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.