing with people whose primary goal is to destroy me. I’m all in favor of negotiation and compromise, but not if the other side isn’t acting in good faith. The republicans who signaled that that they might vote for a bill if Obama was willing to give up this or that were never interested in making the bill better—they only wanted to make it worse so that it would be easier to kill, and easier to campaign against if it passed. In some situations, compromise is the last thing you should do.

Which brings me to…

The Tea Party and Me

I am significantly to the left of the establishment Democratic Party, just as the Tea Party is significantly to the right of the establishment Republican Party. Just as I want democrats to be more liberal, the Tea Party wants republicans to be more conservative.

I hate this about the Tea Party. They are pushing the Republican Party so far to the lunatic fringe that even Ronald Reagan wouldn’t pass their ideological purity tests. Many say they’re hurting their own cause, as far-right candidates like Sharron Angle stand a much worse chance of winning a general election than more moderate, mainstream republicans. But they care more about their ideals than the success of a political party.

And this is a trait I share with them. If it were up to me, the progressive movement in this country would go after Blue Dog Democrats and corporate shills like Blanche Lincoln with just as much ferocity as we go after republicans. The Democratic Party, because it is so full of moderates and centrists, never draws a line in the sand and sticks to it. Even when the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives announced that it wouldn’t vote for a health care reform bill without a public option, they all eventually caved. Had they stood their ground, the bill might have died but at least everyone would understand that health care still needed to be addressed and that if any president wanted to accomplish anything in that area, they’d have no choice but to include some form of a public option.

To be clear, I’m perfectly willing to compromise and negotiate for the sake of the greater good. And when all was said and done I did think that passing the health care bill in its current form was better than nothing (lives did hang in the balance, after all). But I think that certain things should not be compromised—the things that are most essential. The public option was the most important part of the health care bill because it was the seed that could have grown to completely change the system, and I would have raised much more hell about it before considering voting for a bill without it.

So how can I justifiably condemn the Tea Party for demanding too much ideological purity when I often do the same?

The difference: My opinions are based on facts and logic. I don’t want to paint the entire Tea Party with too broad of a brush, but it seems to me that most of them get all of their information from conservatives propaganda outlets like Fox News. They are duped into believing that what they are hearing is actual news, “fair and balanced” and that the information they get on TV is all the information they need.

I get most of my news from liberal sites like the Huffington Post, but there’s a fundamental difference between getting your news online and getting it from TV. Watching TV is a passive exercise. You just sit there and let the talking heads tell you what’s going on and what you should believe about it.

Conversely, getting your news online is a very active process. Not only do you select what stories to read, but you can follow the links within those stories to do your own research and fact-checking when you’re so inclined. Furthermore, you can comment on the stories, thus inviting anyone who disagrees with you to challenge your opinion. Even on sites like the Huffington Post, there is a strong conservative presence in the comment threads and you often have to defend your opinion—which in turn motivates you even more to have your facts straight.

Conclusion

So…am I a hypocrite? How many contradictions did you spot? I said I’m a lot like Obama in that we’re both inclined to reach out to our ideological opponents, but I’m also a lot like the Tea Party in that we want leaders who will fight hard for our own ideological principles. I justified my criticism of Obama because when I reach out there’s never anything at stake and my ideological opponents don’t have any ulterior motives, and I justified my criticism of the Tea Party because my ideological principles are rooted in facts.

I’ll now open up the floor to anyone who wants to challenge me, though I warn you that I might try to reach out and find common ground.

Back in June, when conservative democrat Blanche Lincoln defeated her more progressive rival Bill Halter in the Arkansas primary, I wrote a piece explaining why Arkansas democrats who voted for Lincoln had made a mistake.

They knew that Blanche Lincoln had helped kill the public option and that she was far more interested in helping big corporations than in delivering change for average people, but they held their noses and voted for her anyway because the conventional wisdom was that a democrat needs to be conservative to win in Arkansas.

Well, guess what? That conventional wisdom, it turns out, is (surprise! surprise!) conventional bullshit.

Polls show Lincoln trailing her republican challenger by nearly 20 points. Why? It might have something to do with the fact that half of Arkansas democrats are disgusted by her and can’t even bring themselves to vote for her even against a republican.

When the AFL-CIO backed Halter in the primary and he lost, an “anonymous White House official” [named Rahm Emanuel] called journalist Ben Smith to say:

Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise. If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.

This is the same guy who called progressives a bunch of “fucking retards.”

Well who’s the fucking retard now, Rahm? I didn’t think this was rocket-science. Karl Rove seemed to understand—what you need in an election is a candidate that can energize the base. You stupidly thought that democrats were all going to line up behind Lincoln and because she’s conservative she’d pick up just enough republican votes to push her past 50%.

Well, you were never going to pick up any republican votes anyway. Lincoln may have helped kill the public option but she still voted for Obamacare in the end and that’s all that matters to republicans. They’re not going to give her credit for weakening it—most of them aren’t even aware that she did.

Blanche Lincoln voters: I hope you realize your mistake. You would have voted for Halter in the general election, right? Well it turns out Halter voters aren’t quite as willing to vote for Lincoln. Just like President Obama, you moved to the middle and wound up losing both sides. I hope that you and Obama finally get the message.

Okay, so I don’t hate all democrats and I hate the Republican Party more, but when it comes to the Democratic establishment I have nothing but contempt—contempt which has been seriously reinforced by this news from Newsweek.

Remember the 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Clinton? It seemed to drag on forever because even after Obama won a clear majority of normal delegates—those elected by popular vote—there were still over eight hundred superdelegates—party leaders and Democratic VIPs—with their votes still up in the air. These superdelegates each have a vote equal to one normal delegate who represents thousands or tens of thousands of voters, which means a superdelegate’s vote counts thousands of times more than the average person’s. Theoretically, in a close enough primary the superdelegates could overrule the majority of voters and nominate the candidate who won less normal delegates, which is what Hillary Clinton was hoping would happen in 2008.

Everyone who paid attention closely enough to learn about this ridiculousness knew that it was a problem and that if the Democratic Party wanted to look legitimate again they’d have to take care of the superdelegate problem, and the clearest way to do that would be stripping superdelegates of their voting power. Democratic Party elites could go to the polls in their own states during the primary and cast their vote just like everyone else.

“One man, one vote” is the core principle of American democracy. But if superdelegates are a part of this process, you start getting “One man, one ten-thousandth of a superdelegate’s vote”.

But now a party rules committee decided to toss out a plan to strip superdelegates of their nominating power. In spite of strong grassroots opposition to these rules, any change of rules has to be endorsed by the Democratic National Committee. And wouldn’t you know it? It just so happens that all 447 members of the DNC are superdelegates! And they might not want their power stripped from them.

The result was a compromise, whereby superdelegates will keep their powers but will have their collective influence diluted from about 20 percent of voting delegates to about 15 percent. This has allowed the DNC to paper over the differences. “We’re proud of the work both the Democratic Change Commission and [the rules committee] have done to increase the overall impact and influence of the grassroots on the … nominating process,” the DNC press office replied by e-mail to a NEWSWEEK query. “Each took a different approach, but both took seriously the charge … to increase the power of the grassroots.”

Typical Democratic Party problem-solving. Rather than strip superdelegates of their inordinately disproportional voting power, just increase the number of normal delegates so that it’s slightly less disproportional than before. Now instead of having 20% of the say in who their party nominates to the rest of the country’s 80%, superdelegates will only have 15% to the rest of the country’s 85%. Now if they want to give the nomination to the losing candidate, the race will have to be slightly closer.

It’s a bit like reducing the crack-versus-powder-cocaine sentencing disparity from 100:1 to 18:1.

And of course the Democratic Change Commission is so proud that they increased the power of the grassroots by a teeny tiny itty bitty little amount. Democratic “Change” indeed. That seems to be the pattern: “Look, we made things ever so slightly different than they were before—if you look really hard you might even notice some differences!”

To hell with the Democratic Party. We need a Progressive Party in this country that is powered entirely by the grassroots and dedicated to enacting real change. Today’s democrats can either join that party or become republicans, which many of them (for all practical purposes) already are.

I spent so much time working on yesterday’s epic blog entry that I need to keep this one short and sweet. It’s not a particularly important issue (unless you’re a crack-smoker) but it says an awful lot about the way in which the spineless democrats are governing.

You may have heard of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Crack is the same substance as cocaine, only made to be smoked rather than snorted. For whatever reason, it tends to be the drug of choice for poverty-stricken minorities living in the inner-city. Powder cocaine is more often used by white kids out in the suburbs.

During the 1980s people were positively hysterical about drugs (thank you Nancy Reagan), and politicians needed to show how tough they were on this issue. So they rushed to pass legislation imposing a strict mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for possession of just five grams of crack cocaine (not very much). Apparently they forgot about powder cocaine, which you’d need to possess five hundred grams of (a whole heck of a lot) in order to trigger the five-year sentence.

And so we’ve had a 100:1 sentencing disparity since then, resulting in a disproportionate number of minorities going to prison rather than whites simply because for them crack is easier to come by. Chris Weigant writes:

It’s as if we decided to make coffee illegal, and instituted mandatory minimums for possessing five cups of coffee — while at the same time applying the same penalty only if you were caught with 500 cups of espresso. Or made water illegal, but set a much higher bar for possessing 500 ice cubes. Either way, it is the same substance. The only thing which differs is the penalty for the “lower class” version of the substance.

One of Obama’s many campaign promises was to eliminate this disparity, and in typical Obama-fashion this issue was addressed this past week and the result was—you guessed it—a compromise. They eliminated the mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack cocaine, and upped the amount you need to possess to trigger the five-year sentence from 5 grams to 28 grams. The sentencing disparity is no longer 100 to 1—now it’s 18 to 1.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m amazed they did anything at all. Politicians are so petrified of being labeled “soft on drugs” (because they’re all still trapped in 1987) that it’s a wonder they even addressed this issue at all. But seriously—why not go all the way? The problem wasn’t that the disparity was too great but that there was any disparity at all.

This is the kind of weak governance that exemplifies the nature of the Democratic-controlled congress of these last two years. Make progressive changes but only a little, lest the republicans attack you for being too radically liberal. Never mind the fact that they’re already accusing you of being radically liberal and they’d be doing that no matter what—just pretend that the other side is rational.

Just imagine that their negative campaign ads will go like this: “Congressman Soandso is a soft-on-crime liberal. He voted to reduce the penalty for possession of crack cocaine. Although to be fair, he didn’t reduce it as much as he could have, so he deserves a little credit.”

These people are idiots if they think anyone at all is going to give them any credit whatsoever for not going all the way on this. It would be as though a century ago lawmakers said, “We strongly believe that women have the right to vote, but just to show how reasonable we are we’ll only make their vote count half.”

When are they going to realize how pathetic they look?

Just another quick comment today, this one on the corrupt and spineless senate democrats:

After almost a year of trying to build consensus, top Democrats on Thursday admitted that a sweeping climate and energy bill simply couldn’t be done, faulting Republicans for being unwilling to contribute neither votes nor ideas toward forging a compromise. At a press conference on the Hill, climate crusader Sen. John Kerry called the prospect “admittedly narrow.” Majority Leader Harry Reid followed with a frank conclusion: “We simply don’t have the votes.”

I would be much more angry about this if I thought that the legislation would have had a serious impact on America’s energy policy and the global climate crisis, but had they moved forward we would have no doubt ended up with something weak and ineffective that wouldn’t have really solved anything or brought about real change but would have somehow benefited the oil and coal companies.

Still, just in terms of the gesture itself, this is one big “fuck you” to everyone who voted for Obama and congressional democrats. A radical, “Apollo-style” transformation of American energy policy was one of Obama’s central campaign platforms, and they’re just saying it’s too difficult—they don’t have the votes.

Of course you don’t fucking have the votes! You never have the votes at the very beginning. Too many democrats (as well as every last republican) are owned by the fossil fuel industry. The last thing they want is to have to vote on something that will either piss off their constituents or piss off their energy-industry pals. You have to push the legislation and call on your supporters to put pressure on these people to do the right thing. You never start off with enough votes—you have to fight to get them.

But instead they’ve decided not to fight at all. They piss their constituents off, but there’s no prolonged battle, it’s not in the headlines, nobody is talking about it, and therefore [they think] nobody suffers any electoral consequences for it.

But the worst part is that they’re saying “Now is not the right time. It’s too difficult.” Right, with a Democrat in the White House and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, passing legislation that the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters have been demanding for decades is just too hard. Maybe after the mid-term elections when the Republican Party [presumably] takes over again, it’ll be easier.

I really hate these people.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the power-elites are targeting social security, creating the false impression that it’s in crisis and cuts need to be made when in reality the program is just fine and they’re only trying to funnel more money from the middle-class to the upper-crust. Yesterday I came across this YouTube video that makes this point much more effectively than I can:

Seriously, don’t buy into the bullshit. If you don’t believe me or this video, just do the research yourself.

But the point is that we can’t keep letting them take our money. Every time you get a paycheck, the government takes a huge chunk of that and puts it into the social security pool which you are then entitled to take from once you retire. They want to privatize that pool of money so they can gamble with it, just like they’ve been gambling with mortgages. To let them do that would be disastrous—upon retiring we’ll end up as financial burdens to our children, and if we don’t have children we’ll just be screwed.

So please take a moment to check out this website and sign the petition. The democrats are poised to concede to the republicans on this issue just to prove how moderate they are, so we have to let them know we’re paying attention and we won’t stand for it.

Among the many pundits and news organizations that peddle vague and shallow observations as ‘conventional wisdom’, Politico is near the top of the heap. This week they published a piece called “Why Obama loses by winning” which is the epitome of the kind of garbage that Washington insiders consider brilliant analysis.

When Obama came into office, the assumption even among some Democrats was that he was a dazzling politician and communicator who might prove too unseasoned at governance to win substantive achievements.

The reality is the opposite. You can argue over whether Obama’s achievements are good or bad on the merits. But, especially after Thursday’s vote, you can’t argue that Obama is not getting things done.

Um…yes we can. And we are. Obama may be pushing lots of legislation through that address big issues like health care and financial reform, but when you scratch the surface you don’t see much actually getting done. Other than an individual mandate and some extra subsidies for poor people, not much has changed about this country’s health care system. And other than the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a one-time-only audit of the Federal Reserve, financial reform hasn’t changed a thing about the way Wall Street operates.

Obama’s strategy is to make it look like he’s achieving all kinds of great, historic accomplishments, and it would seem that the Washington punditry has taken the bait.

But the truly egregious thing about this article is this tired old nugget:

But on the issues voters care most about — the economy, jobs and spending — Obama has shown himself to be a Big Government liberal. This reality is killing him with independent-minded voters — a trend that started one year ago and has gotten much worse of late.

Right, we all know how everyone is so upset that Obama is such a Big Government spendaholic liberal. Never mind that the single biggest factor behind this perception is the economic stimulus plan which prevented the current recession from being much worse than it is. It’s Economics 101 that in a recession, you spend more money to get the economy moving again. It’s how we pulled out of the Great Depression. It’s necessary to spend more if we’re going to pull out of the recession we’re in now. Many economists think Obama should do much more stimulus spending—but thanks to right-wing media spin and total ignorance of basic economic principles, many people think that Obama’s excessive spending is responsible for the recession.

Hence the god-awful title of this piece, “Obama loses by winning.” As in, “Even though Obama was swept into office on a message of change and even though he’s addressing every issue he said he would as a candidate, voters would rather he not get all this legislation passed because it costs too much money.” Apparently, voters would like him a lot more if he didn’t do anything on health care, finance, energy, and so on. What Obama should be doing is spending all of his time working on things like Flag Appreciation initiatives and honoring America’s great baseball players.

America is so fucked if this is the conventional wisdom in Washington. Our country is in serious trouble and the only thing that can prevent a monumental fall-of-Rome level catastrophe is radical, fundamental reform. Obama won’t even go near the level of reform we actually need, but the Washington media elite still insist that he’s going too far. He wants to get out the oars and row very softly against the current, but the media wants him to sit back and let the current take us where it will—which in this case is over a waterfall.

On a less important note, the piece also has some fun things to say about liberal bloggers:

The liberal blogosphere grew in response to Bush. But it is still a movement marked by immaturity and impetuousness — unaccustomed to its own side holding power and the responsibilities and choices that come with that.

Ha HAH!!! Yes, it’s we liberal bloggers who have all the power now! We have so much power we literally don’t know what to do with it. Obama, who is totally on our side and listens to everything we say, is driving his presidency into a ditch because he just keeps taking our immature and impetuous advice! Damn, that’s rich.

Regarding our “immaturity and impetuousness” I suppose it’s of little use to compare us to right-wing bloggers, whom we all know are the pinnacle of sophistication. It’s not like they’re saying things like Obama’s birth certificate is fake and he was actually born in Kenya, that his health care reform bill was a plot to set up death panels to ration care, that he purposefully caused the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in order to get climate legislation passed, that he’s a secret Muslim who sympathizes with terrorists, or that he’s an angry black radical who is redistributing the wealth to his black friends as back-door reparations for slavery. No, right-wing bloggers would never be so immature.

So many liberals seem shocked and dismayed that Obama is governing as a self-protective politician first and a liberal second, even though that is what he campaigned as. The liberal blogs cheer the fact that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s scalp has been replaced with that of Gen. David Petraeus, even though both men are equally hawkish on Afghanistan, but barely applauded the passage of health care reform. They treat the firing of a blogger from The Washington Post as an event of historic significance, while largely averting their gaze from the fact that major losses for Democrats in the fall elections would virtually kill hopes for progressive legislation during the next couple of years.

Seriously, have these guys ever actually read a liberal blog? 1- There’s nothing shocking about the fact that Obama cares more about self-preservation than liberal principles—we’re just pissed off that he pretended otherwise. 2- Just because we’re happier with Petraeus than McChrystal doesn’t mean we support the war in Afghanistan. Personally, I only applauded the change because with Petraeus in command it will be politically easier to end the war and bring troops home. 3- Damn right we barely applauded the passage of health care reform. It wasn’t worth applauding. 4- How many people characterized Dave Weigel’s firing from the Washington Post as an event of historic significance? I never mentioned Dave Weigel, but I highly doubt that those who did lost focus on 5- the prospect of major losses for Democrats in the fall, making it even more impossible to get progressive legislation passed.

Regarding this final point, nothing pisses me off more than the argument that progressives are shooting themselves in the foot by being too progressive. Apparently, if we want progressive legislation, what he have to do is let them water-down the legislation until it’s not progressive at all. Only then can it pass, thus securing a political victory for democrats, thus allowing them to win their re-election campaigns and thus return to Washington where they can…what? Are they suddenly going to start passing progressive legislation after the mid-terms?

What these media elites never recognize—either deliberately or out of ignorance—is that America needs big reforms. We tried things the conservative way for the last thirty years and it’s led to economic stagnation, the destruction of America’s reputation abroad, the slow death of the middle class and the catastrophic redistribution of power from sovereign nation-states to multi-national corporations. Progressives aren’t advocating progressive legislation as some kind of culture war battle—most of us spend little or no time at all talking about things like abortion or gay marriage. We’re advocating for progressive legislation because that’s what this country needs, because it’s what the world needs, because it will help everyone, including people who treat the word ‘progressive’ as if it’s worse than ‘nazi’.

We will continue to push our ideology in spite of the political consequences for those in Washington because short-term political interests should never trump long-term national interests. It may take a few election cycles, but hopefully our influence will grow, we’ll sway more independents through the force of our arguments (which have the virtue of being supported by facts and by history). The goal is not to help the Democratic Party, but to make the Democratic Party help us, and thus help everyone. If they have to lose a few elections before they finally get the message, so be it.

From last week’s New York Times:

BOSTON — In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration’s suit against Arizona’s new immigration law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections.

Are you serious, Democrats? How weak and spineless can you possibly be? Do you seriously want the Justice Department to drop the lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law just to make your re-election campaigns easier?

This is exactly why people hate politicians. They care more about doing what’s politically expedient than doing what’s right. If they oppose Arizona’s immigration law—which practically guarantees racial profiling and usurps authority for the state government which for very logical reasons ought to rest with the federal government—then how about some willingness to speak out against it? Or, conversely, if they do support this law, how about some willingness to say so?

Instead of just taking a position and letting the voters decide, they complain about having to take a position because the issue is too controversial.

Not only that, but they actually want Obama to drop the lawsuit and throw all those law-abiding, legal Arizona residents who happen to be Hispanic under the bus, leaving them subject to racial profiling and possible detainment if they forget to carry their birth certificate whenever they leave the house. All so that their re-election campaigns can go a little more smoothly. Pathetic.

Barack Obama did some campaigning for Harry Reid last week as part of his broader effort to maintain Democratic majorities in the House and Senate after this November’s mid-term elections.

The strategy for the republicans is clear: Make the elections a referendum on Obama and the democrats. If the economy still sucks and unemployment is high, voters blame whichever party is in power.

Because the economy does indeed still suck, the democrats have to make sure the election is not a referendum on how they govern but a choice between that and the way the republicans govern.

Hence you have Obama’s now-famous “keys to the car” talking-point, the metaphorical back-bone of the democrats’ entire 2010 strategy:

It’s hard to argue against that. Anyone with a memory-span greater than that of a goldfish understands that republicans had control for nearly the entire downward spiral America took during the last decade. Putting them back in control when their ideas haven’t changed at all since then would unquestionably accelerate the fall.

Obama rephrased this message while campaigning for Reid:

“This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess, or the policies that are leading us out of the mess,” he said. “This is the choice between falling backwards and moving forward. Harry Reid wants to move forward. I think most people in Nevada want to move forward.”

This kind of assertion is a bit less un-assailable. I don’t really see Obama’s policies as moving us forward—it’s more like they’re moving us backward at a slower rate. The choice isn’t about direction but about velocity. How fast do you want to go over the cliff? Vote republican if you want to go faster.

It’s pathetic how far Obama has fallen from that role of visionary candidate he managed to play so perfectly in 2008, promising not just to play the game better but to change the way the game was played. He’s neither changed the game nor played it particularly better than most. His victories have been weak and hollow, and he hasn’t appeared to be fighting very hard for them in the first place.

The choice we’re left with is no choice at all. Left-leaning voters can’t vote republican, but voting democrat would send the wrong message as well—that we approve of the pathetically ineffective governance we’re getting and we’ll accept more of the same.

Obama didn’t win the 2008 election. The idea of “Change” won. Now Obama is the “more of the same” candidate. The “could be worse” candidate. The Democratic Party is the party of “better than nothing.” If they think that message will motive people, they’re sadly mistaken.

I’ve written a lot about the corporate-controlled cronies in Washington want to cut all kinds of domestic spending like unemployment insurance and Social Security while they refuse to cut spending on the war in Afghanistan, but I haven’t yet addressed their purported reason for doing so.

If you spend enough time here in Washington, watching cable news, or reading the opinion (and sometimes the news) pages of major newspapers, you’re likely to be told that budget deficits are a top tier or even number one concern to the American people. Furthermore, moderates (the people, who, according to conventional mythology, decide all elections) REALLY care about these budget deficits. Therefore, it’s good politics to be a deficit hawk.

Polls that suggest Americans are really concerned about the deficit are probably conducted by calling up people and asking, “Are you concerned about the deficit?” Most people would, of course, say yes. But if you don’t just ask a yes/no question and instead give them a list of options and ask, “Which of these is most important to you?” you get results far more reflective of reality:

Obviously, it’s in the best interests of the powerful (or so they think) to spend as little money as possible on the middle-class. More money for them, the thinking goes. So they have their propaganda machines at Fox News and the Tea Party groups howl and scream about the national deficit and how it’s going to be disastrous for everyone’s grandchildren, whom we’re saddling with so much debt they’ll never be able to repay.

So Tea Party people really think they care a whole hell of a lot about the deficit, so we definitely shouldn’t extend unemployment benefits or pay for people’s health care or improve our national infrastructure or basically do anything other than dropping bombs on people who worship a different God.

This concern for future generations seems surprisingly noble of them. Especially because these are the “Drill, Baby, Drill” people—the same people who decry global warming as a hoax, who refuse to acknowledge the oncoming worldwide energy crisis, and who dismiss all environmental groups as fringe wackaloons who have no idea what they’re talking about.

If they really cared so much about future generations, you’d think they’d at least give environmentalists some benefit of the doubt and be open to hearing their case. If they really feel that they have a personal responsibility to make this the best world possible for their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren, they’d want to get all the facts about energy, the environment, and global warming, and they’d be out there demanding that we do something about these problems.

But they don’t really give a shit about future generations. They know the word “deficit” because Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are always screeching about it, and it’s the easiest way for them to pretend they’re making an intelligent critique of Obama’s policies.

Believe me, if Obama wanted to freeze all government spending they’d be crying that he wasn’t spending enough. They just know the economy sucks and that the deficit has something to with economy. One plus one equals “I want my country back!”

Democrats should be trying to educate these people rather than pander to them. If they took that approach on every issue, we might actually get somewhere.