Ezra Klein: "Obama Is A Moderate Republican"

[kpete]

Obama revealed: A moderate Republican

By Ezra Klein, Monday, April 25, 9:51 PM
America is mired in three wars. The past decade was the hottest on record. Unemployment remains stuck near 9 percent, and there’s a small, albeit real, possibility that the U.S. government will default on its debt. So what’s dominating the news? A reality-television star who can’t persuade anyone that his hair is real is alleging that the president of the United States was born in Kenya.

Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn’t. Muslim. Socialist. Marxist. Anti-colonialist. Racial healer. We’ve obsessed over every answer except the right one: President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.

more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-revealed-a-moderate-republican/2011/04/25/AFPrGfkE_story.html

[DirkGently]

1. ... leaving the Republicans with nowhere to go but far right. We're way out of balance here.

[bvar22]

20. It also leaves Traditional Pro-Working Class Democrats....

...with nowhere to go.

I used to ridicule Working Class Republicans for voting against their own Economic Interests.
Now, the Centrist New Democrat Party is asking me to do the same.



Who will STAND and FIGHT for THIS American Majority?
"By their WORKS you will know them."

[BzaDem]

27. Voting for Democrats is not voting against your interests, and could not be -- unless the Republican

party moved to the left of the Democratic party.

[Luminous Animal]

39. If the Dems are not representing your interests, then yes, voting for them is against

your interests. That, "you've got nowhere else to go" is getting old and is starting to feel very abusive. Women who live with potential or verbal abusers often experience increased physical abuse once they've become pregnant NOT because they are pregnant but because there abusers believe (and often rightly so) they've got no where else to go.

[BzaDem]

43. Sometimes, something gets "old" because of how true it is. Telling the truth is not "abuse," and it

should be done at every possible opportunity. The fact that the truth makes you uncomfortable doesn't change that -- sometimes, uncomfortable truths need to be repeated more often.

Enabling the party LEAST aligned with your interests is always acting against your interests, by definition.

[Luminous Animal]

44. I see it as a choice between one who is going to cut off my arms and one who is going to cut off

my head.

Either choice is against my interests. Though I may be compelled to sacrifice my head in order to save someone else's arms.

[BzaDem]

45. But you wouldn't be sacrificing your head to save others arms. You would be sacrificing your head to

ensure other heads are sacrificed.

If you have a choice of A or B, where A is more aligned with your interests than B, then voting for A is by definition in your interest and not voting for A is by definition not in your interest.

Of course, one could pretend that there is actually some third choice that might win an election, or that B being in power will somehow make things better in the long run, or that man-made global warming doesn't exist, or that evolution is not an accurate theory, or that we never landed on the moon, etc. But as we all know, denial doesn't change reality. Reality is what it is regardless of what people claim about it.

[Luminous Animal]

46. Who said I would choose between A & B? That's the choice you try to impose upon me.

A choice that forces me to live on my knees.

[BzaDem]

47. That is the choice that exists REGARDLESS of what I wish for or "try to impose."

Until the Constitution is changed to remove the electoral college/winner-take-all elections, that is the choice. It doesn't matter that you don't like it, or that you think other people are "trying to impose it" on you. Lots of people don't get what they want in life, and most people learn this at an early age. Just wishing that there was a third choice that might end up governing doesn't actually make it possible.

[Luminous Animal]

48. The propaganda says that there is only two choices but there is more than two paths

to be politically engaged and be involved in citizen activism.

I, personally, do not give a flying fuck about the electoral college and the binary system. Especially since there are so many other fulfilling choices available to be an engaged patriot.

[BzaDem]

49. No one is criticizing other forms of activism outside the voting booth.

All anyone's saying is that the President exists whether or not you give a flying fuck about him, that the agreement of the President is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for change whether or not you give a flying fuck about him, and that the electoral college/binary system exists whether or not you give a flying fuck about it.

You can choose to vote for a Democratic President, or enable the election of a Republican President. But you can't accurately claim that there is some way to avoid doing both, just like you can't accurately claim that man-made global warming doesn't exist or that we never landed on the moon.

[LooseWilly]

54. If a Democrat loses an election because the Left deserts him...

then maybe Democrats will stop taking the Left for granted.

Or maybe you and your ilk will be able to convince everyone that the Left is Right because, by your definition, anyone who doesn't vote for Democrats is the Right... because you are a mouthpiece for those who are compulsive spinners for the powers-that-be-behind the Democratic party as-it-is (the DLC who would use the Left for votes while ignoring their interests as the Republican insiders used the Religious Right for votes while ignoring, largely, their interests).

Maybe your repetitive and largely incestuously-logicked arguments will convince a majority... to be afraid and to metaphorically suck off the lesser evil in order to avoid the rhetorical terrors of a reach around from the Boogey Man...

But let's just be honest for a second—the policies your "Democratic President" is willing to fight for... are the same policies that the last Democratic President fought against... and the notion that the party grass-roots should exert an effort to support that sort of "fight" is the sort of snake oil product marketing that actually justifies the sort of vigilante anti-marketing idea fights that call for voting for a Nader... simply to send a message to the snake oil salesmen in charge of the party to let them know that they can fuck themselves if this is all they have to offer.

Feel free to try more bullshit spin to scare me and others about the prospects of not having shitty & half-effective Obama policies being suggested as possible starting points in future negotiations, only to then see Republican ideas swallowed wholesale and enacted as policy in the name of... bipartisanship. The thing is... the Democratic Party only really functions as an opposition party in the US in the 21st Century... because Democrats are too afraid of PR blowback to actually push anything implied by their campaign rhetoric... which means losing control of the White House can only make Democrats more likely to behave as if they believed or were willing to fight for that which they argue in favor of rhetorically.

[BzaDem]

56. Why would they "stop taking the left for granted?" Why wouldn't they move FURTHER to the right, to

make up for lost votes?

A vote-switch from an independent (from R to D) gives the Democrat a net of 2 votes, whereas a vote-switch from an irrational claimed progressive (from 3rd party to d) just gives the Democrat 1 vote. Furthermore, the probability of satisfying an irrational claimed progressive is almost nil in the first place, since they will never be satisfied with any president ever nominated by their party. (This is not unique to the Democratic party or this country -- all political systems have tiny fractions of all parties who will never be satisfied with any party-nominated candidate for their entire life.)

So the more claimed progressives on the left who don't vote for the Democrat, the further the Democratic party moves to the right to make up for their votes. Not sure what you think you are gaining here, or why you feel like you have the power to ever get what you want.

"Or maybe you and your ilk will be able to convince everyone that the Left is Right because, by your definition, anyone who doesn't vote for Democrats is the Right"

Anyone who doesn't vote for the Democrat by definition enables the right. This isn't "my definition" -- it is reality, and it doesn't go away by denying it. I don't care if they claim to be from the right or the left -- the only thing that matters is their actions. There is no meaningful difference between Republican-enablers who claim to be on the left and Republican-enablers who claim to be on the right.

[w4rma]

58. There are no centrist voters. Only money lies in the "center".

People want our paychecks and our lives protected. Not compromised away little by little.

[bullwinkle428]

2. Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us!

[DJ13]

4. Go Greyhound, and leave the drinking to us!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

3. And as the GOP goes further right --

The Dems will keep up by lurching even further right with the goal of capturing the "middle" thus scoring elections wins.

And it will continue to evolve into a Party I do not recognize. :(

[AngryAmish]

5. How in the world have we got to the point where anyone cares what Ezra Klein thinks about anything?

This is not a rhetorical question. He life experience consists of being...a blogger. He has not done anything other than write about what others are doing. He has not done anything and how in the world can he judge how others are doing? In 1990 he was a child. He does not know what he is talking about.

I have no opinion about this particular piece. This is simply an ad hominem against Klein. Nobody should listen to him.

[kpete]

7. because some of us are

liberal thinkers?

peace, kpete

[seabeckind]

12. Ezra has an opinion.

As do we all. Regardless of our background.

[jtown1123]

13. Ezra has a very close relationship to the WH. That's why we care.

The White HOuse also considers him a "liberal" which shows how right-leaning they are.

[cui bono]

14. So you are saying that no one should listen to you either then. n/t

[AngryAmish]

16. Of course nobody should listen to me. I'm just a jerk on the internet.

Same as Klein.

[cui bono]

22. And angry! And Amish!!!

;)

[Enrique]

65. kudos for your consistency

I would have bet money that your opinion of Klein was conditional on whether or not he was saying something good or bad about Obama, but I would have lost

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x490284

[frazzled]

6. Which would make Ezra a an even more moderate, centrist Republican.

His focus being so narrowly trained on details of policy actually blinds him to a lot of things. This is the kind of myopia that leads him to call in the same article G.W. Bush a "Democrat" on domestic policy. Right.

[theoldman]

8. Eisenhower was a moderate Republican.

Those were some of our best years. He was fiscally conservative and not too religious.

[TBF]

11. Yes - and he increased the number of folks eligible for social security -

what a concept.

[TBF]

9. Moderate?

Tax breaks for the rich is the action of a moderate republican. But cutting Social Security/Medicare puts him squarely in Reagan territory as far as I'm concerned.

[ProSense]

10. Ezra Klein is ridiculous

This from a guy who once praised Paul Ryan's plan.

Moderate Republican? What the hell is that?

Olympia Snowe? Republicans have always claimed to support things before they vote against them. The notion that Bob Dole or any Republican since the 1980s was a moderate is silly. They present plans only in opposition to Democratic proposal, position them as similar, but have no real interest in supporting them.

Clinton's health care plan certainly contained elements of Nixon's plan and the 1993 Republican plan.

<...>

The real reason insurers want the GOP leading Congress again is not to repeal “Obamacare,” but to try to gut some of the provisions of the law that protect consumers from the abuses of the industry, such as refusing to cover kids with preexisting conditions, canceling policyholders’ coverage when they get sick, and setting annual and lifetime limits on how much they’ll pay for medical care. Insurers also hate the provision that requires them to spend at least 80 percent of premium revenues on medical care, as well as the one that calls for eliminating the billions of dollars that the government has been overpaying them for years to participate in private Medicare plans. (Be on the lookout for a death panel–like fearmongering campaign to scare people into thinking, erroneously, that Granny and Pawpaw will lose their government health care if Congress doesn’t restore those “cuts” to Medicare.)

link

There are aspects of the current health care law that were not part of any of those proposals.

[inna]

15. semi-significant considering the source

[ProSense]

17. Here's Ezra's latest post:

Ezra Klein: Ryan 2012?

I don’t think it’s likely that Rep. Paul Ryan will run for president in 2012, but if you’ll excuse a double negative, I think it’s less unlikely than people realize. Particularly if President Obama’s poll numbers continue to sag.

The arguments for Ryan’s run would be mostly the same as those for Obama’s run, with the big differences being that a) Obama looks a lot stronger in 2012 than the Republicans did in 2008, b) Ryan would be starting a lot later in the process than Obama did and c) the current Republican field is a lot weaker than the Democrats’ 2008 field, which included Hillary Clinton, a pre-scandal John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, etc.

Ezra seems a tad obsessed with Ryan.

[qazplm]

18. oh good grief no he isn't

if folks want to decry that he isn't as liberal as he ran, that's fair game, is he progressive, no probably not, but he is not a "liberal republican."

[Proud Liberal Dem]

19. Nor a "moderate" one

What BS (from Klein). :eyes:

[dreamnightwind]

21. K & R

I very much agree with Klein's assessment

He said yesterday on TV (it was MS-NBC, probably Lawrence's Last Word show) that Obama's budget is to the RIGHT of what came out of the cat-food commission. The context was they were discussing the budget plan that came out of the Progressive Caucus, and the relative merits of that plan vs. the Ryan plan (which he did not appear to support at all), the Obama plan, and the recs from the cat-food peeps.

I've had numerous posts deleted by the mods just for saying what Klein says, that Obama is basically a moderate Republican. It has really soured me on DU, frankly, we should be free to present this opinion without censorship.

[Tashca]

23. I agree 100%

I agree on all accounts.........

[PufPuf23]

24. POTUS Obama is a neo-liberal.

He did not make this clear in his campaign.

The choice was candidate Obama versus senile and crazy.

POTUS Obama is limited in what he can control but was our best and over sold choice because politics has become marketing and law has become incomprehensible by design of convergent interests.

POTUS Obama is who we have and who will likely be and is now the Democratic Party's best chance to retain the Executive in 2012.

I believe neo-liberalism to be flawed but that is what we have now.

So win the WH but more importantly win Senate and House at federal and state level and get as many Governors as possible Democratic.

This is me being pragmatic. Scratch the rant.

[leftstreet]

29. Obama made it clear in his campaign he was a neo-liberal? When?

:shrug:

[leftstreet]

30. K&R

[PufPuf23]

32. You misunderstood my post -- POTUS Obama avoided the DLC and neo-liberal associations

but by his appointments and policies is blatantly obvious a neo-liberal POTUS.

My druthers is that the POTUS will have the decency to step down and allow a viable liberal Democratic POTUS candidate.

Just I am not hopeful of this scenario.

[TheKentuckian]

31. What makes me bitter is Obama is only President because we were on neoliberal avoidance.

The old okie doak leaves a lot of bile in the throat for me.

I knew he was a corporatist, it was evident in the early parts of 'Audacity of Hope'. The shock comes from the deep ideological nature of political orientation. A true adopter for pragmatic reasons would grab the low hanging fruit and clear opportunities and relentlessly oppose weakening of core planks.

The problem with the neoliberals is the one step forward, two (or more) back. You just end up in the same place as the other corporate party wants to go but get to pretend that progress is being made.

[PufPuf23]

33. A Dude at RU debinked 21st centuy fascism in the USA

with a word salad link that described "Third Way" as a fascist movement. Irony or not reading one's own debunking link.

[TheKentuckian]

38. The Turd Way is a fascist movement, or close enough to score when lobbing hand grenades.

[eomer]

51. It's a hopeless cause, but that's not what "neoliberal" means.

"Neoliberal" is a term from economics and the "liberal" in it means something completely different than the term "liberal" in American politics. It refers to an economic regulatory system that is liberal, meaning relatively free and unregulated. A neoliberal is one who advocates the free market, with little or no regulation, as the best economic system.

All Republicans are neoliberals, or at least I haven't heard so far a single one who isn't (who doesn't advocate free markets).

Many Democrats are neoliberals because they advocate the free market as the best economic system. Obama is a neoliberal. But when they advocate neoliberalism (free markets), they are being conservative (in the American political sense) on economics. Democrats who advocate neoliberalism are conservative on economic issues even if they are perhaps liberal on social issues. The liberal (in the American political sense) position on economics is at the least that markets must be carefully regulated and in some cases it is that the market is not an appropriate solution at all (Single-payer health care being an example of the latter).

Unfortunately, as I said, it's a hopeless cause. The fact that "neoliberal" contains the word "liberal" seems to be too confusing and there's no stopping the use of "neoliberal" as if it is a type of liberal. The result is going to be bad for liberals because part of the war against us is a war against words having meaning. Our political opponents try, often successfully, to get people to use words emotionally rather than semantically. So "socialist" and "liberal" become mere pejoratives, devoid of any meaning beyond that conveyed by hispanic parents who call something "caca" to get their children to leave it alone without going to the trouble of saying why, exactly.

[KoKo]

35. Agree with what you said...but we Dems on the Left tried to do what you recommended...

Instead, we got "caving DLC/Third Way/Neo Liberals"..who cowered to the RW even though the took Act Blue and Lib Dems Money in small donations. These "small donors" gave what they could since "Selection 2000."

What did we GET FOR IT?

[PufPuf23]

37. I share your frustrating as the policy and legislation of the Obama Administration

has been to excuse the past crimes and institutionalize the abuses of what I thought was the worst of the USA.

I am all for a Democratic candidate with more integrity and more populist / New Deal political philosophy )as neo-liberalism is flawed BS) to represent the Democratic Party in 2012.

The problem we share is that the government is working against the people and for special interests. This has happened before in USA history but the world is on steroids and the USA media gives time to trivia and insanity.

[KoKo]

40. So true..what you say:

"The problem we share is that the government is working against the people and for special interests. This has happened before in USA history but the world is on steroids and the USA media gives time to trivia and insanity."

[Mojorabbit]

50. I am in my mid fifties and have seen them come and go

and I agree with Klein.

[dreamnightwind]

25. Klein just continued this discussion with Cenk

Just watched them get into more detail on this assessment of where Obama is on the political spectrum, and how the entire spectrum is way out of whack, on Cenk's MS-NBC show, good discussion worth watching.

[KoKo]

36. Thanks...will catch it on the MSNBC site..since I missed the first run.

[QC]

26. Moderate? n/t

[Ramulux]

28. Great article

Every point he makes is irrefutable. Obama is a conservative on so many policy positions.

[KoKo]

34. Well...I dunno about "Moderate Repug" ...but he Sure isn't the President I voted for...

and as each day goes by that becomes more evident.

Did the Pod People get him? :shrug:

[NeedleCast]

41. No, he isn't

[slay]

42. Glad he said it

cause if i did people would jump all over me. Bravo Ezra for being able to see the truth - and bold enough to speak it! K&R.

[western mass]

52. only difference between Obama and a moderate Republican..

is the D next to his name and the ability to con liberals with nice speechifying.

[joeunderdog]

59. Yup. Abe Lincoln would have called him a Right Wing extrememist.

And Abe was a Repub.

[IScreamSundays]

i really meant it

but I didn't mean to say it twice

[IScreamSundays]

53. oh for fuk

he is a corporatist who is owned by the banksters. if you don't know that you've been on dope

[deacon]

55. Pure nonsense. n/t

[democracy1st]

57. go ahead deacon tell us why its pure nonsense,thanks

[no limit]

64. You know what's pure nonsense?

Calling an article which makes many specific points "pure nonsense" without actually adding anything to that reply nor addressing any of the specific points made in the article. Then when asked to say why you think its nonsense never come back to the thread again.

[notesdev]

60. I don't consider him moderate at all

I consider him to be pretty radical when you look at what he's doing with the banks and the military. Even Bush2 wasn't as in-your-face "so what are you gonna do about it?" as Obama has been. He's also demonstrably more right-wing than B2 on the drug war, ordering his AG to take actions against state laws.

In a crisis, his instincts instantly go far right. Just look at the performance with regards to BP: it started with denial, then cover up, then running cover, and went all the way to limit BP's liability to a fraction of the true cost of its error.

[hfojvt]

61. I don't like that line

"the Republican Party he's facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him."

Makes it sound like the Republican ideas that Obama is embracing are good ones. The sad part is about how many Democrats are abandoning their/our best ideas in its effort to support him.

[inna]

62. good thread

[kenny blankenship]

63. No shit Sherlock.

WP reporters like to take their sweet fucking time I guess. I knew we'd been had by mid summer 2009.