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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The hope for a lot of people lefty - and I'm pretty far left - is that Obama is just a "phase". Not that we'll get over him or something similarly sophomoric; rather, he's a step left of the the current going-ons and a move towards a less rightwingnut general though process.
If I get my "wish", he'll be to the left what Reagan was to the right (except without the burden of neo-cons & the Laffer curve) - the first in a stream of politicians who gradually move the country more to the left. Hell, maybe not even left; *actually* center would be a vast improvement. An election where Kucinich *doesn't* sound, comparatively, like a radical would be a refreshing change.
But now? I'm just happy that he's in. The guy hasn't even taken the oath yet, so *please* - give him a chance. He's already demonstrated he's a hell of a lot smarter many of the last few presidents & contenders, plus up front said he'll do some stuff we might not like. I'm not the strategist he is by any means, so although I'll certainly question what he's doing I'm willing to let him *at least* give him some time to show his plans.
Don't paint us like the right. We're the big tent now, and perfection of the "cause" is not the goal.
Look, here's how this is going to go:
Barack turns to Larry and says, "Larry, we need to get out of this financial mess, how do we do that without putting 2 million people out of work?" And Larry says, "Well, you do this, this and this." And Barack says, "OK, Tim, make it happen. Rahm get Congress on board. Hillary, get out your bull horn." Next, Barack turns to David and says, "General, we need to get out of Iraq without handing the entire ME over to Iran. How do we do that?" And David says, "Well, we need to this, this and this." And Barak says, "Fine. Bob, make it happen. Joint Chiefs, get with the plan. Janet, help 'em out. Hillary, pave the road." Now, does anybody really give a hoot and a holler how "progressive" any of these folks are? NO. We care that they can implement the policies of the center-left President we just elected. Let's get a little more goal-oriented people. There's work to do.
A very deft analogy, thank you. Agreed wholeheartedly.
Now (to take the analogy further), I've seen enough evidence to suggest Obama will be more like Furtwangler than Lorin Mazel. (I'm picking on Mazel because I saw him conduct die Walkure at the Met and my God, it was boring! I mean, they played the notes, of course, but how anyone could get up there make some of the most passionate and cataclysmic music ever written boring is beyond me.)
Obama might appear boring, but just scratch the surface and you find a Furtwangler, which is to say, someone of powerful and singular vision.
One thing I've learned is how to discern a legitimate issue from one that "feels" to be largely media-generated. And this IS HE LIBERAL ENOUGH? smacks of the latter.
What I think you're missing is that the reason he won by such a large margin is because we are largely a Centrist nation. Media pundits and the GOP are the ones who have labeled Obama as such a liberal.
We, the voters, knew.
THIS is what scares me about the left:
"If I get my "wish", he'll be to the left what Reagan was to the right (except without the burden of neo-cons & the Laffer curve) - the first in a stream of politicians who gradually move the country more to the left. Hell, maybe not even left; *actually* center would be a vast improvement. An election where Kucinich *doesn't* sound, comparatively, like a radical would be a refreshing change."
After watching the right get more and more extreme over the past 20 years it boggles my mind that the left somehow thinks "it could never happen to us". The Republicans started out with Reagan and ended up with GW Bush. They followed their ideology to it's extreme and ignored reality and discarded pragmatism. Now you and others on the left want to make the exact same mistake. You see Obama as a foot in the door to get into power and push farther and farther left until the most extreme elements of the party can push ideology over practicality. Don't you see you are making the same mistake the right made? Extremism does not work. If Kucinich's policies were to be enacted overnight they would be a disaster of epic proportions. They are idealistic ideologies not grounded in the real world. I, like most Democrats want a balance between our ideals and what is possible. Reality cannot be bent by ideology. We must work in the real world and our policies should reflect that.
You are all about to find out what happens when you vote vanity over sanity. And I don't at all mean McCain.
For all of you who thought that when Obama made all those campaign promises to you, he meant any single one of them --Welcome to Politics 101.
Whatever your opinion of how Obama got where he now is- the baseline reality is that he didn't get there without every possible variation on Quid Quo Pro.
What you are about to find out is that Obama IS the Gordian Knot. NOT the guy who untied it.
Obama owes lots and lots to lots and lots of string-pullers about to reel him in over the next four years. You who fell for exalting the silliest of inconsequential priorities over what really mattered are going to find out how low any of your expectations are on Obama's list.
Obama has so far picked his way thorough two camps.
Just remember after slagging Clinton all the way through the campaign and rubbing both their noses in it, that the only reliable choices Obama has made so far are nearly all from Clinton's administration.
Likely meaning if Obama had been enough of an American to place patriotism before narcissism when he morally should, we'd have pretty much those same people in place. And a far more reassuringly better president in time of crisis. Make that PAIR of presidents.
Only in America could we reject two proven geniuses in favor of at best one half of a shiny new hologram. I'm not really a president, but I look good on TV. Maybe you could turn the Oval Office into a Holiday Inn Express.
And we'd be minus the other camp--- Chicago Machine Politicians. One reason I could never remotely support Obama is early on having taken a college course on the History of Chicago. Seen up way too close and daily for a seminal semester, it is, and always was, even more putrid a rotten pathology of a self-interest fiefdom than you could ever want to consider. And Obama is a classic every dot connected product of its mentality. What little experience he has actually had is all tainted by it.
If you aren't part of the solution-- you are about to see what happens when you deliberately choose to be led by part of the problem.
I too well remember that the instructor used to continually point out if we learned nothing else from this course, we'd learn the truest meaning of Quid Quo Pro.
Little did he know how horribly true his prediction would bear out.
I didn't think it would be possible for more of an excrescence than Karl Rove to appear on the political scene until I started reading more about David Axelrod.
All we've done is make it possible to prove that folly is as much to be expected from the Left for the next four years as we've seen it for eight endless years on the Right.
I never thought George Bush would be useful for anything. But what he's provided for me is the realization that how I got through the past eight years is going to have to be whatever portion of the next four years I'll be around for.
All I've got to say is God bless the guy who invented the remote. We all owe him the greatest debt and he should be given a special Nobel for Maintaining Sanity.
And that Obama will primarily be useful for me to be able to finally break my news habit. I am indebted to him for the gift of the time I used to spend paying heed. I think now it makes far more sense just to rather not know. I used to read Salon daily. I haven't wanted to even check it in weeks.
I never imagined that past Bush it could get so bizarre so fast that ignorance might really become, if not bliss, at least the sanest way to cope with another four year helping of folly.
The best thing about Obama is that having paid close attention to all his campaign tactics and comprehending the true import of his Chicago origins, my expectations of him are so inestimably low that there is no possible way Obama will ever be able to disappoint me.
As for you who insisted on electing him, you've answered something I've always wondered about. Why people, who finding themselves in crisis could deliberately waste logic and deny reality by constructing a Golden Calf, would ever bother to think that worshiping it could ever solve anything.
-gala1
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
