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Enrique Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:05 PM
Original message
Ed Kilgore makes a good point
Edited on Tue Jul-26-11 02:17 PM by Enrique
I hate his word "elites" and I'm not endorsing the whole article, but I think Kilgore nails one thing. We (whatever you want to call us) have no leverage, until the 2016 primaries, and Obama knows it.

I would add another cautionary note. The part about the (whatever you want to call us) having no choice to vote for Obama in 2012 is true now, but becomes less true every time he or his surrogates rub our noses in it.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/07/25/left_obama_leverage/index.html

(...)

But the more important cautionary note to mention is that approval ratings are absolute, not comparative. Everything we know about Obama’s reelection strategy indicates that he hopes to make this a comparative rather than a "referendum" election, as he must unless economic conditions improve more than they are expected to prior to November 2012, or there is some incumbent-strengthening national security crisis. This strategy might fail, as it did for Jimmy Carter in 1980, or it might succeed, as it (arguably) did for Harry Truman in 1948 and for semi-incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1988. A Republican Party that is on a remarkable ideological bender is certainly doing everything possible to cooperate. But if a "comparative" strategy works at all, it will work most effectively with liberals, who are more acutely aware of the stakes for everything they care about -- from the survival of anything like a social safety net to the maintenance of constitutional guarantees on urgent priorities like abortion rights -- in an election that could give return Washington to united Republican control. Liberal voters are precisely the least likely Democratic-leaning segment of the electorate to sit on their hands in 2012, no matter how they feel about Obama.

And that reality, I suspect, is contributing significantly to the anger and despair expressed by progressive elites about Obama. They may now regret his nomination in 2008, or even (on strategic grounds) his election. But they know in their hearts they will be voting for him in 2012, and for the most part, speaking out for his re-election. Next time there is an open Democratic presidential nomination contest, the organized left will almost certain to make far greater ideological demands on candidates, and make a far less speculative choice of a favorite, than it did in 2008. In the meantime, liberals will mostly have to bury a sense of cold fury that they have been "had" by a politician who in the course of less than three years has devolved from being the left’s great hope for a "transformative" presidency to a heresiarch over whom the Left has virtually no leverage.


(...)
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:07 PM
Response to Original message
1. What's "emo"? n/t
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:15 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. It's a test-meme by Third Wayers trying to paint progressives
as irrational and emotional, like like emo teens, so that 'real' Democrats won't take them seriously. It tries to get between younger progressive Dems and real progressive ideas.

"Emo" - sample - "Leave Brittney ALONE!!!"
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Phx_Dem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:49 PM
Response to Reply #5
17. ROFLMAO! "Leave Brittney ALONE!!!!"
Naaaailed it!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
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kirby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:08 PM
Response to Original message
2. WTF does 'emo' mean?
I've seen this new word on DU in the past week only. Who is trying to introduce this word into the vernacular.
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jzodda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:15 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. EMO=emotional (overly)
Its a disparaging way of saying that somebody is overly irrational, overly emotional over some issue instead of thinking logically or dispassionately.

I disagree with the characterization of DU'ers being "EMO"
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kirby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:21 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. Thanks for the explanation n/t
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MissDeeds Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:26 PM
Response to Reply #4
12. Since it's a disparaging and divisive term
I'd like to see it banned from DU. It serves no constructive purpose.
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Phx_Dem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:50 PM
Response to Reply #12
18. It's a divisive and annoying trait.
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MissDeeds Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 02:49 PM
Response to Reply #18
22. You prove my point
:eyes:
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WorseBeforeBetter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:59 PM
Response to Reply #2
20. It's a concept that's been around since the '80s.
Edited on Tue Jul-26-11 02:00 PM by WorseBeforeBetter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo

Some of the DUers throwing it out now are a little late to the party.
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kirby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 02:01 PM
Response to Reply #20
21. I knew of that term...
I thought since it was a brand new label being thrown around, maybe it had a different meaning wrt politics.
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Tarheel_Dem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:11 PM
Response to Original message
3. "despair expressed by progressive elites"
The Professional Left? :rofl: And FWIW, I don't feel "I've been had". This asshole doesn't speak for me. :hi:
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Enrique Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:16 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. ignoring you finally
sick of that :rofl: in every goddamned post. Why discuss anything with someone that does nothing but laugh in everyone's face?
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Tarheel_Dem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:57 PM
Response to Reply #6
19. Because DU just gets funnier & funnier. ALERT: DU is not the real world.
;)
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Davis_X_Machina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:21 PM
Response to Original message
7. The problem with"....the left’s great hope for a "transformative" presidency" is that...
....there are no ex-ante transformative presidents, or presidencies.

There are presidents whose presidencies fall when the shit hits the fan, and what happens next is transformative.

And after the fact, all of the changes are attributed to the president, because it's easier to think about what happened that way.

It's a human weakness, and Tolstoy nailed it in the second epilogue to War and Peace.
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Armstead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:25 PM
Response to Reply #7
11. That would describe the period Obama stepped into
Edited on Tue Jul-26-11 01:26 PM by Armstead
The shit had already hit the fan when Obama was elected.

He was supposed to be the transformative "what happens next."

But rather than take us in a new direction, he has basically solidified and cemented in place the forces that got us into this mess.

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CakeGrrl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:22 PM
Response to Original message
9. This is what people need to answer: How does a candidate that Progressives find "acceptable"
(and that in and of itself is a major issue - good luck nailing down that definition)

...amass enough mainstream appeal to win a national election, much less a Democratic Primary?
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Armstead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:28 PM
Response to Reply #9
14. A clearly, if moderatly, liberal (or progressive) Obama or Clinton could do it
Edited on Tue Jul-26-11 01:31 PM by Armstead
If either of them had not allowed their liberal instincts to get bought off by the trappings of power, they would have been great mainstream liberal presidents.

If, for example, Obama had shown the same steel and fire against the corporate oligarchy and the GOP that he has used against liberal and progressive Democrats he could have ended up as a successful, maybe great, Democratic president.

If the Clinton who told voters "I'll fight for tyou until the last dog dies" had actually kept that promise, instead of joining the corporate centrist bandwagon, he also would have been a great President.
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Davis_X_Machina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:30 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. How, precisely, is one 'bought off by the trappings of power'?
What trappings of power does a liberal president, or for that matter a conservative president, have or not have, compared to a moderate president?
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Armstead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. You hang out with and listen to the wrong set of stale insiders
Edited on Tue Jul-26-11 01:34 PM by Armstead
..instead of making a point of getting regular reality checks from a mix of ordinary people and experts who are progressive (liberal) and outside of the corporate beltway box.

You also join the Millionaires Club
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Armstead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:22 PM
Response to Original message
10. You disappoiint me in endorsing this shit
Progressive elites? WTF fuck is that all about?

Most progressives are ordinary schmucks like thee and me.

The real elites are the power brokers and oligarchs that "centrists" like Kilgore speak for.
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jzodda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-11 01:27 PM
Response to Reply #10
13. LOL your right
I'm not some "elite"

I discuss politics because its a passion of mine but elite? Nope. I'm just an unemployed schmuck looking for a job with jobsites open in one window and DU open in the other :)
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