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Obama, the Clinton Clone is back to business as usual. he’s inviting another right wing christian bigot, Louie Giglio, to give the benediction at his second inaugural. It seems that his ‘evolution’, just in time for the election is now a devolution. This is not an isolated incident. Another bigot heading up a rally or Inaugural for Obama is nothing new. It started in the summer of 2008 in the South with a string of cultist revival meetings disguised as Obama rallies featuring pig-bigot Donnie McClurkin and ended in the weeks before the election with Obama himself galvanizing the bigot vote to defeat marriage equality in California with his outrageously bigoted comment that he opposed marriage equality because ’gawd’s in the mix’ at pig-bigot Rick Warrens bigotfest and on MTV.
The contradiction between Obama’s promises and his bigotry which defeated marriage equality in California help recreate and invigorate the GLBT movement.
A note for all the Obama supporters during the recent election – this is not what we deserve but it is what we’re going to get because of those who enabled Obama and the Democrats ongoing bigotry, union busting and warmongering. The problem is not just another in a long series of alliances between Obama and religious right, the problem is that Democrats have had decades to pass ENDA and repeal DOMA and consistently refuse to do so even when they had huge majorities in Congress.
People who advocated voting for Obama and the Democrats or Romney and the Republicans voted for a mad dog warmonger whose policies murder civilians and waste the lives of GIs from Morocco to Indonesia. Which of them did you vote for?
People who advocated voting for Obama and the Democrats or Romney and the Republicans voted for either an ‘evolved’ bigot or a non-evolved bigot. Which bigot do you prefer?
People who advocated voting for Obama and the Democrats or Romney and the Republicans voted for scabs and union busters who want to dismantle Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, who approved of mass foreclosures and who want to impose Greek style austerity on working people to make the rich much richer. Which of these corporate scabs caught your fancy and got your vote?
Democrats are Republicans in drag. Period. Full Stop. We won’t advance until we leave them in the dust.
36 Comments
Yeah, good luck with this diary. Even though it pretty much echoes my own feelings, I can’t recommend it. Sorry.
I’ve been down on Obama voters, and their reasons for supporting him, as much as anyone. But all it does is antagonize folks that we need moving forward.
Most Obama voters are good and decent people that voted out of fear. They made a mistake. I make a hundred every day.
The best we can hope for is that they realize their mistake, own up to it, and realize moving forward that “Democrats are Republicans in drag. Period. Full Stop.”
I fail at trying to make that happen. Good luck to you.
A little over one third of the potential electorate voted for Obama, a little under one third voted for Romney and the other third refused to vote. Obama got some voters because they succumbed to the scare tactics of the Democrats claiming that Republicans are fascists and some because of delusions, but those who did so claiming to be part of the left did so have no excuse. None at all. They, in all likelihood, aren’t going to move forward. For them it wasn’t a mistake, it was just another in a long series of capitulation. They’ve become what they claim to oppose.
They can be blamed for enabling war, union busting and warmongering.
It won’t be what you or I say that will move people away the Democrats, it’ll be their imposed austerity program, their mad dog warmongering and their attacks on working people and our unions.
Does anyone remember, “Association of Community Organization for Reform Now”, better known as “ACORN”. Now I’ll give you the formula for success. This is guaranteed to work. First we combine: the dispossessed, OWS, and Progressive’s. These three groups of people have a desire to get from here to there; there being a powerful voice in Washington DC. The ACORN blueprint will serve as a means of connecting with dispossessed people all over this country. That would be implemented by OWS. The political head of this organization would be “United Progressive’s” with a name that reflected what they are about. They are about a government solution to our present day problems that would include the wisdom of FDR in regard to unemployment, and the compassion of MLK in regard to the dispossessed.
FDR’s WPA provided almost 8 million jobs between 1935 and 1943. Eight years of jobs cost less than 4 years of Obama’s war in Afghanistan; and that’s after converting those dollars into today’s dollars. Change progressives desire can only come about when they have a seat at the table. If OWS, dispossessed people all over this country, and “United Progressive’s”, under the umbrella of a party that reflected FDR and MLK, could come together in harmony and mutual respect, they could get a seat at the table of power, and “force” things to move in their desired direction.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. At its peak ACORN had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the U.S.,[3][4] as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru.[5] ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.[6] It filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on November 2, 2010, effectively closing the organization,.[7] Many ACORN members and organizers formed new state-wide organizations.[8]
When are progressives going to quit whining about the problem and start trying to find a solution?
>Which of them did you vote for?
Obama
>Which bigot do you prefer?
The black bigot.
>Which of these corporate scabs caught your fancy and got your vote?
The one that went to public high school.
Not much of a fire. My toes are still chilly. What is your point? You would have preferred Romney?
We have work to do?
If you would have preferred Romney that is your perogative. If you are trying to tell us we have work to do I think you are preaching to the choir. Either way my feet are still cold.
If you were looking to buy a car, and saw one that you liked, and the salesman told you it had everything you were looking for; but after you bought it, it didn’t even run. That’s called “bait and switch”.
Obama dumped all of his African American friends who helped him get where he is; 20 year friends. How do you think they feel? It’s time to move on, that’s all we can do.
No, it’s time to understand that O’Bummer’s lying is not personal strategy, it’s the empire’s strategy.
“But all it does is antagonize folks that we need moving forward.”
Unfortunately, substantive change doesn’t happen without some friction. Toes will have to be stepped on.
Rec’d, Bill Purdue. WelshT’s post is a good companion piece to yours.
(I didn’t vote for a bigot or war-monger; nor did I vote for a corporate scab or union basher.)
Uummm, I voted for neither. I voted for the other black guy, you know, that Socialist black guy and his Hispanic running mate.
And I’m a straight white guy.
You’re right about people who voted for the Democrats enabling what I consider to be fascist policies that are accelerated beyond anything GW Bush ever tried. Obama makes Nixon look like an unabashed liberal, in comparison. For that, you get a rec.
Touche’, comrade Ludwig.
As a practical matter, people who voted for Obama are only enabling his policies if they live in a state that cast its electoral votes for him or if they have a Democratic Senator or member of Congress. Collective guilting is not pretty.
And Obama supporters are a pretty broad range of people. Probably half or more do not necessarily agree with the agenda of progressives, even those within the Democratic Party.
I’m getting the feeling that these angry diaries are by former Democrats mourning the death of the New Deal.
You mean [compradors]?
So, your strategy for change is to spend the next four years whining at and scolding people who voted for Obama? Good luck with that, Victoria.
It’s not much past two months since Obomba was re-elected, so projecting into four years is silly on its face, Margaret. But given what this president both has and hasn’t done in these two months, it would seem a bit natural to express outrage if one hadn’t voted for him, or castigate others for their anger…if one had.
I’m not a scab, a racist or a warmonger and I’ve never voted for a Democrat or a Republican because what they do after being elected is to continue institutional racism, misogyny and homohating. They start wars to make US corporation rich and attack workers and our unions.
Voting is not the way to change. The history of the US (and elsewhere) is clear on the matter – massive, militant actions by workers and small farmers create change. Later, politicians and the courts may, but often don’t, validate what we won and still later, as in the case of the 13th, 14th and 15 amendments, Social Security or Medicare, they take it back.
Democrats are not part of the left. They’re right centrists and they’re the enemies of workers, people of color, environmentalists and the antiwar movement. Period. Full Stop.
No doubt too much scar tissue.
You no longer feel any pain for having voted for war, racism, homophobia, misogyny, the ruin of our environment, union busting and the murder of American citizens by Obama.
Lakota, look up the methods of the Cuban Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria, INRA (National Institute for Agrarian Reform) formed by the Fidelistas to implement Agrarian Reform Law of 1959.
They were much more effective at change. When farm employees and share croppers on large plantations demonstrated that they were poor because the plantation owners were super rich, INRA confiscated the land and distributed it to the poor. When strikers were physically attacked by managers and owners INRA and the Rebel Army trained their guns and cannon on the managers and the strike was swiftly settled.
That’s how it’s done when people get serious.
Well there are 65 million Obama voters and 60 million Romney voters out there, a bunch of whom are going to have to be persuaded to do something if change is going to occur. Whipping up on them is not going to persuade them.
The Democratic Party has been a center-right party for at least 65 years. And before 1932, the Democratic Party at its best was a center-right party. It is only when they have been pushed movementally that change has occurred, and then only so they could return to being a center-right party. But that doesn’t mean that Republican voters should be given a pass. After all a lot of the union workers who left the Democratic Party started voting Republican. Most farmers vote Republican.
Rights are never secure without vigilance and struggle. Ain’t nobody gonna do it for us but us.
Not true, Tarheel. As a practical matter, if those ‘nonessential’ folk had voted for Jill Stein, a clearer record of opposition, no matter how the electoral college vote went, would have been presented.
Not to say that there might not in any case have been finagling of the highest order – I’m still chewing on the fixed percentages the Greens were showing in vote tallies so I don’t think those results were without challenge – but in the environment in which we swim, who’s to know?
Recommended.
Democrats, and not just Democrat politicians, are part of the Right. They’re the enemy.
The strategy of the Left will be to provide a program that can help unify the union left, now growing in numbers and militancy faster than at any time since the last Depression, and the radicalized pro-union unemployed and underemployed youth who were mobilized by the Occupiers.
That program will have to present ideas that combine real solutions, needed solutions that are at the same time solutions that the banksters and looters and the political prostitutes who front for them will never agree to.
A program like that is based on the thinking of figures from Sam Adams to Lenin and is designed to polarized and draw large numbers of workers, people of color, immigrant and imported workers and the antiwar and environmentalist movements into political combat with the looters and settle the question of who should rule.
A program like that is aimed at creating the conditions that will allow us to form a workers state. If the following sounds like whining to you maybe you ought to invest in a dictionary.
Domestic Affairs
• Call for constitutional amendments guaranteeing socialized medicine, quality housing, nutrition and trade union levels of pay and benefits for workers, students, retirees, job trainees and the unemployed.
• Call for the expropriation of banks, financial institutions and manufacturing and transportation companies that accepted or applied for federal bailouts, to be run by councils of workers and consumers. Call for laws to criminalize hoarding large amounts of money here or overseas.
• Call for a 100% tax on personal income over $200,000.00 a year and a 100% tax on estates over that amount.
• End the horrors of unemployment by adopting a 30 hour work week, with full benefits, for 40 hours pay and by supporting demands for trillions to be invested in publically owned and democratically Manhattan Project style efforts to green industry, agriculture and the infrastructure.
• Not a penny in handouts and bailouts for the looter rich. Criminalize industrial and agricultural pollution and polluters.
Military and Foreign Affairs
• Immediate, total and permanent withdrawal of all US troops, air and naval fleets, spy agencies and mercenaries to US home bases to be demobilized and until then used to improve infrastructure, protect strikers and people being foreclosed and to provide emergency housing, food and medical care for the homeless and unemployed.
• Cut all assistance to the zionist colony in Palestine, give the military assistance to the Palestinians and demand that the zionists accept Palestinian control of Palestine.
• Convene an International War Crimes Tribunal to investigate US involvement in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Pakistan and elsewhere.
• Convene an International Peace Conference based on a US constitutional renunciation of violence to solve international disputes. Pass a constitutional amendment renouncing aggression against other countries and making it a capital crime to lie and plot to begin wars of aggression.
Civil Rights and liberties
• Full rights for immigrant and imported workers including the right of dual citizenship.
• Declare the US a multilingual nation.
• Criminalize discrimination, violence and harassment by racists, gynephobes, GLBT haters, immigrant bashers and union busters.
• Reinstate the Bill of Rights
Let the record be clear. Many of us, myself among them, voted for Obama as if he were a progressive, for his first term. After he was in office, soon after, we realized, to our dismay, that he was not the man we thought he was – and we said so for the next nearly four years, our clarity increasing, our dismay increasing, as that record resolved itself. And we felt responsible, we apologized even for voting as we had done. We put our feet to the fire, we moved on, and we voted for Jill Stein.
The questions Mr. Perdue ask this term’s voters are not whines or scolds; they are questions it would behoove you to ask yourselves, so that we can all join together to do better next time around.
Put your feet to the fire. Believe me, you will feel much better after you have done so.
We have work to do.
And what would that clearer record of opposition have done? If politicians are not listening to the people a clearer record of opposition does not change that unless it actually and practically threatens their job. In this political environment, unlike earlier ones, sending signals does not work.
It could have been the start of a voting bloc, as in: had every voter who had serious moral issues with voting for Obomba voted third party, etc. At the very least, reaching a 5% threshold would have meant matching funds for the next election, iirc.
I exclude voters who are confused or deluded because the left is not allowed on the ballot or allowed media time.
I include those who pretend to be for workers but who advocate voting for our enemies, the Democrats.
Publicly repudiate the Democrats, every one. Mock them, belittle them, make them objects of scorn and derision. That’s really all one can do. Make being identified as a Democrat a mark of shame as it should be. The Democratic brand must be destroyed to create space for something better.
Boy, howdy, it’s nice to see you back, Kurt Sperry. And on fire. ;o)
Do you really think that would create the space for a third party?
Is that all one can do, really? Or just all that a lot of people would risk doing?
Once again, in case you don’t know my position. I don’t think electoral politics gets fixed until the political culture in which it exists gets fixed. And that doesn’t get fixed by pissing off folks who might help you. As satisfying as it might be to one’s self-esteem. Publicy ridicule the politicians, but treat voters with some degree of respect.
Thanks Bill Perdue for taking the time to post here at FDL.
I don’t visit DKos anymore. I stopped going to Salon after GG left. I have checked out GG’s new site and still concur with GG’s way of politics looking and seeing but now seldom read GG @guardian.co.UK site comments and not placing comments at GG’s. I am now down to just following FDL on a week to week basis from past peak of trying to stay current with 5-7 politics themed websites week to week.
Some days coming here to FDL it seems maybe the time has come to stop visiting FDL as well. I hope I will see/know when the time has come.
In November 2012 Barack Obama was re-elected to be POTUS until 2016.
It seems if good and decent people could not vote Barack Obama out of the WH after seeing and knowing what Obama did/did not do from 2009 to 2012 then what would ever persuade them to do so?
Some large points why voting Obama out of WH was doing good politics –
>>> Barack Obama did not support OccupyWS/likely enabled effort(s) to weaken OccupyWS or other Occupy themed projects.
>>> Barack Obama is doing to Bradley Manning what is being done to Bradley Manning.
>>> Barack Obama is a war monger who has chosen to be a war criminal.
>>> Barack Obama sabotaged MediCareForAll while signing off on AHIPGiveUsAllYour$$Care.
>>> Barack Obama selected Eric Holder to do what as AG Eric Holder does not do.
>>> Barack Obama has allied the Obama WH with Wall St.,Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase while sitting still as Ben Bernanke shovels one QE after another out in service to Wall St. and the big USA money banks while telling common USians to suck it up,leave their houses/homes behind based on foreclosures done fraudulently,Live Austerity and Walk The Edge Of Ginned Up Fiscal Cliffs being mixed up needlessly with SS.
>>> Barack Obama is pro M-I-C and is conducting hypocrisy based American Empire.
>>> Barack Obama has done/is doing very little about Global Climate Change brought on by egregious human conduct and abuse of the planet.
Just on Occupy and Manning issues alone — two core/signature FDL site issues as well– to not vote for Barack Obama ( again/1st time)was a matter of not being a hypocrite. To swagger/still swagger about FDL and brow beat others about not voting/not being pro D/Obama was/is being/doing what? Often smelled/smells like IOIYAAD being presented as a legitimate framing premise. Serially presenting “reasons” and rolling out rote apologia about D’s and Obama while doing simpleminded R vs. D junk at this point in early 2013 is willed ignorance/ misdirection.
The idea/notion that people voted for Barack Obama out of fear is a dimly lit/weak premise. Barack Obama was/is not pro Occupy and plainly is not doing right by Bradley Manning — these are two issues that were very well illustrated here at FDL during 2012. Yet not enough reason to vote Barack Obama out of the WH in November 2012? Then what ever was?
Barack Obama’s war mongering,war crimes and allowing innocent adults/children to be killed repeatedly on Obama’s say so were not enough to cause “good and decent” people to vote Barack Obama out of the WH? Then what was/is?
Too late now and not good consequences will ensue.
There are three categories of political people in our banana republic.
Democrat and Republican politicians from both parties represent the worst and most indecent people in politics and are all political prostitutes. There have been no exceptions to that rule since 1865, That’s especially true for those who pretend to be ‘progressives’. Kucinich voted against health care and for Obama’s plan to make HMO and pharmaceutical company owners richer.
Next in order come shills for the Democrats or Republicans who want to apologize for politicians. They often pretend that elections are the way to change things. That’s delusional.
The third and largest category are voters.
Some are politically aware and if they voted for Democrats or Republicans they betrayed the struggles of workers, people of color, imported workers, the anti war movement and the fight to prevent climate disaster.
The rest – at least the two thirds who vote for Democrats and Republicans – are simply miseducated and bombarded by lies. They’re never given a choice. The remaining one third to one half, depending on the election, are politically aware and reject the swamp of Democrat and Republican politics. They don’t vote or register protest votes. Good for them.
Stop pretending that the tiny number of politically aware voters who vote for our enemies are not acting like Benedict Arnold – they are.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Sam Adams, 08 01 1776
You don’t get it. You’re blinded by too many silly civics classes. You accept the idea that the US is a ‘democracy’ ignoring entirely the fact that we’re ruled by the .01%.
Elections are not how change occurs in a banana republic. Real change comes from militant and massive mobilizations or workers like the rise of the CIO, small farmers, who won at Lexington and Appomattox, women who won suffrage and some reproductive rights, people of color who fought from Little Big Horn to the rise Black nationalism, immigrants, antiwar struggles like defeating the US in Vietnam, and from environmental activists.
Our struggles are ultimately won in the streets, workplaces and the barrack. We got fundamental change in 1775-1783 and completed those changes in 1860-1865. The next time we get fundamental change it’ll follow mass movement that culminate in the creation of a workers state.
“Do you really think that would create the space for a third party?”
No. But it might create space for a genuine second party.
And “folks” are already pissed off, regardless of who they voted for. You suggest they’d be more pissed off for being confronted with their hypocrisy (Democratic and Republican voters alike) and out of pique would refuse to “help.” And so, they deserve some degree of…
“respect?”
I don’t think our political culture gets fixed until the electoral politics that define it gets fixed, which includes politically “progressive” blogs and bloggers which, overtly or covertly, championed and voted (with plenty of self-esteeem) for Barack Obama when there were alternatives.
And I think being rational about and well adjusted to the cognitive dissonance of it all is the anti-thesis of being well adjusted and rational.
…but that’s just what I think.
The first rule of life period, is to work with what you got, because you most certainly can not work with what you don’t got.
We got OWS. Those are young energetic people all over this country, who would become aligned with any organization that has their interests at heart. The two operative words here are “young energetic” as opposed to “old and tired”. There is no patent on the ACORN blueprint, read it. If you don’t got money, you got to have people. How many people all over this country have been screwed by both parties? Those people would very much like a viable option to D and R. First a viable option has to be provided. An idea is not enough, someone has to do the work of gathering support from those who have been ignored by both parties. That’s where “young and energetic” comes in, that’s where the ACORN blueprint comes in. Is there a party called the progressive party? Do people called “progressives” only exist in “cyber-space”?
A legion of “disenfranchised” people all over this country need representation, those people hailed “Barack Obama” as their leader, and their representative. He did the same thing to them as he did his friends of 20 years, he discarded them like other disposable objects.
The conditions are right, the time is right; there has never been a better opportunity in history for progressives as now. Quit complaining and go to work on what you claim you want.
I like that. This includes those who had the microphone, such as Norman Solomon, Robert Scheer, writers for The Nation, union leaders, and every other person and group who urged people to “vote for Obama, especially in swing states.” These are the people who, in subservience to the Democratic Party, robbed others of their independence and created the illusion that it was okay to put your stamp of approval on Obama’s drone wars, his NDAA, his slobbering at the thought of decimating Social Security, and so on.
It is not the time to move on and let bygones be bygones. Should we forget the Bush/Cheney war crimes? Of course not, no more than we should forget those who urged support for the war current criminal.
Ridicule them often. Don’t let them or any person who should have known better off the hook until they admit their mistake. If that sounds harsh, remember: the 2014 midterms are around the corner, and these same people will be crawling out of the sewer, urging people to vote once again for war-supporting, Social-Security-decimating Democratic, “less evil” politicians who have their noses firmly up Obama’s posterior. More votes for Democrats means less votes for independents.
Explain to me how it creates space for a second party and which Congressional Districts such a second party could take.
I didn’t say it was a great plan or one likely to garner short term results. It won’t; nothing will. It isn’t so much the best thing as the only thing that can set the nation on a righteous course again.
Politics change when culture changes, the prevailing tolerance of the status quo and those enabling it cannot coexist with significant change. If mocking Democrats is too confrontational simply stop taking them seriously, frankly admit to yourself that the Democratic Party is essentially just a tool of the .01% and that its ends and the ends of the remaining 99.99% are separate and often contradictory. Those advocating for the party are thus acting against their own interests if they aren’t getting paid to do so like mainstream journalists and party hacks. You know those intelligent and sometimes insightful columnists and pundits you take seriously who pitch the “lesser of two evils” defense of the Democrats? Maybe they’re talented writers or engaging speakers and they resonate with you. Recognize they too are the enemy–at least as long as they advocate supporting politicians who are working against the interests of the vast majority of Americans–and stop taking them seriously. Once we collectively do that, the problems become magically more solvable—that and there is no other way.
I perhaps should add that the primary driver of the inevitable ebb of ideological movement conservatism is just this; a growing consensus that it is an unserious political movement and that not just its leaders but its adherents are broadly seen as irrational. This is more social/cultural than political but the one precedes the other.
A Democratic Party held in similar regard (as they well should be) would suffer a similar loss of legitimacy. With congresspeople held in lower regard than lice, cockroaches and probably punch bowl turds and the economic wealth being stolen without consequences by a tiny oligarchy, whatever you think about the inevitability of the status quo, we aren’t as far as you might think at any moment from populist reset. The pump is getting well primed.