Barack Obama: Friend or Foe?

Below are some of the highlights from an incredible conversation between Tavis Smiley, John Heilemann, and Bill Maher on Reel Time tonight, February 18, 2011.
All three agreed that President Obama is NOT adopting virtually any of the positions that his base wants him to. Smiley and Maher attributed this problem to the President's being a lousy negotiator who gives away the store before negotiations begin.
But Heilemann articulated a very different theory, one that I heard Professor Jonathan Turley insinuate several months ago and one that sent a Rushbo size chill up my spine. Heilemann believes that the President simply is not nearly as liberal as his base, not anywhere close to being as liberal as the people who elected him, and that the positions of his that infuriate his base the most are not the result of poor negotiating skills at all. Rather they are strictly a function of the President's beliefs being much closer to those of the Republican Party than to his base.
[Ed Note - in other words, we may have been had!]
On a second, albeit interrelated, topic, Heilemann explained that the events in Wisconsin have absolutely nothing to do with a purported state budget shortfall. Rather they are part of a well orchestrated effort by the national Republican Party to destroy the labor unions once and for all and thereby separate the Democrats from their most ardent, reliable, and indispensable supporters. Without the money and the foot soldiers that the unions provide during election season, the Democratic Party will be defenseless against the unlimited Citizens United funds that will assuredly cascade in to Republican coffers.
Which makes Obama's customary conciliatory, split-the-baby approach to the situation in Madison that much more baffling, frustrating, and primarily infuriating.
Anyway, here are the actual salient excerpts from the discussion on Reel Time:
Tavis Smiley: “Budgets are moral documents, and when we see what you put on the table, then we know what you really believe. And I think for the last couple of years the Obama administration has been serenading Wall Street with that Stevie Wonder classic, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,’ and all the rest of us have been getting the Sam and Dave classic, ‘Hold On, I’m Coming.’ But the American people can only hold on for so long. And when the President puts his budget on the table and wants to balance it on the backs of the poor, that’s unacceptable.
This is our President whom many of us voted for in December who went along ... not just compromised, but quite frankly capitulated on these Bush era tax cuts. Obama did that. This is Obama’s budget that wants to give another 22 billion to the military."
Bill Maher: “Why is [Obama] such a bad negotiator?"
Tavis Smiley: “He gives them everything up front.”
Bill Maher: "[Obama’s budget] was another desperate attempt to make Republicans like him. A budget is merely a starting negotiating point. So why did he start from where they already are? Let’s fuck the poor. We have to tighten belts. So let’s do it with kids, poor people, and the planet. This guy has got to learn how to haggle.”
John Heilemann: “I’ve got to break this to you, Bill. It’s not that [Obama] is a bad negotiator. He just doesn’t believe the same things you believe. He doesn’t want the same things you want. He agrees with Republicans more than you agree with Republicans.”
Bill Maher: “Why isn’t he more forceful right now on the side of these workers in Wisconsin?”
John Heilemann: “Here’s what’s going on in Wisconsin: Simply put, the union movement in America right now is the last actual muscle that the Democratic Party has nationally. If you look at campaign spending across the country, it's the only thing that stands between Democrats being routed across the country and having some credibility running elections. This is an assault waged not just by the Governor of Wisconsin but by the entire Republican establishment, the conservative establishment, on the ability of Democrats to compete in elections, not just in Wisconsin, but across the country going forward. And it is a purely political thing. If they can strip collective bargaining from the unions in Wisconsin, they will try to do it in every state in the country and destroy the union movement as a POLITICAL force, not just as an economic force. That’s what this is all about.”
Tavis Smiley: “If it’s all that, and I agree with you that it is, if that’s what’s at stake, shouldn’t the President get involved in this? Shouldn't he be more forceful standing behind these unions in Wisconsin?”
No one tried to answer.

Hurricane Katrina Levels the White House

Katrina Vanden Heuvel was brilliant in her emotion-laden criticism of the President on Cenk Uygur’s show today:
“We’ve seen this time and time again: A president preemptively making concessions that abet his opponents and demoralize his supporters. Compromise is demanded in politics, but leadership can not be defined by compromise.
This president was dealt a good hand in many ways, but his preemptive concessions took away that good hand. And he had public opinion on his side, but you can’t just let that sit there. You have to mobilize public opinion with your leadership.
Our system is rigged in many ways through the power of establishment money and through the lobbyists who swamp Washington D.C. every day. But you can provide leadership that lays out a different narrative.
We’re having this debate about the budget in the completely wrong framework. Our priorities are skewed. A budget is not just a set of numbers. It’s a moral document. It is also a reflection of a nation’s values and aspirations.
And, if we’re a nation that’s going to balance the budget on the backs of the working class and low income Americans, to the benefit of the richest and the multinational corporations that out-source jobs, then we are a nation in dire need of our own pro-democracy movement to take back this country for the people who built it and made it strong, and to take it away from those who brought us the financial crisis that robbed trillions of dollars from people who have worked so hard for decades.
We need to understand what we’re going to do outside of the White House, outside of Washington D.C. It’s late for that. We need independent organizing in this country to change the balance of forces, to change the nature of political power, and to find a way to have a different debate because, with all due respect, this president is not going to lead us to the promised land. We have a blueprint of cruelty in the GOP plan. Let us not forget that they never had a mandate to do what they’re doing. It was a lousy economy and joblessness, not a desire for big spending cuts, that got them elected in 2010.
But this president is seeking reelection. This president is charting his own course, a course that sadly has demobilized the base that elected him.
It’s insanity that military spending constitutes 58% of the discretionary spending budget. We have, in inflation-adjusted terms, a military budget that’s larger than it was during the Bush years or the Cold War. That’s insanity. And two wars costing about 120 billion dollars a year.
We can do better. But it’s going to require people outside of Washington working with allies inside Congress. And we can say to them, ‘Enough.' There’s a disconnect between what’s going on in Washington and what this country needs. "

The President's Chronic Capitulation Syndrome II

The link below goes to an incisive L.A. Times article from December about how the President's penchant for appeasement is driving some of the largest Democratic donors away from the party.
Or. as one of them said, "He's got many great qualities, but he is not a fighter. I've met with many donors, and the level of disappointment is extreme."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/09/nation/la-na-dem-donors-20101210

Or, to quote Jim Hightower, "President Obama suffers from a debilitating disease: Chronic Capitulation Syndrome." And, quoting George Soros: "I don't mind losing a fight. But I do mind losing without a fight."

I know that President Obama regards himself as the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan (which might well be a significant part of the problem in and of itself) in that he thinks he's capable of forging alliances with even the most strident forces on the other side of the aisle. But he forgets two primary differences between now and then:

(1) When the extremely conservative Reagan "compromised" with the Democrats of his day, he was dealing with an essentially reasonable opposition party. By contrast, there is nothing "reasonable" about today's incarnation of the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell said it all when he essentially described his understanding of "compromise" as getting everything he wants while relinquishing nothing. Doesn't quite sound like a penultimate "negotiating partner" to me.

(2) If President Obama were writing on a clean slate, compromise might not be such a bad thing. But he's not. His presidency was preceded by eight years of unimpeded, unvarnished far right wing policies and enactments. So, by seeking and achieving only "compromise" legislation, all Obama is doing is holding serve. He is not making any effort to overcome the lead his opponent previously amassed, which is, as a result, becoming insurmountable.

Even worse, when it comes to civil liberties, Obama has not only failed to abolish George W. Bush's abhorrent, medieval policies, but, in most instances, he has enthusiastically followed them and, in some, he has actually made them worse!

But that will be the subject of a later post(s).