The evidence is overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he got: these severe domestic budget cuts and even ones well beyond these, including Social Security and Medicare, which he is likely to get with the Super-Committee created by this bill.In a blog post entitled The Debt-deal, or, the Chickens of Third-Way New Democracy Come Home to Roost, bloggers at The Current Moment take the long view, seeing this recent defeat as the culmination of 20 years of austerity measures led by the Democratic Party, and linked to a broad trend in the Western world:
The general point is that the Tea Party added a touch of crazy, and Obama added a touch of ruling class cool, to a much more general problem for the Left. The mainstream parties of the Left, from New Democrats to Spain’s Socialists to British Labour, have been preaching austerity and a new era of limits for decades. In such an environment, austerity in a time of recession, extended joblessness, and growing inequality seems like the reasonable thing to do.Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, put the question on his Facebook page, and sparked a debate among leading leftist academics that was noted by WSJ.com:
Obama continually craves – or rather demands – progressive credentials. Beyond mere triangulation, it’s as if he understands his signal accomplishment to be the translation of progressive desires into neoliberal politics...
Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.posted by anigbrowl at 10:37 AM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
So nearly forty years on from the chaotic '72 Democratic convention, the left, whether Netroots or "Professional" are still seen as disruptive, scary hippies and it is assumed they are loathed by all decent people. Just like the idiotic right wingers, they conflate "the left" with that carefully nurtured anachronistic wingnut fantasy of the "smelly, dirty, hairy" leftist and are scared to death of being tarred by it. And it is why many in the left blogosphere defiantly took the moniker "DFH" which stands for Dirty Fucking Hippie.In other words: "Who cares what you say, you just think we're a bunch of dirty fucking hippies and you're just slandering us like a friend who stabs a friend in the back in a futile attempt to gain cred with right-wing gangsters."
The blogosphere's subsequent adoption of the term "hippie punching" is a shorthand to describe how Democrats like to debase the left in order to appeal to so-called Real Americans. It's a sort of proxy bullying, in which the Party attempts to prove their middle of the road bonafides by attacking what they believe Americans see as their out-of-the-mainstream fringe. (It's like a gang initiation where you have to beat up your childhood best friend to prove your loyalty to the new crowd.)
The question arises, aside from Obama’s chronically allowing the Republicans to define the agenda and even the terminology (the pejorative word “Obamacare” is now even used by news broadcasters), why did he so definitively place himself on the side of the deficit reducers at a time when growth and job creation were by far the country’s most urgent needs?posted by homunculus at 11:56 AM on August 5, 2011
It all goes back to the “shellacking” Obama took in the 2010 elections. The President’s political advisers studied the numbers and concluded that the voters wanted the government to spend less. This was an arguable interpretation. Nevertheless, the political advisers believed that elections are decided by middle-of-the-road independent voters, and this group became the target for determining the policies of the next two years.
One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required. There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason. In a political climate where it feels as if the inmates are running the asylum — as in the current Republican threat to default on America's debt — the prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted.James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had some good fun with Chopra's argument.
We cannot afford that luxury any more, I'm afraid.
...all of us who have taken advantage of our liberal heritage to question and criticize President Obama need to step back and consider the radical nature of the opposition, from the Supreme Court down to the local precinct....
If ever there was a time to stand behind the captain, this is it. Not because pluralism and free expression are wrong. They aren't and never will be. But like Churchill calling upon a coalition cabinet in the depth of the war years, it’s paramount that we see the greater danger for what it is.
If one accepts Chopra's premises, this seems self-defeating. He proposes to sacrifice liberalism's putative advantages--thoughtfulness and reason--in the name of electoral victory. But what's the point in voting for liberals if they're just going to ape the right-wing sheep?posted by BobbyVan at 1:24 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
Of course this column rejects Chopra's premises, particularly the first one. If we learned anything in college, it is that the claim that liberals in general are open-minded, tolerant and thoughtful is a combination of fraud and self-delusion. Chopra refutes his own first premise by asserting his second one. If he were really the freethinker he claims to be, he would not describe those who disagree in such crudely dismissive terms.
To be sure, not all liberals are as thick-headed as Chopra, and some conservatives are. But we have to wonder if Chopra hasn't gotten the general trends backward. Perhaps conservatives have tended to win elections over the past few decades precisely because liberals have allowed themselves to be outsmarted by already acting in accord with Chopra's advice to be stupid.
As Tea Party Reshapes GOP, Cheer And Worry -- "The grass-roots movement is pulling Republican debate to the far right."posted by ericb at 2:59 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
« Older Hipsters on the Hudson.... | August and September 2011 mark... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Obama is an incredibly skilled and successful politician. He is not weak, and he is only a failure insofar as his goals are diametrically opposed to those of (most of) his supporters. Stop trying to rationalize all of his accomplishments as failures, and recognize them as successes for the team you didn't intend to support.
posted by rusty at 9:53 AM on August 5, 2011 [43 favorites]