Dear Friends,
I’m disappointed too. I’m less disappointed in what this President said he was going to be vs. what he is than I am between that and what I wanted him to be. He has not lived up to all of his promises, but even looking at his promises he never said he was going to be our knight in shining armor. Republicans said he would be… but who can trust anything they say at this point?
I am frustrated and I am disappointed because I believe, like you do, that there are rare, once in a generation opportunities being lost. I’m frustrated that what I think could be possible right now is not getting done. But as disheartened as I may be at lost potential, even at some outright failures, I have never for a day been sorry I voted for this president. The other choice was John McCain! Hell, if that had happened, Karl Rove wouldn’t be throwing millions of dollars at Republican candidates from Houston, TX… he would still be in Washington throwing hundreds of billions of dollars down far right rat hole after far right rat hole. Are things bad? Yes. Would they have been even worse? Hell yes!
This is not the time… well, there never is a time, but certainly this is not the time for liberals to throw up their hands in defeat. This is the time to take the toe hold we have and make it a foot hold, so we can make that a step, so we can… you know… something like that. I’m not sure exactly where that analogy leads.
But understand my point. This is when we double-down. This is when we fight to reform a broken and corrupted system. This is when we fight to use Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson to demonstrate our power and our conviction. This is when we toy with the Democratic establishment with talk of primary challenges from Al Franken, or Alan Grayson, or Anthony Weiner. This is when we send letters of support to members of the Progressive Caucus and demand that they stand firm.
Our nation is in a deep hole of conservatism that you and I know skirts along the thin edge of fascism. I would love to jump right out of that hole with an FDR or a JFK or a Johnson, but if that isn’t an option I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up and watch while the hole gets dug deeper and deeper. I just can’t in good conscience allow that to happen unopposed.
We have to make our stand.
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This is where I am too.
I think the first thing to keep in mind is that Barack Obama ran as a ceter-right Democrat while liars painted him as a far left liberal. I’d have preferred a center-left Democrat, and I believe the right candidate with the right campaign could have won with that platform. That said, neither of the two major candidates took that approach, and and I knew it at the time. It makes no sense to be mad at the President when he governs the way he said he would rather than the way his opponents predicted he would.
Which leaves me with only real complaints which are the promises he hasn’t kept and the ones he persists in keeping that he should let go. On DADT, Guantanamo, and the executive excesses wearing the fig leaf of the “war on terror” he simply hasn’t done what he promised to do. Its disappointing. The other complaint is that he continues to fulfill his promise to reach out and negotiate with Republicans long after it has become clear that their is no political or policy upside to doing so. I am honestly mystified by this persisence. I don’t like it, but I get why Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln have enormous sway. I even understand why they have more negotiating power than Bernie Sanders and Al Franken, though I positively despise the cynical calculus (where else are you going to go?) that makes that true. I have no earthly idea why they are still trying to talk to Lindsay Graham, much less McConnell and Kyl and the rest.
That said, my path to improve the country is clear. There is nothing at all wrong with the country that wouldn’t be made much much worse if John Boehner were running the Senate. If I don’t like Ben Nelson’s negotiating power, I have to provide a reason for the WH to listen to someone else. If Rahm Emmanuel really is the guiding force behind the disappointments I listed above, then I’ve got to show that there is a higher upside to tossing him then the downside. If I don’t want “my” side to cave at the slighest breeze from the right, Ive got to show that the Tea Party is great at yelling but is lousy at winning elections.