If Obama does do a deal with the 'Pugs, he needs to withdraw from the re-election campaign

Agreeing to what they want, even half of what they want(and we know it'll be way more than half)will mean he can never do anything progressive again. Progressive things require financial resources. You can't do social change AND austerity. And clearly it means that all "HOPE" for the poor will be gone. A Supreme Court nomination or two(which he wouldn't get to make anyway)can't make up for letting SS or Medicare be tampered with.

Our only chance in 2012 will be with a nominee who realizes that our party HAS to fight for everyone the 'Pugs attack: labor, the poor, the dispossessed, the Rainbow, and everyone who's closer to the streets than the suites.

A centrist can't do that. A right-of-centrist especially can't.

We need to nominate a DEMOCRAT in 2012.

Barack Obama can never be a Democrat again if he works out a deal with the forces of evil in the House. There simply aren't any issues that will remain that could outweigh the destruction of the rest of the New Deal. We don't have to settle for a pro-choice Republican from the mid 1970's.

You can stop screaming from the streetcorner with your cardboard sign. People have heard you.

He's only been with us on the side issues that required no risk and no money. Everytime there's been a fight, he's caved. Don't you get it yet? He's not on our side.

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Because I don't have a vested interest in seeing the worst possible side of anything he does, even if I have to make it up. Because apparently in your world, not only did he not call for raising taxes on the rich, but apparently there was no fight over healthcare reform, no fight over DADT, no fight over financial regulation, no fight over the stimulus bill...

I trust him because I don't rewrite history to justify thinking he's the spawn of satan.

On each of those bills, he gave up everything in them that matters.

A)There's nothing of value in the healthcare bill(the no-preexisting condition ban was made meaningless by the massive insurance company rate hikes that he did nothing to stop);

B)the financial reform bill has no teeth at all, and everyone on Wall Street thinks it's a joke;

C)DADT will not be replaced by a situation in which LGBT people have full equality with heterosexuals in the military(and they were only going to get full equality if it was in the new policy from the start);

Each is a half-measure. Half-measures are never victories.

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C)DADT will not be replaced by a situation in which LGBT people have full equality with heterosexuals in the military(and they were only going to get full equality if it was in the new policy from the start);

can you explain that -- I didn't know it wasn't going to be totally lifted?

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Nothing comparable to this.

Cutting a deal with Southern Senators that excluded most blacks and women from Social Security and labor law protections in order to get the votes he needed to get the laws passed wasn't a "major cave."

Of course, the blacks and females excluded might have seen it differently . . .

on healthcare, card-check for union affiliation, financial reform, and saving the Bush Tax Cuts(the ones we now know will be in place forever). Those were far worse than what FDR did(not that I condone what FDR did).

You claimed, in plain English, that "FDR never did any major caves to the 'pugs." I pointed out one major cave that FDR did to the "'pugs," so now you've changed your argument to "he didn't do FOUR massive caves."

You said "he NEVER," not "he didn't do FOUR."

Funny how the standard shifted so quickly . . .

Obama/Rahm see liberals as the "opposition" -- !!

The chess game is over --

Obama is over --

from the Internet.

And this isn't about my ego.

At least not like every night.

You never get change without them(the post-election Obama switch from "transformation" to "transactional" is proof of that, as was your pal Rahm's success at stopping anything genuinely progressive from happening AND blocking progressive primary challenges to the Blue Dogs).

And nothing I've ever proposed would lead to "catastrophic change".

There isn't any greater good that would be served by Obama willingly agreeing to massive cuts in social spending as part of a deal. Those cuts would never be restored and accepting them would mean this party would forever lose the right to ask poor people to vote for us. We can't WIN without the votes of the poor(and the 'burbs never really backed Obama anyway).

Compromising with Cantor is the same thing as surrender. And we can never fight back after that. We can never fight for more social spending after it. We can never fight to defend anything in Social Security or Medicare if we allow anything in either to be cut.

I want to win and to stop the right-wing crazies. You just want to surrender to them. And Obama never did want to stand up to the Right or to Wall Street at all(he's proven that he backs the suites instead of the streets).

We're in the final stages of the corporate state transition. Corporations are rewriting our laws now.

You start one in the evening, come back the next evening and try to start a different one. You have tried to start more mass movements than anyone else I can think of, and they all last less than forty-eight hours.

You want all Democrats(based on your posts here)to campaign for Obama no matter what and probably even in the primary, and I strongly suspect you don't even want anyone to fight for a progressive platform.

And the thing is, before you ask, that I am involved in my local party and I do as much nuts-and-bolts stuff as you do...it's likely most of those who are anti-Obama progressives can say the same.

I'm fighting for the spirit of Election Night, 2008...you apparently see that spirit and what the people who fought for this administration wanted as something that had to be extinguished as quickly as possible...because only "the deal", any deal, mattered.

Given that we've repeatedly seen that no one on "the inside" is on the side of the people, why do you give the insiders such a total benefit of the doubt?

Yet the next day, you've still moved on to something else that's equally as likely to be forgotten the day after that.

You don't do anything that's any more effective. And it's never a good strategy for progressive gains to accept conservative interim results.

The cuts that will be made in any deal with Congress will never be restored. Doesn't that bother you at all? Doesn't making Social Security and Medicare open to attack bother you? Doesn't having a party leadership with no values it will fight to the death over bother you?

Politics is about struggle. And the only legitimate progressive politics is one that mobilizes all the people left out in the cold by the right-wing power structure. Together, all those people can form a majority. But Obama has never been interested in that. All he's ever really cared about is "bipartisanship", which can never mean anything other than "doing what the Republicans want".

If this is supposed to be a two-party system, then we need a second party. Democrats can't be that party if we join the GOP in being part of the Austerity Coalition. Look at Spain and Greece and see what's happening to the "center-left" parties who are doing that. They're consigned to the political boneyard at their countries next general elections.

Why do you make these claims that have already been shown to be dubious? Obama increased spending over Bush* during his first two years. He didn't have to do these kinds of things until we had a Republican House. Chances are, we will some day have another Democratic congress and president. This claim is hyperbole.

Except for defaulting on the public debt, but that's a little one.

And it would be a catastrophic change to forever blur the differences between Dems and 'pugs by agreeing to impose a budget more brutal than anything Reagan or Bush the Second would ever have signed.

It's just not enough to "re-elect 'our guy'", especially when 'our guy' is mostly on the side of Wall Street rather than us.

As a party, we simply couldn't ever recover from being party to the Cantor austerity thing. We'd never have any right to ask poor people or workers to vote for us again(as was the case in '96, when Clinton agreed with Dole on everything that mattered).

Oh come on. Part of the reason we're in this mess - according to some - is because progressives protested and sat out the 2010 election in order to shake off some blue dogs (which were elected by other Democrats in the primary, by the way, or at least not challenged). I don't believe that, but they used to like to claim that. And don't tell me that the blue dogs voted like the Republicans unless you can name one that did - otherwise I have no reason that you actually looked it up. Also, 80% of the remaining blue dogs voted against the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill, against the Republicans. Every blue dog had a significant partisan voting record, but if you want to name one that didn't, and go on to name five bills where they voted against the Republicans which still aren't important to you, then I will believe that you actually researched this claim that they are not better than the Republicans to you (this information is not difficult to find by the way, and I'll give you a hint that a major newspaper has already compiled it for you at their website).

Do you realize that Obama actually committed more money to the stimulus than the New Deal, even adjusted for inflation? Did you actually know that? Do you really think that he wouldn't reverse some of this damage that the Republicans are inflicting if he didn't have to work with a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, when he has shown in the first two years that he is willing to increase spending when he is in a position to do so?

house. They called themselves "hurting" Obama and look what happened!!! Those dems who stayed home and didn't vote shot themselves in the foot and now want a fuckin revolution!! That's why nobody takes them seriously!!

I want to blame splinterist progressives for the mess we're in, but it really makes more sense that the politics of those districts were pretty conservative to begin with.

There's no case against doing that. Your way is surrender.

posts. :evilgrin:

Thanks for the note of support.

And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

And if you want to support a candidate like Obama then you'll have to

rely on the rightwing to elect him as far as I can see --

And an unrec.

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He has no leverage.

And only Wall Street will celebrate if he gets a second term. He's not on our side and never will be again.

which helped create the fake debt "crisis" --

BLAGGA BLAGGA BOO BOO BOOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as President.

That gave us the twelve years of nothingness that was the Carter and Clinton years. This was supposed to be different. At least he was supposed to fight to make it different. But he never tried. The whole "bipartisan" thing was a code for "I surrender".

Perfect response. :rofl: :rofl:

Who would it be?

thing to say.

You are saying the same NO COMPROMISE crap the teabaggers push.

The idea that you are willing to let the Republicans pick the next couple of Supreme Court Justices - which will probably be replacing liberals on the Court - is absolutely DISGRACEFUL.

Just imagine giving the Roberts Court another crazy RW'er.

Grow Up.

Any compromise means the end of all progressive policy. Don't you get that? You can't have liberalism AND austerity. That just reduces liberalism to some meaningless rights shit and leaves workers and the poor out in the cold.

Unless there's redistribution of wealth from the rich to the non-rich, you don't have a progressive administration. If he makes the kind of deal he's going to make, there will never be any liberal programs again. The remaining antipoverty programs will die. Nothing positive will come of this.

Cuts of this size are never restored.

People should really be smarter then this.

What's the point in fighting for "not as bad"?

You can't win elections that way.

and any more voting for the "lesser evil" will simply move the party

and the Congress further to the right --

if that's what you want -- you'll get it!

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:rofl: --

Really humorous, huh?

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at least in regards to Obama.

anything Obama does have the same goals as McConnell. Period.

So there!

nm

Sid

Sorry if the rest of us don't have your needs.

You want a savior, not a president.

in the destruction of the New Deal?

SAVIOR -- PINK PONY

The alternative is, he could actually stand up to the bastards...like he's never done the whole time so far.

n/t

What DEMOCRAT do you think we could win with if not Obama? Some of refuse to believe that you can't win with the independents and keep thinking we can will a presidential race with a real DEMOCRAT who is left of center. It ain't gonna happen.

as a real fighter for those left out in the cold by Reaganism-Bushism. People who gained from that aren't ever going to vote for us anyway, and you can't do anything worthwhile if you've won by sending a "we look down on the same people you look down on" message to upscale voters.

We can win if we fight. It's just that, in the fall, our candidates usually haven't fought.

That's a depressing admission.

Not in this decade.

It's not a "fight." it is about convincing people used to bread and circuses again a media carrying water for the Republicans.

Such a fight can't be won through "centrism" and deference to Wall Street.

Of getting voters to hate Wall Street. The left has done a terrible job, though admittedly the media works for the Republicans. So it's an uphill battle. The left comes off as whining and Americans hate that.

All leftists in THIS country are Americans. We're just as American as the left-bashers.

Typical victim posturing.

Leftist Americans are a subset of Americans, not representative of Americans. Therefore the left has to convince the non-Leftist Americans if it wants its visions to become reality.

Centrist Americans are also just as American.

You were using a right-wing rhetorical tactic.

And of course Centrist Americans are American. It isn't the left who does the "you're not an American" smear.

New Silent Majority postions? You know raising taxes on the wealthy, no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ending the wars. Things like that. You know all those positions that a VAST majority of Americans say they favor.

in a left winger to the White House?

If we can find one to meet your standards, that is. Complete with pony.

Reality needs to set in for some people.

Do you think swing voters will come running back to the same policies -- nothing done about jobs -- they rejected in 2010?

for being too far left.

Or just plain ineffective.

They said the economy was the most important thing to them, and specifically, jobs. Whoever runs on that, will win.

How does anyone forget Obama putting Koch Bros DLC Rahm Emmanuel in White House --

or forget Obama's Wall Street team which created the meltdown --

Or Obama making back room deals with Big Pharma and private H/C industry to trample

single payer -- MEDICARE FOR ALL -- which the nation and suffering Americans desperately need?

How do we forget Obama extending the tax cuts for the rich -- which basically ensured that

there would be a debt "crisis" to be faked?

Treasury is borrowing that money now to cover those tax cuts for rich -- had to increase

interest on it -- $120 BILLION -- by a half of a percent!!

How does anyone forget Obama extending the Patriot Act -- ?


From the beginning, this president was betraying voters -- how do we forget that?



WE NEED TO NOMINATE A LIBERAL IN 2012 --

a small "d" democrat who will show some signs of caring about the public --

And Obama should serve as a lesson for all of us that we need our BS meters turned

waaaaaaaaaay up -- !!

And that we have to avoid candidates who are pre-owned and pre-bought by corporate $$$ --

That's most of them -- so I think we should be looking outside of the party for a new

candidate for 2012 --

AND WE NEED TWO STRONG ANTI-WAR CANDIDATES!!

unfortunately it seems all threads about looking for a real democrat to primary Obama in 2012 now get hijacked by cheerleaders.

And there is nothing to say any other President could do better.

and shove it.

But hey ... yet another political masturbatory fantasy of some new uber liberal to run in 2012 ... ignoring that fact that there isn't one.

He should not be supporting any cuts....in any deal....period.

If he does...it's not their fault. HE put them on the table!

He's responsible for every fucked up thing in Washington.

Thanks for enlightening all of us as to who and who cannot be a Democrat.

that reduced us to the Reagan-Carter and Clinton-Dole contests.

off your high horse.

This country is no where close to electing someone like Dennis Kucinich, Al Franken et al to the office of President. The closest we'd get would have been Kennedy...and if you don't think he'd have made concessions you're not being honest. As much as we may want a "more left" President we're not gonna get it...at least no time soon.

I live in the real world. Save your lectures about who is and isn't a Democrat.

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That's what being a "pro-business Democrat" means---helping corporate power rig elections for the Right.

That's all that needs to be said about that.

in his speech at the '68 Democratic Convention(the one he said right after he blasted Daley for "Gestapo tactics in the streets")

"How hard it is to accept the truth".

What "real Democrat" has a realistic chance to win the general election?

We've never gained votes by having our nominees act as if it's embarrassing to disagree with the Right.

We win when we generate enthusiasm. We win when we inspire passion. That's what we have to do. And those things are far more important than fundraisers with CEO's or corporate luxury suites at our conventions.

Regardless if you like or dislike Obama, he will be a lame duck halfway through his second term, that is, IF he declares and campaigns to seek his second, and perhaps it would be better if we primaried him with someone like Alan Grayson, IF it means that he MIGHT get a clue that many of his supporters are very disappointed in his performance thus far. Grayson is someone whom I could get behind and would do what I could to help him get elected and would likely vote for in a New York minute. Makes it more likely that we would have a Dem as POTUS for 2 more terms, and perhaps again elect a majority in the HOR hopefully no later than '15. I fear a Rethug being (s)elected as POTUS, not only in '13. but also in '17 as well, when I MAY be reaching age 60. (since I very well might not make it to that "ripe old age" if Medicare and SS are gutted)