… why? Please make your point.
The impression this article conveys is that it’s mostly slightly-left-of-center academics and Dem party hacks who have sold out to the third (and fourth) Bush term.
I have to disagree. Back in 2003-2005, you couldn’t go a few weeks in most big cities without seeing some sort of protest activity directed against the Bush war and security state. Code Pink was all over the place, Cindy Sheehan was on the national news every damn night.
So where is the radical anti-war, anti-surveillance state protest movement when Obama pulls the same shit?
chirp…chirp…chirp
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Was it grabbing hands demanding a pork pie for a vote? Why was ACA so difficult to pass even in the bastardized commercialized form it arrived in.
The point being that doctrinaire leftists have a list of Official Positions, just like doctrinaire rightists do.
Contribute to a cause which is on the wrong side of the Official List?? Raus mit 'ya!!!
Probably because in survey after survey conducted up though 2010, the vast majority of voters were not dissatisfied with their health care.
Not to mention that the 60 vote filibuster rule in the Senate was used liberally and badly to deny a true democratic vote on the issues. Not that both sides won’t do that. But the minority party took it to unheard of levels in the first term.
I see your point, and partisans are gonna parti, but I really think that the degree to which the wagons are circled is different on the conservative end of things. Liberals, IME, more readily -openly- disagree with one another and have a pallette of ideas, and are therefore more easily fractured into smaller groups. Conservatives, IME, mostly seem to disagree with liberals to different degrees about a few oversimplified issues that inevitably speak to character.
Doctrinaire examples of the shouty pushy kind of each side, at the individual level may be equally common, and tend to cancel each other out. But as you rightly say - liberals disagree with positions, and I will try to add that conservatives seem to disagree with character. Insofar as liberals will argue and try to sway your opinion, conservatives mostly just will punish, or threaten to punish, your nonconformity. (please note, I am not talking about democrats and republicans, okay?)
Conservatives see the enemy at the gates, Liberals see the fox in the hen house. Conservatives want order, Liberals want fairness. Closed mind, open mind. Shall I go on?
Oh, and thank you for your response. I appreciate you saying, even if I don’t totally agree, I do somewhat agree with you.
So where is the radical anti-war, anti-surveillance state protest movement when Obama pulls the same shit?
Some of the same shit, surely. But I’m going to say… 65% less of it.
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It was hard to pass because the Dem caucus included a bunch of conservatives who didn’t want anything to do with it. The same as it always is with Dems.
And, the Dems had a supermajority in he Senate for barely 6-months, non-consecutively. During which the majority was always in-question: there was a run-off, the death of Ted Kennedy, his replacement, the election of the replacement’s replacement, etc… The idea that Obama had free reign for two years is completely incorrect.
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This is what 21st century politics has come down to: the question who’s worse. This is a mistake.
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We need to get past the idea that the President has some kind of magical powers to usher in utopia right this minute.
And realize that a POTUS actually doing stuff FOR the people instead of for his cronies or corporations requires kowtowing and dumbing down of idealism, and making horrible compromises with the devil. Otherwise, you end up like Jimmy Carter: a lame duck for 4 years.
That said: affordable healthcare is NOW a thing – granted a sickly, patched together thing, shot through with compromise and ineptitude – but I argue it is a hard earned foot in the door. And Iran went 6 years without being invaded by us.
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Why was it hard to pass? Lot’s of reasons, most of them have to do with politicians getting re-elected. Lobbies for various health-related industries provide money for campaigns, the politician has to do his quid pro quo to keep that money flowing, he also has to consider his constituents and how it will play to the voters; Democrats in red states and Republicans in blue states walk a fine line of trying to appeal to everyone even on severely partisan issues.
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This is what politics always means and always will. You choose the person who matches your goals best over the person who matches them least best. But nobody will ever satisfy you 100% - not even yourself. Nobody goes through their day without having to choose between conflicting principles or making the best of a bad situation. Reality isn’t interested in your principles. And if you were made President, you would find yourself having to make compromises too, because the position is not omnipotent; Congress and SCOTUS and 200 other countries and a million things completely out of your control get a say, too. Demanding that a President to hit every situation perfectly is what you do if you want to complain when he/she can’t; because that’s not how the world works.
You pick the best available and hope for the best.
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Sure, getting everything perfect is impossible, but putting just a little bit of distance between your position and odious totalitarianism isn’t too much to ask. “Hey, I want to execute an American citizen with no formal charges by shooting him with a missile… can you write me a legal brief that says I can do that?” Doesn’t fall under “less than perfect” it falls under “send him to the international courts on crimes against humanity.”
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Some at occupy, some at smaller protests, some busy trying to deal with police harassment, some busy trying to recover from ptsd from police violence, weird health problems that might be from police torture, etc. Not everyone can keep going for four, six, eight, ten, twelve years…
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I can’t say what is going on in the USA, here in Britain there are still protests, but they are rarely reported on except by the Guardian and maybe the Daily Mirror (as long as the protest isn’t anti-Labour party). It seems like it has been that way since the riots in 2011.
Also burnout and mental illness from being focused on the movement for too long. People are advised to have interests outside the movement to avoid this, but it doesn’t always work.
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In your opinion.
It’s fine if you think that extrajudicial executions are just a compromise that you sometimes have to make, but as long as we can agree that:
- There is something Obama could do which is too awful to condone as “just a compromise”
- Some people think Obama has done such things
Then your analysis that people are basically just whining that Obama isn’t perfect falls flat. People aren’t whining that he “isn’t perfect” they are complaining that he’s continued or implemented reprehensible policies and practices. It may be a matter of opinion whether the things that Obama has done are really that bad, but the people complaining about those things aren’t looking for perfection, a lot of them are just looking for better than terrible.
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The same shit? Our war of aggression against Iraq was mobilization of ~250,000+ troops into foreign lands on false evidence that cost well north of $3 trillion. So let’s give up on that false equivalence right now.
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. People aren’t whining that he “isn’t perfect” they are complaining
that he’s continued or implemented reprehensible policies and practices
No, they aren’t whining that he “isn’t perfect”. They’re saying he’s awful and “totalitarian” and that democracy is dead and that everything is broken and blahblah-hyperbolic-blah. “Isn’t perfect” is far too nuanced.
It may be a matter of opinion whether the things that Obama has done are
really that bad, but the people complaining about those things aren’t
looking for perfection, a lot of them are just looking for better than terrible.
No, there’s plenty of evidence that a lot of the people who complain about Obama are just looking for reasons to demonstrate their ideological purity. Because if “better than terrible” is what they want, then Obama’s your guy. If you want terrible - if you want more losses than gains (from a liberal perspective) - elect a Republican. If you want an unimaginable nightmare, elect a Tea Party Republican. Does Obama fuck up? Yes. Did every other liberal Presidential icon? Yes. That’s how it goes.
And again, focusing on the President is a fundamental mistake. (Though yes, it makes the whining easier) Congress can stop everything you’re complaining about here, for good. But even the Purest Progressive Dream President will only have the reigns for 8 years at the most. The next guy will be free to be as bad as Congress lets him.
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Okay, so shouldn’t be whining he isn’t perfect.
Okay, they aren’t.
Hyperbolic… what’s the phrase… oh yes:
If you want to say that launching another war in the middle east isn’t ruthlessly awful, or that extrajudicial kill lists aren’t an affront to democracy, or that his approach to whistleblowers hasn’t been despicable, that’s something you could do by disagreeing with that those things are really all that bad, or that they could be better if we voted differently, or that Obama could have done anything about them.
But in your opinion anyone who disagrees with these things or thinks they really are that awful is just whining.
That actually isn’t true. The kill list I am so fond of complaining about is already illegal, not just in the US but in international law as well. Sure, they got some lawyer to write a joke legal brief to say it was legal before doing it, and then hid that legal brief because it was a joke. But all congress can do is pass laws. If the executive isn’t going to follow the law then congress can only do so much. I’m not saying congress is powerless, but they aren’t all powerful any more than the president is.
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