Originally Posted by Deb C

Why does that phrase upset you so much, since it is merely an expression of keeping him accountable.

Mainly because it's a cliche. Why not just say "we need to keep him accountable to what he ran on?" I read a lot of Democratic political sites because I mostly support the Democrats (mostly=more than 98% of the time) and I just keep seeing that phrase. It's also a phrase that derives from torture--although I'm not so literal to be much affected by images based on the Spanish Inquisition (insert Monty Python reference here).

Originally Posted by annla899

Mainly because it's a cliche. Why not just say "we need to keep him accountable to what he ran on?"

Hmm... Maybe, what with the nation's glee over torture and assassination as ways to "do justice", they're actually talking about holding literal fire to the literal feet of a literal murderer. That would at least be morally consistent. If we are to take whacking bin Laden as the new Standard of What Is Right... I'd think that something every other killer would be good to remain aware of.

Originally Posted by James50

Can you provide some examples? You have posted probably more words on this forum in the last 3 months than anyone else. As far as I remember, you have been accorded the same treatment as everyone else on the forum: supported when there is agreement and disputed when there is disagreement.

I don't understand why you equate disagreement with accusations of being a traitor.

Are you confusing us with some other forum?

James50

All of us have had our share of disagreements on various issues. But I have been accused of being a troll, and god forbid, a Republican, because of my views. Especially when exposing Obama's hypocrisy, opposing opinions about war, and anything that brings to light the American empire's wrong doing. To me, that's being accused of being a traitor. And no, I will not take the time to prove those statements. Anyone who said and indicated these things know who they are and why at the time they said them.

And to be clear, I am not upset or concerned about those remarks. No more so than anyone else when they are disagreed with. I take the accusations as part of the territory when telling the other side of the story.

Originally Posted by Deb C

I was not one of those "do not vote" folks. My main message was for us to stop being apologists and start holding Obama accountable. What I experienced with so many of us progressives was this denial about his betraying the very platform that got him elected. As I have said many times in these forums, we suffer from abused voter syndrome. Instead of us challenging Obama, we at times, enabled his move to the Right by not holding his feet to the fire.

I voted for Obama with my eyes wide open. I voted for a politician, not a saint. I don't suffer from "abused voter syndrome" because I never expect ANY politician, or any regular person for that matter, to always satisfy my desires. I also realize that a president represents only one branch of government and is never going to get his/her way on everything (and thank God for that).

I think we make a big mistake by focusing only on one person and neglecting to build the progressive movement as a whole. That movement includes pragmatic middle-of-the-road folks as well as the more idealistic among us.

I refuse to join the circular firing squad. I will fight for progress, as slow as it may be, and I will not yield to the reactionary Right in the name of "sending people a message." The stakes are too high right now.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I voted for Obama with my eyes wide open. I voted for a politician, not a saint. I don't suffer from "abused voter syndrome" because I never expect ANY politician, or any regular person for that matter, to always satisfy my desires. I also realize that a president represents only one branch of government and is never going to get his/her way on everything (and thank God for that).

I think we make a big mistake by focusing only on one person and neglecting to build the progressive movement as a whole. That movement includes pragmatic middle-of-the-road folks as well as the more idealistic among us.

I refuse to join the circular firing squad. I will fight for progress, as slow as it may be, and I will not yield to the reactionary Right in the name of "sending people a message." The stakes are too high right now.

Well said! Thank you!

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Hmm... Maybe, what with the nation's glee over torture and assassination as ways to "do justice", they're actually talking about holding literal fire to the literal feet of a literal murderer. That would at least be morally consistent. If we are to take whacking bin Laden as the new Standard of What Is Right... I'd think that something every other killer would be good to remain aware of.

Well, you think they're holding a literal murderer's accountable, but then you loathe all of it. I understand your sentiments and even appreciate them, but they are oddly idealistic in a nihilistic kind of way.

Justin, you would love this theater group in Chicago "Theater Oobleck." IMO, they are the funniest, smartest, most original ensemble in Chicago. They're anarchists (and not just in the Marx Brothers sense). They don't have a director. I saw this production a while ago, which they revived called, "The Pope is Not A Eunuch."

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago...ent?oid=873018

These Ooblecks come to Chicago and put on a few productions with names like Godzilla Vs. Lent and Cud, to which various critics respond with names like "offbeat" and "audacious." The critics are impressed with the funky ambience of the Oobleck home base behind Cabaret Voltaire; they like the heady, anarchic storm of jokes, allusions, subversions, and cracked associations Oobleck unleashes, bringing folks like Martin Heidegger and Mitzi Gaynor into the same sudden universe.

And from the same article/review:

You heard me, I said "genius." An adolescent genius; a chaotic genius; a groping, exasperating, grandiose, hilarious genius. You can see it in the current Oobleck show, The Pope Is Not a Eunuch--a sophisticated satire, at once frivolous and dead-on, that runs from the bowels of the Vatican to the shores of Lake Michigan; from the conniving Cardinal Sindona to Dizzy, the arpeggio-singing baby; from the murder of Pope John Paul I to the suspension of cause and effect; from a crazed Harriet Beecher Stowe to something like the arctic scene from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; from camouflage miters to elephant sausage; from information-age stasis to an anarchist paradise, where authority is a disgrace, assassination is legal, and you can hear the infant poetry of "a thousand beautiful stories explaining themselves to each other."

signed, Ann (who is an anarchist at heart)

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I refuse to join the circular firing squad. I will fight for progress, as slow as it may be, and I will not yield to the reactionary Right in the name of "sending people a message." The stakes are too high right now.

Do you think that asking to keep Obama accountable for his numerous broken campaign promises as a circular firing squad? It just really looks like a double standard when we on the Left yelled loudly when Bush took us down the road of war and favored the corporation. Yet, when Obama does similar things, we excuse him with statements about his not being a saint.

Holding our representatives accountable is our first and foremost responsibility as citizens. I'm grateful that more and more of us are awakening to that reality.

Originally Posted by annla899

Justin, you would love this theater group in Chicago "Theater Oobleck." IMO, they are the funniest, smartest, most original ensemble in Chicago.

Meh. I'm not opposed to goofballery for the sake of goofballery. I'm just not really terribly interested in it.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Meh. I'm not opposed to goofballery for the sake of goofballery. I'm just not really terribly interested in it.

They're not merely goofballs. They actually have a point and their plays make many points. You just get to laugh your ass off while you get the point.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Do you think that asking to keep Obama accountable for his numerous broken campaign promises as a circular firing squad? It just really looks like a double standard when we on the Left yelled loudly when Bush took us down the road of war and favored the corporation. Yet, when Obama does similar things, we excuse him with statements about his not being a saint.

Holding our representatives accountable is our first and foremost responsibility as citizens. I'm grateful that more and more of us are awakening to that reality.

Loyal opposition is extremely important and necessary, especially for politicians. But a little honey with the vinegar doesn't hurt, either.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Do you think that asking to keep Obama accountable for his numerous broken campaign promises as a circular firing squad? It just really looks like a double standard when we on the Left yelled loudly when Bush took us down the road of war and favored the corporation. Yet, when Obama does similar things, we excuse him with statements about his not being a saint.

Holding our representatives accountable is our first and foremost responsibility as citizens. I'm grateful that more and more of us are awakening to that reality.

When the other side is worse in every way....

We know what the Republican Party now stands for -- crony capitalism, a ravaged environment for quick bucks, male dominance within a family, militarism, sadistic or sociopathic narcissism among elites, extreme social hierarchy, brutal management, superstition and pseudoscience, heterosexist bigotry, and special favors for Fundamentalist Christianity and the more bloodthirsty factions within Roman Catholicism. I can't quite say racism because these people would treat poor people of all origins equally -- badly. It's practically a re-imposition of the Gilded Age ideology that died in Russia when Lenin took over.

President Obama is no saint, but just look at the Other Side. That side wants to create plenty of incentives for being born into the Right Family and disincentives for much else. So how do I become a Rockefeller?

We don't need political saints to lead us. We need tax laws that encourage small business instead of giant corporations, more spending on education so that children of poor families have a competitive chance, a culture that fosters diversity as richness instead of threat, and a culture that sees pacifism as loyalty. We need to divest ourselves as a nation of the pathologies that looked so attractive in the preceding 3T. Now that we see the consequences of an ethos that proclaims "Devil take the hindmost" and "I've got mine -- $crew you!", what do we do with the inevitable losers and their innocent loved ones? Do we tolerate a new form of serfdom in which those left behind are expected to become dependents of those who tolerate their existence only in severe poverty and subjection? Such has shown a tendency to become outright slavery. In view of the cleverness of elites, they can create something similar to a prohibited relationship bereft of one critical feature of law and create a permissible horror.

The current GOP stands for transforming the vices of the 3T other than those with obvious origins in the ghetto or barrio into the American Way of Life -- never mind that such an "American way" is unsustainable and abominable due to its accretion of fascist and feudal elements that most of us thought were left behind in Europe or had been dismantled here.

I voted for, made about 100 calls for, and gave money for, Obama in 2008. (The amounts were not large.) When he appointed Larry Summers his top economic guy I was so stunned I literally went into denial. I have been massively disappointed to discover that he is not in the least what his detractors accuse him of being, that is, a big-government liberal who wants to restrain free enterprise. I suppose I should have known better, since there hasn't been a true liberal Democrat in the White House since LBJ, but I thought this was going to be different. There are evidently no real links between the mass of working Americans and the Democratic Party any more that work. Nor is Obama trying to create any. Like Clinton, on whose Administration he drew so heavily, he seems determined to prove to independents and Republicans that he doesn't fit their stereotype of a Democrat.

The problem is that he trusts the Establishment that got us into this mess and Establishment solutions cannot get us out. Once again, having snared OBL, he has a chance to get us out of Afghanistan, but it will surely be a big surprise if he takes it.

However, anyone who has any faith in rationality and government at all, in my opinion, has no option but to vote for him again next time, and I expect to do so. I very much doubt that I'll be giving any money or making any phone calls this time, however, and I am quite sure that there will be a great many more like me.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Do you think that asking to keep Obama accountable for his numerous broken campaign promises as a circular firing squad? It just really looks like a double standard when we on the Left yelled loudly when Bush took us down the road of war and favored the corporation. Yet, when Obama does similar things, we excuse him with statements about his not being a saint.

Holding our representatives accountable is our first and foremost responsibility as citizens. I'm grateful that more and more of us are awakening to that reality.

I'm going to vote for the most viable progressive candidates whenever possible. Between elections, I will advocate for progressive positions.

I don't see that it is a good use of my time to undercut someone who, for all his flaws, is still going to be better for the country than the Republican candidate. My energy is better spent elsewhere.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

When he appointed Larry Summers his top economic guy I was so stunned I literally went into denial. I have been massively disappointed to discover that he is not in the least what his detractors accuse him of being, that is, a big-government liberal who wants to restrain free enterprise. I suppose I should have known better, since there hasn't been a true liberal Democrat in the White House since LBJ, but I thought this was going to be different. There are evidently no real links between the mass of working Americans and the Democratic Party any more that work.

And that's why cultural issues often decide American elections.

Originally Posted by DKaiser

Nor is Obama trying to create any.

True. And worse than that. After he was safely elected in 2008, his team did everything it could to demobilize the people who worked to get him elected.
Obama is part of the establishment and the establishment is currently so corrupted by corporate campaign money that they will not and can not solve any problem that their rent seeking benefactors prosper from.

And true change must come from the people.

Originally Posted by Dkaiser

The problem is that he trusts the Establishment that got us into this mess and Establishment solutions cannot get us out. Once again, having snared OBL, he has a chance to get us out of Afghanistan, but it will surely be a big surprise if he takes it.

Which is why IMHO we aren't anywhere close to being able to put the 4T behind us. The solutions being applied to the 4T problems have to work before a 1T is possible. We're arguably going in the wrong direction right now as fast as our elite can get us there. (nowhere?)

Originally Posted by DKaiser

However, anyone who has any faith in rationality and government at all, in my opinion, has no option but to vote for him again next time, and I expect to do so. I very much doubt that I'll be giving any money or making any phone calls this time, however, and I am quite sure that there will be a great many more like me.

The professionals are going to totally run his 2012 re-election bid. It would be best if the energy from the 2008 campaign and the populist anger now evident in the midwest and elsewhere over the latest shredding of the social contract by stealth governors were channeled into downballot races. That's the only way a difference can be made. Almost anyone who is fairly high in the American government right now got there by playing by the 3T rules. Our current leaders will not chose a different path. The world that they understand and have prospered in is what they will seek to maintain. Even if it costs the common people everything. And costing the common people everything is what we now see in budget proposals that continue to fund defense systems that the Pentagon doesn't even want while making permanent the Bush tax cuts and attempting to effectively destroy Medicare for everyone born after 1956.

Everything is gong to get worse before anything can get better.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I'm going to vote for the most viable progressive candidates whenever possible. Between elections, I will advocate for progressive positions.

I don't see that it is a good use of my time to undercut someone who, for all his flaws, is still going to be better for the country than the Republican candidate. My energy is better spent elsewhere.

As per above, the center-left coalition that united behind Obama in 2008 needs to concentrate its efforts on taking over the available levels of the Democratic party. Support the most progressive viable candidate in primaries. The only way to end the current decay pattern that the United States is in is to make it known to the politicians that continuing the status quo is unacceptable. Our leaders have to fear us more than they do big money.
And we're a long way from being there.

Brian's historical survey was pretty accurate with one exception: union members before the New Deal were not Democrats--they were at least as likely to be Republicans. He also seems to have forgotten that farmers made up a substantial share of voters in the first half of the 20th century and Democrats did pretty well among them.

I have taken a lot of heat, most of it from Brian, over my statements to the effect that rationality has lost most of its influence over public affairs. But I think a lot of the more optimistic liberal posts here, not only Brian's by any means, are still refusing to face facts about what is going on in this country. Just because the Tea Party is crazy does not mean that they can't get into power. This morning's NY Times includes this article on the coming primary challenge to Richard Lugar in Indiana, which reflects what I've been saying about the Tea Party. Folks, they already have one house of Congress and could easily get the other one in 18 months. And if they do we are going to be in a world of trouble. For Obama to be re-elected, stabilize the situation where it is, and take us definitely into a rather discouraging High is probably the best thing that can happen now.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

When the other side is worse in every way....

We know what the Republican Party now stands for -- crony capitalism, a ravaged environment for quick bucks, male dominance within a family, militarism, sadistic or sociopathic narcissism among elites, extreme social hierarchy, brutal management, superstition and pseudoscience, heterosexist bigotry, and special favors for Fundamentalist Christianity and the more bloodthirsty factions within Roman Catholicism. I can't quite say racism because these people would treat poor people of all origins equally -- badly. It's practically a re-imposition of the Gilded Age ideology that died in Russia when Lenin took over.

President Obama is no saint, but just look at the Other Side. That side wants to create plenty of incentives for being born into the Right Family and disincentives for much else. So how do I become a Rockefeller?

We don't need political saints to lead us. We need tax laws that encourage small business instead of giant corporations, more spending on education so that children of poor families have a competitive chance, a culture that fosters diversity as richness instead of threat, and a culture that sees pacifism as loyalty. We need to divest ourselves as a nation of the pathologies that looked so attractive in the preceding 3T. Now that we see the consequences of an ethos that proclaims "Devil take the hindmost" and "I've got mine -- $crew you!", what do we do with the inevitable losers and their innocent loved ones? Do we tolerate a new form of serfdom in which those left behind are expected to become dependents of those who tolerate their existence only in severe poverty and subjection? Such has shown a tendency to become outright slavery. In view of the cleverness of elites, they can create something similar to a prohibited relationship bereft of one critical feature of law and create a permissible horror.

The current GOP stands for transforming the vices of the 3T other than those with obvious origins in the ghetto or barrio into the American Way of Life -- never mind that such an "American way" is unsustainable and abominable due to its accretion of fascist and feudal elements that most of us thought were left behind in Europe or had been dismantled here.

This makes no sense. Keeping Obama accountable is doing him a favor. It appears that the Republicans not only have Obama running scared, which makes him lean to the right, they have most of us in their pockets too.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

He also seems to have forgotten that farmers made up a substantial share of voters in the first half of the 20th century and Democrats did pretty well among them.

You're correct, I did forget that. It helps explain what success the Democrats occasionally enjoyed outside the South, such as the victories of Woodrow Wilson.

I have taken a lot of heat, most of it from Brian, over my statements to the effect that rationality has lost most of its influence over public affairs.

No, David. You've taken heat over your statements to the effect that rationality ever had much influence over public affairs in the first place. You see current reality reasonably well (except for your seemingly perpetual illusion that government and academia, which constitute your world, are all that matter in terms of making decisions), but you see the past through the same misty lens that you saw Obama through in 2008. Obama is really not much different from FDR in the ways that you describe him. FDR had to be pushed to the left. Obama will have to be, too. I admit, I allowed myself to hope that electing him was all we needed to do, even though I knew better. It was sheer wishful thinking, of course. But we have a Crisis on our hands, and there's no short cut. We're in it for the long haul, and it will require a lot of struggle on the part of large numbers of people -- as always.

Just because the Tea Party is crazy does not mean that they can't get into power. This morning's NY Times includes this article on the coming primary challenge to Richard Lugar in Indiana, which reflects what I've been saying about the Tea Party. Folks, they already have one house of Congress and could easily get the other one in 18 months.

They cannot get into and stay in power. They won (or rather, the Republicans won -- the Tea Party only won a few races, and lost more than it won) in 2010 because Democratic voters stayed home. That will not happen in 2012 to the same degree, if nothing else because it is a presidential election year and turnout is always higher then. Also, to the degree that the radicals in the GOP have taken power, they are already provoking a backlash.

The people are not sheep. They are not clay to be molded any way the politicians and the media decide. They matter. That is about to be demonstrated. I hope you pay attention.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I'm going to vote for the most viable progressive candidates whenever possible. Between elections, I will advocate for progressive positions.

I don't see that it is a good use of my time to undercut someone who, for all his flaws, is still going to be better for the country than the Republican candidate. My energy is better spent elsewhere.

You equate holding Obama accountable with undercutting him? This type of mentality is what the Republicans love because they know they have the upper hand when Obama's base will not challenge him. So the only people he has to account to are the Republicans. I would say the only cutting here is our nose in spite of our face.

Originally Posted by Deb C

You equate holding Obama accountable with undercutting him?

I call that phrase "holding Obama accountable" totally vague and lacking in specifics, is what I call it. Whether it is undercutting him or not depends on exactly how one proposes to go about holding him accountable.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

... Just because the Tea Party is crazy does not mean that they can't get into power. This morning's NY Times includes this article on the coming primary challenge to Richard Lugar in Indiana, which reflects what I've been saying about the Tea Party. Folks, they already have one house of Congress and could easily get the other one in 18 months. And if they do we are going to be in a world of trouble. For Obama to be re-elected, stabilize the situation where it is, and take us definitely into a rather discouraging High is probably the best thing that can happen now.

I can also see the Tea Party losing the one House that it now holds while gaining the other (the Senate). The Democrats won just about every Senate seat that it could conceivably win in 2006, and 2012 is the rebound. The harsh reality that huge money can buy numbing campaigns of propaganda showed itself in 2010. Many of us thought that because so many Republican Senate seats were contested, the Democrats could gain a little in the Senate. The adage that money talks understates political reality; it SHOUTS! Money can buy the talents of the most effective liars; when the lies fail the money-men have the option of turning to outright thuggery as has happened in other countries in political Crises. Between far-right groups of politicized militias, prison gangs, outlaw motorcycle clubs, and street toughs, the thugs who could pervert the process through intimidation need only get the orders and the rewards.

The early and middle years of a Crisis are a flux. Political realities can swing wildly. The closest analogue that I see to contemporary America is Spain in the 1930s, where politics swung sharply from Right to left and back to Right. There just might not be a Francisco Franco yet, but in view of the millenarian right-wing thought that now permeates the Air Force...

The people who foisted George W. Obama upon us precipitated a Crisis. They wanted to intensify the gutting of industrial work that had long made possible a large middle-income group and supplant jobs that paid a middle income with jobs with even lesser pay, lesser security, and even more destruction of political autonomy. They wanted to destroy reproductive rights (I presume to ensure that there would be more cannon fodder for wars for profit). They sought to gut education except in technical fields, but even with the degradation of science with creationist claptrap and the pricing of a college education into the stratosphere, they might be able to rely upon HB1A visas that bring in vastly-underpaid technical "help" even as engineers. They got their profitable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and don't be surprised if they find some other excuse for a war for profit. They pushed debt as a method of turning people into peons even if they had a college degree.

We, the American People, have been hoodwinked -- and $crewed! Will we be snookered again in 2012? If we are snookered again in 2012, then we are in for a really-nasty Crisis, one perhaps as devastating as our enemies of the last Crisis endured. If we are the Bad Guys this time, then I can think of many countries that would be horrible enemies who in victory would reshape much of America in ways now preposterous. I can even imagine the United States of America being dissolved into some of its constituent states, Puerto Rico getting independence, and Hawaii being restored to the old Hawaiian monarchies as vassals of Japan. I can even imagine Texas being spelled with a J for the X with the cities of Dallas, Houston, Austin, and Fort Worth renamed after Latin-American politicians and generals and Spanish as the official language of instruction at the Universidad Tecnical y Agricultural in a place renamed Estacion del Colegio. What remains of the venerable film industry of the US could relocate to the sunniest and driest part of the eastern US -- the Shenandoah Valley -- when some other country takes over Hollywood.

A system that $crews its own people almost invariably has a missionary drive to impose its exploitation, repression, and fraudulent revolution elsewhere. The British, French, Czechs, and Poles weren't the aggressors of World War II. Except for Finland the Axis Powers had thoroughly-rotten social orders. The Third Reich had the lowest industrial wages in Europe except perhaps for the Soviet Union (itself one of the most rotten social orders ever known).

It's up to us Americans now to decide whether we want to make a better America now or to take the lazy course of allowing things to get so bad that we either need a violent revolution to force a monumental change of the system (with much bloodletting) or that other countries force upon us a new social order that we could have given ourselves instead of a thug-ruled era of New Serfdom. We are in a Crisis Era, and we still have some choice on whether that Crisis is benign or catastrophic. A hint: wisdom yields more nourishing fruit than does anger.

Originally Posted by Deb C

You equate holding Obama accountable with undercutting him? This type of mentality is what the Republicans love because they know they have the upper hand when Obama's base will not challenge him. So the only people he has to account to are the Republicans. I would say the only cutting here is our nose in spite of our face.

I'll give you a specific example. I think putting up a primary candidate from the left against Obama would be a monumentally stupid idea. I say this not because I wouldn't want someone more to the left, but because I think strategically. A lot of politics IS about strategy. Hammering your incumbent from either extreme weakens them. Look at what happened to Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.

Obama has enough to deal with from the crazy Right without having to take hits from those on the Left who are bound and determined never to be happy. Politics is an imperfect business.

And you know what? Even if someone like Feingold, Kucinich, or Sanders made their way to the White House, eventually they would have to compromise somewhere and piss off the purists. That's the way politics works. This is why I don't put any of these people up on too high a pedestal.

Originally Posted by Deb C

You equate holding Obama accountable with undercutting him? This type of mentality is what the Republicans love because they know they have the upper hand when Obama's base will not challenge him. So the only people he has to account to are the Republicans. I would say the only cutting here is our nose in spite of our face.

Allowing the Tea Party and the financial angels behind it to take over America is as much a folly as is possible these days.

I now see President Obama not so much as the President who will lead us through the Crisis as one who can at best calm the tempest of impending disaster. Americans need to undo much of the destructive tendencies of the preceding 3T no matter how well those tendencies serve powerful people and interests, as those types can bring disaster. This country needs to resolve its inequities and start on economic growth that depends less upon debt and more upon toil. It needs to repudiate institutional corruption and restore reason and direction to schooling. It needs to reject the corporatism and fake populism that can only lead to political disaster. At best I see President Obama taking the role of FDR in FDR's first two terms -- establishing the foundation of a new economic order that supplants a catastrophic failure of the last 3T. Such suggests that FDR was a Reactive leader perhaps a bit ahead of his time. He had, after all, cast off the moral crusades of older Missionaries (Prohibition and eugenics) without rebelling against the old decencies, some of them from well before the Roaring Twenties. The crackdown on Depression-era gangsters is almost stereotypically a Lost effort against the pariahs of the Lost Generation.

It wasn't until World War II that FDR started getting recognition as the great leader that he was. Then he could moralize against the Axis Powers at will just like a Missionary.

The President is not above criticism. Would that Americans been more critical of this President's failed predecessor! Just let the criticism be valid and relevant.

While I do not plan to name names here, I think it's time to call a spade a spade rather than refer to it metaphorically as a shovel, as that old Nomad Mark Twain liked to say.

For 45 years or so I have listened to Boomer lefties fantasize about the great progressive mass out there which has the strength to control America and the uniformly wicked ruling class. Now the actual voting population has moved steadily rightward, with a couple of blips, since then, but that has never bothered them. Neither has the disappearance of the industrial working class or of farmers, two New Deal constituencies. (I don't mean that these things haven't bothered them but they haven't affected their world view.) Their Prophet was indeed Howard Zinn, who reinterpreted the whole history of the US in this fashion. We this today when people claim, as they do, that the only reason the Republicans did so well in the last elections was that "progressives" like themselves stayed at home. (Whether they stayed at home or not.)

In fact, the United States moves leftward (1901-17, 1933-45, 1961-66 or so) when it has leaders who genuinely believe in greater equality, particularly economic equality, and how to bring it about. The worst indictment I can levy against my own generation is our nearly total failure to produce any of those kinds of leaders. Bill Clinton is going to live in history as the most left-wing Boomer President, and he wasn't very left wing. And I think the evidence is overwhelming that left wing Xers are not going to fill this void, because Xers have too little faith in institutions and are too busy looking out for themselves and their families to think broadly about what the country needs.

If there were a left-wing movement ready to lead us through the rest of our crisis and into a new promised land, we would know it by now. It ain't out there.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Allowing the Tea Party and the financial angels behind it to take over America is as much a folly as is possible these days.

I now see President Obama not so much as the President who will lead us through the Crisis as one who can at best calm the tempest of impending disaster.

Not a Pathleader who would lead a nation onto a very different course. But by blocking some of the worst excesses, Obama may give a Pathleader a fighting chance of accomplishing the mission.

(The term "Pathleader" comes from Gail Sheehy's book Pathfinders)

The closest figure I can compare Obama to would be James Otis.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Now the actual voting population has moved steadily rightward

Untrue. Far too blanket a statement. On social issues, the actual voting population has moved steadily leftward. On economic issues, the parties have presented no real choice, except in 2008 (which turned out to be an illusion, but at least a choice was presented), and the voting population showed itself to be left-leaning on those issues as well.

Neither has the disappearance of the industrial working class or of farmers, two New Deal constituencies.

The specific New Deal coalition is dead, and has been for a long time. However, that doesn't mean that a progressive coalition is impossible. The votes are there. 2008 showed it. All that's needed is a leadership willing to follow through.

We this today when people claim, as they do, that the only reason the Republicans did so well in the last elections was that "progressives" like themselves stayed at home. (Whether they stayed at home or not.)

David, that is exactly what all the data show to be true. These aren't phantom voters. They're the ones that voted in 2006 and 2008. What, you think those folks changed their minds and voted Republican? Does it occur to you how monumentally improbable that is? And there are no data backing up the idea. The progressives stayed home in 2010, because of all the perfectly valid criticism that's been leveled at Obama -- by you among others.

In fact, the United States moves leftward (1901-17, 1933-45, 1961-66 or so) when it has leaders who genuinely believe in greater equality, particularly economic equality

1933-45 proves you wrong on that, as FDR did NOT genuinely believe in greater economic equality. I'm not really convinced that his cousin or Wilson did, either. Especially Wilson.

Bill Clinton is going to live in history as the most left-wing Boomer President

The youngest Boomers are currently 50. You can't say that for at least another ten years, probably not for another 20. Remember that the first two Missionary presidents were Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, so we had two conservative Missionaries (the first one also a prime sleazebag) before the first progressive Missionary by inclination (Hoover) took office.

In fact, I'm going to make a prediction. Whoever is elected president in 2016 will be strongly progressive, and there is at least a 50-50 chance that person will be a Boomer. If not, he/she will be an older X cusper like Obama.

If there were a left-wing movement ready to lead us through the rest of our crisis and into a new promised land, we would know it by now.

Some of us do. But if your sources of information are limited to the old media, you won't see it, not because it isn't there, but because the media don't choose to cover it unless they have no choice, as in Wisconsin recently.