Frank Schaeffer: Obama Is Now and Will Be a Great President

[dennis4868]

The "disappointed" left says president Obama sold out. The racist-laced Medicaid-mugging, billionaire-codling right staggers under the weight of terminal "birther" mythology (now trumpeted by moron-come-lately Donald Trump). Meanwhile president Obama continues to bide his time and looks down the road to the post-2012 reality when his patience with an impatient country, his thoughtfulness in the context of a sound-bite-entertain-ourselves-to-death era of short attention spans and historical amnesia will be vindicated. If you think that president Obama played the Republicans in the last lame duck congress like a violin just wait until after 2012 when the rotten Tea Party will be about as relevant as 1930s hate monger radio priest: Charles Coughlin (the "father" of hate radio), is today.


President Obama has met the vile far right (and religious right lynch mob) and also met the disappointment of the shrill impatient left with a calm smile and good humor. He's even reached out to what remains of the Republican Party languishing hock deep in the quagmire of their own frightened and wholly imagined paranoid "victim" status. President Obama has also played chicken with each new crisis and -- invariably -- pulled last moment hair raising victory from what critics said would be defeat. Before he'd served a year president Obama lost the support of the easily distracted (bitter?) left of the Left and also became the target for the white hot rage of the hate-filled right of the Right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds are sticking with our president.

skip....

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to being by the time Obama took office -- do to "help" our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the elderly! What did the left do to help our newly elected president? Some proclaimed that the president's economic policies had "failed" before the president even instituted them!

the entire article is here....
http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2011/04/obama-is-now-and-will-be-great.html

[Tx4obama]

1. K & R n/t

[msongs]

2. the "bitter left", ie the public majority wanting health care for all, end to wars, & so forth

[patrice]

3. I know all kinds of people who want those things & even more economic justice & they aren't bitter

I believe if this particular author had wanted to talk about proponents of health care for all, anti-War activists, & so forth, he would have referred to them as such. He didn't do that. He, apparently, wanted to refer to people who put their bitterness ahead of other things, so that's the word that he used.

[Armstead]

7. I'm bitter.....(politically)

Yeah. Bitterness is a logical result of seeing 30 years of the Democratic Party moving further and further to the corporate right -- and therefore assisting the GOP to move the "center" of the political spectrum to the right, and simultaneously dismissing and ignoreing the legitimate concerns of liberals and progressives.

And before you respond with "don't just complain then. Do something about it," I will point out that many people have been working in many ways to change this -- but the Democrat corporate centrists fight, rather than support, such efforts.

[patrice]

8. Hey, I live in Kansas, I agree strongly. Look at what our moderates got for us!

Not just Sam Brownback, but EVERYONE in those public sector jobs who wasn't a Koch-bot vetted by ChurchCo got fired and replaced here. Not to mention our really good friend and all around nice person Dennis Moore, D Ks in the House, who did everything he could to get along with them for, what, 12 years?, and was replaced by Mr-it's-easier-to-say-you're-sorry-than-it-is-to-get-permission Kevin Yoder, a Social Security privatizer, who got where he is through at least the indirect support of Agricultural Subsidies going to generations of his extended family (does anyone really think the connections that money created for the Yoders had absolutely nothing to do with his "election" to the House?) . . . but the party goes on doing the pro-forma things that make it a "party" and no one cares, because, afterall, it's only Kansas.

Yes, I agree, I'm just not bitter about this stuff. I'm angry. I'm not bitter, because I get how most of it happened at our level. I get how all of these moderates/centrists are making almost exactly the same kinds of mistakes "the bitter left" is making, only based on different data and with a more socially acceptable persona, and they get away with it because the way things are protects their errors, until, like Dennis, the go away and are replaced with someone who can capitalize on all of the stuff that was left out there, in the name of "centrism", "to be determined".

I'm angry, not bitter, because I understand how so much of this goes forward because of MOST people making mistakes in judgment, not because they are bad, and I know that once people see dangerous consequences they correct what they can. They've been protected from seeing the danger of their errors by systemic inertia that is now manifesting certain factors at such dangerous levels that probably at least a few people, "elected" and constituent, are looking at NEW data now. So, the problem, now, is how to identify the level of systemic danger that elicits AUTHENTIC adaptation, without driving too much regression. That and TIME. And bitterness elicits regression; it gives people on both sides of a question an easy cop-out on themselves and on each other. And though the factors for change ARE high now, we're running out of time; the probabilities of the best, most salutary, adaptations are decreasing, so bitterness is a luxury we can't afford.

[patrice]

4. The obvious logical error in your summary equivalence of those groups with "bitter" looks kind of

odd.

[OhioBlue]

5. nope.

I would like health care for all and an end to wars but I'm not bitter. There is a difference.

[freshwest]

6. Years ago, I posted this by Schaeffer elsewhere and caught hell. Mainly from Hillary supporters.

http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-will-triumph-so-will-america.html

A lot of Democratic women left where I'd been posting since 2000 and voted for McCain in spite. It was one thing to have an enemy of the other party in the White House, another thing to have a Democrat who inherited that mess.

Suddenly, all the vitriol aimed at Bush, became Obama's burden. But what is going on in D.C. is not the result of any one man. A POTUS is a person who believes they can do something for those who elected him, but not only them. Obama is a hard-working man and if the left continues to attack him as viciously as the right does, we can expect he will compromise to get done what he can.

Obama has been bashed on a level I have not since the era that saw the deaths of Evers, the little girls at the church in Birmingham, the freedom riders, JFK, RFK and MLK. It's been deja vu for me since I saw Palin and the crowds she inflamed, and the Tea Party is the fruit of that.

Perhaps some here haven't seen the way that lefties treated Obama with everything they consider a failure on his part. But these voices are unfair or ill-informed, IMHO. And their energy *feels* to me, exactly the same as that put out by the RW.

How many followed the Congressional and Senate races closely around the time that Obama got elected? Did people really think that when Obama got into office, he would be able to wave a magic wand and do all he wanted to do?

Obama was left with a nation bankrupt, just as Bush intended, to promote the interests of his global cronies. He did what he could within minutes of being sworn in to overturn a lot of Bush orders, before the public celebrations. He came into office without a clear majority in the Senate, but Democrats blamed the Party and Obama for that without knowing the details. It's easy to condemn when you refuse to acknowledge the depth of the opposition.

People were frustrated and wanted results fast to turn things around. The GOP has been consolidating their base state by state for almost 20 years. You don't turn a country around without help and he didn't get it from the meager numbers of lefties in office. He has had to work with what he had to get things done. I've seen some far leftists who act as thin-skinned as the GOP when criticized or not getting their way.

Remember the GOP fighting to keep Franken from being seated? Their attempts to toss the guy with the brain problem? That's how narrow the majority was, and then there was Lieberman. The guy who gave them their technical majority, but insisted on playing the hawk and getting his conservative agenda, or else he would have handed the Senate back to the GOP. Does anyone think that didn't play a part in what has disappointed us so much?

Formerly Democratic strongholds have fallen to the side state after state. The DNC sucked badly, but they weren't the first blow against the much needed strong Democratic base to win elections and get the results progressives.

Right now, I'm not happy with Obama's results, but they are really *our* results. Does anyone truly believe that Obama would oppose a Senate full of Al Frankens and Bernie Sanders' if he had it? No, he wouldn't. But that's not what he has to work with. I believe strongly that if there is a full progressive majority in both houses soon, he will be able to live up to all of his promises. Some people don't want to hear what he has done, period.

That reminds me of the GOP. They won't hear of any Democrat doing anything good. They refuse to admit that Democrats have any good ideas. They have been attacking Obama since Day One and have not stopped. Is it a mistake on their part?

I rate people sometimes by what they do good, and also who is against them. It's said that we are known by the company we keep. We're also known by the enemies that we make. Consider the enemies of FDR, JFK, RFK and MLK. What did they want to stop them from doing? Why did they hate them so much?

I give the example in Michigan with Bobb. Look what this man did in the years that he had for a boss a Democratic Governor and now look what he's doing now. Do we believe the man suddenly turned into a GOP? Would he do what he's doing with a governor from the Democratic Party? I don't think so, although economic realities hit in every state, regardless of party. The situation in the GOP states are due to GOP policies.

Bobb's probably trying to save what he can in a state that probably didn't want Obama in the first place, or Democratic policies, or they wouldn't have elected Snyder, would they? We have to look at the reality, the strength of the opposition. Because Obama has.

I know what I'm saying won't mean anything to those who thought Obama was going to change everything overnight. I've cited on other threads details that people who'd kept track would know. I'm not unaware of what we haven't gotten done. I believe it will get done in time, but *not* by *not* voting and saying it's no use.

Democrats who say they are too disgusted to vote, well, they aren't part of the party, are they? Be real. Because being a Democrat is not mandatory, it's a choice. It's a choice to believe, that working as a group, certain goals can be achieved.

The GOP and the RW machine, conspiracy talkers, pundits and the MSM, say the entire system is worthless. But then they promote the 'new, improved' political solution, the Tea Party. If it's all worthless, why do they vote?

Because it's not, and they know it. If as so many people on the left say, that there is no difference, why does the GOP do anything and everything to stop us from voting? Why do they defame us day and night, even calling for us to be killed? What is the power of the Democratic Party and by extension Obama, really?

I wish folks would think what we have, that MSM works so hard to tell us we don't. What I think, is that we actually do have a great deal of power and what we do, and who we vote for does make a difference. The teabaggers certainly think so of their candidates.

:rant:

[FrenchieCat]

9. Thank you for that piece.....I hadn't read it.

Shows that not even a year after being elected, folks were doing what they are doing now. It is a shame, and shows that at the end of the day, many of us just aren't as smart as we think....we just think we are.

[freshwest]

11. Thanks. There was another article I got shagged for, that explains our malaise:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/cynics-need-to-drop-their_b_772939.html

Most of the people I talked with online, but not in real life, refused to listen to it, saying that it was all the same. So they claimed they were too smart to be fooled again, so they wouldn't vote. But they *were* fooled into *not* voting. Once again, their pride won't let them admit it.

Despite the stories of how the Koch brothers and the US Chamber of Commerce were using the empowerment of the USSC decision in Citizens United to buy the elections, targeting Democrats only, progressive laws only, they still maintained their higher standards had not been met.

Some were listening to conspiracy pundits and with good reason for the Bush years as we saw the endless wars begin. We've been at war longer now than any other time. There have to be strong economic factors and we learned all of those *again* from the Bush era. Not that we hadn't figured out how to 'follow the money' in years past.

Those same. who feared the NWO the Bushes proclaimed, brought it about by electing the very people who claimed they would save them from it. I have no sympathy for those who scream at Obama as much as the rightwingers do. They have destroyed our nation by giving into the cheap disdain the MSM sold them.

:rant:

[TheKentuckian]

10. Shocking! A recovering fundie and corporate "centrist" thinks Obama is the shizznite.

Can you believe it???