Not in the best of moods, after yelling at a client; and looking over what I wrote yesterday I'm not thrilled with that either.
I no longer enjoy reading the blogs I go to for political humor: World-O-Crap, Sadly No, or even Tbogg. They make fun of the right wing, but the right wing is winning and there seems to be no one on the left who is capable of dealing with the current malaise we find our selves in and anyway I do not like slave humor all that much.
The arguments on Balloon Juice are examples of what is going on in the liberal/progressive/leftist side of the political spectrum. I can kind of understand the demand that one not blame all the troubles we are currently having on Obama (although he would certainly want all the accolades if things were going well). Certainly, once the 2008 election was over it should not have been difficult to realize what could happen in the senate given the make up, with or without Franken. A change of procedural rules might have been in order, although no one in power was willing to push the issue.
Some other backers of Obama seem to feel that there is something else that might theoretically have been done, but that he could not do it because of institutional limitations. Then the next logically step, which for the most part they do not make is that therefore, no one could have done anything, therefore we as a nation are in a place where there is no hope. Literally, no hope. There are a lot of things wrong, but no way around the internal limitations so they can't be fixed. Ever. By anyone. That may also be true, but well as I've said before I'm not a nihilist for nothing.
Others make fun of leftists who have been known to ask "Where is the leadership we were led to expect?" They point out that no one seems to be listening to Obama now so although he can demand say the end of DADT no one cares. Leaving out the real question of whether or not what he says to people outside his very private meetings with the powerful is what he really asks for or believes. Let's say he really does want to repeal DADT (unlike what he said he wanted to do about private insurers, or pharmaceutical companies, or FISA, say), why would anyone be interested in doing what he asks or what he wants. He just led his party to the biggest defeat in decades, what makes him a leader who should be followed now. These people do not seem to understand that there is a thing called "time." Things that one may do or be able to get done at one point they may not be able to accomplish at another. Months or years of dithering and showing little or no leadership may cause one to "spend their seed on the ground," as it were and leave them nothing for on down the line.
The background of these arguments assumes that he wanted to accomplish some sort of liberal/progressive/leftist agenda. Or that he at least looked at the world from that prospective. Nothing that he has done in the last two years should cause people to believe that and when one points that out one tends to get shouted down. From the very beginning, with his appointment of Rahm, the fat homophobe to give the invocation, and the economic team who are as conventional as conventional can be and really do believe in the very things that brought this country to the edge. Well that should have been a wake up call to those of us who thought he knew what he was doing and that he at least had an outlook that was not totally controlled by the oligarchs.
There is the argument that he could not have known just the kind of intransigence nor the type and viciousness of the attacks that would be leveled on him. Really? From the git go the right attacked him for not being a real American and a Muslim Further, the last democratic president from whom Obama took many of his policies and personnel was attacked, I think, as viciously. The Clinton Death List anyone? How about we have pictures of Bill loading cocaine off a drug cartel plane, or how about what about two years of impeachment proceedings? I'm being told that it is worse because Obama is black. I'm not sure that it is worse, I just think it is different.
Then there is a new argument that apparently he is afraid of being mistaken for an angry black man and so therefore he does nothing to lead or really push because he might be seen as a new version of H. Rap Brown, I guess. Instead he must look and act like Jackie Robinson. Or what? Or he will be attacked even more than he is right now? Oh really? That is one of those things that one cannot really respond to because the implication in the argument is that the person making the argument is from some other planet where they cannot understand the languages spoken on this one.
All of these arguments assume thatObama wants something other than what is happening. I suspect that he does not want any other policies, but that he does want someone else to take the blame for them. Although why he thinks that he might look better if he does anything else is beyoned me. I also do not quite understand why he would bring the last big democratic loser out to shill for him either.
I also do not touch here on the absolute crazy of the real crazies who talk death pannels and socialism and Kenyan births. Maybe some other time, although truth be told I could not figure the absolute hate for Clinton either.
