What Comes After Obama?

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

As one of my favorite (and long absent) Daily Kos commenters said recently:

 

can't even get people who agree with my points to focus on the long term big picture. None of this short term stuff matters. Its just infortainment. The real big picture is what comes after Obama? 

And, as usual, bruh1 is dead on. That's really the question, isn't it? WTF do we do after this guy gets done splintering the Democratic Party, destroying the middle class, and sending the poor even deeper into poverty?

It's a cinch that time spent figuring out “What's Wrong with Obama” will be time wasted. He's not going to change. Is he truly an elite corporatist neoliberal, a misguided centrist liberal, an actual weakling or fool? Who cares? It's People magazine profiles masquerading as political analysis. His deeds tell me everything I need to know. He spent close to a year carefully constructing a minimally progressive front and allowing desperate progressives to see him as their Savior (from Bush and the Republicans). He then promptly, even before the vote, sold us out on the FISA amendments he promised to filibuster. He then continued selling us out on everything, starting with the Public Option, accomplishing almost nothing actually progressive for two years, while doing his level best to undercut, repudiate or just plain anger every single Democratic core constituency, from unions to trial lawyers to GLBTs to civil libertarians to latinos. The only folks who've gotten something substantive out of their vote for Obama are gay soldiers, and then only because gays en masse threatened to turn off the GayTM. How African Americans can still support this guy out of anything but symbolism is beyond me; he's been the worst president for black people since Reagan.

Now that the 2012 campaign is in full swing, we can dismiss any new talk from him about supporting any of these core constituencies. Anything on that subject will just be the same “elect me, what other choice do you have?” stump bullshit we heard last time — you know, all that blather about ending the wars, closing Quantanamo, restoring the rule of law, and rescuing the society from the criminals currently extracting its wealth and exporting its jobs.

So what's the answer to bruh1's question, about “what comes after”? The first answer, clearly, is “More of the same, for quite some time.”  Even if he manages to fumble the re-election (which I doubt, although there are signs he could), Obama and the DLC power structure he represents will continue to be all-powerful within the national Democratic Party. They will be the strongest force opposing progressive change in this country, outside the Tea Party.

A Tea Party insurgency inside the Democratic Party could make the answer very different. But the Tea Party has millions in support from corporate donors, a weapons-grade PR machine and media echo chamber that funnel supporters to them, and a legion of lawyers and experts who fashion and coordinate legislation at the state and local level. That makes it seem pretty hopeless.

I don't think it is. I was around in 1964, when Barry Goldwater led the Republican Party to a withering defeat that might have crushed that party for all time. I had a right-wing acquaintance, Bob Consoli, who had been an active supporter of the Goldwater campaign. I made fun of the campaign's ineptness and extremism, and of Bob's faith in such a man. All Bob had to say was: “Laugh all you want. This isn't the end.” And it wasn't. In the intervening years, right wing elements within and outside the Republican Party came back from electoral defeat, organizing huge grassroots movements in support of their core issues. In less than a generation, they had us living in Ronny Raygun's Amerika. And we haven't managed to get out of it since.

I don't know what Obama's fortunes will be next year, and I mostly don't care. He has already demonstrated convincingly that his interests and mine are not connected. All I care about, and am hoping for, and will work for, is the same kind of resurgence on the left that we have seen from the right.

4 comments

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  1. sooner than we think, 2013. Obama has paved the way for 4 to 8 more years of Republicans four years earlier than expected. Where many of us on the left are concentrating our money and efforts are congressional and local races to take back control. We got screwed here in NY with a right wing, blue dog governor who hates unions workers and the poor but loves them millionaires. The saving grace is a gutsy AG who is taking on the banks and Obama over foreclosure fraud. This is where the push back will come.

    The White House is a loss no matter who wins. I find I am even more disheartened now than when Bush was re-elected in 2004 but I will not give up trying to get this country back on the right track.

    I wish bruh1 the best, he is a brilliant voice that was silenced by the right wing Obamacrats and their Rovian tactics

    Welcome to Stars Hollow.

  2. may have done us a favor, handing Democrats a way to come back.

    From John Aravosis at Americablog

    A friend recently asked me if we really want to hold the presidency the next four years.  I didn’t quite understand his point, so he continued.  The economy is going to be in such bad shape during the entire four years, he explained, whoever is in the White House during that time, whatever party, is going to be eviscerated by the voters for a long time coming. (Try to make the Congress Democratic instead, he argued, so as to blunt the GOP president, but still blame him for the malaise.)

    Reads the rest about how the Dem don’t market themselves like the Republicans. Food for thought

  3. Neo Lib lying sell out yuppie fucking scum.

    The thought that they’re going to change is laughable, and, anyway – that forgiveness thing is NOT for those kinds of criminals. For those people, “forgive” means I’ll NOT require you to put in jail for life for being lying sell outs. I think banishing ’em to pick through garbage dumps for daily food would be bad cuz it might displace the poor who already workign in Raygun heaven, so I don’t know what to do with ’em.

    maybe 100’s and 1000’s of them won’t be re-elected?

    as much as I can’t stand ’em, I don’t think “the left” has figured out any important lessons since Prop 13 in ’78 in CA.

    People want shit to work. We don’t want to hear excuse upon excuse from leafy neighborhood dilettante explaining how the latest tome from some Kennedy School Of Government, College of Highly Paid Excuse Makers explains in 400 or 4000 pages that the roads / education / blah blah is complex, and, let’s hire another crop of paper pushers to study shit. Make shit work. We get enough of the rich man’s contumely & the whips and scorns of time from our fucking thieving asshole bosses. Make shit work.

    Americans will ALWAYS be on the side of the person who invents a google or an airplane, and will ALWAYS not care if those creators get rich. What is  “Fair” can’t be some whiny ass noble selfless gooder better abstract thing, what is “Fair” has got to be practical. People who got rich got rich on google cuz the roofs don’t leak water on the computers, cuz the roads work to deliver the roofing material, cuz without roads who has a goddam computer to plug in, cuz without reliable power how the hell can a computer work.  So, guess what computer genius, you either pay to support the community which supported you to get rich, or, pack what you carry into 2 duffel bags, we’re shipping your greedy fucking ass on a 1 way C-130 to shithole Nigeria, we’re throwing you and your money on the tarmac, and leaving.

    I’m 51 – my medicare and social security taxes cost me $1.77 an hour of work, based on 40 hours a week (ha ha) times 52 weeks.

    What does NOT having Medicare and Social Security gonna cost me? Every time I go the grocery store or the gas station or the corner store, I’m gonna be over run by starving seniors covered in freaking diseases begging for crumbs.

    ANYONE who wants to live in that world – we got extra space for your drooling, ignorant fucking ass on that C-130. Ya see, cuz those of us in the public sector have made shit work, we’re thinning the herd of Randian fuctards! Can’t wait till ya all fix Bananastan!

    Yeah I don’t give a rat’s ass about 0bummer – except to HOPE he and his ilk get flushed (I’ll be voting “Medicare ForALL”), BUT, I’m not seeing the ism out there I give a rat’s ass about either.  

    ugh.

    rmm.

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