Getting Smarter About Politics [View all]

[sheshe2]

I guess the question is, what has to happen before a great many progressives figure out that what they think about politics doesn’t work? I mean, we started losing in 1972, and we’ve continued losing ever since; over the course of 43 years, at what point do we figure out that how we think about politics doesn’t get us the progress of government we all want?

We even have a stellar example of what we can do in order to get a progressive government. It’s called the Obama campaign, especially in 2008. That campaign was a progressive campaign; it was a classic, in that it promoted the idea that we could do great things with government, and make people’s lives better. He won in the first landslide a Democrat has experienced since 1964, with the largest turnout since 1968 and yet within one election cycle, progressives apparently forgot that lesson and reverted back to negativity and attacking Democrats.

Seriously, how could anyone who considers themselves politically savvy believe that negativity about Democrats is going to get us anything except more Republicans in office? And yet, before Obama even took office, the professional left and the PUBs (Progressive Unicorn Brigade) started attacking him for crap. The loudest segment of the progressive movement was already declaring his presidency a failure because he chose Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, forgetting the basic political reality that it’s the President who sets economic policy, not the Treasury Secretary; not that they evaluated Gethner fairly, anyway. They even went after him for his choice for the Christian pastor who gave the invocation. How can anyone expect to be taken seriously, politically speaking, when you are criticizing the president of the United States for not choosing “the right pastor” to say a prayer at his inauguration?

The sad part is the negativity, which built to a crescendo almost as soon as he was inaugurated. The stimulus package was too small. He was spending too much money trying to bail out the banks. He wasn’t spending enough time bashing Republicans (as if that is a policy decision that makes sense to a country that is heading toward depression.) They complained that he was “too nice” to Republicans, apparently unaware that most Americans want bipartisanship. He was purposely showing the public how he would reach out to them and they would bite his hand off, but PUBs and professional lefties attacked him, not the Republicans doing the biting of the hand. It made no sense.

They attacked everything that Obama and every Democrat did for two solid years after his inauguration. And yet, the same people give themselves zero credit when it comes to the disaster that was the 2010 election, when we gave Congress to Republicans, thus preventing him from getting anything done and then blaming him for not getting anything done.

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