- Don't criticize Barack Obama over anything that's happening in America, because it turns out all real domestic power lies in the hands of the House of Representatives, not the president.
- Don't criticize Barack Obama's foreign policy because that will only depress his base and help Mitt Romney, who would probably be just as belligerent (unless you believe the Democratic Party). And my god, have you seen Romney's domestic policies (editor's note: obviously, ignore point #1 when speaking of Republicans)?
- Don't criticize Barack Obama.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Rules for reformists
With the 2012 U.S. presidential election coming up, here are some helpful rules for discussion that I have gleaned from liberals online:
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Thanks, Charles. I think for mental health reasons I'm going to have to stop reading "liberal" blogs. I gave up on TPM and Kos a while back, and now I've had with Balloon Juice. I think now I'm down to Greenwald, IOZ, Chris Floyd and you. Maybe I should just go back to reading books.
ReplyDeleteDon't criticize Barack Obama over anything that's happening in America, because it turns out all real domestic power lies in the hands of the House of Representatives, not the president.
ReplyDeleteAs I've learned from my dyed-in-the-DNC-wool father, this only applies when the president is a Dem and at least one house of congress is under GOP control. If the reverse is true, then the president has all the power.
Funny, you'd think the Democrats would have emphasized Point 1 back in 2006 when they won control of the Congress despite the Evil Rethuglicans in the White House. Back then, it wasn't enough to control both houses because the POTUS and Admin were still Evil Rethuglicans!
ReplyDeleteLove Kos' entry...
ReplyDelete"Feel free to unload on Obama the day after he is reelected"
That is literally genius.
Party runs deep.
ReplyDeleteLate in Obama's second term, maybe faithful Democrats will even get in on the game and admit the man wasn't all they made him out to be. Kind of like how grumbling Republicans finally turned on George W. Bush after it was too late to matter anymore.
ReplyDeleteWould kill to see Bernie Sanders run in 2016.
ReplyDeleteNice summation, Charles. Nonetheless, Kos' pragmatism seems quite sensible given the debacle in 2000. I DESPISE having to choose the lesser of two evils, but I worry that it would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise.
ReplyDeleteErnie: opting for the lesser evil is how principle gets abandoned and evil, however "lesser", becomes permanently entrenched.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem with "lesser evil", besides it still being "evil", is that the choice is binary. Choosing one causes the other to never materialize, so there is no way to verify that the evil you chose was, in fact, less.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest debacle about 2000 is that partisans are still waving the bloody shirt about it 12 years later, usually based on the absurd idea that Albert Gore Jr would have refrained from invading Iraq. This is the same guy who voted for the Persian Gulf war so he could get a spot on primetime tv (and presumably a spot on the presidential ticket in 92) and supported a decade long sanctions regime that killed half a million children. His one single objection of any note to Bush's invasion was that Bush hadn't cobbled together a large enough international coalition (not that that was a concern when Clinton did the same thing in Kosovo). He had zero problem invading the country on principle, which should be obvious because he had no issues with Clinton's bombing campaign in 1998 that pretty much continued right up until the 2003 invasion of ground forces. Nor did he have any problem with the 98 Iraq Liberation Act. So yeah it's a debacle alright. A debacle that I am probably going to have to see and hear this mythology trotted out every election season for the rest of my life.
ReplyDelete^^^What he said.^^^
ReplyDeleteRepuclbicans and Democrats...Bah! Humbug!
ReplyDeleteFirst Anonymous, I had to declare a swath of liberal sites and commentators "dead to me" (as Colbert would put it) after they utterly failed to cover any of last week's NYTimes stories about Obama's Kill List and cyberwar with Iran. If these things aren't stories to them, then they can't see the forest for the trees.
ReplyDeleteStill got Greenwald, Pierce, and Davis, as well as Larison for some reasonable conservative thinking.
Love Kos' entry...
ReplyDelete"Feel free to unload on Obama the day after he is reelected"
That is literally genius.
Thanks. The prospect, however slim, of seeing his more understandably naive, inexperienced true believers turning against him in utter rage is the only thing that makes me look forward to the pious fuck's second term.
If it happens, I'll wager that what ignites the fury is his fuckwitted healthcare "reform." Let hordes of young jobless or underemployed folk learn up close and personal about the predatory shits who run the insurance industry? For the first time? Let them see that Obama's problem of a "hardship exemption" for those who can't feed the insurance beast's already-bloated belly with their own anemic blood is as much fake bullshit as HAMP? Let a few of them get packed off to jail (I recall reading somewhere that Hopey refused to rule out prison time for those unwilling/unable to pay his overlords at AETNA, Kaiser, et al)?
I think the resultant explosion could make OWS look like a toddler's play date at Chuck E. Cheese.
You might almost say I'm "hopeful." :p Though I still won't be voting for President Fuckwit myself.
The problem is that only the left seems to tear itself up over whether or not Obama is the lesser evil to be voted for or not. Those who aren't just bots seem to agonize. But the right (except some of the libertarian right) doesn't even care about drone bomb murders and secret wars, and wars all over the whole planet etc.. And they have no problem voting for the same while quibbling with some minor detail of Obama.
ReplyDeleteAnd so Mitt might win just by sheer default. Whether that's worse than Obama or not I can not say. It's just a matter of horrible policies being the only ones that have ANY voice.