Tag: ek Politics

I Trust It Is Now Clear Democrats Hate The Left

by Ian Welsh, September 29 2010

Now that virtually everyone of any importance, up to and including the President has told you that they hate you, that you are a bunch of unrealistic ingrates who need to be drug tested, I trust no one still thinks the White House doesn’t hate the left’s guts, and that it comes from the very top, from the President?

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Not just that, but for whatever reason, these folks either don’t care about winning elections or are so incompetent they can’t see the obvious.  Everyone with any track record of being, y’know, right, told them the stimulus was too small and every political consultant knows the economy is the most important thing to reelection chances, yet they passed an inadequate stimulus anyway.  In a midterm election where they need the base to come out, they have spent the last six months insulting the base and engaging in policy after policy meant to enrage it.  They could have, for example, put off filing a brief arguing that government secrecy allows the president to assassinate any American he wants anytime until after the election, but they chose not to.

It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections.  Further, they are  very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.

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This is your Democratic party.  These people are the problem. As long as they are around, the problem can never be solved.  If it could be, they would have done so.  This means, sorry folks, that the only hope for liberalism and for America to avoid a complete economic meltdown, is for Democrats to be swept out of power and for as many Dems who aren’t reliable progressives to lose their seats as possible.

Yes, the Republicans will do worse things, but that’s going to happen anyway.  And in some cases, as with Social Security, it is better to have Republicans in power, because it is easier to fight Republican efforts to gut SS than it is to fight Democratic efforts to do so.

Obama Scapegoats His Own Voters

By: Cenk Uygur Wednesday September 29, 2010 3:05 am

They think they’re going to lose and they’re setting up a scapegoat. It wasn’t that they ran a bad campaign or that they didn’t deliver on their promises – it was their ungrateful voters and the damned professional left. Actually, Washington reporters will love this. There is nothing they enjoy more than beating up on progressive activists and the Democratic base. This strategy is tailored made for the DC elite. They’re going to eat it up!

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I think they still believe that the DC media is a good proxy for the mood of the country. That is a stunning and inexcusable error. But they’re so deep in, they can’t even see that losing the election and winning over the DC establishment is not a win or a wash, that’s a gigantic loss. Do you think making David Broder happy will win you the 2012 election?

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Almost everyone in Washington is there because they succeeded in this broken, corrupt system. If you make them happy, you’ve probably done the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do.

What got you elected was the promise to throw those bums out on their asses not to cater to them. But if you like, you can take another cheap shot at the people trying to help you and see if that changes the polls. My guess is it won’t. And then when you blame us again, the only people happy will be the ones in DC who hate change.

Obama’s CYA 2010 Talking Points for Rolling Stone

by Taylor Marsh, 28 September 2010 4:18 pm

Barack Obama is never responsible. What’s worse is that it doesn’t even occur to the President to show humility in the face of compromises with Republicans that manifested policies that haven’t solved the problems he was sent to fix. I won’t take you through the litany of bipartisan mush Obama and his loyalists call “accomplishments,” most of which any Democratic president elected in 2008 could have gotten done with a Republican Congress, though we’ll never know what a could have done with a Democratic majority if Pres. Obama would have been bold instead of compromising with the minority at every turn.

The hubris of Pres. Obama to point the finger at voters at a time when it’s his responsibility and that of the Dem leadership to make the case for Democrats is choking.

Pres. Obama obviously thinks Democratic voters are his bitch and an abused one at that; the more you whip the stupid wench the more she’ll perform for you, no matter whether she gets anything for her trouble. After all, she’s got nowhere else to go, right?

March 31, 1968

There is division in the American house now. There is divisiveness among us all tonight. And holding the trust that is mine, as President of all the people, I cannot disregard the peril to the progress of the American people and the hope and the prospect of peace for all peoples.

So, I would ask all Americans, whatever their personal interests or concern, to guard against divisiveness and all its ugly consequences.

Fifty-two months and 10 days ago, in a moment of tragedy and trauma, the duties of this office fell upon me. I asked then for your help and God’s, that we might continue America on its course, binding up our wounds, healing our history, moving forward in new unity, to clear the American agenda and to keep the American commitment for all of our people.

United we have kept that commitment. United we have enlarged that commitment.

Through all time to come, I think America will be a stronger nation, a more just society, and a land of greater opportunity and fulfillment because of what we have all done together in these years of unparalleled achievement.

Our reward will come in the life of freedom, peace, and hope that our children will enjoy through ages ahead.

What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people.

Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year.

With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country.

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

But let men everywhere know, however, that a strong, a confident, and a vigilant America stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace–and stands ready tonight to defend an honored cause–whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifice that duty may require.

Thank you for listening.

Obama Seeks to Bridge Enthusiasm Gap with More Threats and Insults

By: David Dayen, Tuesday September 28, 2010 9:06 am

Hectoring the Base: It’s Not About GOTV, It’s About Laying the Blame

By: Jane Hamsher Tuesday September 28, 2010 9:49 am  

And why it doesn’t matter.

You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I’m going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!

The flying monkeys Villagers are all atwitter (and when aren’t they now days?  140 characters seems more than sufficient to capture their “wisdom”) about the upcoming unceremonious kicking out on his ass departure Mayoral campaign of Rahm Emanuel.  Jane Hamsher’s take at Firedog Lake is here.

So, Orzag, Summers, and now Emanuel.  Who’s next?

How about Axelrod?

It’s really hard to read this piece by Noam Scheiber at The New Republic any other way.  It reminds me of the hagiographies of Rahm we were seeing a month or two ago.

Should we celebrate like Munchkins?

While I do love me some heads on pikes and I think each one richly deserved (Scheiber’s obsequious beat sweetening butt kissing not withstanding), I think I’ll hold off for the moment and not just because Doughnut Holes are just as fattening as Doughnuts however much Homer pretends otherwise.

There is absolutely no indication this White House intends to stop hippie punching or change course (h/t Corrente).

We have a saying in the Corleones- a fish rots from the head down.

More Fear Factor enthusiasm

As we get closer to the election hardly a day goes by without Institutional Democrats demonstrating another “Profile in Courage” while they piss off anyone who might be inclined to vote for them.

Yesterday we saw the rare Double Axelrod.  After half an hour of pleading on a conference call with bloggers, showing all the “Vote for Us or Republicans will eat your babies” finesse we’ve come to expect from Joe Biden and Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell (Rachel Maddow has a little more finesse, but not much), David Axelrod “Political Genius” (firstly, you should hear that like “Wiley Coyote- SUPER Genius” and secondly, that arrogant bastard would be the first one to tell you), finally let Susie Madrak get a word in edgewise-

“Have you ever heard of hippie punching?”

Long pause.

“You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching. We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day.”

David Axelrod, “Political Genius”-

“To the extent that we shouldn’t get involved in intramural skirmishing, I couldn’t agree more. We just can’t afford that. There are big things at stake here.”

Madrak replied that Axelrod was missing the point — that the criticism of the left made it tougher for bloggers like herself to motivate the base. “Don’t make our jobs harder,” she said.

“Right back at’cha. Right back at’cha,” Axelrod replied, a bit testily, an apparent reference to blogospheric criticism of the administration.

Dave, the only thing at stake here is your phony baloney job and the only reason that it is at stake is that you’re a craven cowardly fool.

Case in point (told you it was a Double Axelrod day)-

Democrats have also decided to not deal with the Bush tax cut repeal. Speaker Pelosi couldn’t rally her caucus, mostly because of conservative Democrats worried about midterms. Someone needs to explain what the hell having a majority is if so called Democrats are going to slither away without making the case for middle class tax cuts.

If any Congress deserved to get blown out of Washington it’s the 111th. I know it will usher in ugliness from the Right. However, if Democrats won’t stand on a line to make the case they’ve stood on throughout history, which is standing up for the middle class, then they don’t deserve the majority.

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Not even bothering to make the fight is the height of political cowardice and malpractice. It’s leaving a move on the board against Republicans un-played that Democrats need and the electorate wants to hear from them. Make the case, drive it home hard, then let the people decide who has their economic back.

If Democrats in “difficult” districts can’t make the case against extending Bush tax cuts for the top 2%, while resoundingly raising their voice for middle class tax cuts, then these Democrats deserve to lose, because the district is too red to help the Democratic agenda actually manifest real progress that matters.

And why should we expect any different?  It’s only wildly popular, like oh… say, the Public Option as opposed to Individual Mandates to spend 20% of your annual income to buy crappy non-coverage from Insurance Industry leeches.

And yet they bitch and moan about the lack of “independent” support after they did everything possible to fold the Veal Pen organizations into Obama for America and the DNC, screwed over the Unions on EFCA, sold out Women’s Reproductive Rights, and have shown a distinct lack of “fierce advocacy” for the GLBT community.

In 2008 we sent “Democrats” to Washington with filibuster proof majorities and gave them complete control of Congress and the White House and they have whimpered and whined like cowardly babies because they are too lazy and stupid to do their jobs.  Well in the real world that gets you fired you pampered privileged pantywaists.  I hope you’re all unemployed long enough to use up all your benefits just like every working class Joe you shafted.  You’re miserable excuses for human beings and a waste of the air you breathe.  Contribute to reducing Global Warming by shutting your big, fat, yaps.

We voted for change and we’ll keep voting until we get it.

Assholes.

Fear Factor enthusiasm

I must admit I share Gregg Levine’s frustration–

In 1976, the Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, WI, was the number two beer maker in the United States, its roughly $600 million in sales almost equal to that of industry leader Anheuser-Busch. But trouble loomed. The growing popularity of name-brand light beers, increased availability of niche and foreign brews, and a change in Schlitz’s brewing process, done to make its namesake beer cheaper to mass-produce, all were taking a toll on the market share of “the most carefully brewed beer in the world.”

So, in the Summer of 1977, an new CEO at Schlitz abandoned their heretofore successful “Go for the Gusto” slogan, and turned to the ad men of Leo Burnett to craft a message that would help increase the brewer’s short-term profits (the time between investment and payback was apparently too long for new management). What the boys from Burnett produced was a campaign that will live in infamy:

At the screening of the new commercials, the Burnett people watched as the boxer told a disembodied voice that he was going to knock him “…down for the count” for even suggesting a switch from the Schlitz label. The outdoorsman in one of the following commercials told his pet mountain lion to calm down after his choice of Schlitz beer was also challenged and snarled back to the animal, “Just a minute, babe. I’ll handle this.” . . . . The reactions to the commercials once they went public were almost immediate; people hated them. Burnett officials were appalled at the reaction. . . . . Ten weeks after the commercials first began to air, Schlitz management ordered them pulled. Soon after, the Leo Burnett ad agency was fired by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company. The short-lived run of commercials would go down in advertising history as “The Drink Schlitz or I’ll Kill You” ad campaign.

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In 1976, there were fresh choices for beer drinkers, and Schlitz’s reaction was to abandon their core identity as well as their winning formula. They chose to eschew long-term investment for short-term profit, and when threatened by fast-weakening consumer enthusiasm, they decided to threaten their consumers right back. Threatening consumers did not work for Schlitz, and that was in a category where people pretty much understand the immediate benefits of their choices.

For Democratic leaders, threatening unenthusiastic voters with vague pictures of doom and gloom, when much of what the voters see right now is already pretty gloomy, is not going to “wake up” very many of the rank and file. Promising little else in terms of benefits if Democrats stay in power-little beyond “there’s more to do”-does not provide enough positive motivation to engender enthusiasm.

You see, I can’t find the lyrics to that song either.

When a Stranger Calls

So it’s pretty clear this morning that a staffer identifying himself as Jimmy used a computer in Senator Saxeby Chambliss’ Georgia office to leave this message on Joe.My.God..

All Faggots must die.

Well, as Clint would say, “we all got it coming.”

I mention it more for its amusement value than anything else.  When I call Republicans bigoted and racist I’m not slandering them- I’m just stating facts.

James Galloway at the Atlanta Journal Constitution has the mainstream media lead on this.  He expects a clarifying statement by Senator Chambliss before tomorrow sometime identifying the culprit.  Frankly you’ll get a lot more information from this blog post by Max Fisher at The Atlantic.

This is the Carnahan ad yanked from YouTube because of Faux’s false copyright claims.  If 30 seconds from an hour long broadcast isn’t fair use then ‘a’, ‘and’, ‘the’, and ‘is’ can be copyrighted.

h/t Crooks and Liars for hosting it.

Another longish story, but I hope you’ll bear with me.  It was originally published on TomDispatch but has found it’s way to Grist and Firedog Lake and now via Eschaton to The Stars Hollow Gazette.  I’ve edited it for space.

My Road Trip With a Solar Rock Star- Or Notes on the Enthusiasm Gap

Posted by Bill McKibben at 8:12am, September 16, 2010.

(W)e tracked down the solar panels that once had graced the White House roof, way back in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter. After Ronald Reagan took them down, they’d spent the last few decades on the cafeteria roof at Unity College in rural Maine.  That college’s president, Mitch Thomashow, immediately offered us a panel to take back to the White House. Better still, he encouraged three of his students to accompany the panel, not to mention allowing the college’s sustainability coordinators to help manage the trip.

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It couldn’t have been more fun. Wherever we could, we’d fire up the panel, pour a gallon of water in the top, point it toward the sun, and eight or nine minutes later you’d have steaming hot water coming out the bottom. Thirty-one years old and it worked like a charm — a vexing reminder that we’ve known how to do this stuff for decades. We just haven’t done it.

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There was just one nagging concern as we headed south.  We still hadn’t heard anything conclusive from the White House. We’d asked them — for two months — if they’d accept the old panel as a historical relic returned home, and if they’d commit to installing new ones soon.  We’d even found a company, Sungevity, that was eager to provide them free.  Indeed, as word of our trip spread, other solar companies kept making the same offer.  Still, the White House never really responded, not until Thursday evening around six p.m. when they suddenly agreed to a meeting at nine the next morning.

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Now, let me say that I already knew Jean Altomare, Amanda Nelson, and Jamie Nemecek were special, but my guess is the bureaucrats hadn’t figured that out. Unity is out in the woods, and these kids were majoring in things like wildlife conservation. They’d never had an encounter like this.  It stood to reason that they’d be cowed. But they weren’t.

One after another, respectfully but firmly, they asked a series of tough questions, and refused to be filibustered by yet another stream of administration-enhancing data. Here’s what they wanted to know: if the administration was serious about spreading the word on renewable energy, why wouldn’t it do the obvious thing and put solar panels on the White House?  When the administrators proudly proffered a clipping from some interior page of the Washington Post about their “greening the government initiative,” Amanda calmly pointed out that none of her neighbors read the Post, and that, by contrast, the solar panels had made it onto David Letterman.

To their queries, the bureaucrats refused to provide any answer.  At all.  One kept smiling in an odd way and saying, “If reporters call and ask us, we will provide our rationale,” but whatever it was, they wouldn’t provide it to us.

It was all a little odd, to say the least. They refused to accept the Carter panel as a historic relic, or even to pose for a picture with the students and the petition they’d brought with them. Asked to do something easy and symbolic to rekindle a little of the joy that had turned out so many of us as volunteers for Obama in 2008, they point blank said no. In a less than overwhelming gesture, they did, however, pass out Xeroxed copies of a 2009 memorandum from Vice President Biden about federal energy policy.

I can tell you exactly what it felt like, because those three students were brave and walked out graciously, heads high, and kept their tears back until we got to the sidewalk. And then they didn’t keep them back, because it’s a tough thing to learn for the first time how politics can work.

If you want to know about the much-discussed enthusiasm gap between Democratic and Republican bases, in other words, this was it in action. As Jean Altomare told the New York Times, “We went in without any doubt about the importance of this. They handed us a pamphlet.” And Amanda Nelson added, “I didn’t expect I’d get to shake President Obama’s hand, but it was really shocking to me to find out that they really didn’t seem to care.”

As I noted last night in Prime Time, I had to turn Joe Biden’s interview with Rachel Maddow off because I can’t really afford a new TV.  I wondered if others noticed the savage disconnect between the Institutional Democrats and reality.

Well, Gregg Levine at Firedog Lake did.  I’ll spare you the embedded video because I don’t want responsibility for your monitor either, but I’ll quote extensively as it’s a long piece.

Biden Scolds Dem Voters for Enthusiasm Gap; Tells Progressives to "Get in Gear"

By: Gregg Levine, Thursday September 16, 2010 7:00 am

Vice President Joe Biden made room in his busy schedule Wednesday to appear on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to address the much-reported enthusiasm gap between fired-up Tea-publicans and a disappointed Democratic base. How do I know that was his reason? He said so…

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Biden then launches into a list of Democratic accomplishments-tobacco regulation, hate crime laws, insuring kids (SCHIP…)-none of them, as best I recall, ones that were first enacted during the Obama Administration…

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Actually, Mr. Vice President, you didn’t mention a single thing that your administration or this Democratically controlled 111th Congress has gotten done. You are just telling progressives out there that they “better get energized,” that they “get in gear,” that they “should not stay home” come November.

Why? Because. . . because. . . Pete Sessions!

Joe Biden is not saying Democrats need an excited progressive base to win in November, and here is what the administration is going to do to excite them; Biden is saying Dems need an excited base-so the progressive base damn well better get excited. Period.

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He (Obama) brought us goals? Obama gave us the goals? Progressives haven’t been articulating goals since. . . when now? 2006? 2002? 1932? 1916? . . . 1899? OK, maybe Biden just phrased that badly-but still, Joe, what goals have been met, exactly?

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(T)he progressive base hasn’t been warning about the opposition? It has been the progressive blogosphere, far out in front of any Democratic Party organ, that has been telling the establishment that they had created space for the Tea Parties by aligning the White House too closely with the banksters. It was progressives that begged for a bigger stimulus, a jobs agenda, and health care reform that actually helped people and did so before the midterm elections.

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Make no mistake, what Joe Biden was doing last night was blaming progressives now for Democratic losses later.

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Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, I was a consultant-of the branding and marketing variety-and Biden’s performance reminds me of some of my worst clients from those days. These guys (and gals) would sit behind the two-way mirror watching focus groups, and they would deride the respondents and curse about how their stupid target consumers were wrong-wrong!-about their product. It was the consumer who was doing a bad job of understanding the product. It was the consumer that was not paying attention to the right things. It was the consumer that had failed to understand the benefits of these clients’ brands.

Those were not successful brands. And without a change in their point of view, they didn’t become successful brands.

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(B)enefits were not what Vice President Biden was selling to Rachel Maddow and her presumably progressive audience on Wednesday. Biden went with fear and loathing, blame and bluster. That strategy didn’t work for my clients in boom times, and it won’t work for Democrats now.

First of all, the reasons the Beltway pundits and bloggers are concentrating on O’Donnell’s defeat of Castle is that it’s in their backyard, the margin was huge, and those idiots really didn’t expect it because they have no fucking clue how much we hate their elite corporatist butt-kissing asses.

But if you really want to do a little celebrating I’d like to draw your attention to two less covered and more positive victories last night.

The first is Ann Kuster’s 42% margin over Katrina Swett in New Hampshire’s 2nd District-

Kuster  handily defeated self-styled Blue Dog Katrina Swett, who co-chaired Joe Lieberman’s 2004 presidential campaign. Kuster, a lawyer, community activist and women’s health expert, had the support of progressive groups like MoveOn, Democracy for America, Progressive Campaign Change Committee and EMILY’s List. Swett ran hard to Kuster’s right and tried to paint Kuster’s progressive supporters as an electoral liability.

The second is the abject FAILURE of Mike Bloomberg’s hand picked Wall Street Representative Reshma Saujani in her race against Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 14th District.

There is some really twisted logic behind the notion that Obama would be vulnerable in 2012 if the economy’s bad, and yet the country would look to a creature of Wall Street like Mike Bloomberg for salvation.  Of course, it’s equally twisted that the tea parties exploded in response to the bank bailouts, and yet Bain Capital billionaire Mitt Romney is their favorite for 2012. Maybe that gave them hope.

But it didn’t work out so well yesterday.  The millions that Wall Street pumped into Saujani’s campaign at the behest of Team Bloomberg cast her irrevocably as a tool of Wall Street in the eyes of voters who have had quite enough from the financial oligarchy.  She wound up with only a pathetic 19% of the vote.

Michael Bloomberg and his proxies couldn’t even orchestrate a serious challenge to a congressional seat in a year of unprecedented dissatisfaction with incumbents.   If 19% doesn’t qualify as a public rebuke of their organizing abilities, I don’t know what does.