And F#ck You, Too, Sir

[Content Note: Colloquialism using violent imagery.]

It's no secret that the Democratic establishment has unbridled contempt for progressive bloggers and activists. The hostility for leftwing policy, especially economic policy, and the neglect of social justice policy, has been documented for years under the broad header of what's colloquially known as "hippie-punching." But it's rare we get such a perfect, unvarnished glimpse at just how deep that contempt really goes.

So, thank you, Senator Chuck Schumer, for your naked honesty during an interview with Isaac Chotiner for The New Republic.

IC: You and Mayor Bloomberg, in 2007, said that reregulating Wall Street would cause people to flee overseas to London. That is very different than [the position of Senator Elizabeth] Warren.

CS: It has got to be, to me, a careful balance, OK? Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession. And to sit there and do nothing, or do what the Republicans want—repeal Dodd-Frank—makes no sense. But on the other hand, I think that you just don't attack Wall Street because they're successful or rich.

I just unsuccessfully, with Bloomberg, supported raising the building height in midtown Manhattan, so we could build more office buildings. Office buildings are our factories—imagine the people of Michigan saying, "We don't want to build a new auto factory, because the Ford family will get richer, or the person who builds the factory will make money." You've got to look at the effect on average folks. The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year. I'm not saying Elizabeth does this, but there are some on the far left who just have a visceral hatred of Wall Street. It's counterproductive.

IC: You don't think Elizabeth Warren makes a villain out of Wall Street?

CS: I am just going to leave it at what I said.

IC: Forget Warren then. Is this a problem for your party?

CS: You don't want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti–Wall Street. It's not the right way to be.

IC: So are the left-wing blogs as bad as the Tea Party ones in this case?

CS: Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout.

This is why progressives can't have nice things in this country.

It is just factually wrong that "the left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti-Wall Street." Insert requisite caveat that there probably exist blogs on the vastness that is the entire internet authored by people who do want politicians to be comprehensively anti-Wall Street, but there is not a single left-wing blogger I read writing regularly on this subject who is reflexively, uncritically anti-Wall Street. I will, however, only speak for myself here.

I don't expect Democrats to be "completely and always anti-Wall Street." I expect Democrats to be pro-regulation of Wall Street.

I expect Democrats to be pro-accountability for Wall Street, when there is exploitative and/or criminal activity on Wall Street.

I expect Democrats to support reasonable taxation of Wall Street, and the people who work there and draw enormously inflated salaries.

I expect Democrats to give a fuck about wealth inequality, and I expect them to talk about the obscenity of multimillion-dollar golden parachutes for executive failures, and I expect them to laugh in the face of minimum wage proposals that are a fucking joke.

I expect Democrats to care that privileged, white-collar criminals go unpunished for their economy-destroying malfeasance, while un-privileged kids are sentenced to interminable prison terms for walking around with some pot for personal use in their pockets.

I expect Democrats to own up to the fact that they support Wall Street largely because their electoral fortunes depend on not pissing off the titans of finance who habitate there, instead of pretending that they aren't compromised.

And I expect that Democrats who consider themselves reasonably intelligent people to make the good faith distinction between someone who has principled disagreement around the latitude extended to Wall Street and someone who unaccountably insists that Democrats must be "completely and always anti-Wall Street." That is some mendacious framing, used to deflect criticism and discredit critics. It is bad faith. And it is pathetic.

I expect more.

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Generally Awful

Congratulations to Mitt Romney, who was voted least barfiest in three more states last night: Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Yay for Mitt Romney, who managed to trounce his only remaining competitor, Ron Paul, whose failure to have dropped out of the race is strong evidence for the case that he may be dead.

I mean, I don't want Ron Paul to be dead—I hope he's happily counting all his gold pieces in a beautiful mansion made out of discarded Ayn Rand paperbacks—but has anyone seen him lately? Anyone? Bueller? I'm beginning to suspect that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were Weekend-at-Bernieing Ron Paul through the last two debates, y'all.


Anyway! There's not a whole lot of news to share today. Ron "Bernie" Paul hopes to influence the Republican convention with his cool collection of delegates (good luck with that). Mitt Romney is still terrible and also suuuuuuuuper bored. President Barack Obama is still not progressive and also overconfident. And a GOP newsletter has called for armed revolution if Obama is reelected, because that party definitely becomes more reasonable by the day.

In good news, or news that will be repeatedly and depressingly denied throughout the day, President Obama is reportedly "disappointed" by the antigay vote in North Carolina, and his North Carolina spokesperson Cameron French said: "President Obama has long believed that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights and legal protections as straight couples and is disappointed in the passage of this amendment." Which of course is some bullshit parsing that pretends marriage and civil unions are equal, but that still whiffs of evolution, ahem.

At Think Progress, Igor notes that a "senior adviser to the president said in an interview last month that Obama 'may get around' to supporting the freedom to marry before November."

Basically, the President is waiting to see if he can win without endorsing marriage equality. And if it looks like he's going to lose without endorsing it, he'll pull out the "fierce advocate" card, endorse federal marriage equality, and see if that rallies the progressive troops to put him over the top. Not a bad political play, except for the fact it's so goddamn obvious he looks less savvy and strategic than craven and unprincipled.

But naturally anyone who expects the President to prioritize decency over winning is just a stupid rube who doesn't understand how politics works.

One of these days, I hope to be able to cast a vote for a politician who understands there are lots of people in this country desperate for a president who runs to lead, instead of one who runs to win.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

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More Evidence That YOU Don't Understand 12 Dimensional Chess

In the latest Gallup poll, President Obama's job approval rating averaged 40%. But the even more important numbers are these: Support for the president is down 11% among liberals (from 79% at summer's beginning to 68% now) and down 12% among moderates (from 59% to 47%).

After months of triangulation, capitulation, and bipartisanship to appeal to the all-important moderates, their support for him is now below 50%.

Meanwhile, he's losing his liberal base just as quickly.

At some point, the administration is going to have to acknowledge at long last that is not because we don't understand politics, but because we do.

[H/T to @PeterDaou.]

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Whoooooooooops the Alienation of Your Base During an Election Is Definitely a Terrible Idea!

Or just more evidence that I am very, very stupid and don't understand 12-dimensional chess. ("It's that one."—The Obama Administration.)

So, in their ongoing strategy of totally pissing off the activist base that helps people win elections, the Obama campaign has turned the hippie-punching up to eleven. Amanda Terkel reports on an email sent by the campaign's point person in New Mexico which takes aim at Paul Krugman and the "Firebagger Lefty blogosphere."

"I know many of you have raised frustrations, but please, I implore you, please take 5 minutes and read the article below. It does a great job of explaining the Debt Ceiling deal," Sandoval wrote in bold text.

The rest of the email was a blog post taken from a blog called "The People's View," run by Spandan Chakrabarti. Chakrabarti writes that he has "been participating in online and offline liberal activism since 2003, when Gov. Howard Dean ran for president."

The blog post that Sandoval thought was important enough to share with others harshly condemns Krugman and progressive bloggers who have been critical of Obama. From the 1,825-word post:

Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama. That's why he unleashed a screed as soon as word came about the debt ceiling compromise between President Obama and Congressional leaders - to, you know, avert an economic 9/11. Joining the ideologue spheres' pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria, Krugman declares the deal a disaster - both political and economic - of course providing no evidence for the latter, which I find curious for this Nobel winning economist. He rides the coattails of the simplistic argument that spending cuts - any spending cuts - are bad for a fragile economy, ignoring wholeheartedly his own revious cheerleading for cutting, say, defense spending. But that was back in the day - all the way back in April of this year. [...]

No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let's look at the deal again, shall we? [...]

Now let's get to the fun part: the triggers. The more than half-a-trillion in defense and security spending cut "trigger" for the Republicans will hardly earn a mention on the Firebagger Lefty blogosphere. Hell, it's a trigger supposedly for the Republicans, and of course, there's always It'sNotEnough-ism to cover it.

"Firebagger" is most likely a combined reference to the liberal blog FireDogLake, founded by Jane Hamsher, and "Tea Bagger," a less-than-flattering term for Tea Party activists.

Not only is this email stupidly hostile during an election to the very people who are most politically active and comprise what should be the president's activist base, but it just utterly misunderstands why it is that the "ideologue Left" is angry with the President.

There has long been this insistence that disaffected progressives just don't comprehend how politics work, this continual implication that we're just whiny babies who don't understand the political realities with which the grown-ups have to contend in DC, but that is manifestly not the issue. The "ideologue Left" know very well how politics work: It was not we, after all, who foolishly believed that "hope and change" was enough to fundamentally alter the political vitriol plaguing the Beltway, who arrogantly believed that politely asking Republicans to rise above petty partisan bickering was going to inspire them to compromise.

We know how politics work. Insomuch as our criticisms are about politics, as opposed to policy (I'll come back to that in a moment), they are designed to challenge the administration to do politics in a different way than they've been doing it.

Greg Sargent lays out this piece of it pretty clearly:

[T]his story does provide a window into what I think is a real problem — the nature of the Obama team's frustration with liberal critics. The problem is that some on the Obama team don't reckon with what it is lefty critics are actually saying. Obama advisers get angry when they think liberal critics are refusing to accept the limits placed on him by current political realities, and when lefties presume at the outset that Obama will inevitably sell out. That's reflected in Sandoval's angry email and in other periodic explosions of anger at the "professional left."

But the lefty critique goes considerably further than this. It's an argument with Obama's team about tactics and strategy, about what might be attainable if he handled these negotiations differently. The case from these critics is if Obama approached negotiations with a harder line, it would be better politics because it would juice up the base and show indys he's a fighter. They also advocate for this course because the current dynamic is hopelessly broken — and they think a more aggressive approach has at least a chance of broadening the field of what's substantively possible. (There's a segment on the left that also thinks Obama wants what's in the deals he keeps securing, but the points above are broadly what many lefties agree on.)

Whether you agree with this critique or not — people make persuasive cases in both directions — Sandoval's email shows a broader failure to reckon with what it is that has lefty critics so ticked off. That's the real problem here — and it's one of the key causes of the tension between the left and the White House.

What we have here is a failure to listen. The only thing the White House is hearing is a straw-argument that's easily dismissed: They have unreasonable expectations because they are unsophisticated.

That, literally, could not be more wrong. (Nor, frankly, more insulting.)

It also completely leaves aside that there are deep policy differences between critics on the "ideologue Left" and the administration, legitimate criticisms about the approach to the economy. Atrios sums up this chasm succinctly: "I don't ever imagine the Very Important People sit up late at night worrying about what's being posted on the walls of this humble lemonade stand. But to the extent that something might be in their base bugging their d00dz, I hope it isn't the armchair punditry or even the policy advice. It's that we've basically had 9.0%+ unemployment for 2.5 years and maybe...somebody should do something."

The irony of the administration sniffing haughtily about the "professional left" is that I can think of a half a dozen progressive bloggers who started blogging full-time after losing their jobs, and every progressive blog commentariat includes active and passionate and valued commenters who are unemployed. Unemployment is part of the reason there is a professional left, and the pretense that we are somehow separate from Real Americans, that we see things differently and/or don't speak for people experiencing long-term unemployment, would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

The White House is missing, profoundly and comprehensively, that there are valid and reasonable political and policy differences with their progressive base, and, at minimum, those differences need to be heard and respected.

And, before I leave the subject of the President's base, I want to quickly mention, yet again, the potential to alienate female voters with shit like this from Obama's current stump speech:

If we're willing to do something in a balanced way--making some tough choices in terms of spending cuts, but also raising some revenue from folks who've done very well, even in a tough economy--then we can get control of our debt and deficit and we can start still investing in things like education and basic research and infrastructure that are going to make sure that our future is bright. It's not that complicated, but it does require everybody being willing to make some compromises.

I was in Holland, Michigan, the other day and I said, "I don't know about how things work in your house, but in my house if I said, 'You know, Michelle, honey, we got to cut back, so we're going to have you stop shopping completely--you can't buy shoes, you can't buy dresses--but I'm keeping my golf clubs'--you know, that wouldn't go over so well."

Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

Listen, the administration can keep getting pissy about the "ideologue Left" just being a bunch of stupid hippies who create headaches for them, or they can PAY ATTENTION to how this stuff looks from, say, my perspective. I'm a professional woman who writes progressive political material, and I'm implicitly being denigrated as a ninny-brained shopaholic who needs her husband to audit her spending and explicitly being denigrated as a know-nothing shit-head who doesn't understand how politics work.

When the election rolls around, and I don't feel the slightest inclination to support the President, his (male) supporters will be lining up to sneer at me, "What do you need—a personal invitation?" No, I don't need a personal invitation. What I need is to stop being given message after message after message that I am worthless, because I am not a corporation, because I am a progressive, because I am a woman.

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On Wasted Opportunities

The other day, I was talking to Kenny Blogginz, who's busily attending university at the moment instead of amusing us with his many sardonic tales of young adulthood. We were discussing the absurdity that is Donald Trump's allegedly serious campaign for the presidency, and KBlogz mentioned how he's heard many of his friends say (half-seriously) that they'd totally vote for Trump.

And then he said: "The only time I ever hear people my age say they're going to vote for anyone anymore, it's an ironic vote. Everyone's so disillusioned after being so excited about Obama; they don't give a fuck about politics anymore."

It's all well and good for seasoned political junkies and chronically disappointed progressives like me to say, "Well, if you read between the lines, Obama was never a real progressive in the first place," and it's all well and good for Democratic partisans to argue that Obama's doing the best he can given the clusterfucktastrophe he inherited and the political restraints created for liberal-minded leaders by a conservative media, and it's all well and good to say that if McCain had been elected, surely things would be even worse, all of which are the things that get said after any Democratic presidency (or Democratic Congressional majority) inevitably disappoints.

But Obama's campaign was not the generic, familiar stuff of a John Kerry or an Al Gore. His campaign was soaring rhetoric about hope and change and difference.

And then he turned out to be the same old shit, quite certainly even more conservative in his governance than a President Kerry or President Gore would have been.

On the most prominent social justice issues of his time in office—gay rights and abortion—he is craven or altogether silent.

In the greatest recession since the Great Depression, which has left untold numbers of young adults—who were told since birth that if they did well in school and went to college, they'd get a good job and a house and a secure, happy life—living in their parents' home, unable to find a job, and crushed under the weight of enormous student loans. That's if they had a decent enough public school education to make it to and through college at all.

He promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Those wars not only continue; he has also escalated the war in Afghanistan, launched a covert war inside the borders of Pakistan, and gone to not-war in Libya.

He has broken campaign promises and alienated his base and pandered to the rightwing and shit on every ounce of progressive good will extended to him and bailed out banks while telling the people they screwed to tighten their belts and pull up their bootstraps—and, on top of everything else, he has failed utterly to be cool. The man who swaggered into office to a Jay-Z soundtrack has governed like someone who doesn't give a fuck about the jobless, debt-ridden nightmare in which young people are starting their adult lives, the soundtrack to which is an ominous wind whistling through cracks in the crumbling infrastructure.

It's no wonder they're cynical. That was some switcheroo he played on them.

And if Donald Trump, or some other dipshit candidate, goes strolling into the White House on millions of ironic votes because an entire generation has been literally and figurative let down by someone who promised them hope and change, well, we oughtn't get mad at the people who "throw away their votes." After all, the only people who throw away their votes are those who believe they aren't worth anything in the first place.

And we damn well know who gave them that idea.

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Quote of the Day

"When the only acceptable discourse is between The New Republic and The Free Republic, what you're going to get is basically a solidly Republican outcome."—Atrios, on how the apathy/hostility toward the progressive left leaves us drifting infinitely rightward.

See also Digby's great post today on the same subject here: "The fact is that there is no liberal establishment willing to validate liberalism."

I was thinking about an old piece I'd written, almost six years ago now, about how progressives are politically homeless in the US. When I dug it out, I was bitterly amused to discover that it was spawned by a piece from Barack Obama's senate campaign stump speech in which he was rather generous toward then-president Bush.

Said I: "Obama isn't up for reelection next year, but I expect he'll be stumping for other Dems who are, and I hope his tune has changed. I've not a smidgeon of tolerance left for anyone, of any party, who would leave our political passion without a home."

lulz

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Also...

As a good companion piece to Rep. Weiner's comments, Paul Krugman notes Beltway Myth becoming reimagined fact in real time, in response to Dana Milbank's terrible piece in which he claimed that "a protracted debate on the public option" delayed the passage of the insurance industry giveaway healthcare legislation. Observes Krug:

Um, that's not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn't what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican "moderates" weren't negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.

So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.

The worst of it is that I suspect Obama's memory has gone down the same hole.

Yes, well, it's certainly easier to be indignant at your ungrateful base if you imagine you tried valiantly to get them everything they wanted and failed, rather than treating the primary goal as your first bargaining chip.

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Obama Presser Open Thread

So, President Obama gave a press conference yesterday (video here; transcript here) on the shitastic tax deal, and used the occasion to, once again, respond to progressives' criticism of his incessant capitulation by accusing them of expecting perfection and being too daft to understand how politics works, then upped the ante by implying progressives who expect(ed) more from a Democratic president with a Democratic Congressional majority don't care about USians who are suffering, thus also asserting yet again that progressives and "the American people" are mutually exclusive groups.

When a reporter asked "if the Bush tax cuts deal showed that he has no core principles that he's willing to stand firm on," Obama testily replied (in part):

This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for a hundred years. But because there was a provision in there that they didn't get, that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for maybe 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness, of compromise.

If that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it: We will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are.

And in the meantime the American people are still saying to themselves, [I'm] not able to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out. That can't be the measure of how we think about public service. That can't be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people.

Uh, no it doesn't. In fact, the primary reason that progressives are so insistent that Democrats pursue progressive legislation while given the opportunity is because we just spent eight years being made painfully aware that "not everybody agrees with us," and that when our ideological opponents have control of the executive and legislative branches, we are not merely marginalized for that disagreement but cast as traitors to the nation.

And now here we are listening to a Democratic president talk about us as if we are not part of the oft-invoked "American people," with the same concerns and struggles and needs, but some highly privileged group who stands outside the realities of unemployment, spiraling healthcare costs, foreclosures, bankruptcies.

(That description does, however, sound a hell of a lot like the financial executives to whom this president has kindly catered.)

Look, I'm deeply sympathetic to the frustration and anxiety wrought by the expectations of perfection. And, sure, there are people who expect this president to never fuck up. But that is not remotely the quality of the vast majority of criticism being made. Progressives are not expecting perfection; they're expecting some shred of evidence that this president gives a flying fuck about the concerns of his base.

And if something can't be done because, as the president also said during his press conference, that negotiating with Republicans is like negotiating with hostage-takers who have taken "the American people" hostage, then he needs to direct his ire at them. Exclusively.

In any case, he needs to stop treating his base like stupid ingrates, because it is getting really goddamn old.

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And they would have gotten away with it too,

...if it weren't for that meddling Reagan.

The administration of the California State Universities has announced that it plans to charge tuition next year. The University of California will likely follow suit.

Since the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, Californians have largely not paid tuition to attend California's public colleges and universities. They have, of course, paid fees. More on that in a bit.

This move by CSU comes at a time when higher education in the US is under attack, as is the very notion of government.

Colleges and universities do a lot of different things:

1. They engineer new, patentable technologies that are used to fight heart disease and people in Asia.
2. They train the next generation of widget technologists.
3. They push students and society to reconsider what they think they know, and expand (often conflicting) lines of thought.

Our schools still have the money to do the first of those three things (markets hurrah!). We seem to be struggling widget-wise, which makes zero sense even by the logic of bootstraps (but here we are!). However, it's that last bit that got potential California students in trouble.

In 1966, Ronald Reagan defeated Pat Brown (the guy who signed the master plan) to become California's 33rd governor. He looked at the academy (notably Berkeley) and saw a bunch of freeloading, widget-smoking commies who were belly-aching about how people in Asia were people, Black people were people, lady people were people, poor people were people, and so on. He wanted to make those widget smokers pay.

In 1970, State Senator Al Rodda surveyed Reagan's smashing success, which included a doubling the fees charged to attend UC in just two years.

As of this writing, the fees to attend UC hover around $10000, with the fees to attend CSU institutions around $4200. While this wasn't all Reagan, the man certainly deserves some credit.

The reality is that in the US, we're still 'cleaning up the mess at Berkeley.'

Cuts to funding in higher education are not merely about !!bootstraps!!. The anti-government, pro-bootstrap argument doesn't even make sense in the context of higher education (or most things, for that matter). When it comes to de-funding higher education, I think a different framing of the issue is called for.

I don't know about you, but students in my classes frequently get back papers covered with colorful notations like "what do you mean by this?", "you need to refine this", "such as....?", "you should give (more) examples to back up your argument." Historically, that's one of the things I'm theoretically paid for-- thinking critically and getting others to do the same.

Thus, it's hardly surprising that college campuses are places where some folks espouse ideas such as:

We should stop going to war to serve the interests of your friends' corporations.

We should stop putting so many people in jail to serve the interests of your friends' corporations.

And a recent favorite:

Global warming is real, and we need to do something about it yesterday, even if it hurts the interests of your friends' corporations.

Alas, the State of California is poised to end its experiment in tuition-free higher education (depending on your perspective, tuition may actually constitute the experiment) and I blame Reagan and a never-ending line of corporate interests.

The state of California may not have the money, but that's by design.

My nation does have the money to pay for universal free higher education, yet it chooses not to. I humbly suggest that the end of California's fifty-year run is as good a time as any to reassess our priorities.

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How's the view from the sideline?

There's currently a four-way gubernatorial race in Rhode Island, featuring Obama bipartipal Lincoln Chafee, a(nother) Republican, some guy, and Rhode Island General Treasurer Frank Caprio, a Democrat. Caprio, the Democrat indicated that he wouldn't mind if Obama endorsed him. Instead, the Obama administration announced it wouldn't be endorsing anyone.

Caprio, being a man after my own heart, told Obama to "shove it", and also:

"accused the president of 'treating [Rhode Island progressives] like an ATM machine,' and ignoring Rhode Island during springtime flooding that swept through the state."

It is unclear whether or not Caprio reminded Obama that "it is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election", but that strikes me as a logical next step.

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In Case You'd Missed Being Called Stupid by the Obama Administration...

Igor catches White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett noting, with regard to the repeal of DADT, that the "members of the gay community who actually understand [that the Justice Department is required to defend the law of the land are] working with us to try to put pressure on Congress to repeal it."

So, if you're not behind the White House interminably delaying the repeal for bullshit reasons, it's because, as per usual, you're too stupid to understand (or too hysterical to care) How Things Work.

Whoooooooooops.

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Et Tu, Rendell?

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is the latest prominent Democrat to tell progressives to suck it up and vote blue:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says discouraged liberals need to "get over it" and support the Democratic Party, before they regret it.

"This isn't about President [Barack] Obama," Rendell said on MSNBC's "Last Word" Monday night. "It's about whether the Democratic Party, not perfect, but certainly bent on trying to preserve theories in government and progressive practices, is going to be in charge of the Congress or the Republican Party. And it's not the Republican Party of old. This is a scary Republican Party."

Of conflicts the left has had with Obama, Rendell said, "We ought to get over it."

"If we've got some issues with President Obama, save them for another day," he said.

1. The Democratic Party ain't exactly the Democratic Party of old, either. In many ways, that's a good thing, because the party has progressed with the country on many social issues, even when it still lags behind public opinion. But in other ways, it's lamentable: The Democratic Party of the New Deal has been replaced by the Democratic Party of the Bipartisan Deal.

2. Saving one's grievances "for another day" in the age of corporate personhood and unlimited political contributions is increasingly futile, as Election Day is the only day that the average person's voice still has even a remote chance of carrying over the din of lobbyists shuttling between elected officials and their corporate masters.

3. It isn't just the president with whose governance many progressives have issues; the Congressional Dems aren't exactly covering themselves in glory lately, either.

4. Hey, Rendell, maybe instead of yelling at us, you should yell at the dipshits in your state who are trying to exploit the abortion exception in the health care bill, which was proposed, championed, and ultimately supported by the Democrats you're admonishing us to vote for, without a trace of irony that THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT that's alienating progressives from your retrofuck party who's actually moving BACKWARDS on women's autonomy.

Harrumph.

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All Right, Let's Just Get This Over With

The President's much-discussed interview with Rolling Stone ends thus:

[Signaled by his aides, the president brings the interview to a close and leaves the Oval Office. A moment later, however, he returns to the office and says that he has one more thing to add. He speaks with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger.]

One closing remark that I want to make: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we've got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.

Everybody out there has to be thinking about what's at stake in this election and if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years on key issues like climate change, key issues like how we restore a sense of equity and optimism to middle-class families who have seen their incomes decline by five percent over the last decade. If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election. And right now, we are getting outspent eight to one by these 527s that the Roberts court says can spend with impunity without disclosing where their money's coming from. In every single one of these congressional districts, you are seeing these independent organizations outspend political parties and the candidates by, as I said, factors of four to one, five to one, eight to one, 10 to one.

We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place.

If you're serious, now's exactly the time that people have to step up.

As I said in comments yesterday, I regard the vote-for-any-Democrat-to-keep-a-Republican-out-of-office position as a legitimate and perfectly understandable position. I've frequently voted on that basis myself, especially when the only other alternative was not voting, because there were no candidates further left of the Dems on my voting ticket.

But I also regard as a legitimate and perfectly understandable position the reluctance to vote affirmatively for candidates and/or policies that one cannot endorse in good conscience. And the president of a democracy should recognize that, too.

It's Glenn Greenwald's principled opposition to the Obama administration's national security and civil liberties policies that gets the attention and respect, but, of course, that is not the only principled reason a progressive voter might feel unable to make the "perfectly logical calculation" to cast a vote for the Democratic party when that vote implicitly endorses an agenda inconsistent with one's own dignity and autonomy.

That feminists/womanists and queer activists are not regarded (or even discussed) as having a legitimate reason to feel alienated, demoralized, and conflicted about casting an affirmative vote for a party that has failed utterly to protect and/or extend their basic civil rights, underlines the very marginalization that creates disaffection in the first place.

Every election, that snake eats its own tail again. And 'round and 'round we go.

But this time, we've also got the president himself jumping into the fray to make noise about "what's at stake." As if we don't know.

Our "lack of enthusiasm" is "irresponsible," he admonishes us: "Everybody out there has to be thinking about what's at stake in this election."

Well, Mr. President, what if thinking about what's at stake in this election is exactly the cause of one's lack of enthusiasm? What do you recommend to the people whose very bodies and lives are still treated as bargaining chips by your administration and your party? How much do you think "the other guys are even worse" really matters when your "better" alternative is failing to defend and champion equality (and fail even to react to encroachments on our rights) instead of actively opposing it?

That's the sort of distinction that makes a difference to people whose own lives aren't affected by the Democrats' disinterest. Someone who isn't personally invested in the legalization of same-sex marriage might appreciate the philosophical difference between a party who endorses codifying discrimination into the Constitution and a party who merely declines to pursue equality because it's not politically expedient right now. But to someone who's not allowed at their dying partner's bedside because they're not "family," that's a distinction without a meaningful difference.

Either way, they're standing out in the hall like a second-class fucking citizen.

And the people who tell us to vote for the Democrats because the other guys are worse are frequently people who have never had to stand in a voting booth and cast a vote for someone who they know is likely to treat their bodies and/or lives as a point of compromise.

Even when you know the other guys are worse, that shit ain't easy to do.

And progressives/Democrats really need to stop pretending like it is.

The president frames our disillusionment as "standing on the sidelines" and "sitting on their hands complaining" and "taking their ball and go home," which he says "tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." Which is as clueless as it is insulting (and it is extremely insulting). It's also a fine bit of projection.

It isn't feminists/womanists and queer activists who are standing on the sidelines and sitting on their hands complaining: It's the Democrats—who have opportunities to stop Roe from being rendered an impotent statute, and opportunities to be allies to the LGBTQI community, but choose not to take them. (Even when 75% of the population supports equality.) And then complaining about people who aren't axiomatically inclined to support them, forgiving for the second, fifth, tenth, twentieth election in their lives the alleged necessity to have "played politics" with their identities and rights.

There is indeed someone who wasn't serious in the first place, but it ain't us.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

No More Strawpeople, Please

Greg Sargent lays out for the White House "the various arguments that people on the left are actually making."

I would personally argue that there are, in fact, only two groups—Sargent's second and third categories. His first category falls into the same trap Biden et. al. have, which is assuming that rank and file Democratic voters are insufficiently enthusiastic for vague reasons, instead of the same reasons that "high-profile commentators" and "progressive operatives" are.

Otherwise, good stuff.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Now Biden Doubles Down

After telling disillusioned progressives to "stop whining," Vice President Joe Biden doubled-down on the scold-your-base strategy last night:

"And so those who — didn't get everything they wanted, it's time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward," Biden said during an appearance on MSNBC, "but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward."

Biden was asked by MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, in the debut of the host's new program, "The Last Word," whether he'd like to retract his admonition to liberals to stop complaining.

"There are some on the Democratic base, not the core of it, that are angry because we didn't get every single thing they want," the vice president said.

"They should stop that," Biden explained. "These guys, if they win, the other team, they're going to repeal healthcare [reform] and I want them to tell me why what we did wasn't an incredibly significant move that's progressive and helping people."

The Obama voter who's "angry because we didn't get every single thing they want" is a damnable strawperson. Joe Biden is mistaking ideological purity for what, in reality, is consistent principles—and the expectation that the administration have them, too.

This is getting really old. The Press Secretary, the Deputy Director of Public Engagement (har), top advisors, the Vice President, and the President have all gone on the offensive against their own base, and then they wonder why the fuck the base isn't on their side. OMGLOLWTF.

And, as Maud pointed out in comments, the hyperbole is ridiculous:

This reminds me of the tired line, recently used by Biden in his interview with Rachel Maddow, but trotted out frequently by the usual suspects, "As much as I wish we had a magic wand..." Yes, that's right. People expect magic. The only two possibilities are selling-out completely, and the magic wand. Expecting anything but the first is the equivalent of demanding the second.

Which reminded me of this comment Obama made at a fundraiser last week:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. 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 particular derivatives rule; I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- I thought that was going to happen quicker.

Yes, that's right. Because expecting a healthcare reform bill in the richest nation on the planet to guarantee healthcare to all its citizens is the same as expecting world peace. Jesus.

This is so infuriating. Forget legislative failures or policy disagreements for a moment: I just want my Democratic president to be better at politics than this.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!