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On July 10, 2008 I wrote a blog about my disappointment that although candidate Obama had promised to filibuster the FISA bill, he voted for it anyway. For a while I got off the Obama bus.
There was a good reason for it. Having lived most of my life in Britain I’d watched this movie before. Tony Blair was a new, young, dynamic candidate who promised a lot of change, etc. And he was really going to shake things up, etc. And he had a nice suit. And then he was elected Prime Minister, and suddenly the change wasn’t quite so changey.
I didn’t vote for him again. It was exasperating to watch British public opinion veer away from Blair in a manner befitting Titanic vs. the Iceberg. The problem was, and remains, that Blair and his team had spent so much capital pumping public enthusiasm for change that when he didn’t deliver, people started to get pretty bitter. About the only thing that kept him in office, frankly, was 9-11. And then, mirroring Thatcher and the Falklands War, he saw an opportunity in Iraq, and well the rest, as they say, whoever they are, is history.
Cut to: Barack Obama. I like the man. he’s easy to like. He’s smart. He has a nice suit. And he’s spent a lot of time promising change. Eventually I got back on the Obama bus, but it was with a nagging doubt that – as I say, I’ve seen this movie.
But unlike the British Public, Americans are a more impatient bunch, and it’s taken a lot less time to raise some ire from the base. It’s comforting to see.
It’s not too late. It doesn’t have to turn out the way the Blair government did. Distractions are not required to win public support. Just deliver what you promised. What’s so wrong with that?
I swear, sometimes, watching Democratic politicians coddle the right lately is like watching a bunch of teenagers who can’t wrap their head around the fact that they asked some girl out on a date and she said no. And instead of enjoying the relationship they’re in, they’re running around trying to win the girl that turned them down. it’s like surrogate form of campaigning. A drug. One day I’ll convince her and she’ll say yes! Forget the fact that she’s buck-toothed, her breath stinks and she can’t see out of one eye. She will say yes.
No. She. Won’t.
As Kos said, last night’s elections prove that. We all saw it coming. We’ve been warning about it for MONTHS.
I just wonder if there’s anyone in Washington who isn’t in living in such a fantasy world that they’re willing to heed the real message from last night, instead of inventing one over the coming days to make themselves feel better.
It’s not too late. Just do what you said you’d do. What’s so flaming difficult about that?
10 Comments
I’ve never met him.
Nice fella. Good with kids.
As for the diary of course you’re skating over the real issue which is not that Obama won’t do what he said he’d do, or that Obama is fixated on bipartisanship. The real problem is that Obama is anti-progressive. He’s your enemy not your friend.
He’s probably killing hundreds of kids a day.
Christ he has only been in office 9 months. The Bush administration and Rethugs had 8 long bloody years to get the country in this stinkin mess. Give them some time, push hard and pray.
How long does it take him to kick out Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? About two minutes. How long does it take him to stop torturing children and start obeying the law? A little longer but not eight months. There’s plenty of stuff he can do as president that doesn’t involve the legislature.
As Greenwald constantly says it’s not that Obama is slow at doing good, it’s that he’s been fast at doing evil. He’s pro-actively anti-progressive. He’s not just sitting on his hands.
Hope for eventual change
The stupidity of hope. Just like the people who voted for Obama, the people who voted last night will be just as dissatisfied in a very short time.
How many politicians ever turn out to be that much better than the guy they replaced? Not many!
We just keep voting thinking it will change our lives, make things better, and the next guy will be the true saint. It hasn’t worked yet, and undoubtedly won’t work in the future.
So the stupidity of hope fits the bill.
Good diary Stelpavlu with some nice comparative insights but you do not go far enough. I believe Tony Blair was at least a more known entity than Obama was. Consider how little experience or little he had achieved in his life before being President: a one term Senator who had only served 4 years of a 6 year term and most of those 4 years were spent campaigning to be the President. A few years (8 or 9?) as a state senator in Illinois where he failed to take positions on lots of key issues by voting the equivalent of “present” and had a pretty undistinguished background. A loss to another Democrat in his first run for national office (a congressional seat). Obama is a salesman not a statesman something that Bob Rubin at Goldman Sachs picked up early. Goldman was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama (and his biggest campaign $$ supporter in 2008). Thus, Rubin asked then Senator Obama to give the founding talk for his Goldman sponsored Hamilton Institute which favors unfettered free trade and cutbacks on entitlements (like social security). Is it a wonder that so many Goldman people now work in the Obama administration and that Goldman Sachs did so well under the bailouts? Obama never was a progressive and had little more than a murky, ill-defined record that propaganda/pr types hyped into a liberal resume so that he could win the Democratic nomination. Ever since the election he has shown he is nothing more than a DLCer as his choice of Rahm Emanuel as CofStaff shows. Obama froze progressives out of his administration and has consistently and repeatedly failed to meet with the progressive caucus of his own party in Congress. He’s wooing GOPers like Snowe and protecting and enabling GOPers-in-Democratic-clothing like Lieberman and Nelson and Max Baucus. He broke one of his major campaign pledges (remember this whopper of a lie: “I will hold all healthcare reform meetings in public and televise them live on C-SPAN”?) and talks of “insurance reform”. His healthcare proposals are a sellout to the insurers and BigPharma. Like Tony Blair, Obama is all image, all public relations, and no substance at least for real, profound, progressive change. He will face the same fate that Blair and his successor at the Labour Party will soon face: being kicked out of office.
Leen, what’s your cutoff point? 1 year? 2years? 8 years?
As for me, there never was a cutoff point. I saw the con coming by summer 2008.