(For William Black, see Corrente on 2009-02-17; he's the S&L enforcer who took down Charles Keating, back in the day when we had a regulatory structure). Here's the Bill Moyer's transcript; trying to excerpt from it is like trying to excerpt a nuclear explosion, so read it all:
BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. [See Corrente, 2008-09-28, on ratings agencies.] Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. ... What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined." ...
BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. [See 2008-09-25] All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste. ....
BILL MOYERS: Why are they firing the president of G.M. and not firing the head of all these banks that are involved? [2009-03-30]
WILLIAM K. BLACK: There are two reasons. One, they're much closer to the bankers. These are people from the banking industry. And they have a lot more sympathy. [Buiter's "cognitive regulatory capture"] In fact, they're outright hostile to autoworkers, as you can see. They want to bash all of their contracts. But when they get to banking, they say, "contracts, sacred." But the other element of your question is we don't want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn't cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up.
BILL MOYERS: The cover up?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Sure. The cover up.
BILL MOYERS: That's a serious charge.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Of course.
BILL MOYERS: Who's covering up?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have mass[ive] losses, and that they're fine.
These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator. ...
BILL MOYERS: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.
BILL MOYERS: In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization.
BILL MOYERS: And that's a law?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's the law.
BILL MOYERS: So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not could. Was mandated--
BILL MOYERS: By the law.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: By the law.
BILL MOYERS: This law, you're talking about.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. ...
BILL MOYERS: This law, you're talking about.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: What the reason they give for not doing it?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: They ignore it. And nobody calls them on it.
BILL MOYERS: Well, where's Congress? Where's the press? Where--
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, where's the Pecora investigation? [2009-03-15]
BILL MOYERS: The what? ...
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You are.
For this, we have Geithner-san a pass on his tax problems?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.
BILL MOYERS: But what might happen, at this point, if in fact they keep from us the true health of the banks?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, then the banks will, as they did in Japan, either stay enormously weak, or Treasury will be forced to increasingly absurd giveaways of taxpayer money. We've seen how horrific AIG -- and remember, they kept secrets from everyone.
BILL MOYERS: A.I.G. did?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: What we're doing with -- no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson's firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn't want us to know that. [Corrente, numerous posts, 2008-2009] And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG.
Where Congress said, "We will not give you a single penny more unless we know who received the money." And, you know, when he was Treasury Secretary, Paulson created a recommendation group to tell Treasury what they ought to do with AIG. And he put Goldman Sachs on it.
BILL MOYERS: Even though Goldman Sachs had a big vested stake.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive stake. And even though he had just been CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary. Now, in most stages in American history, that would be a scandal of such proportions that he wouldn't be allowed in civilized society.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, like a conflict of interest, it seems.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive conflict of interests.
BILL MOYERS: So, how did he get away with it?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: I don't know whether we've lost our capability of outrage. Or whether the cover up has been so successful that people just don't have the facts to react to it.
BILL MOYERS: Who's going to get the facts?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: We need some chairmen or chairwomen--
BILL MOYERS: In Congress.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: --in Congress, to hold the necessary hearings. And we can blast this out. But if you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn't just that they're terrible business people, though they are. It isn't just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds. But they're not going to disclose the truth about the assets.
BILL MOYERS: And we have to know that, in order to know what?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: To know everything. To know who committed the frauds. Whose bonuses we should recover. How much the assets are worth. How much they should be sold for. Is the bank insolvent, such that we should resolve it in this way? It's the predicate, right? You need to know the facts to make intelligent decisions. And they're deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don't want the facts. And this is not new. The Reagan Administration's central priority, at all times, during the Savings and Loan crisis, was covering up the losses.
BILL MOYERS: So, you're saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the ringer, right?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's right. And it's particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, "You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they'll run for the exits."
Are there any questions (now) about why Galbraith's response to Geithner-san's plan was SHOW ME THE LOAN TAPES? Those tapes are evidence of massive fraud -- and if the banksters destroyed the evidence I bet that's a crime worse than fraud.
.
And let's suppose that the mortgages themselves are based on fraud, larger than Enron. What will that do to the value of the derivatives based on them? Could that be the reason they're no market for then? Because they're shit and all the smart money knows it?
And I guess we have our explanation for why the bailouts have no accountability and no transparency under this administration or the last one: The banksters run Versailles
, and the role of the administration they own is to cover up their crimes and stick this generation of taxpayers and the next with a multi-trillion-dollar bill -- all after they looted our 410(ks)s, destroyed our homes, and threw millions of us out of work. Well done, all.
UPDATE Did a quick run through our famously free press to see what kind of play this story is getting. Nothing on Google (10:51 AM, EST); ditto Yahoo (10:53); the better A listers (Atrios; Hamsher) are on it; and The Obama 527 Formerly Known As Daily Kos is schizophrenic: Front-pagers on (gawd help us) Sarah Palin and Evan Bayh*. OTOH, here's the top recommended diary: "Moyers drops bailout bomb on Obama" -- a good post that gives the code section. There's plenty from the pom-pom brigade in the comments (the word "Krugman" is still a hate trigger, though by this point attenuated) but they're clearly fighting a rear-guard action; their arguments are worse, and their talking points are stale.
What I'm waiting for is the honest insiders -- people like Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, Buiter -- to weigh in. Nothing so far. If we don't hear anything from them, that's going to be extremely disappointing. Nothing at Big Picture either.
UPDATE See the flame war at Kos.
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Remember it's just a
scandalito if nobody cares.
Pardon me while I die of old age waiting for The Village
or Dem "activists" to give a flying fuck about the continued, nay accelerating, transfer of wealth to power.
Well intentioned fool versus macabre participant
I probably lean toward many of Obama's advisers being of the macabre participant variety. I'm still "hoping" that Obama is of the former variety. If he is of the former variety, than he is open to persuasion*. If he is the latter variety, he most likely is not.
* I think the 11-d chess rationalizers and the apologists and the everything Obama does is good, etc make persuasion almost impossible and lead me toward a similar sentiment to that of VL above. I have to say, though, that it seems more worth my time to talk to non-Dem activists about issues than Dem activists.
Only tyrants rig elections.
Persuasion
is already impossible. It was impossible before 11D chess took hold. What remains is mitigation at best.
Why didn't we elect McCain then?
"What remains is
defeatismmitigation at best."-----------------------------
I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
McCain...
...had lower scope for mitigation.
Agreed
but mitigation is not the only thing to expect and as the pitchforks continue to come out, that will be proven. Actually, it won't be proven any other way. Certainly not by 11-dimensional chess.
-----------------------------
I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
Pitchforks
I agree completely in that it will be when there's serious risk of pitchforkery that the Village
will try to protect itself by adopting some of the right stuff.
I remember you and Damon providing me some relatively tame examples of this, but, really, I still fail to see how it would happen before the pitchforks. Before the pitchforks, the strategy is to see how one would best mitigate. Mitigation in a hostile environment is a tricky thing.
Conspiracies are quite common
In a much smaller venue, and involving much smaller numbers, I should note here that conspiracies happen all the time. They rely on the reluctance of those outside the immediate group of conspirators to blow the whistle. The reasons are pretty obvious too: we know and like at least one or two of the participants, we know what happens to whistleblowers, and we generally need to get along with our lives and do our jobs. Black is describing the behavior of big fish, but the little fish I have seen swim in much the same way. There is no surprise here.
Yup
the entire thing was and is based on fraud. In fact, imo, Geithner and Obama are worse than Bush and Paulson when it comes to handling this. Hard as that may be to believe.
So, why do ANY of the CDSs need to be paid back?
Surely a derivative of a fraud has no value? Let alone one hundred cents on the dollar?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I think most of them were
I think most of them were fraudulent and shouldn't be paid back. Same with most CDOs, if you you get down to it. As William Black says, everything possible is being done to conceal the extent of the fraud.
But, fundamentally, the majority of it was fraud.
Breathtaking. This isn't just crony capitalism, this is kleptocracy.
That's not fair, Ian
Electing Obama, and protecting him from any and all criticism, was all about feeling better about ourselves. We've been waiting for ourselves for so long!
And people like you with your honest analysis just want to ruin everything.
And now, it seems, I can't feel wonderful about Larry Summers, either! Is nothing sacred?
Never Cynical Enough
when it comes to this Administration and Wall Street. Now, they're trying to evade what few restrictions were on the bailout money. The Dems seem to have learned a lot from Bush/Cheney, just none of the lessons I was hoping for.
They're also, btw, fucking with the economic statistics to make them look better. Yves had wondered why, since it would appear to be in Obama's interest to make things look terrible now. But that depends on what you think is in Obama's interest. If Obama's main interest is to keep the masses from revolting during this massive wealth transfer, then making the economy seem not as bad or look like it's getting better IS in his best interest.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Ask not what Obama can do for you.
Ask what Obama can do for Hank Paulson's golfing buddies.
Hey, a guy's got to make a decent living after his WH stint, so
propping up the Big Bankster Boiz and keeping the system going may simply be self-preservation....
Am I getting cynical, going beyond skepticism?
Avedon posted the link to Moyers
at Eschaton. Out of 89 comments, exactly one was made about the transcript.
Okay, Black laid it all out for us. Now what? I guess I'll send the link to Levin, Stabenow, and Schauer.
Atrios posted WaPo article about Team Obama manipulations to
avoid regulations, restrictions. To comfort the Big Bankster Boiz. Bca otherwise they won't play ball....
I love this comment!
There were comments of concern and rationalizations for the financial policy actions as well.
The article is, well, devastating. The source is the WaPo, which holds no great love for Dem administrations, but, still.... Seems the Village
is getting "concerned." Or, real reporting breaking out? Have to see how reporting continues, whether this is put down the memory hole or slapped down.
Holy Hell!!! Seriously, are there moles trying to gin up scandals in order to bring down the Obama administrations? Or is this total enthrallment to Big Money? WTF
??
Again, what is going on here?
There's another page to this article. Oh, dear, what can the matter be with Team Obama?
My comment from last night has info on Prof. Black, video link--
William Black on Bill Moyers' Journal is being quite SHRILL.
Wonder if he's any relation to Atrios, formerly Prof. Black....
Video link to Moyers' Journal.
Did I not hat tip you?
I promptly posted the links all over creation.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Hell's bells -- lost reply. Didn't see your posts below the top
when I began the day's web reading. Saw the WaPo article at A's place, went bonkers about that, etc., etc.
Wrote a longer comment and lost it in checking French phrase I was going to use. Blegh.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Obama and appointees are looking more and more corrupt. The personal narrative of "he's a likeable guy" seems to be holding, the way it did for a long time with Bush. The American worship of wealth and celebrity is still a problem -- people seem to say "nobody like me should get a break that I don't think I got", like renegotiating mortgages. So the banksters can exploit that meanness to keep defeating any homeowner protection bills, all the while ignoring the anger at huge bankster rip-offs. It's all very personal. Eventually I think the costs of the Obama/Geithner/Summers looting will make people angry, when joblessness drags on and on with inadequate social supports or when they're required to buy expensive private health insurance with such high deductibles and co-pays that it's unusable, or when their or their parents' pensions disappear into corporatists' pockets.
The concentration of wealth in the 1920s was rolled back in the 1930s. I'm reasonably optimistic that the overreaching here will lead back to 95% marginal tax rates and heavy estate taxes and we'll get the looted money back. But in the meantime, there's just too much human suffering, and there's a distressing danger of fascism rather than revived democracy. But I'd guess that it won't happen in time to save Obama.
Meanwhile, I'd encourage everyone to participate in the demonstrations next Saturday.
Why now?
As the links in your post show and as other blogs have shown, this was known to have been possible long before now. There's even a link up there to a post written before the general election.
Why wasn't this given exposure and credibility by the MSM before now?
See Somerby's DailyHowler.com. Seriously, not to be flippant,
but most lefty blogs are also very much media critique and watchdog blogs, along with being political blogs. We cherish what's good that's published, but what the MCM* tends to empasize is what suits the objectives and needs of the corporate masters and the entrenched courtiers who make up the permanent DC Village
.
Much was known, and much was ignored, pushed down the memory hole and kept in a fog of misinformation. Great distractions were set before the public, one after another. Or in multiples, to drown out important information.
I still miss Media Whores Online....
Before I found the blogs, I simply could not figure out why and how our vaunted free press was so piss poor. Blogs have helped so much, not only to ferret out the real reporting, real journalism, necessary fact-based information, but to analyze and help me see how much journalism has been corrupted by Big Money. Which also leads some bright young liberal things astray, as they try to get into the Big Time media, make the TV appearances, earn the big bucks.
*MCM--Mainstream Corporate Media
I wish I could share your enthusiasm for the job done
by the leftysphere.
How many blogs were watchdogging Harry+Nancy+Barack's role in TARP?
Corrente and ...?
The difference is that...
...Corrente did not seem particularly invested in who won. This perplexes some, assures others.
Like most investments
that stock has also dropped precipitously since fall, so staying out of the market was not necessarily a bad call on balance. Sad it wasn't possible to short Obama/McCain....
-----------------------------
I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
Credibility
The point is that if everyone had taken the advice and followed Corrente's lead, it was more conceivable that McCain might have won. Unless you're relying on the fact that most bloggers didn't listen to you, your credibility in giving advice is a little damaged by this. I mean, it doesn't mean that Corrente and Obama critics are wrong, oh, far from it; it's that you have to be able to say that following your advice won't have unacceptable adverse risks.
Reminds me of Catch 22
1. In fact, they didn't follow our lead. The A list never would have followed us, not in a million years, nor did I expect them too. (I did expect Obama to win, as he actually managed to do -- aided by the Lehman Brother's implosion in September.)
2. And if they had taken our tack, we would have been crazy do anything else.
In any case, why should I, for example, invest my time in doing work that others were doing perfectly well? Should we really have posted on Sarah Palin 24/7, like so many did -- and still are? It seems far better -- for Corrente, for the blogosphere, and the left -- to do what others are not doing, and develop a unique competence. As things stand now, not only did we turn out to have a fairly accurate reading of Obama, we are the go-to blog in single payer, and have a good deal of solid work done on the financial crisis, and thus are in a position to affect, in some small way, critical issues this year. So, as you can see, following Mandos's advice would have had significant opportunity cost, and no significant upside at all. Therefore, he is in no position to lecture anyone on credibility. In any case, as well known racists, it's hardly likely that our help would have been perceived as useful by anyone.
Now, there are a lot of thing it's not possible to know -- politics being as reflexive as the financial markets are. And one of those things is what we all would have done had the race tightered. Since it was clear that McCain wasn't even trying, that was extremely unlikely to happen. In other words, the "more conceivable" argument that Mandos makes is complete hooey. "More conceivable" in what alternative history?
Odd, too, how Mandos manages to convert "not particularly invested" into "advice." If one really wishes to relitigate the primaries -- and assault our credibility into the bargain -- one will have to do better than that kind of sloppiness.
Really, this is the truthiness argument in another guise -- all I did, for example, on The Big Shitstorm was write and report on the truth as I saw it. Mandos, viewing the truth as instrumental and politics as a sort of game, would prefer that we suppress inconvenient truths and behave like wannabe insiders. No thanks, both for the preference, and the truthiness -- and the hypotheticals.
Politics and games
Obviously, at the outset this is all hypothetical, but what hypotheses about the campaign are credible goes to the very heart of the matter of what political practices apply under these conditions. You very clearly admit as much when you say that you don't know what "we all would have done had the race tighten"; in saying this, you yourself admit that there is a political calculus at work beyond the statement of mere valid fact.
I say, as a statement of mere valid fact, that the race did briefly tighten and could have tightened further if only a few other pieces were in place. How it was that these pieces were *not* in place for it to tighten further is a matter of fierce debate still. Indeed, they remain again a part of the point of this kind of discussion.
My "not particularly invested" was in the mode of ironic understatement, and I'm sorry that you took it literally. In fact, Corrente taken en masse was very very invested in particular hypotheses about the campaign and primary, very invested in hypotheses about how it would work out and what to do.
These hypotheses---which will continue universally to be rejected by the A list and beyond for the forseeable future---have become inextricably linked with Corrente's more admirable and foresighted forms of advocacy.
The (apparent?) astonishing belief that it does and should not is well encapsulated in your first statement:
To propose, to hector, to engage with those whom you have already decided would never reciprocate or take your advice is itself a destroyer of political credibility, and can only be based on an odd sort of romanticism. It means that you were relying on being Cassandra, it was not a mantle merely thrust upon you. I mean, talk about truthiness, can you see how someone might not see that as being quite intellectually above board?
The point is that it is a dilemma. Either you eschew offering advice on political strategy, and you stick to reporting on the issues you care about, or you take political strategy seriously, including accounting for all the constraints others may honestly forsee. I notice that a number of Correnteans (the dreaded some people) want to have it both ways.
Sorry, you can't. For me, I prefer door #1.
It is not merely that politics is a sort of a game, it is that it exists with real constraints on anyone who would act within it. Now, there are two things you can do: you can act to overthrow the board itself, or you can sit down and play chess. Again: some people want to have it both ways. It was totally transparent during the campaign. You can't play chess and overthrow the board. It's a matter of credibility.
And no, you cannot substitute strategy for trite quotations from Gandhi. Perhaps this is my bitter Pakistani side but he is rather overrated.
And let's be clear...
...what the object of a discussion of strategy means, at least to me. It is to bring about very large (radical, even) reform or mitigation before the application of pitchforks. Needless to say this is not an easy question.
Then you should do that
and not mumble the old bone of the primaries. Eh?
Or perhaps your point is that foregoing developing a distinctive competence in single payer -- which would have been the opportunity cost of your "advice" -- somehow impedes mitigation? Or a measure or expertise in the financial crash?
Briefly
*Who* keeps mumbling the old bone? It comes up daily in the snide "I told you sos." Like "That Kool-Aid sure is hard to undrink" which is a recent title of a post here. Old bones, geez.
This is a *false* dichotomy. Do I have to elaborate on why it is a false dichotomy? Fine. It's simple. There was nothing stopping you during the primaries, regardless of whom you supported, from blogging about these things. nyceve was writing universally well-regarded works on the Daily Kos all the way through!
The problem is, with titles like "That Kool-Aid sure is hard to undrink", you tie all the issues you care about to a particular variant of a disputable hypothesis about the primaries, which few beyond Corrente will be willing to admit for the forseeable future---regardless of its correctness. It's not sure what it gets you. This is a practical example of what I mean.
Sorry, but this recent a priori mini-meme of yours is trolling
You spontaneously decided that, in retrospect, Obama had to throw countless progressive constituencies and issues under the bus.
In fact -- until the financial meltdown -- he was, with his waffling "centrism," at increasing risk of losing the election to an historically unpopular party with both a weak ticket and weak MSM support, what by all rights was a can't-lose election for the Democrats.
You also have repeatedly tried to kick up dust with the loaded suggestion that Hillary should have done the same things Obama did, and she would have won the nomination, which is patently untrue in countless ways, not to mention a call for her to have been unethical.
Rather than littering so many threads with these rationalizations of 11-dimensional chess, please show us the source of your revelation that Obama wouldn't or couldn't have done as well or better by being an actual Democrat. Or even well enough, while doing the right thing.
What is it with these people
that they think they need to have the last word. Talk about Cassandra, Mandos plays a sykiatrist, attributing motives and evaluating actions as if he could see into someone's soul.
Mandos, your screed is jaw-dropping, to say the least. You no more understand what anyone is doing here than George Bush understood Putin. It's just silly.
Please look into your own soul and evaluate what you're really doing here, before criticizing others.
You don't know that
That is pure conjecture, you don't know that now, nobody could know it then, and nobody will ever know that in the future. Not speaking for Corrente, but only for myself, my advice was for Obama to run as a Democrat in a Democrat wave year, quit playing footsie with Republicans and instead focus (as Bush did) on developing a real program going forward which incorporated his base and clearly repudiated Bush and Republican policies. My preference for the A-list was to not focus on Sarah Palin's daughter's uterus, and instead push Obama on issues that the A-list says (or pretends) to care about.
Neither piece of advice (which I think was the general view here at Corrente) was taken, but Obama won anyway, an outcome that was clear for months. That doesn't make it bad advice, it makes it advice not taken, and I submit that had that advice been taken, governing now in that manner would be a helluva lot easier. It's not clear that Obama even COULD have lost to McCain (he won INDIANA for god's sake). What IS clear however, is that Corrente basically called it straight, that now there are sour grapes that this blog did not believe the hype, and a whole lot of moonwalking is begrudgingly starting to happen around left blogistan. And guess what, it's mainly over the Big Shitpile and single-payer, and what blog is focusing on those issues, with tons of cred?
-----------------------------
I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
Bingo!
What IS clear however, is that Corrente basically called it straight, that now there are sour grapes that this blog did not believe the hype, and a whole lot of moonwalking is begrudgingly starting to happen around left blogistan. And guess what, it's mainly over the Big Shitpile and single-payer, and what blog is focusing on those issues, with tons of cred?
You know, BTD had just as much criticism about Obama during all of this, but he supported him, because he felt he would win the primary, based solely on media treatment He could see many problems with Obama's policies and lack of specifics. He continues to criticize and to try to push Obama leftward, just as people have been doing here.
Corrente is the leader in tactics and attitudes that are becoming more, let's say, popular, except among the hardcore supporters. As I pointed out the other day, the anti-Obama sites are decreasing in number and comments, although hard feelings remain. I suppose there are people that want to see him fail, but that just means worse days for us, so it's as unrealistic and counterproductive as those who feel he's some sort of superhero and undeserving of any sort of criticism, even constructive. I tend to ignore both types.
Wide-eyes and open minds, people.
I don't want him to fail
I want him to succeed. And the only way for that to happen is to drag the Overton Window
left. I don't see going all pom-pom as the way to do that -- and if that's important, it's very well handled by many others. And I'm perfectly happy to see insiders take advantage of the energy thus created -- as long as it serves our values and interests. And I'm perfectly happy to ignore wannabe insiders, too.
No one is asking...
...you to become BooMan, Lambert. Well, I ain't.
Well, that's a relief
My advice, FWIW, is what it always is in cases like this: Be the change you seek. If you aren't seeing the kind of posts you want, then you should write them. Otherwise, when push comes to shove, you're just trying to allocate somebody else's time. That cuts no ice with me.
Disagreements
Gah. "Be the change you seek" or "Be the change you wish to see in the world" or whatever the original was happens to be one of those trite sayings that rubs me the wrong way. Frankly, part of the change in the world is criticism and re-evaluation. Meta matters.
Well, the meta armchair is indeed comfortable
Some call it trolling (see elsewhere). I'd certainly (at this point) call it of purely academic interest.
To continue the academic metaphor, we don't even have a thesis; perhaps the prolegomena to a thesis. An 11-dimensional prolegomena that proposes work for others. Sweet.
So method is beyond analysis and criticism, then. n/t
.
If the criticism is in the form of...
useless and baseless rationalization for Obama failing to seize the massive opportunities both during campaign and since to move the Overton Window
left, where we all (except for Hank Paulson's golfing buddies) need it to be, sure.
Existence
The point is very much whether those opportunities existed in the first place and to what extent. This is a disputable point. A small example: how many federally-elected politicians take a dissenting view on Israel/Palestine. The answer: extremely few. A case in point as to why: Cynthia McKinney. If it were a mere matter of openly declaiming a progressive position, then we'd see a balanced debate on this point. But we don't.
I/P was thrown under the bus well before Obama!
Conjecture
The point is that it is conjecture either way (I will get to VL later on this issue, right now I have to pick my interlocutors since the numbers aren't exactly equal here...). But at Corrente, for all the very interesting blogging it does on health care and the financial crisis details, weight is heavily given to one side of the conjecture, well after the fact. This leaks regularly into the healthblogging and econblogging.
Is this productive? You tell me.
I would say that not only is it unproductive, it is based on a misapprehension of what is possible in a polity which was never designed to obtain your goals, your way. But I would never bring up this kind of objection if it weren't regularly the case that the opposite is asserted with reference to the recent elections.
Then if the goals matter to you
... you could and should be attempting to achieve them. As it is, the goals are so nebulous that it's not possible to operationalize them, and in any case, achieving them is proposed for only others. That kind of meta-meta strikes me as being as pointless as the rest of this discussion. Could it be that you ridicule "Be the change you seek" because the armchair is so very comfortable?
This is an old gambit
Essentially, it constitutes an a priori denial of the value of process discussions by imputing bad faith to anyone who would do so. It denies that process discussions are actually a part of doing something. Which is funny, because the whole point of this discussion is about the value of strategy and process, starting from a criticism of the strategy of others.
And it's a hypocritical position to take in a context where other people's take on process issues (re primary, etc) are freely considered objects of valuable criticism by people who decry "11-dimensional chess". As though this were not itself equally liable to be armchair meta.
I for one don't consider either to be armchair meta, but for some people, one is considered to be valid armchair meta and the other mere laziness.
Mandos...
For weeks you've peppered our threads with useless and baseless claims that Obama had to run away from the left. It's a big fucking waste of time, and the Correntebot is getting restless.
"Baseless"
I have provided repeatedly examples of why it was not baseless. That I do so is considered out of bounds. I'm impugned for raising the primaries and the general, but I've almost never done so except in contexts where it was already brought up, as it is daily. That it is brought up daily is considered unremarkable; that I periodically dispute it brings up an ominous reference to the "Correntebot".
VL @ 12:24pm ref'd the "Correntebot," but a while ago Caro was
criticized for using the term "Obamabot."
When is "bot" referencing acceptable?
My take at the time was that the criticism of Caro's use was a tad over the top, a bit too PC for my taste. But some reasonable explanations were given.
So, what't the take here on "botting" a group/person/blog? Bot referencing? Semi-serious question!