Is Obama the first President to Blur Compromise and Concession?

[bondwooley]

Run time: 01:42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VGIitm0JJw   Posted on YouTube: April 23, 2011 By YouTube Member: MaxFolger Views on YouTube: 36   Posted on DU: April 23, 2011 By DU Member: bondwooley Views on DU: 1634

 
Often, history holds some surprises. Maybe people are being too tough on Obama Take a look at what we found!

[Richardo]

1. What a Fox-like subject line

:thumbsdown:

[bondwooley]

2. Maybe you're missing the satire. n/t

[Richardo]

3. I guarantee I missed the satire

:blush:

[Alpha Numeric Wanda]

6. I don't eny Obama's position...

...trying to get anything at all accomplished with all the lunatics in politics and the media getting away with crazy distortions of his policy and political objectives. But, even after that recent speech, he has left me wondering who is really going to stand up and make a case for the positive role of government? It can't be that hard to argue that we have a responsibility and the ability to take care of our old people, and educate our kids, and ensure safe work environments and the rights of minorities, can it?

For the record, I got the satire in the video. Good stuff. Keep it up.

[szatmar666]

4. "The Closing of the American Mind"

It's a book I recommend to everyone on du. It attempts to explain why so many americans don't have the capacity to perceive reality anymore and instead sink into this left vs right "my team vs your team" relativism while the country is going bankrupt morally and economically.

http://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Allan-Bloom/dp/0671657151

Obama didn't simply "compromise away" progressive ideas. He consolidated the gains of a right wing reactionary movement under Bush and in the process of doing so advocated for policies that are far to the right of every legit conservative political party in the world. Some of what progressives call "progressive" compromise in America, such as the "public option" is considered ultra right wing politics in EU that has no prayer of ever getting off the ground as real policy.

[bondwooley]

5. Well stated!

The right is going so extreme that dems/progressives are chasing them to that end of the spectrum, rather than holding the center together.

[ooglymoogly]

8. The only scenario that makes any sense; is that

these are not concessions. They are the desired outcomes; and if the foil, (the blue dogs and hard right) do not push hard enough so that he can still wear the kabuki costume of a democrat, he just hands over more anyway to get the desired hard right outcome the cleptocracy mandates, while telling us the opposition is just to intransigent and that he did the best he could.

Meanwhile: Back in electioneering mode, he is saying things that make sense again; to get elected, just like he did before. Fool me once blah blah.

[szatmar666]

9. I think this goes back to the 1968 Democratic Party chasm

and the collapse of the New Deal Coalition with the election of Nixon.

The left in America has to come to grips with historic reality. In the 1960s there was a "new left", a generation of young college students who demanded rights for minorities and introduced social liberalism into the discourse very much against the "old left" represented among others by the racist southern white working class in LBJ's tent. It was the reaction to Vietnam and Jim crow laws in the South that came together and flexed its political muscle as a movement first in the streets and later in 1968 with Humphrey vs McGovern in big time politics and achieved a sound strategic defeat 1st at the polls and than the disintegration of the New Deal coalition in national politics. Perhaps it was the "right thing to do" in a simplistic moralizing sense but it was a very stupid thing to do strategically.

Now, 40 years later it's time to assess the results. We have civil rights laws, that's true, but in practice the USA is more segregated than ever before: incarceration rates skyrocketed and racial hatred is worse than ever. The USA incarcerates black men at a rate of 4800/100k, or 6X that of South Africa in 1990 and much higher than it used to before Nixon and Reagan. It is today, for all intents and purposes an apartheid economy. At the same time the bottom 90% of workers had to contend with a 1% wage increase since 1981 while the same number was 75% in the 1st 30 years after WW2 while union membership dropped to an all time low since the New Deal at less than 7% of the workforce.

Obama represents the culmination of this "new" academic left of the Civil Rights that has such a dismal record of achievement while ready to make fiery speeches about progress and civil rights and even more ready to then turn around and compromise away worker's rights. I think that it's time for the left to take a good look at itself, stop the BS and start organizing the workplace and start speaking to the working class in a way that it used to during the progressive era.

[ooglymoogly]

13. Your points are well taken and most, I believe are a part of the kaleidoscopic equation that

quantifies our present circumstance. I disagree however, as to what extent 0 is one, or now the leader, of the folks that make up that new left. I believe that is just the only kabuki cloak that remotely fits his actions and the outcomes of his actions. From All evidence and it is monolithic, he is working hand in glove with the cleptocracy and is where he is because he can be counted on to do so. That is born out by the outcomes of his actions that are diametrically opposed to his speak; which is so honest in tone, down to earth and brilliant to the worshiping ear, it defies description. In a past life he could be Orwell's model for newspeak.

[szatmar666]

14. I try to make it a point not to guess people's intentions

and not to demonize them. I think Obama really believes what he preaches but spent a little too much time in the halls of power at Harvard and the US Senate. There is a disconnect between the elite and working class Americans that is part of the culture and I think even the most enlightened elites are captive to a false economic narrative drafted by Wall Street and John Birch flunkies in the late 60s.

I think Obama is fundamentally down deep the US Gorbachev: a believer in a failed ideology while he's aware of the failure and tries honestly to fix the system. He can't find a solution, not because he's some evil conspirator on the side of evil cleptocrats, but rather because he's boxed in by his own nurture and nature as someone who's a product of the system: all his premises and knowledge grew out of this flawed world view. I also think the result is inevitably the same as in Russia: the complete and utter collapse of the current system, the withdrawals of US troops from abroad and a period of chaos and violence on the streets which will result in robber barons and local warlords grabbing up the pieces. I hope I am wrong but I can't see a way out unless Americans start doing what their forefathers did in the 1880s: organize and strike.

[ooglymoogly]

15. And there lies the fundamental disagreement.

As proof of that evil I give you Bradly manning. I give you the tax breaks for the rich, I give you preacher Warner, I give you a president claiming to himself the right to designate anyone on the planet a terrorist and exterminate him, I give you the non prosecution of horrific criminals who murdered and slaughtered millions for financial gain, I give you the Wall st. robber barons who every prosecutor in the land admits the evidence of felonious crime is dripping all over this presidency; I give you the continued criminal prosecution of Seigalman which we all know is a political hanging to protect criminals, all fixed with the simpleton excuse; "looking forward",

I am interested in the reality of outcomes; not the song and dance of speech and duplicity and not achieving what was never intended to achieve in that lofty speech.

[bondwooley]

10. Hope you're wrong with the fool me once concept, though you might be dead on. Fingers crossed. n/t

[szatmar666]

11. I don't think Obama is simply "fooling" us

or that he is some sort of "sellout". I think he's just simply too clever for his own good, as I said, part of the intellectual history of the new left: much talk , not too much action and a clear disregard for the working class.

[scrubthedata]

16. I don't think that Obama has a disregard for the working class

Unless I really am being fooled. In comparison to Boehner's apparent hatred of the middle class, Obama is practically the working class' patron saint.

Granted, comparisons are relative and not always the way to get to the truth.

[szatmar666]

17. I would have agreed with you before Madison

I was always ambivalent in blaming the democrats for abandoning the working class, especially since Clinton's 2nd administration because I haven't seen the popular uprising to push back against the right wing bullies attacking him in the late 90s. But now, that I saw the popular uprising in the mid-west, especially here in WI, and the deafening silence from major democrats from the WH and the Senate, I really think there is a chasm between the intellectual elite who's in charge and workers who are marginalized. With that said it is true: this is a 2 way street. I think dems went along with much of the destruction of unions the last 30 years, didn't put up a fight mainly because unions themselves didn't put up much of a fight either.

[scrubthedata]

20. The lack of Dem support for Madison is, indeed, deplorable.

The usual talking heads have put it on the radar, but the Dems (at least the ones outside of the state) have exercised a pathetic, passive attitude. What are they so afraid of? They're not getting Koch brother money no matter what they do. They can't look stupid for defending unions and workers when that's the only group on their side already.

I just don't get it.

[ooglymoogly]

7. KR excellent....nt

[fayhunter]

12. Hey, he's not that bad! But I enjoyed Reagan ;-)

[The Nexus]

18. Charlie of You Tube's Liberal Viewer fame. nt

[bondwooley]

19. Context? n/t

[The Nexus]

21. Compare the 2, and check out the YT profile of the video's uploader

nt

[bondwooley]

22. Different people IMHO. n/t