Obama has an historically historic opportunity to be one of the great populist presidents, getting the gig at a time when most Americans are keenly aware that far-reaching changes are needed, beginning with shoring up the threadbare safety net.
If "progressives" can do little better than playing the cultural-superiority card vs. the ignorant Bubbas who are too unhip to know racy associations for the word "teabag" — rather than defending and promoting the economic policies that are proven to be the best answer to recessions and depressions — we're just begging the Republicans to become populist heroes.
The problem is that neo-liberals like Obama are playing old movies in their heads, partying like it's 1980. They're playing "greed is good," when that tune is fully played out.
So, with conditions ripe for real change, we get sweetheart deals for certain white-collar sectors, and hard time for everyone else. Why have "Social Security" when you can have "Entitlement Reform"? And is there a greener job than the Soylent kind?
Well, smug put-downs about Sarah Palin's daughter's baby daddy are enobling, certainement. Perhaps that will be 21st century progressivism's proud legacy.
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virtual class warfare
once again
boot the CEO
I thought it was well understood by now that Obama's JOB is to
kill left and center populism along with the Democratic party. If he's a one-term President, so much the better for him, as that will just mean an earlier segue into his next cushy gig at Goldman-Sachs.
JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream
Spot on, VL.
We had over 5,000 teabaggers, here, on Michigan's capitol lawn, yesterday, who weren't the least bit coherent, but whose message, I had the terrible realization of having, could actually appear attractive to a people in a state where the unemployment rate is now 12.6% and who's president, despite offering kinds words here-and-there, has effectively told American manufacturing to "drop dead."
It is crazy that the 5,000 that marched on Lansing, the other day, almost appeared to this eye to be victims of something, despite some of them being out-and-out racist, xenophobes, and end-of-the-world types.
Yes, the response from the left to this movement is not hardly sufficient. The left has got to have a better answer to this than the "oh, those are just stupid yokels/rednecks". The response has to be both blunt and lucid.
I'd go even further, VL. I'm seeing the makings of a movement that not only wants to produce populist heroes, but populist martyrs. One of the popular winger talking points at these rallies is that sacraficing children and grandchildren for our own immediate gain. At the rally in my state capital, in particular, there was a heavy use of children and infants to translate the message to the media. I'm talking baby strollers plastered with anti-Obama and anti-tax messages, a whole contingent of small children carrying placards...it was just creepy.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Back at you, Damon
Spot on.
Yep
And every class-based sneer from the "creative" [cough] "class" about how Palin is, essentially, trailer trash is going to come back to haunt the Dems in .... Well, I thought 2012, but now I'd bet 2010. That's why the Republicans weren't serious with McCain. To set up the next play, which is right wing populism.
I'd say, gee, wouldn't it be great if there were programs that appealed to enough of them to fragment and peel them off, but I think the Finance Democrats have written them off too. I continue to think it's not a coincidence that the MI primaries went down as they did -- not in a CT way, just that when push came to shove, MI was on the list of underperforming divisions to be written off, as it were, and so it was.
NOTE * I've got no problem with attacking Palin as such, it's just that I feel the means taken to do so were counterproductive. I guess we'll see.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
And, surely as expected, MI came back into the fold
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118798/quotes
"Do you see ANY Democrat doing anything about it? Certainly not me! So what're you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on! Come on, you're not gonna vote Republican!"
Well, 50,000 didn't
That's not a negligible number, even if the effort is Astroturfed by rich fucks. Think of it as a dry run.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
And, of course
If you have the power, you can tweak the official scorecard until it covers the spread, as the RBC did. So you don't really have to write down those losses so severely after all.
(sighs)
Cassandra's a great part, so long as you're doing The Trojan Women, and after it's over you get to take off your makeup and go home.
Reporter to Mahatma Gandhi: What do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi to reporter: I think it would be a good idea.
Sighing?
Instead of pounding your head on the desk?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi