Obama And The Crumbling Of A Liberal Fantasy Hero

[Drunken Irishman]

101. Liberals can't have a hero because liberals don't get elected...

At least the liberals who are acceptable to an ideological base out of the mainstream.

You know, one of the biggest arguments liberals peddle, and have been peddling since DU was established, is that only real Democrats can win. We hear it all the time - if you have a Republican and a Republican-lite, the voters will vote for the real thing every single time.

Yet you keep telling me, over and over, something I've heard since 2009, that Obama is just Republican-lite (Clinton too!) and yet ... who are the only two Democratic presidents to win reelection since Roosevelt?

Where are your liberal heroes?

If you have to go all the way back to JFK or FDR to find a liberal hero president, there is a reason for that! It's not Obama's fault Humphrey lost to Nixon. It's not Obama's fault George McGovern got his ass kicked in '72. It's not Obama's fault Jimmy Carter lost reelection in '80. It's not Obama's fault Mondale got his clock cleaned by Reagan in '84 and it's certainly not Obama's fault Dukakis, Gore and Kerry lost their elections.

So, let's stop acting like there is an abundance of liberals dominating national politics and Obama somehow undercuts that because he's not as good as you had hoped. The fact remains is that liberalism has largely continued to fail in the eyes of many Americans because the ideology has been corrupted by uncompromising fools who would rather nominate Kucinich and lose badly than win with Obama.

That's why your ideology sucks. It sucks because it moved nowhere between the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 90s. That's a thirty-year period where you accomplished shit. You accomplished shit because you overestimated your power and didn't make the changes needed bring your ideology back into relevance.

Bill Clinton won because he ran as the anti-liberal. Had he run a left-wing campaign, like so many of you pine for from your presidential candidates, H.W. Bush would have won reelection and the Democratic Party would have been stomped into irrelevance nationally. But Clinton had to run as a moderate because past liberal candidates got ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE on the national scene.

The true fantasy is not that Obama isn't a liberal - it's that liberals actually believe they can do better than Obama. Guess what? You can't. You can't because being president is more than just about wide-eyed ideological optimism. Even Kennedy ordered the assassination of, and coup against, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Had DU been around back then, I'm sure most of you would've been outraged at your supposed liberal leader.

How many of you would've been outraged over the liberal FDR throwing legal American citizens into internment camps? You talk about Obama's failure to close Guantanamo Bay? Imagine if he had ordered one opened in the continental U.S. and then forced American born Muslims into it! He would've been impeached and completely tarnished his legacy for the remainder of existence. Yet the same people who attack Obama for civil liberties and being a right-wing warmonger also sometimes sport FDR avatars. Ironic, don't you think?

But that's the complications of being president. It's not black and white - it never is. No president, liberal, moderate or conservative, has ever adhered solely to their ideological grounds. It can't be done. Kennedy was far more tepid on civil rights than many in his own party - but that was solely because of the politics of it. FDR promised to end lynchings as president and then dropped the issue when he was elected because he didn't want to alienate southern Democratic support. Imagine Obama coming into office promising to support gay rights and then doing absolutely NOTHING on the issue because he was too fearful of alienating certain groups - I mean, no asking for the repeal of DADT and DOMA, no signing hate crimes legislation or providing benefits to same-sex spouses ... nothing. It would literally be like that - taking a crucial point of his campaign and essentially dropping the issue once he became president because he didn't want to offend those in his party and cut off crucial support.

Even the liberal heroes would not be considered heroes if DU existed back then because the President often makes tough decisions that are not ideologically pure enough for the base. Some wanted the New Deal to go further than it did - which led to the rise of guys like Huey Long. It was Long, in fact, who called the New Deal corporatist. Imagine that! Liberals unsatisfied with a Democratic president's economic policies - calling them too corporate friendly! LOL

Spooky ... right?

The bottom line is that liberals can't have heroes because pragmatism isn't part of the ideology and most every leader - from FDR to Kennedy to even Elizabeth Warren (who has been unbending in her support of the fascist Obama, mind you) - has to make a tough decision that alienates the idealistic. You know, whether it's FDR cutting back spending at the start of his second term because he feared too much debt (which plunged the economy back into recession), Kennedy upping involvement in Vietnam or LBJ taking us fully into her jungles.

The difference, of course, is that there was no internet back then. We have the luxury of hindsight and time with those leaders - our image of what they are is compounded by what they did overall. But I guarantee you had DU existed in the 30s and 40s or the 60s or 70s, you all would have been just as down on FDR and JFK and LBJ and Carter as you are Obama - four of them who are often praised as being more progressive and liberal than the current president. Maybe, in some realms, they were - but in others? Carter constantly butted heads with the more liberal members of his party - namely Ted Kennedy - and opposed increased federal funding for abortions. He was also the first president that put the U.S. on the long road toward deregulation.

Obama is the first Democratic president of the true internet age (internet use under Clinton the 90s was spotty and certainly communities not nearly as large as today) - and that also means he's the most criticized. Worse, everything he does is instant. Every reaction gets a remark and that wasn't always the case.

I mentioned the Kennedy assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. How do you think that would have played out today? I'm guessing it would've been much worse, much more pronounced than it was back in '63. Hell, how many Americans actually heard of the assassination back then? Was it even a top story? Did people question the U.S.'s motives behind it? Probably not at the level they would today.

You know, it's ironic that Snowden criticizes Obama's human rights violations and suggests America was better at this in the past. I guarantee you, though, had Snowden leaked secrets under past administrations, especially if the U.S. at war, it's likely no one ever hears his name and fully understands what he did. Why? Because the government would have killed him. Anyone who doesn't believe that is fooling themselves. They would have assassinated him, or imprisoned him for life and no one would have ever heard his story - even if he bolted the country prior to the leaking.

Just food for thought. Politics isn't for the idealistic. It's too nasty for that. No president should be blinded by their idealism or they won't accomplish anything. As they say, you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Well politics isn't much different.