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Obama has come within 30-40 miles from WI (Minneapolis and Chicago suburbs), but will not campaign. Why? Reagan and FDR wouldn’t have hesitated. NOT campaigning shows: cowardice or indifference, whereas even a losing effort (like Reagan for Bork) can get you at least a grudging respect. Obama and his Democratic colleagues are not stupid or cowardly- why do they repeatedly blow obvious political opportunities?
The answer is that the Democratic Party and Obama are not an autonomous agents trying to “win” in a party competition. Winning must be subordinated to other considerations. Some possibilities in WI are:
1) teaching people that ‘there is no alternative”, and the protests are always futile, 2) new activists reinforced by a win in WI would be a threat to take over the party, or 3) at least one of the plutocrats (0.0001%er)s has intervened personally.
Obama’s action looks as cold as Stalin’s halting the Red Army before Warsaw in 1944.
12 Comments
Sooo Sad…..
Obama wouldn’t go into Wisconsin because he knew what the outcome would be: his policies of war after war are starving the states of required funds to finance social programs people need as capitalism crumbles.
Obama is afraid to risk the fact his Wall Street agenda is no different from Scott Walkers.
Slight correction Alan.
Obama and his party are afraid that people may realize that his policies are the same as Governor Scott Walkers.
Too late.
Obama can’t show up in Wisconsin after he promised to get his marching boots on, and turned out to be lying about that.
And despite Obama’s support for Slavery in Bahrain, some unions and some working people continue to support him.
Not defending O here, but I heard the tail-end of a news report this morning stating that the prez coming to WI would have changed the scope of the election to less of a referendum on Walker’s actions to a early referendum on O himself further complicating the grassroots aims to rid the state of a governor. I’ll listen to see if I can find out who made the statement.
I am of the persuasion that it was a good thing for the recall effort that he didn’t insert himself personally.
O wants Walker to win. Yet another skirt for him to hide behind.
I think part of the anger is directed at the fact that *his* DNC hasn’t helped with the funding of the recall effort.
WI, home of the unions. Is this the final curtain call for concept of labor rights? Someone turn out the light cause I think I hear a fat lady singing. People don’t understand the word liberty anymore, its become too complicated. Maybe if unions had adopted the liberty bell? Rec’d
Obama is a corrupt politician…
There is nothing more to the guy.
Obama’s conspicuous absence in WI speaks volumes. In a race that is a virtual deadheat his presence could help energize a number of voters to vote for Barrett. And, it would demonstrate that O stands for more than the next election. His absence reveals that he doesn’t understand the significance of this recall election nationally.
I believe that he understands, I think the diarist is correct in assessing that the mainstream Democratic Party is afraid of any grassroots activism that they aren’t directly orchestrating and that such activism represents a bigger threat to the status quo that feeds and sustains them than a Republican governor not being recalled. Obama only wants astroturfed activism he can manipulate like his 2008 Hope and Change charade, not real popular activism he and the DNC aren’t directly controlling.
I await TBogg, High Scold of Yore.