Remember, this man not only writes for Forbes Magazine (not exactly a Liberal bastion), lives in SoCal (okay, that is a Liberal Bastion...outside of Orange County and parts of Northridge), but used to run Marvel Entertainment:
It is not the conservative attacks that concern me. I’m far more focused on the progressives who are already expressing their disappointment over Obama’s failure to re-introduce the public option as a way of cutting health care costs or believe the President was just too darn rational in his proposals – thus leaving what they believe to be too little negotiating room for the battles to come.
This from an article entitled “Obama’s Speech Another Meaningless Line In the Sand” by Justin Krebs, co-founder and director of Living Liberally, a progressive non-profit.
We liberals are finally learning what conservatives have said all along: Ignore the President’s pretty speeches and judge him by his actions.
Of course, liberals and conservatives are judging from two very different directions. While criticism from the Right sees him as a socialist-leaning bleeding-heart, we on the Left wish he were what the Tea Party accuses him of. Instead, we see a President that continues to adopt conservative frames, extend Republican wars (and start one of his own), and buy into the advice of a coterie of Wall Street executives. The proud progressive we wanted to elect never put single-payer healthcare on the table, hasn’t fought for meaningful mortgage reform and didn’t draw a line in the sand when it came to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.
Well, he did draw a line in the sand… but seems to think of it as his starting line for compromise, which is how the Bush-era give-away to our wealthiest citizens continued while Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.
What progressives like Mr. Krebs consistently forget is that Obama has another virtue in addition to character – he knows how to add.
The President can manage to work out that, if he is to get anything done, he has to get a vote through the House of Representatives where the vote totals are stacked against him.
So, you ask, why didn’t he get his way when the Democrats controlled both houses in Congress?
Because the President can also add to 60- the number of votes he needs to accomplish anything in the Senate where the filibuster results in minority rule. All it takes is 41 ‘nays’ and the best-laid progressive plans go down the drain.
If you recall, there was a point in time when the President had 58 Democratic votes plus 2 independents in the Senate, giving him the appearance of being ‘filibuster-proof.”
However, he also had a few Blue Dog Democrats who knew that a vote with Obama was a nail in the coffin containing their own political futures. Which do you imagine was always destined to win out? Obama’s progressive plans or a Senator’s career?
The president has only one way to get something done– go directly to the people in the hope that they will have the good sense to support his rational approach and ask them to push their elected representatives to do the same. I think we can all agree that “rational” is not something the President can expect in Congress without outside pressure from the voters.
Yesterday, Barack Obama took his arguments directly to the people. Now, let’s see if the Congressional Republicans and progressives alike care to listen to the result.
By the way, Living Liberally...THANKS FOR SHOWING UP IN NOVEMBER, you really @#$^ing helped.
