General Discussion

had no compunction [about] pushing their agenda even though they lost big."

Which is why I get so frustrated at President Obama's seemingly never-ending appeals for "biparisanship" and "compromise."

Everyone here knows he is a very intelligent man, perhaps the most intelligent president we've had since JFK. And yet, it seems only recently to have dawned on him that Republicans have no interest whatsoever in helping him govern. That they would quite literally prefer to see the country burn down around us, rather than do anything that might improve things and somehow rebound to the President's advantage. Indeed, I think there is nothing Republican leaders would enjoy so much as another Great Depression or another 9-11, just so they could blame this administration.

Furthermore, the President and many Democrats seem to have this illusion that Americans (and I'm talking about your average voter here, not political junkies like yours truly and folks on DU) care about process as much as they care about results. For example, that somehow voters would have recoiled in horror had Harry Reid invoked "the nuclear option" and ended the fillabuster rules long enough, say, to pass card check and a trillion and a half dollar stimulus. The Republicans used the threat of "the nuclear option" time and again when they were in the majority to get everything from conservative judges appointed to passing the Bush tax cuts. Had a truly effective stimulus been passed in 2009, and the economy started mending in 2010, NOBODY but diehard Repubs would be grousing about how it was done. (Just as, with the unemployment rate still high, nobody cares that Obama had to compromise away a truly effective stimulus to get anything passed at all. When your house is on the line and your kids aren't getting enough to eat, what counts is results, pure and simple).

As you said, Republicans have no problem ramming their agenda through in whatever way they can. What's more, they act strategically to cut off Democratic power at the roots: destroying ACORN, attacking unions and Planned Parenthood, suppressing the vote including early voting (which favors working people), etc. The Democratic version of that would have been, upon winning the majority of both houses and the presidency, to:

eliminate funding for "abstinance only sex education" and "faith based initiatives"--which are government subsidies of right wing churches; cutting or at least threatening to cut the huge and bloated budgets of military bases in places like South Carolina and Texas and other red state subsidies, ELIMINATING any talk of vouchers that funnel off taxpayer money away from the public schools; shutting off access to the Armed Forces Network for right wingers like Rush Limbaugh (or at least ensuring that the network also features Democratic voices in equal time with Republicans)...and ENDING the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the earliest possible opportunity!

I could go on and on. None of that has happened. Even if we don't get the bases cut, the subsidies chopped--at the very least the GOP would be playing defense, the way we ALWAYS seem to be playing defense- trying to defend Social Security and Medicaid, trying to keep the EPA from being gutted, etc. It seems I've spent my entire life fighting this shit. Silly me, I thought with the election of a Democratic president, and a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we'd finally get back to trying to build a progressive society, rather than always hanging on by our fingernails to keep from slipping into some social Darwinian/Ayn Randian abyss.

Now of course it's too late--Republicans, who were on the ropes in 2009, have the House, the plurality of state houses (where they are busy gerrymandering more safe GOP districts and rewriting election laws to suppress Democratic turnout) and the distinct possibility of taking the Senate in 2012. It's as if Democrats learned nothing from 1994-2000.

I like this President. I admire his intelligence, his personal fortitude, his persistance, and his ultra-cool demeanor. But I am very disappointed in how things have gone these past three years.

What our president seems to lack is the zest for confrontation, as well as compromise, that informed so much of what FDR, Truman, and LBJ said and did. (I can't, for instance, imagine any of those men forgiving a turncoat Democrat who spoke at a GOP convention the way President Obama forgave Leiberman. A "Leiberman" in a party led by FDR, Truman, or LBJ would have been bounced from his committee chairmanships--at the very least--and frozen out of the White House forever). FDR "welcomed their hatred," Truman gave them "hell," JFK publicly cursed out corporate CEOs. And yes, I know, we can't have Obama acting like "an angry Black man." But to hell with that. People's lives are on the line. Our entire future is at stake. Maybe it's time for a little desk pounding and a few raised voices on our side.

The president's speech last week was certainly a step in the right direction. One could do worse than channel the trust busting side of Teddy Roosevelt. I hope we see more of that.

The GOP will hate this president, no matter what he does. So why not do what's right, or at least try to do what's right and go down fighting, rather than what's expedient?

The audacity of hope, and all that?

Sorry if I've ranted. I'm so glad I got that off my chest!

And just in case there's any doubt--of course I will vote for, support, and encourage this president as best I can. I have his back.

I just want to be absolutely certain he has mine.