Why is he taking heat from the left? He deserves it!
President Barack Obama's liberal backers have a long list of grievances. The Guantanamo Bay prison is still open. Health care hasn't been transformed. And Wall Street banks are still paying huge bonuses.
But they are directing their anger less at Mr. Obama than at the man who works down the hall from him. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, they say, is the prime obstacle to the changes they thought Mr. Obama's election would bring.
The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides. Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul.
"F-ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.
The antipathy reflects deep dissatisfaction on the Democratic left with Mr. Obama's first year in office, and represents a fracturing of the relationship between the president and the political base that mobilized to elect him. A little more than one year ago, Mr. Obama's victory led some to predict an era of Democratic dominance.
The anger on the left shows that Mr. Obama is caught in an internal battle over both the course of his administration and the Democratic Party.
Many in the party, particularly in the wake of the loss last week of a Massachusetts Senate seat, contend that the White House should chart a centrist approach focusing on the economy. They point to polls showing Mr. Obama's approval rating among independent voters has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points since early last year.
The left has gotten some of what it wanted: a ban on torture, an expansion of children's health insurance and an equal-pay law for women. But liberal activists say those and other measures add up to far less than what they expected… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Common Dreams>
To move to the center, Obama would have to take a giant step to the left. The reason that Obama has dropped 20 percentage points with independents is simple. Obama ran on a platform of change. In part due to GOP obstruction, Obama has not delivered. In part due to following the right wing advice of Rahm Emmanuel, and others, Obama has not delivered. Independents see no change, and they do not have the investment in Obama that we progressives do, so of course they are bailing out. Moving to what DINO Neoliberals are calling a centrist approach is moving even further to the right. Nothing he could do will alienate independent voters more. Obama’s Rahm is defective, because Rahm can’t seem to remember why Obama one.
Even the most neophyte computer user knows that when RAM loses it’s ability to remember, you replace it. The same applies to Rahm.
11 comments:
Rahm has needed to go for a while; at first, I thought he would kick Republican ass, but he wound up demoralizing the progressive Dems. He's way past worthless.
You GD right he deserves it! Great guns here TC. It's becoming more and more mute though, isn't it? My disappointment with my President is getting out of hand... you know? Good post. :-)
If Obama gets rid of Rahm, he will at the same time be admitting that they failed in the first year of his Presidency. The first year is when a President has political capital, and must get things passed. Well the only thing that passed was, THE FIRST YEAR.
"Many in the party, particularly in the wake of the loss last week of a Massachusetts Senate seat, contend that the White House should chart a centrist approach ..."
Those are no doubt the same slow learners who pushed ahead with "bipartisanship" against all evidence that it was just giving Repubs a licence to bugger health reform.
I suggest you vent your frustration with DNC. If I can no longer trust the progressive agenda as anything other than another lie I was seduced into voting for, I am no longer going to vote at all. Silence may be the only voice that is left.
If Reid is not forced to retire and lieberman stripped and given committee assignments same as Specter was when he went Democrat and assigned virtually as a freshman Senator then I see no point in using a tablespoon to bail out the Titanic.
I will work for me and my own and I will write and talk to everyone I know who is disenfranchised to not be involved and let the government do what it will and I will do as little to pay into it as I legally can. Tell me again the difference s between the Dems and Repubs?
It matters little to me who corrupted the message, what matters is that the message has become just more inside the beltway bullshit.
I do not take not voting lightly I assure you Tom. I have not missed ANY election of any sort including small single issue votes since I was 18. But if silence is the last voice I can use then I will simply sit it out and work for them around me to achieve a life they can sustain.
hell I will be saving the money I used to contribute and that will put me further ahead just in that.
I knew we had been pawned by President Obama when he appointed Rahm Chief of Staff.
Broke my heart, too.
:(
It seems President Obama's State of the Union speech restored all of the Dem's popularity.
Even Rahm's?
Lisa, I was horrified when Obama appointed him. I was right.
Thanks, Gwen.
RZ, I'm afraid that just isn't true. Obama is already admitting that he has made mistakes, and he has numerous accomplishments in his first year, including the largest stimulus package in US history (even it it was too small).
Stimpson, every time the Democrats have adjusted to accomodate the Republican demands, the Republicans have gone back on their word about what they wanted and increased their demands.
Mark, we will disagree on this. As bad as the Democrats are, the Republicans are so much worse that I could not abstain in good conscience.
Glenda, I hope that we were outfoxed by the business as usual wing of the party. I am not yet sure we were pawned.
Ivan, I doubt that, but Obama should throw him under the bus.
Published on Saturday, January 30, 2010 by the Daily Telegraph/UK
'Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Barack Obama Ups Spending on Nuclear Weapons to Even More Than George Bush'
by Carol Driver
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/30
He is also stimulating this.
Posted Friday, January 29, 2010 8:07 PM
Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe
Newsweek
By Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman
Excerpt from the Aug. 1, 2002, ‘Torture Memo’:
For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-fire.aspx
Would this be one of his accomplishments?
RZ, you incorrectly said that he had done nothing. Your first article, which I already replied to in another thread, does not support your incorrect statement. Changing the subject to support an untenable position is a technique called redefining. It is a logical fallacy. Piling on other unrelated material is a technique called dumptrucking. I am familiar with these techniques, because, as a volunteer, I teach prisoners not to use such thinking errors.
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