I Would Support Him If He Would Support Me...

[AzDar]

But, that ain't happenin'...

[MNDemNY]

1. yup, corporations are being supported on every front.

Funny how that works!

[AzDar]

2. It's heartbreaking. Truly.

[msongs]

3. tell him you are a US general or corporate CEO. whatever u do dont tell him you're gay though nt

[Jamastiene]

9. Ain't that the truth. n/t

[Ken Burch]

21. Or tell him you're David Geffen and confuse the hell out of him

n/t.

[Writer]

4. There unfortunately are 299,999,999 others who are asking for support, too.

And not all of them think like you.

[VMI Dem]

5. Is it poor leadership or a complete lack of it?

[Popular Front]

6. The President would support you if you would support him

It's intuitive. We have to stand by him. If we don't, then the only people he will listen to are the banksters.

[IndianaGreen]

7. hello? We voted him into office with solid Democratic majorities in Congress

All we got out of this are pretty words and bad policies.

[AzDar]

10. THIS is what gets me...he seems to be making many things worse.

Why?

[Jim Sagle]

17. That's his job.

[AzDar]

8. George Orwell...is that you?

:crazy:

[jgraz]

11. Exactly. Obama called me every night after I sent him that donation

Actually, it got kinda creepy after a while.

[rockymountaindem]

14. We stood by him at rallies, canvassing and at the ballot box

We continue to stand by him by hoping every day and trusting that he's going to do something right for health care. When is that going to happen?

[salguine]

23. I think electing him President could be interpreted as "supporting him".

[jefferson_dem]

12. What about ME though?

Your post serves as a picture perfect, and concise, critique of the "My Pony" crowd's concerns.

Thanks.

[roguevalley]

19. actually, his post had a lot of reasonable questions and you denigrating

it as if he was some sort of entitlement queen is sad. capitulating to lieberman, LIEBERMAN, is not change. Its fucked up. Its craven. Its wrong. he deserves the scorn that some feel.

[salguine]

25. Ah, "pony". Ignore List for you.

[jillan]

13. And last nite the DCCC called me asking for money.

All I could say was WHY? Them - So we can maintain a Democratic Majority in Congress.
Why? For what? What difference is it making? I told him that when the Dems stand up and fight for what we believe in then I will donate, but until then they are not getting 1 cent from me.

I would love to know what kind of responses these poor people are getting these days while trying to raise money for them Dems.

Doesn't this administration realize that it's not the republicans bringing their numbers down? It's their own party.

[jeanpalmer]

20. They called me too

I gave the same response.

[FrenchieCat]

15. Face it; many fought the wrong people all along.

Since the day of the election, many have been so busy fighting to keep this President's feet to the fire, they forgot to show up to fight the true opponents of health care; those who don't want us to get nothing.

This summer, when Obama really did start off with high approval ratings, the Town Hall maniacs started showing up on all of our televisions. They were everywhere for weeks! They were fighting and taking action. They were loud, angry and rebellious. And so....where were we at that time? Maybe we should have made sure that our voices were louder than theirs, instead of sitting on the sideline watching, waiting for someone else to do something.

What I see though is that when it comes to taking action, we can point to the faults of this President, his administration or/and our elected Congressional Democrats. But inasmuch as that would be true, we ought to look at ourselves as well. Democrats were split from the get go. Some wanted single payer and nothing else, and were willing to fight the President for it; not fight his opponents so much. Others were willing to accept the PO, but it had to be a certain type of PO, and they rebelled against the President, because they felt he wasn't doing enough to support it. Other did not much more than offer weak support (not much marching, calling congress, or hitting back at the media via phone calls, letters and such), all along always finding criticism, not so much toward the true opponents of health Care reform, but against our own.

They had their televised rallies that were attended by thousands, while we laughted at them. Meanwhile, we mainly sat on the Internet and discussed what it was that we were insisting on, and debating on whether the administration was doing right or doing wrong. You see, we have been doing this since the election, and we did it throughout the summer, and we never bothered to even consider to act on the premise that we were the one that we were supposed to be waiting for. Because believe you me, most of us didn't even bother to ever show up.

But yes, the administration has not acted as strongly as I would have anticipated.....which is why I keep on calling, and writing, and whatever else I need to do....cause nothing is over, and nothing is set into any stone. But yet so many are expressing defeat before the bill is done.

So how weak can we be, because again, we are claiming to have lost without ever having fought, because we are still waiting for others to fight for us, and we continue to debate on the Internet and discuss whether the administration has done it right or wrong. Same as right after the election. We haven't changed, and yet we expect radical change like single payer, total withdrawal from Afghanistan, etc. Change that is radical cannot happen unless we are willing to stand up and fight. But most of us never fight the real opposition; we fight amongs ourselves, and then we fight against a Democratic administration constantly (and I mean constantly).

Perhaps at the end of the day, we are getting exactly what we deserve; something weak, watered down, and tepid; because that is exactly the type of support the majority of us offered.

[IndianaGreen]

16. We are not the ones that made a deal with Big Pharma or put Single Payer off the table

[Peacetrain]

18. Single payer was never on the table..

[jeanpalmer]

22. Democrats were not split on HCR

from the getgo. They were united in their willingness to accept single payer. If single payer had been enacted, not one Democrat would have complained. Many Democrats accepted a true public option because single payer wasn't on the table. But Democrats really weren't split as to what their first choice was.

I think too much credit is being given to teabaggers for thwarting reform. Why would any Dem wanting real HCR pay any attention those idiots? It was pretty clear what Democrats wanted. If any Democrat misinterpreted teabagger outbursts for public opinion on the matter, he/she has only himself/herself to blame.

If a Democrat wants to find out what the base thinks, all he/she has to do is drop by DU. He doesn't have to go to a townhall meeting. And the people in Congress know this. I'm sure they monitor the internet all the time to gauge the Democratic pulse. They know very quickly if they're not doing what the base wants them to do. If they don't, they're hopelessly or intentionally obtuse. In the internet age, they don't need a phone call. Is there even one person on this board who can't figure out what is not acceptable to Democrats in the way of HCR? Of course not. And the politicians can figure it out too. They may act like they don't know, but they know as surely as you and I do.

So it's not our fault if these politicians refuse to do the right thing. How many of them don't know that if they shut down these wars and reduced military spending we could afford reasonable HCR? They all know it. But they act like they don't, and they certainly don't talk about it. Why is that? It's not because they don't know, it's because they don't want to political heat for unfunding the military. Same thing on jobs. How many of them don't know that outsourcing causes job losses? They all know. They pretend not to know, and again they don't talk about it, but they all know. But they don't want to offend the establishment by taking on outsourcing. Obama holds a jobs summit, and doesn't even mention outsourcing. Come on.

These Democratic Congress people know exactly what's expected of them in the way of HCR, ending the wars, protecting jobs. They don't need phone calls or letters to find out. For various reasons of self interest, they have decided not to do the right thing.

[ima_sinnic]

24. why didn't we "do" anything? I couldn't afford to be arrested

have you forgotten the "Baucus 13"?

May 12, 2009
Filed under: News — russell @ 11:45 am

Make it the Baucus 13.

Five more people were arrested at the Senate Finance Committee this morning.

They are advocates of a single payer health care system.

And they were protesting the fact that Committee chairman Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) continues to exclude single payer advocates from a series of hearings on health care reform.

Last week, eight doctors, lawyers and activists were arrested as they sought to put a single payer advocate at a table of 15 witnesses.

Today, 13 witnesses testified – not one a single payer advocate.

The Baucus 8 were charged last week with “disruption of Congress” and face a May 26 court date in Washington, D.C.

http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=690

You can go to that website and click on the "News" link to find one story after another about people "doing something" to advance single-payer, and either being squashed like bugs or ridiculed and marginalized. High school students in West Virginia with t-shirts they designed: "What Would Jesus Do? Single payer. / Health care for all. / Everybody in. / Nobody out." They even raised money for a full-page newspaper ad in the Morgan (WV) Messenger -- so far, apparently, only the republicans have made a coordinated effort to squash that effort -- but was this even reported in the news where you are?

This is only one tiny example of the grassroots efforts of the MAJORITY, the GREAT MAJORITY that want a truly affordable, sane healthcare policy comparable to those in Canada and England, who have simply been ignored. Where do those "comments" that I've sent through the whitehouse.gov "Contact Us" link go, anyway? We are a majority who voted for Obama in the deluded belief that he was "of The People" and would really represent us and fight for us and our need for affordable health care (disclaimer: I am 63, self-employed, & uninsured). Unfortunately, Obama saw fit to give that job to Max Baucus and a few other insurance company senators/reps, and he has not said much besides give him a bill with the word "reform" in the title.

Ironically, if Obama had been president in the early 1960s, I don't think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have passed. The teabagger/moron element was even more vocal and overtly violent, with politicians in the South even passing out axe handles for beating black people and actively resisting desegregation. President Kennedy introduced the basics of the bill in a speech in 1963 and he sent the bill to Congress a week later (June 19, 1963) (see, presidents DO "introduce" bills). After passing the House with improvements and strengthening:

The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in November 1963, and referred to the Rules Committee, whose chairman, Howard W. Smith, a Democrat and avid segregationist from Virginia, indicated his intention to keep the bill bottled up indefinitely. It was at this point that President Kennedy was assassinated. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, utilized his experience in legislative politics and the bully pulpit he wielded as president in support of the bill.

Because of Smith's stalling of the bill in the Rules Committee, (Emmanuel) Celler (D-NY) filed a petition to discharge the bill from the Committee. Only if a majority of members signed the discharge petition would the bill move directly to the House floor without consideration by Smith's committee. Initially Celler had a difficult time acquiring the signatures necessary, as even many congressmen who supported the civil rights bill itself were cautious about violating House procedure with the discharge petition. By the time of the 1963 winter recess, 50 signatures were still needed.
The record of the roll call vote kept by the House Clerk on final passage of the bill.

On the return from the winter recess, however, matters took a significant turn. The pressure of the civil rights movement, the March on Washington, and the President's public advocacy of the Act had made a difference of opinion in Representatives' home districts, and soon it became apparent that the petition would acquire the necessary signatures. To prevent the humiliation of the success of the petition, Chairman Smith allowed the bill to pass through the Rules Committee. The bill was brought to a vote in the House on February 10, 1964, and passed by a vote of 290 to 130, and sent to the Senate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

The bill was filibustered for more than 50 days, and it included the unpalatable potential for forced segregation, making the ratios of black to white school students equitable and reflective of their proportions in American society--which did indeed occur a year or two later. As Johnson signed the bill, he is quoted as saying, "We have lost the South for a generation."

See, I don't think Obama would sign anything that didn't give the moronic, hateful concerns of "the South" equal consideration. That wouldn't be "bipartisan." The way things are now, proponents of segregation and racial discrimination would "have a place at the table," even though their attitude would be totally unconstitutional and a travesty of human rights.

My beef with Obama is that he allowed the teabagger element to blather and monopolize the airwaves without a strong, forcefully repeated response that would have shut them down by directly addressing their moronic bullshit (after all, the great majority of the country was behind him, and would have been greatly influenced by clarification of the teabagger distortions, rather than being left to bewilderedly wonder whether the teabaggers might be onto something), and he did not come out at the beginning with a clearly defined goal other than some nebulous "reform" that would "include everybody."

A "leader" cannot let all sides chaotically "have a seat," especially the divisive and destructive elements; it is the basic function of a leader to channel the sides into focusing on a single direction. Nebulous "reform" is too generic and directionless and simply paves the road to failure.

[uponit7771]

26. voting for Obama and campaigning for him was only the beggining of support not the end