MoDo lets Obama have it today: "The president has been ... spectacularly unable to fill the leadership void in Washington... His inability to grab a microphone and spontaneously assuage Americans’ fears is strange.... He long ago should have gone out into the country to talk to Americans in person and come up with a concrete plan.... His withholding and reactive nature has made him seem strangely irrelevant in Washington, trapped by his own temperament. He doesn’t lead, and he doesn’t understand why we don’t feel led."
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10 comments:
Here's my comment on MoDo's column:
Couldn't agree more. President Obama has seemed depressed in his last two speeches and even more detached than usual. I think he's mad at us, or at least befuddled by our failure to appreciate him. He's angry with the left, anyway; he said so in December when he called us "sanctimonious purists" and sent out Robert Gibbs to say worse. Evidently he figured abandoning his base would endear him to so-called Independents. They weren't endeared.
As Westen wrote, Obama has been off-message from Day One. He never told a narrative. Worse -- he never backed up a narrative with serious jobs programs. He never fought for us. He never stood up to Congressional bullies. It was clear early on his was more comfortable making deals with corporations (big Pharma) than with fighting for Democratic ideals. Meanwhile, his "look forward -- not backward" policy meant not just that Bush Administration officials went free but also that none of the big players on Wall Street would pay for their misdeeds. They are, after all, a major source of campaign cash.
He said not a word as Congress wrote weak bill after weak bill, all of them larded with concessions to special interests. He just signed what they brung him.
At the same time, as his economic team pushed the stimulus bill on Sunday teevee, they showed little interest in job creation and cavalierly low-balled what the unemployment rate would be. Then most of them went off to better jobs themselves -- Summers back to Harvard (where he said he was going to study job creation! Orszag to Wall Street.
Why should Iowans -- or anyone else -- believe President Obama has the interests of the American people at heart? He & his team have done little to show it. The White House turnover has brought more fat cats in: Bill Daley, Jeff Immelt of GE! His policies have become so right-wing that this week Congressional Dems have seen him in court over Medicaid.
It's been a downhill presidency.
Again, the unnamed Democrats are whining off the record that they wish Obama was more of a fighter. That's the whole trouble. Either the President has completely hijacked the erstwhile party of FDR and taken it to the corporate conservative land of Reagan, or the Democrats have been wimps all along. I suspect it's a little of both.
Mainstream elected Democrats appear as terrified of losing their campaign cash and White House support if they don't give in to Obama's conciliatory approach, as the Republicans fear their own seats if they don't kowtow to the Tea Party. Both parties, of course, are wholly owned and operated by Wall Street and the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with a dose of Koch Brothers toxicity giving that added repulsive oomph to the GOP.
Asked about Obama, Democrats are supremely wishy-washy. Asked if he should face a primary challenge, they balk and cringe. They all are extremely quick to say what a good guy he is. Of course they would say that. He brings the millions in from the people who really count -- the tycoons and banksters and the rarefied members of the Forbes 400. Their largesse trickles down to them just the way the Bush tax cuts were supposed to trickle down to us. Only for them, it's real.
While I was awaiting the Wisconsin recall results Tuesday night, I kept thinking that this could be the tipping point, when the Democratic base finally takes its party back, when a nation becomes inspired enough to challenge politicians of both parties -- neither of which is working for the people who elected them. Congressional approval is at an all-time low, with an especial disgust aimed at Republicans. The undemocratic Super Congress appointed to decide our fate will not win any fans either. I sense a resurgence of a true popular movement, immune from astroturfing and co-option by the corrupt duopoly. It's either we take our country back, or we can all spiral down together into the black hole of fascism.
The Wisconsin Recall Returns are a good place to start. After an almost $40 million dollar media blitz the Republicans only lost two seats. The next round will see if the Democrats loose any seats. The exit poll interviews indicate the voters saw what the Democrat and public worker unions had to say and were unimpressed. We will see next week how the two Democrats do.
Obama was not impressive to many of us before his election and is less so now. I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that after His speach Monday He, Obama, is defenately not F.D.R. He does sound a lot like Carter however.
Richard
@ Richard. Um, how surprising is it that Republicans won in Republican districts, only one of them by a comfortable margin? Factor in the millions of anonymous Republican funny-money that poured into Wisconsin (Democratic supporters tended to ID themselves; Republican backers did not), and it's amazing that any Dems won -- as did two of the challengers, again in Republican-leaning districts.
This is hardly a stunning win for the bad government crowd and I should think you would be ashamed of crowing about it.
I'm not, the point is that the out of State money in the 10s of Millions of dollars from Public Unions and others didn't really affect the results. These folks way out spent the incumbents and their message didn't resonate. We will see next week if it works the same way in the other direction. If spending all this money on relatively local races really changes nothing what does that say about the same thing nationally?
Put simply rule one of advertising : It helps to be selling something people want. After Wisconsin you must ask yourself if what you are offering in the "Great Virtual Bazaar of Ideas" is what a majority of us "sub informed" consumers want.
If not pay attention to the consumers and offer something that fills their needs. That should be easy as there sure are a lot of needs out there. Yet nether major party is doing a good job of listening and offering.
I am not saying that I don't agree with some of points you make, I am saying that however much merit the points have they seem to not be resonating.
Richard
@ Richard. "These folks way outspent the incumbents...." -- Richard
"Among interest groups, spending has been about even with a slight edge possible to Republicans overall. The Democratic We Are Wisconsin has been the biggest single spender this year at $7.9 million, while Republican spending was divided more among multiple groups.... The interest groups have a virtual monopoly on the campaign advertising." -- Mike McCabe, executive director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that monitors campaign financing, cited in Reuters @
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-wisconsin-recalls-idUSTRE77376L20110804
Richard, I have asked you time & again not to make "statements of fact" that are verifiably false. It's unfair to other readers who may believe some of your repeated misstatements, & it's unfair to me to have to constant fact-check you.
Your entire comment is based on a false statement, which essentially renders it nonsense. If you think makiing stuff up is somehow a contribution to discourse, I'd like to know what the hell contribution that might be.
The general agreement in the "main stream media" is that when all the reports are filed between $36 and $40 million will have been spent in the Wisconsin recall elections. With as you stated "We are Wisconsin" a Democrat organization having spent the most. My belief is around $12 million not $8 million. Let's wait for the final numbers to come in prior to "a rush to judgment". However even if as you state they spent $8 million of the $17 million reported at this time that is almost half of the reported total from just one Democrat group. There were a lot more than just one Democrat group spending money.
More importantly all the money from both sides didn't change many minds.
Richard
@ Richard 1. "These folks way outspent the incumbents...." -- Richard
@ Richard 2. "My belief is around $12 million not $8 million. Let's wait for the final numbers to come in prior to 'a rush to judgment'." -- Richard
Here's the difference between statements of fact and opinion. The first remark, although it is not factual, is expressed as a statement of fact. The second is an opinion -- in this case an opinion of what the future will hold.
What you're telling me in your second comment is that it's okay for you to make stuff up and present it as fact because later on there's a chance it may become true. When I present evidence contradicting your "statement of fact," on the other hand, I have made a "rush to judgment."
Ergo, your misstatements are okay. Other people's statements of fact are prejudgments. If and when you can see the fallacy in applying a double standard (What I say is true because it might be some day; what you say is false because the facts may change), you are welcome to comment here again. In the meantime, I will not support this kind of nonsense.
@Richard said, "The exit poll interviews indicate the voters saw what the Democrat and public worker unions had to say and were unimpressed."
Where did this come from? Is it one news clip about an interview with one person? or, is it a valid sampling from voters exiting the pole? This kind of statement should be backed up with a citation or it is unadulterated bs!!!!
From-the-Heartland
The following article may be of interest:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-ideology-of-no&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110810
Richard
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