Forget about “winning the future”–Barack Obama wants to win the center. That’s what the Washington Post is telling readers (7/25/11):
Obama ‘Big Deal’ on Debt a Gamble to Win the Center
Advisers think securing his plan would ensure general-election victory
The Post‘s Zachary A. Goldfarb (who can’t be held responsible for the headline) explained that Obama was making Republicans
an offer they couldn’t refuse. In exchange for trillions of dollars in cuts, including to Medicare and Social Security, Republicans would have to agree to a fraction of that in increased tax revenue.
He added:
Obama’s political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president’s standing among political independents, who abandoned Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections and who say reining in the nation’s debt is a high priority.
Perhaps this is, indeed, what White House insiders are saying. But a newspaper should point out that such ideas are hard to align with reality. As Dean Baker noted at Beat the Press:
Every poll done on this issue shows that people across the political spectrum, including Tea Party Republicans, overwhelmingly oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The Post either has some polls that no one else knows about or it’s just making things up.
Or it’s the same old story, where the media define the “center” somewhere well to the right of center.
I think we need to be careful about placing things in the context of campaign strategy. I find it really difficult to believe that anyone with a lick of sense honestly sees these slash and burn policies as “winners” among those who’d vote for a Democrat.
How about viewing this in the context of this being what Dear Misleader was backed by his bankrollers to do, a second term be damned? A Democratic president would face less resistance as he sliced and diced what passes for a social safety net, which is precisely why he got the big bucks, don’t you think?
The whole false narrative of a debt-obsessed center is designed to lend some aura of political perspicascity to this hack job. It sounds better than the RCA Victor version of “hearing his master’s voice”, doesn’t it?
My gosh, If only Obama would act as a Democrat! Instead of dismantlement of all that is sane and insured he should use his executive power to create trouble for his Republican opposition. Congress needs the president to assure the details of their spending are carried out in a timely fashion. Certainly, problems with administration can be found within districts of republicans who are obstructionist. And with the extended powers granted by the Patriot act, Somebody has to be dirty, and can be arrested and imprisoned secretly. My gosh, act El presidento.
Obama won the same percentage of the white vote as Al Gore. But it had shifted.It was younger .He raised his black vote by 2% and hispanic by about the same. Very very hard to do. Energizing that base to the same extent is a party trick he will have to pull off or he is toast.As polls stand now he is not looking good in that dept.But it does account for his steadfast demand for an increase in taxes even AFTER Harry Reed had agreed to move past it.He is playing to his base.
I have never in my life seen a President who has been so tone deaf to the people that elected him, or a Democratic President whose policies were so far to the right. I know that I could never vote for Obama if he touches Medicare. He is either the biggest fool to be President in my lifetime, or is playing chess in 11 dimensions, and I’ve seen no evidence of the latter.
What does he think he was elected to do, anyway? Gut the New Deal and the Great Society?
Whaaaa whaaaa whaaaa. This President is hardly tone deaf. You may not like his style but at least he’s trying to get shit down for this country inspite of the almost insumountable objects being placed in front of him and his own party bashing him constantly doesn’t help. The comments here are pathetic.
fuck obama. you are now seeing who he really is. when he voted against the fisa bill you all
were so enamored of him you couldn’t see the real him. i saw who he was immediately and
and turned down a job with his campaign. he will turn more to the right as we get closer
to the election. do yourselves a favor and sens bernie sanders money. he has all but rented
ads, but first he wants to know if you will support him financially before he runs. your choice obama
or bernie? not a tought one huh?
I was never fooled by him. I voted for Nader.
Fuck you, empi–Your pathetic ignorance about what constitutes principled disagreement (” . . . his own party bashing him constantly doesn’t help . . . “) is the one thing that separates thoughtful people from party hacks (like yourself) who support the Dear Leader no matter how much he betrays his own avowed principles and promises. If you’re down with the President cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, fine. (He’s not being forced to do it–he’s doing it because this is what he wants to do to get his beloved deal with his enemies.) But don’t tell me I’m the asshole because I’m not throwing my beliefs and principles aside so that a <Democratic President can outflank the Republicans to the right, crap on his base, and put the first big nail in the coffin lid of Social Security.
Obama’s Fiscal Commission Blunder and the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) Deficit Shell Game
A recent editorial by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) in USA TODAY titled Opposing view: Just say no to higher taxes
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-07-04-opposing-view-debt-limit-taxes_n.htm
speaks volumes regarding the Obama administration’s misjudgment with the Fiscal Commission. Demands for the Commission arose from the 2008 book/movie I.O.U.S.A. highlighted: the Leadership, trade, savings and budget deficits; the first three being the most middle class relevant and root causes of the budget deficit, the tip of the iceberg. The ATR’s pledge signers (not permitted to negotiate in good faith) limit the focus only to spending, throwing middle class relevant deficits under the bus and allow ATR to be the Puppet Master of a deficit shell game.
The word monarch means ‘single ruler’. Has ATR become America’s 1st Monarch? Does its anti-tax signatories represent America’s 21st Century Aristocracy?
Obama is in office for a reason. I have to agree with Doug Latimer when he says:
> A Democratic president would face less resistance as he sliced and diced what
> passes for a social safety net, which is precisely why he got the big bucks
I have thought this since about a year into Obama’s term, about the time it started to be obvious that his health care plan was a double-cross.
This crisis in our country seems like a blatant attempt to show that the government has been hijacked and since 2001 to push that fact humiliatingly into the people’s faces with one indignity and insult after another. Americans are so confused and aghast and probably all this bickering is because we don’t know what to do or think about this.
I’ll bet Germans felt this this way in the 1930’s. and I think it is every bit as threatening and urgent to respond to.
Last century it was determined that people had to be herded by the government, and now the handling is so obvious, such a farce, the facade so thin they are hardly bothering to try to hide anything. If this stands, over the next two decades Americans growing up with habituated to be living in a world where they are treated like the native population of any third world country.
I think it is beyond denial that what is happening is engineered, and that what is needed to reverse it is exactly the opposite of what the Republicans and Obama are promoting. It makes me sick to our people have to go through this.
I firmly believe that once social security or medicare is cut it reduces the confidence it in and makes it likely for a whole string of cuts and instilling cynicism and anger in the younger generations.
Soclal safety net should be getting stronger – and more global – it is not global poverty that should be bleeding into the United States!
@brux, You say “Americans are are so confused and aghast…we don’t know what to do or think…” It looks like what we are seeing is a classic example of what Naomi Klein wrote about in her book Shock Doctrine. In this book she talks about how “disaster capitalists” grab more power in disasters while people are scared, confused and weakened. After learning that they could do this during natural disasters they realized that they could manufacture disasters to capitalize on.
This manufactured debt default crisis fits into this model perfectly. The proposed slashing of the support system of our older and poorer people of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that Obama signed on to also fits well into this. If Obama fails to avert a default on the debt, using either the 14th amendment or another means, it will be further evidence that he is working for the world’s most powerful few in the global corporatocracy, rather than for the American public. The world’s most powerful few, led by Goldman Sachs, did not give Obama a record amount of money for his campaign for nothing.
Not enough Americans vote. A lot of the American people are misinformed and under-informed. The media is generally awful. This apathy gets us this government.
TimN’s minimal vocabulary (restricted to obscene name calling) is probably the best explanation as to why most of these ‘comments’ seem very uninformed. Is anybody listening to anything other than sound bites and slogans? Apparently not. God forbid they would take the time to research (in depth) all of these issues they bleating about. Who is their Shepherd… the gang of talking heads at Fox News?
Once US citizens were referred to as consumers we lost all our powers. The privatization of American anything, expanding markets beyond consumerism, the politics took over. These “sophisticated” incremental moves of political power are accomplishing nothing at all but to tank every institution, every protection, every law, every Constitutional idea reflecting “WE THE PEOPLE”. These men and women have lost their way in the pool-of-manipulations and spin, with re-election as the only goal of the whole body of predatory politics practiced in our government.
It is truly time to remove any outside money from politicking. Political advertising is the most innocuous form of the techno-twitter-FB-TV-radio propaganda. Take away the money. Allow adverts for only two weeks before the election. Why should it cost a BILLION dollars to become the president? The result is a president who works against those he “seduced” by decency, hope, dreams of humanity and a really prosperous nation built on education, manufacturing and alternative ideas. Clean out DC now!
I never called anyone a name, Latchno . . . I simply expressed outrage at a poster’s lame-ass depradations and obviously uninformed views . . . like yours, for instance. Calling someone, say, a “dickhead” is calling them a name. Telling them to fuck-off is expressing contempt and outrage about their dumb and mis-informed beliefs . . . got that? By the way, my informed poster, “comments” should be in double quotes, and lumping me in with the liars at Fox “News” (see how that works?) tells me that you, like empti above, simply see any criticism of Mr. Obama, no matter how informed and valid, as beyond the pale. You’re as reactionary and rigid in your thinking as the Fox talking heads are. If occasionally intemperate language and strongly held (and well-informed) opinions get you all worked up to the point of nutty and ill-informed ravings (“God forbid they would take the time to research (in depth) all of these issues they bleating about.” {sic}), then seek enlightenment elsewhere . . . like at your average Presidential press conference.
When will people stop acting like children. Obama is repulsively right wing. His attack on Medicare and Social Security is something he wants to do. He has been bought and sold to and by the banks and Wall Street. Why do you think his campaign won the annual award for marketing? He appointed the most right wing people to his cabinet. His behavior has been nothing other than an aggressive attack on the people of this country. Wake up and start fighting him instead of supporting him. This whole “debt crisis” is baloney. Did you know that the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, gave away 16 trillion dollars to Wall Streeters and Bankers? Add the wars of aggression, being done merely for oil, cut the military budget which is bigger than that of some countries and we have an enormous surplus. And the plutocracy at the top wants us to cover their bad bets on the stock market and pay for military excursions to ensure that they have oil to further destroy the planet. Start complaining.
I thought Obama and the “Democratic” Congress elected in 2008 lost ground in 2010 not so much because “independents” abandoned them but because campus political groups abandoned them along with many African-Americans who stayed home — rather than vote — in 2010.
How long after his election did it take to figure out that Obama was way more about class than race? The “carry-overs” in Human Resources at the US DOD and the Treasury/Fed might have been a subtle clue. Especially after his 2008 campaign virtually drowned him in “West LA” money from neo-liberals plus “eastern” money that would otherwise have gone to Hillary Clinton. That was money from disgruntled Democratic neo-cons and neo-liberal alike. So you can throw the Sun Belt and Washington State into the mix, too.
Clinton did get quite a bit of Establishment money from Wall Street and the Upper West Side in NY’s financial districts. But debt deflation from the Wall Street meltdown meant the money from the “Beyond the Beltway” progressives went instead to Obama. The shrinking upper middle class were being confronted with shrinking paper portfolios — which were drying up by the minute. Only the biggest players were making money off the Bailout.
By the way, you can still help to pay off Hillary’s 2008 campaign debt by going to:
http://hillaryclinton.com
And aren’t we ignoring the big Democratic “victory” in the 2006 elections? The one engineered by Howard Dean based on the strategy of running viable “Democratic” candidates in all 50 states? Many of the new Democrats were Repugnicrats who ran as GOP candidates in local and state elections in the past. It made for a somewhat fragile coalition in Congress and moved the Democrats even further to the Right. And it left Democratic progressives even more in the minority without a heavy black turnout at the polls for support.
So 2010 went to — shall we say — the cynics? The same ones who backed Obama because he would split the underclasses in two after draconian cuts in domestic spending led to massive social unrest? [Hmmm!] And who better than a political neophyte to run the US government after the biggest thing he’d ever run before that was a US Senate office? An office with an extra side door for corporate lobbyists to come in and massage his ego. And well out of out of sight from the “truly needy” in his Senate office waiting room?
And a man with an enormous ego, period. A self-styled “populist.” My eyes are starting to swell shut, I’m so choked up.
His “populist” plan all along is to “win the center” for corporate and vested financial interests. Huh? The “center” of US politics is an MSM artifice, anyway. Which ordinary people don’t enter into in the cable version of America’s political “center.” Only their sponsors do.
As well as the Blackwater people and the Carlyle Group. Don’t be fooled by the lack of adverts from our war profiteers. They don’t need ads. [Seen any wars actually wind down, lately? Not with Libya on the horizon.] And with ten years to build the largest mercenary force in history — one that can crush any rebellion — it’s nice to know how the hell we got here now that it no longer really matters. Even as we foot the bill for our own destruction.
Wow I have never heard such bellicose verbiage being thrown with both hands at our commander n chief on these blogs.I would be happy ,but i have noticed that most of the anger is due to the fact that most of you feel Obama is not left enough -and has feet of clay. Well at least we can meet on the ground that he is not what he pertains to be.I have no illusions though.He has your vote. Come hell or high water he has your vote when push comes to shove(And we tea party types mean to shove). Cut him one slice of slack. The realities are that this last election put an end to his dreams of a socialist utopia. Now he just wants to hold this job. Like all presidents he is now addicted.So he is spinning faster and faster trying to make everybody happy. Grabbing at his goals, and grasping at straw polls. Stuffing the cash in the gob of his war chest. Washington has made him dizzy.He came in assured…. but wrong.He will leave unsure ,confused,and defeated. And we are all the worse for it.
Am I nuts or did Fair sidestep this entire budget debate?Very little said(a little like Dems on the hill).Many things to say- but one thing is for sure.The tea party is a force to be reckoned with.Not a “terrorist”group(Bidon) or astro turf ,(Pelosi)but a counter weight to out of control government.
Another thing is for sure.Obama is looking bad.To his enemies,and to his supporters.He sounds to my imaginative mind like a frog croaking over and over “tax the rich”,”tax the rich”.S and p crashed.Treasury bonds picked up as money flowed away from stocks as the panic begins.This agreement in reality cut little.The tea party knows that.Our president will be happy with that.And the danger grows everyday,as the world reacts to our true state of the union.Another thing is sure…..With this man in office nothing will get better.