Huh?
Via
Daily Kos:
<...>
That pragmatism, by the way, is a joke. It's a loser attitude, the idea that you should push for what's reasonable instead of what you want. Give up on your ideals, they tell us, they're not realistic with Congress being Republican controlled. Obama is just a man, so overlook the repeated insults and dismissals of who we are and what we stand for. So what's our reasonable demand? What have WE gotten in the budget compromises? That list of things Obama has done for progressives is disingenuous, neatly sidestepping all of the things that were taken away from us and touting minor concessions as major accomplishments.
It's not just that progressives must stand up to the president. It's that progressives must stand up to those who are supposedly on our side. When the Republicans get nine concessions to our one, there was no compromise. We didn't win that one thing. We lost nine, but the apologists gloss over that. That was the reasonable thing to accomplish without control of the House, they say. Well no, it wasn't. Not until you came along and told everyone: We the Left are willing to give up.
<...>
The apologists defend themselves as pragmatists, but they're not. That is a critical mistake, particularly in a world where compromise is necessary. Listen very carefully. You are not being pragmatic. You are not being reasonable. It is not pragmatic to destroy our ability to fight. It is not reasonable to kneecap us at the very beginning of the race. It is not pragmatic to give the entire debate over to the Right.
Hiding behind a strawman argument that other people's opinions are inhibiting one's ability to fight is absurd.
Excellent response here:
What lunacy Since when did the words "reasonable" and "pragmatic" become curses?
In the 1960's, the greatest lasting progressive legislative achievements came about due to a pairing of two disparate forces: the civil rights/progressive movement led by figures such as MLK and the tough-minded Democratic politicos led by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
LBJ was head of a Democratic coalition that included a Democratic legislative majority based on southern Democrats. Many of these southern Democrats were progressive on some issues, but hostile to MLK and civil rights issues. They were the remnants of the old New Deal coalition (where FDR presided also over an alliance that included southern segregationists).
Notwithstanding, the Great Society alliance held together long enough to give us Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, etc. All during a very trying time when the nation was falling apart due to the Vietnam War.
Obama presides over what should be a much more unified coalition. The old southern segregationists are no more, since the southern Democratic Party largely went over and became the new southern GOP. However, in its stead we have solid black political participation which, as 2008 showed, while not enough to swing the majority of the old Confederacy, was enough to elect the nation's first black President.
And now people want to splinter into various ideological crusades? This is what happened in 1968, when a solid Democrat named Hubert Humphrey was very narrowly defeated by Richard Nixon. I had numerous relatives at that time who threw their votes away because "Humphrey and Nixon are the same." They voted for Dick Gregory, Donald Duck, etc. Talk to them today and they turn red with embarrassment at what fools they were.
Fast forward to 1980. Same thing. Jimmy Carter gets gutted by progressive opponents who celebrate Ted Kennedy and refuse to be reconciled in a general election that puts Reagan in the White House.
Fast forward again to 2000. Progressives belabor Al Gore as being "the same as Bush." Naderites and others splinter off to the extent that the GOP regains the White House under George W. Bush.
The same mentality, it seems, is alive and well. The mentality of the great noble defeat, the lost cause, the grand gesture that maintains one's ostensible purity at the cost of actual achievement.
I did not support Obama in 2008 - I was a Clinton supporter. But I am with him now, 100 percent, to the end. That is because you measure results and he has achieved results. Health care. Foreign policy, where he is managing the end of two wars he inherited. Revitalizing civil rights enforcement. Revitalizing environmental enforcement. Ensuring that the great social programs are protected.
If Obama loses in 2012, it will not be because the other side put up a better candidate with better ideas. It will be because he was abandoned by his own. Just like Carter and Gore were.
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