We elected a symbol, an idea and we got a figurehead, a golden calf

[Generic Other]

We expected him to lead us out of the wilderness like a modern-day Moses. He had a really good line and we all fell for it. We believed he would make old Pharoah let our people go. Instead, he gave Pharoah the seat of honor at his table. And he lost the way. The rest of us followed blindly at first, refusing to believe we could be lost. We are still wandering through the wilderness 4 years later. Nothing has changed. Except whatever hope we had.

And I don't think Obama meant to tarnish the dream, but he does seem overwhelmed by the entrenched forces of the opposition. And for 4 years, he has done way too much to appease them. He seems willing to do anything to accommodate them. But a lot of other Democrats have appeared to be like this in the last decade as well. We seem like we have no fight in us at all.

Our senior party members are not powerful enough to do battle with the GOP. The ones that are really strong have been systematically silenced or marginalized. Let's face it, for every Michele Bachmann their side sends to Congress, we need a Howard Dean, a Cynthia McKinney or an Alan Grayson to throw at them. Instead, we self-righteously drove the final nails into their political coffins when GOP voters screamed for their heads. I don't care what they said or did. It wasn't GOP talking points. They were fighters. They played dirty because they knew we were in a mudfight with the GOP. Obama has come to that fight in his Sunday school suit and a vow not to get dirty.

But this is a war for the very soul of our nation, a war we are losing to the dark side. And we seem at times to be our own worst enemies.

Watching Moses descend from the mountain with an eviction notice, a pink slip, and a defaulted promissory note, we just meekly fall into line. It becomes obvious in this moment that we did not follow Moses into the wilderness at all. Not the Moses who would have smashed the GOP in a fit of rage. Instead, we are stuck with the golden calf that wishful thinking by his followers created.

I have a sinking feeling none of us can ever hope to reach the promised land. To know we were once so much closer, that our own savior is guiding us ever further from that place, can only intensify our suffering. Meanwhile Pharoah rubs his hands in glee.

[ZombieHorde]

1. My vote for President Obama was actually a vote against McCain/Palin. nt

[aquart]

2. Beware of anyone who wants you to chant simple slogans.

He ain't Moses. And if he screws this up he will be remembered with disgust. But WE gave him this Congress and WE need to take the blame.

Falling for every stupid, well-crafted meme by well-paid PR flacks owned by the scum billionaire conspiracy? We deserve what we get.

[Palmer Eldritch]

6. Like, "Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People"?

Yeah,
that John Lennon was a real evil son of a bitch!

:sarcasm:

[sad sally]

22. Gee, I never thought of John Lennon as a politician.

Always seemed to most of us that he was the opposite of one...

[Palmer Eldritch]

69. He was a Leader... who used simple phrases to reach millions.

[robdogbucky]

48. Help, it's the attack of the Rovian Concern Trolls Again!!!! n/t

[aquart]

76. Well, other than his insufferable anti-Semitism....

But that's pretty epidemic in Britain. I'm sure he thought nothing of it. And, clearly, neither do you.

[emulatorloo]

9. 2010 Election was a disaster. The House is full of irrational ill-informed ideologues

who would be more than happy to drive us off a cliff. That crowd seems to hardening in their resolve. It is scary as hell.

I put a fair amount of blame on the media, who promoted these folks by pretending they were credible candidates.

[Generic Other]

23. He was given a triumphal hero's welcome to Washington DC

unprecedented in our history. He embodied our hopes of freeing ourselves from the bondage of the GOP and our modern-day Pharoah Bush. He was anointed. We damn near deified him.

While I agree he was no Moses, he was perceived to be when he was elected even if it was the fictional invention of PR flacks who wanted to give Obama the crown of Moses and MLK and JFK and Joan of Arc all rolled into one. Perhaps no one could live up to the expectation. But he hasn't even tried. Greatness is thrust upon most of history's heroes. They don't always ask for it, but they don't run from it either.

And once you have seized the sword of the great hero, you are obliged to prove your mettle. Otherwise, you are unworthy of a hero's welcome.

[Palmer Eldritch]

3. Now Obama is some heathen Idol? Step back from the edge if you haven't already gone over.

[emulatorloo]

13. Agreed.

[Generic Other]

27. The people created him out of their hopes

The golden calf.

[Palmer Eldritch]

29. You have fallen into the abyss of abstraction, detached from actual meaning

WordCandy is dandy
but TruthLiquor is quicker

[Generic Other]

39. And cliches are always more powerful than thoughtful ideas

Do you want me to rhyme too?

[Palmer Eldritch]

68. Come back when you're a little deeper.

[Generic Other]

72. Come back? From where?

I have been here all along. Where am I supposed to come back from? Having an opinion? Expressing it? I put more effort into expressing my thoughts than you exerted to post two rhymed cliches that say nothing but put me in my place with some hip verbal shorthand you're affecting this week.

Fine you disagree with me. That doesn't make you somehow my intellectual superior. Maybe you should try taking a risk by sharing an actual thought.

[theophilus]

4. A Trojan horse? n/t

[Palmer Eldritch]

10. A Two-Term President.

[FiveGoodMen]

40. That's what I think.

All of this looks planned.

[Myrina]

45. Without a doubt.

He's not 'overwhelmed' or 'entrenched' ... he's workin for his homie, Ol' Pharoah. Always has been.

[montanacowboy]

5. Oh the unrec's are out

Tell them Anything but the truth

Soon it will be evident even to them

[Palmer Eldritch]

8. not all of us have gone completely insane.

[PurityOfEssence]

26. Not necessarily

Never underestimate the fervor of true believers, especially when coupled with fragile egos that are loathe to admit a mistake.

Unrec is for bullies and sub-adolescents: it's an infantile attempt to rewrite current events and change reality while hounding dissident voices from the public square.

Nothing will change. Obama will continue Bill Clinton's pathetic neediness for love from the unrelenting reactionaries and systematically buttress corporations and undermine the weak and the working people. It's nauseating.

Hey, at least we're getting more religion in government, though, right?

[Generic Other]

43. Seems like we are powerless to see through our own conditioning

Why would any Democrat seek approval or love from the GOP? Most of they hate us with every fiber of their being. The only way to gain their friendship is to turn on the rest of us!

I feel like I am an old school liberal Democrat whose party doesn't want me around anymore.

[PurityOfEssence]

55. Not so fast there...Obama and his ilk hope you leave the public forum

Certainly the DLC corporatists wish you'd either disappear or suck it up and lie down at their feet while ceding any personal efficacy to their vaunted wisdom, but the times they are a' changing. There is an increased disenfranchisement of everyone but the top couple of percent, and now that the establishment Democrats are increasingly unable to hide their lack of actual concern for the plight of those who truly fuel the economy, we will be seeing some shake-ups.

Obama has a messianic need to be beloved by all. Disregarding the realpolitik street-fighting of stewarding an effective (not fair, but merely effective) social order, he is following in Bill Clinton's footprints to be a transcendent Pied Piper of intellectual greatness. This is disgusting. This is self-aggrandizing. This simply won't work.

The difference between the left and the right is that the right considers ANY different approach as a vile assault on civilization itself. Understanding this is very helpful to understanding the interplay of modern politics: conservatives HATE any contrary view, but the FEAR it more, whereas liberals dislike different views, but accept that they're going to be there. This is why conservatives truly believe the media is liberal: to even mention abortion (to social conservatives) or progressive taxation (to fiscal conservatives) without spitting bile and a hate-filled face on a news program is to tacitly endorse it. Such things are treacherous underminings of all that is good. Liberals will hear the analogous "other side" and accept that people believe such things, and that's that. To a true conservative, all things threatening "the way things should be" are scourges of humanity itself and must be destroyed. Even though liberals sneer and deride the reactionaries' point of view, they accept the concept of plurality.

Enough said.

[Generic Other]

66. Obama's "messianic need"

The public had this same impulse in 2008. Sarah Palin believes she can energize her followers appealing to the same needs.

This kind of cult thinking is dangerous in a democracy.

[elocs]

53. Apparently the UnRec crybabies are out too.

Of course, only things with which you agree or believe are the truth and only the things with which you disagree or do not believe to be the truth merit getting an UnRec.

[Peregrine Took]

7. What we got was a DLC, triangulatin' republican wannabe. n/t

[scheming daemons]

20. Maybe so many on the left shouldn't have stayed home in 2010 afterall..

...we told you that if the GOP wins the midterms, Obama is going to have to move to the center.


But everyone wanted to stay home to "teach Obama a lesson".



They sure showed him.

[sabrina 1]

51. Funny that most Progressive democrats held their seats

So I guess democrats didn't stay home after all. Blue Dogs, otoh, lost after they were used as an excuse, by the Democratic Leadership, for blocking all progressive legislation. If that was the truth, then they are no loss, are they?

I guess the voters believed them.

This 'blame the voters' nonsense is a very, very bad strategy. If you don't face reality, you can't fix your problems and this attempt to blame voters for taking Democrats at their word, is way past getting old and just sounds like more excuses for why, when they had the power in their hands, they failed to use it.

[LoZoccolo]

11. Funny that you should mention Howard Dean because

Howard Dean says that Obama's had a good few weeks!

I like Howard Dean.

[emulatorloo]

15. Me too, but maybe he is The Platinum Calf. Lol

[Scurrilous]

12. Unrecc.

Doesn't make sense.

[LoZoccolo]

14. I made it 0 lol. n/t

[Generic Other]

46. My post made you have an orgasm? n/t

[kstewart33]

16. Here we go again.

OMG, we can't help ourselves.

It's a collective involuntary reflex. Rumors swirl that Obama is about to sell us all down the river, and immediately DUers trash the guy as an absolute and unforgivable traitor to all things Democratic.

All this, when we HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN THE DEAL YET.

Let's repeat this, because repetition sometimes increases the chance that what we repeat will sink into our collective heads:

WE HAVENT EVEN SEEN THE DEAL YET.

Good. Now let's move along, shall we? And reconvene WHEN WE'VE SEEN THE DEAL.

[emulatorloo]

19. "but if we don't call Obama a heathen idol now, it will be too late"

I think our time would be better spent calling our Reps Senators than trying to come up with hyperbolic comparisons, but maybe that's just me

[xxqqqzme]

32. When you do see the 'deal'

it will be done. But you will have 'moved along', so you will have nothing to say at that point? I prefer to voice my opposition to this center right leaning president, even if he doesn't pay any attention to me.....a Democrat!

[kstewart33]

36. Nonsense.

You are trashing the president for reasons that do not even exist yet.

We are moving along until we have reasons to criticize him.

So far, there are no reasons and there won't be until the actual details of the deal are known.

You know that.

So stop trying to gin up a fury on the DU boards that is needless, gets everyone worked up, and for no reason.

[PurityOfEssence]

17. Yes, it's the cult of personality.

We were continually fluffed about specifics of policy and cajoled to trust the great character and use him as a blank slate upon whom we wrote our own aspirations, just as he said in the preface to one of his books.

The personality was the selling point, and this is what one gets for such foolhardiness.

Health Care, Financial Reform, an illegal War in Libya and disastrous lack of leadership on Global Climate Change are the results of someone more concerned with getting elected and sustaining power than of someone with fiery convictions.

Nothing new here; many have been saying this since before the election, although you deserve credit for making the point again.

It's like the Peace Prize: great rewards based solely on an unsubstantiated set of starry-eyed assumptions.

Blah.

Wait for the firestorm from the acolytes

[Generic Other]

28. Actually you said it much better than I could

Thanks for the reasoned response to my "hyperbole."

[blkmusclmachine]

18. He's been in the WH for 4 years already? News to me.

n/t

[emulatorloo]

21. The perils of DU Hyberbole, I guess. A lot of noise at DU these days, not much signal

[NYC Liberal]

24. Maybe YOU only elected "a symbol, an idea," but many of us did not.

Maybe YOU "expected him to lead us out of the wilderness like a modern-day Moses," but I and many others did not.

Maybe YOU "believed he would make old Pharoah let our people go," but again: you don't speak for all of us.

Many of us knew exactly who and what we were voting for and are overall happy with what we got. Most of us weren't living in fantasyland in 2008 and were realistic about what could and had to be done.

[Generic Other]

33. I did not expect Obama to embrace the policies of the rightwing

"Many of us knew exactly who and what we were voting for and are overall happy with what we got..."

And what exactly have we got? Out of the wars? A decent healthcare system? Protection of our civil liberties? A refusal to budge on SS and Medicare? Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes?

No. We get fancy ass speeches.

[NYC Liberal]

58. We've gotten a hell of a lot more than "fancy ass speeches" (whatever that means).

Yet every time someone here actually talks about what Obama has done, it gets derided and mocked by a very loud minority of people as being "just a list." So what's the point?

[Generic Other]

64. I drew a line in the sand many years ago stating the positions from which I would never budge

That line was to keep GOP from pulling me onto their side in a tug-o-war. Not meant to stop my own president from pushing me back and over the edge!

[MisterP]

60. judging by their posts, many do seem to believe we have withdrawn from the Muslim world,

guaranteed access to doctors, a "crusade" to strengthen SS and Medicare, and staunch opposition to the rich

[Generic Other]

65. We have let down the American people and I am ashamed

I should have been shouting as loudly as I did under Bush. Because a hell of a lot of important things have not changed.

[mckara]

25. Obama was the LEAST Tainted by Corporate Influence

Now, we see how deeply our system has been corrupted!

[FiveGoodMen]

42. What makes you say that?

He may have LOOKED that way, but in retrospect...

[mckara]

59. Of the Other Candidates...

Obama was less entrenched with special interests, except for Dennis Kucinich, who the media disparages fearing his truly progressive positions. Of the 2 viable Democrats in 2008, Obama and Hillary Clinton, the president had less of an affiliation with the DLC and his spouse was not complicit in repealing Glass-Steagall.

[FiveGoodMen]

67. Yeah, I'm saying that's how it looked at the time, so that's what we all based our decisions on

but now I'm thinking he was PLENTY entrenched, just keeping it well hidden.

[iemitsu]

30. great analysis Generic.

this sums up the situation clearly.
democrats seem to have lost their fight.

[Romulox]

31. Disagreed with the OP more and more as it went on.

"And I don't think Obama meant to tarnish the dream, but he does seem overwhelmed by the entrenched forces of the opposition. . . Our senior party members are not powerful enough to do battle with the GOP. "

I disagree entirely with both these points. Occam's Razor suggests that both the President and the Congress invest their resources in the issues that are important to them (e.g. overseas wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, Wall Street bailouts.) I disagree vigorously with the various "3D Chess" style arguments which suggest that Obama is a victim of his own lack of conviction, or that, alternatively, every move is part of an elaborate "rope-a-dope" in which the President can never be held accountable for any of his stated positions. To me, such arguments are either delusional, subtly demeaning, or perhaps even racist.

It is much more intellectually clean to assume that the priorities put forward by this President and this Party represent their true values.

[Generic Other]

35. That makes them scammers then who deliberately fooled us

Do you really think this is the case? I try to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, I have no idea. I simply find it interesting how we create the cult of celebrity in this country, and even our politicians are fictional. They seem to lack conviction when it comes to actions. They are best at making speeches and attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

[Romulox]

37. In a word, yes. nt

[DFab420]

54. nvm re read your post.

and my reply made little sense.

[MilesColtrane]

34. "that our own savior is guiding us ever further..."

Considering ANY politician a potential savior is foolishness.

[Generic Other]

38. I agree

I think though Obama was not adverse to taking on this role, and many were more than happy to oblige. However, we should remember that post-Bush, we were all looking for any hope to cling to as we were drowning.

[damntexdem]

41. Feet of clay.

And they've been walking the wrong way.

[undeterred]

44. The best campaigner does not necessarily make the best leader.

There is a crucial "negotiator" skillset that Obama seems to be missing.

[Generic Other]

47. Do you have examples?

I bet you are correct. Just curious.

[undeterred]

49. I'm just thinking in general terms...

DU is made up of people who know the issues pretty well. But a lot of people who vote do so based upon bits and pieces of news coverage of campaigns. In general terms the people who spend the most money and run the best campaigns win. That doesn't always mean they are the best leaders.

Recently there have been a few races of all Democrats that I've watched... all good people. The person who raised the most money was able to get their name around the most and win the election. Does that mean they were the best leader? Not necessarily.

Obama ran an excellent campaign and raised a lot of money. Right now, in this particular situation, those skills are irrelevant. What is needed here are negotiating skills. Those aren't tested during a presidential campaign.

[Roy Ellefson]

50. Vote Democratic

My old man was born in 1926 he proudly cast his first vote for Harry S. Truman and subsequently proudly cast his votes for Adlai Stevenson, Adlai Stevenson, JFK, Johnson, Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, and Obama. He passed away in 2009...I'm pretty certain that the only candidate on that list that he would now have second thoughts about supporting is Barack Obama...and I agree. Unfortunately I have nowhere else to go.

[Generic Other]

52. My father got the crap beat out of him for voting for FDR

A gang of Hoover voters jumped him when he left the polling place. He thumbed his nose at Republicans his whole life.

I don't ever want to act like one.

[Johonny]

56. with the price of gold i wish i got a golden calf

[Scurrilous]

61. LOL

:thumbsup:

[Generic Other]

62. They took our money to make the thing instead of doing the job...

I don't think you can have it back. But I understand your sentiment.

[LWolf]

57. "We" is not all of us.

I, at least, knew better. I suspect that there were others, as well.

Who heeds the lone voice, the lone wolf, in the wilderness?

Nobody at DU, anyway, lol.

There is no satisfaction, though, in being proved correct. I would rather have been wrong; it would have been less destructive for all of us.

[Generic Other]

63. People with deep misgivings were shushed very effectively

No one wants to be the one raining on someone else's happy parade. The Lone Wolf was not alone. The rest were just in hiding. PTSD.

[kstewart33]

70. How do you feel about him now, Generic?

Entitlement cuts? Wasn't going to touch benefits - the savings would come from increased efficiency and reducing fraud.

Time for another rant? I hope not.

Let's support Obama and hope to he** that he wins this fight.

[Generic Other]

73. I don't think he's leading the fight to protect anything I hold dear

Evidently others don't agree. I remain unconvinced.

[RegieRocker]

71. And the republicans will get the same.

[Ikonoklast]

74. I voted for a politician, not a religious leader.

Those most disappointed in Mr. Obama thought he could walk on water, and deluded themselves.

I voted for a guy to get things done.

I got what I voted for.

The person you are looking for is a myth...you will be forever disappointed because you'll never find him.

[Generic Other]

75. I am not the one who created the myth and I never much believed in it

But you must admit there seem to be many who did.

[JCMach1]

77. White Knight syndrome- we on the left have it

:(