These Are Not The Droids You Are Looking For

[lame54]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/20-6

Published on Monday, September 20, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Who Is Responsible for the Progressive "Enthusiasm Gap?"
by David Sirota

That was the message from President Obama late last week at a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser at Greenwich, Connecticut home of (I kid you not) a fundraiser named Rich Richman:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get - to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed - oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed - then, well, I don't know about this particularly derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and - (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.)

As Firedoglake reminds us, the president campaigned on the public option and as president cited it as one of his three foundational principles for real health care reform. Let's also remember that the White House quietly negotiated away the public option and cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry to weaken the health care bill. Let's remember, too, that the White House openly fought progressive efforts to seriously reform the Federal Reserve bank - one of the key actors in the market meltdown. The president also abandoned the cause of the Employee Free Choice Act, and, of course, didn't just fail to achieve "world peace," he massively escalated the Afghanistan war...

...As I wrote in an earlier newspaper column entitled "Whither the Sacred Campaign Promise," this tactic of denying the very legitimacy of expectations has become the standard political tactic of this White House. Rather than acknowledge expectations' basic legitimacy, this administration seems to think it can just tell voters that it either never made promises it clearly made or that voters are immature children the minimal things they expect. The calculation, as mentioned above, is that voters are so stupid and lobotomized they will submit to pure historical revisionism and brainwashing - they will, in short, feel crazy for even thinking more could be done than the White House is doing.

Perhaps this "these are not the droids you are looking for" strategy will work. Maybe it's true that effectively telling Democratic voters that they are idiots and are misremembering recent history will motivate those voters to vote in November. And maybe progressive activists and media voices are the idiots for saying that a better strategy to motivate Democratic voters (and, by the way, better public policy) is to simply fight harder for and deliver on the progressive policies promised in the 2008 election.

But I don't think so...

[lame54]

1. .

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Star Wars, what a great movie.

[Fumesucker]

4. Why is that Storm Trooper holding your picture?

[Fumesucker]

3. It is a blatantly self evident fact that David Sirota needs to be drug tested..n/t

[obxhead]

5. Again?

[MineralMan]

6. How many times is this out-of-context thing going to be posted

here? Really...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Until they make up a new one.

Probably around friday afternoon.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, a little originality would be nice, I think.

This was debunked over the weekend when the entire context was posted. But, I suppose, every blogger who copies and pastes from FDL will be posting it today, so we can expect additional postings here.

[lame54]

10. how was it debunked?...

yes, i did see the entire transcript

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

11. Falsely contradicted does not equal "debunked"

The full context is in no way exculpatory -- it is even worse.

To just be popping off trying to blame the powerless for your own failings is gross.

To do so in the context of ostensibly encouraging them to be more enthusiastic is both gross and political malpractice.

[Marr]

12. Put me down as another person who would like to know how this was "debunked".

[Arkana]

20. Well, see, if you're not a thin-skinned shut-in you're smart enough to know

that the President didn't "insult" anyone and anyone who thinks he did needs to take a fucking chill pill.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

37. Just so we can calibrate our insult-o-meters, do you?

Spewing personally directed bile ("thin skinned shut-in") as a mode of what is supposed to be civil discusssion to argue that the president isn't ever insulting raises questions about what you consider insulting.

[unapatriciated]

15. Go ahead - debunk it...

"Well, we're waiting".

[DirkGently]

24. I think the "debunking "... has been debunked.

[Marr]

9. "Out of context".

Everything is "out of context" if you aren't personally present. I've read the complete remarks and see no significant change in meaning or tone, regardless of how much context is added.

[Greyhound]

13. "These words do not mean what you think they mean."

"This administration has your best interests at heart."

"The rich are your friends."

"You are too (developmentally challenged) to understand what we are doing to you."



:rofl:

[Capitalocracy]

14. "Go out and make me do it"

If I don't enact progressive change, it will be because you didn't make me do it.

But if you criticize me in any way while doing so, it will be your fault when the Republicans win.

:crazy:

[Arkana]

19. No but you see OBUMMER INSULTED UUUUUUUSSSSSSSSS

[nashville_brook]

29. the "context" of the passage is a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser.

and the sentences before the passage...as well as the sentences after the passage, do not negate or reverse or even soften the highlighted passage.

but, if you have a different interpretation, please share with the class.

[DirkGently]

33. Oh, but if you read the whole thing, while tilting your head just soooooo ...

[Radical Activist]

16. Public option and EFCA. Still blaming Obama for what the Senate blocks?

I guess I'll never understand why some pundits are so eager to let the Senate off the hook and pretend that Obama is the only elected official in America. Sirota was misleading people about Obama back when he was an Edwards campaigner and he never stopped spinning. I can understand Sirota feeling a little defensive after two years of throwing shit at Obama instead of being helpful while the rest of us were trying to get good bills through the Senate.

[yurbud]

17. Is there any precedent for this ''fuck you, now vote for me'' strategy working?

[DirkGently]

26. Well, "We're bombing you into Democracy" went pretty well, I hear.

[yurbud]

28. yep, ''sorry I killed your grandma and your baby, now thank me for liberating you.''

[DirkGently]

32. Ayuh. Thus, "Boo hoo, stop criticizing us, or we'll call you babies, boo hoo, etc."

[Arkana]

18. More overreaction.

NO ONE CALLED DEMOCRATS IDIOTS. CHRIST AL-FUCKING-MIGHTY, GET A GODDAMN GRIP.

[Fumesucker]

21. Of course they didn't call all Democrats idiots..

Only an idiot would believe that..

They called _liberals_ idiots..

Don't bother replying, I'm heading out for my daily drug test.

[Arkana]

22. Please point me to where Obama said "liberals".

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Oh, wait. He didn't, and you and yours are wetting your goddamn drawers over a complete non-story.

Oh, and by the way? He's right. Democrats DO see the glass as half-empty all the time. That's why liberals and Democrats have always been the ones to effect sweeping change in this country--because they see the proverbial glass as half-empty. He never said to stop pushing--he simply asked you to realize that he IS doing the things he promised to do. Not at the speed I'm sure he'd prefer, but talk to Congress on that one.

[Fumesucker]

25. Not Obama, silly..

It was Rahm the Nine Fingered..

[Marr]

27. Let me help you with the english language.

He's talking about Democrats who feel that his policies have either been too far to the right, or too weak. Here on this section of the planet Earth, people to Obama's left would be described as "liberal Democrats" or just "liberals".

[DirkGently]

23. "a better strategy ... is to simply fight harder for and deliver on the progressive policies

promised in the 2008 election." Better than Jedi mind tricks any day.


Good find.

[Lorien]

35. Absolutely. But he obviously thinks the problems of "the small people" are just a joke

we aren't laughing.

[ibegurpard]

30. good metaphor

"it only works on the weak-minded"

[KittyWampus]

31. Ah, the Reactionary Screamers are always at it here on DU.Like 12 year olds at the lunch table

"did you hear what X said about Y"?!

[unapatriciated]

36. except this was no 12 year old.

It was our president acting like one. Paragraph B sounded like a grade school taunt by someone who does not want to be held accountable for their own actions.
Paragraph B was not needed to enhance paragraph A and served no purpose in the goal of getting Ds elected.
If this administration were serious about keeping the house and senate they would not be making insulting statements that do nothing to gotv just before an election.

[glitch]

39. Well said. The insults seem gratuitous. Why? What is their point?

Obama is smart enough to not make gratuitous insults to a big part of the base right before a close election. So what's going on?

"If this administration were serious about keeping the house and senate they would not be making insulting statements that do nothing to gotv just before an election."

[TK421]

34. I'm glad I called out of work that day....I heard what happened n/t

[ThoughtCriminal]

38. We are not the Droids you are looking for