Progressive Dems must assert agenda NOW

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14819-time-for-progressive-dems-to-face-the-truth

If this time is to be different, progressive Democrats must start mobilizing their own agenda now. And the first step is to face the truth about the record of the president we have just re-elected. Here's an initial reality check:

1. The Economy Still Sucks

Three years into the recovery, we have an official unemployment rate of just under 8 percent and an underemployment rate of almost 15 percent. Incomes are declining and at least 12 million homeowners have mortgages that exceed the value of their houses. Consumers aren't spending and therefore business is not investing. And we are still running a huge trade deficit with a sluggish global economy. This leaves government as the only possible source of substantial new spending to create jobs.

Yet there is no jobs program. President Obama says his top priority is a deal with House Republicans to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. His "liberal" position starts with a ratio of spending cuts to tax increases of 2.5-to-1. The only real dispute between the president and Republicans is whether the rich will have to give back the tax breaks George W. Bush gave them. So when the eventual deal is struck, the federal government will be taking more out of the economy over the next decade than it is putting in. This virtually guarantees that - even if we escape another recession or financial meltdown - we will not reach anywhere near full employment in the next four years.

2. The Low-Wage Future

With no new substantial source of stimulus, our trajectory is toward a further erosion of living standards for the majority of Americans. Off-shoring and automation will continue to shed jobs with no offsetting increase in the demand for labor. Budget cuts - including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid - will widen the holes in the social safety net and further limit investments in education, infrastructure and technology upon which any chance at future prosperity depends. And the White House's indifference to the dramatic erosion of organized labor (e.g., its reneging on promises to reduce the barriers to organizing) will continue to undercut the bargaining power of all workers - union and non-union alike.

The president's Council of Economic Advisers will not admit it, but their default strategy for growth is to let American wages drop far enough to undercut foreign competition. That is the only possible policy rationale for Obama's enthusiasm for the Trans Pacific Partnership, a further deregulation of trade that will strip away the last protections for American workers against a brutal global marketplace of dog-eat-dog.

[graham4anything]

1. Immigration reform is most important-100% amnesty, 100% citizenship

Last edited Wed Dec 5, 2012, 06:06 AM - Edit history (1)

everything else should come after according to this liberal (but not necessarily progressive as I am not even sure what that word means) democratic person
I know you can't have a liberal conservative, but you can have a progressive conservative and I never liked that phraseology myself

but I trust President Obama to know what he needs to do, and what he can do
and anything he does is a helleva lot better than anyone else would so I would not tell him what to do

so I leave it to President Obama as he is wiser than me or any of us, and his plate is pretty full.

(though maybe a commuting of the sentence of Gov. Sieglman before Christmas would be nice)

100% of President Obama is better than zero from anyone else

I also know it takes a lot of patience
It took 100 years from LINCOLN to LBJ
It took 50 more years from LBJ to Obama

even God did not do it overnight
and it takes a seed decades to become a mighty redwood

[Fumesucker]

2. FDR to LBJ wasn't anything like 100 years

In fact it was only thirty years between them taking office, 1933 for FDR, 1963 for LBJ.

[graham4anything]

3. Are you a teacher? Sorry I forgot to dot my I's and cross my T's on my typo.Lincoln.

Obviously meant Lincoln

Lincoln=FDR=LBJ=OBAMA=CARTER

the important part of my post was Lincoln to LBJ to Obama

but even using FDR as an example
it didn't freakin' happen overnight.

From Lincoln to FDR was a helleva lot of decades in between

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Yes. Although it looks pretty grim, as more and more people are ground under the wheels

of business as usual, those people will be looking for alternatives.

[Le Taz Hot]

5. "Progressive Dems"

The problem is that there are so few of them -- en toto, MAYBE 1-2%. THAT is key here. I can think of exactly 3,maybe 4, in the Senate: Boxer, Sanders and Senator-elect Warren (possibly Franken). Obviously more in the House but still a small proportion who would actually FIGHT for the rights of the middle class and poor. Most Dems will do what they are told by their Third Way "leaders," including and especially Obama who are exacerbating the problem(s).