Back in the dark days of September 2008, just after Sarah Palin was revealed as John McCain’s running mate, the grassroots foot soldiers in the change campaign went into a tailspin seemingly overnight. I was a little off in the final numbers and Palin stayed until the bitter end, but I did predict the composition of President Obama’s winning coalition of democrats, republicans and independents.
Barack was elected via the emotions and efforts of a wide swath of America, meaning he would need to answer the demands of all while negotiating a steep, nearly vertical, learning curve. He inherited a job most of us couldn’t begin to understand with a Congress full of lifers intent on keeping the current system in place and the rest of us under thumb.
Patience, persistence and pragmatism were called for yet We The People act like spoiled, petulant children instead.
I reference the US Navy term Hold Fast in the blog above. It’s when the crew finds itself in a desperate situation, grasping tight to the last remaining forward progress they can muster via sweat and courage. Hold Fast! A cry of resolve and an acknowledgment of the task that lies ahead. What political party you belong to is the last thing anyone cares about when the ship is under attack and people are dying.
So what does that mean for We The People Who Slumber Still?
The partisan scam that has dominated our politics, both left and right, for the last forty years finds itself in just such a situation. Holding fast to the division and the distraction that has kept them in power. Holding fast to a status quo that made them rich while making the rest of us poor. Between tea partiers and left wingers, the grand drama that is American Politics holds fast with a single-minded ferocity that is tearing apart the Republic.
Our moment of national reconciliation is now a cacophony of partisan rants, exactly at a time when the country is ready for (and desperately needs) a drastic change in methodology. We must continue to discuss and define what our vision of tomorrow will look like and translate those dreams into reality via the ballot box over the coming years with metronomic regularity. Now is not the time to slack off.
We must hold fast to that fleeting memory of unity we built during the primary and general campaigns of 2008, lining up around the block to cast our vote, and find areas we can work together to create a more sustainable society. Agree to disagree if we must on certain things, but places remain where there is no disagreement and we must address them immediately if we are to see anything resembling change come to fruition.
We must heal up our wounds at the grassroots to have the strength necessary to change the heights.
I still think Barack embodies the best natures of both parties and understands the surest way to achieve our common goals is via evolution of society instead of a revolution that tears it all down. We saw how Congress responded to the challenge they confronted when the president removed his hand from the Lincoln bible and called for a house united. More of the same partisan games from the same wicked players who have been on the field for decades.
Will we finally respond to such wanton incompetence in the only way we can by turning out in much greater numbers than we typically do for midterm primaries?
Hold fast.
What we see now is exactly what I predicted would happen before Obama won the primary. You can campaign on hope and change and each individual will put his or her ideas into that change, and hope. But when elected Obama has to legislate. Then, I said, the coalition would fragment, and so it has.
You can be all things to all people when you’re running on hope and change but when elected Obama had to come up with real policy positions and when that change became real it wasn’t what many hoped for.
Obama is going to have to choose which one of the groups he’s going to satisfy most, because he can’t satisfy them all, and hope he can convince those not satisfied that what he’s doing is for the best, better than the change they hoped for.
I think you miss my point entirely. The campaign is a series of things he would like to do, as his platform literature ably demonstrated. Anyone who put anything into Barack that wasn’t in those statements was going to be very disappointed and have only themselves to blame.
However, once in Washington, he was confronted with the system we have in place. No one man was going to change that, no matter what our hopes were to the contrary.
Absent massive, sustained and nation-wide protests of the sort we haven’t seen since the 1960s, President Obama was doomed to fail as his unstoppable force ran straight into the immovable object of Congress and the rest of the corrupt federal government.
I think you are still putting a little too much blame on Obama’s shoulders at this point as he is the president democrats allow him to be, no more and no less, since they have basically told all of his independent and republican supporters to go pound sand.
Liberals don’t need no sticking bipartisanship!Just ask Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton how well that coalition worked out for them.
This is pretty disingenuous, jason. During the primaries you argued against Clinton exactly because she wouldn’t be able to change Washington, she was too much a creature of the Washington culture.
Now you are saying Obama can’t change Washington because no one person can.
Both views are bogus.
Look, the people appear ready to kick incumbents out in November. But that’s not necessarily going to get our government out of its rut.
But more important, I take issue when you insult people with arrogant generalizations like Patience, persistence and pragmatism were called for yet We The People act like spoiled, petulant children instead, and then expect people to take your views seriously. If you can’t avoid insulting people, then maybe you are the spoiled, petulant child.
If you truly believe in grassroots activism, then act like it. That means you put your faith in the people (not in the leaders) to make change happen. But you’re still hung up on Obama being some kind of savior (however you define it) of your country, which he is clearly failing at. And because he’s failing, the question now is, did he ever want to save anything?
In the end, it doesn’t matter. He is no greater or lesser a human being than the rest of us, but defending his actions to date is a travesty of all you have ever said you want for this country.
The entire country is acting like spoiled, petulant children who didn’t get the change they demanded on January 21, 2009. No one man can change Washington and I never claimed he could.
I said he seemed to have a better idea of how to start the long, hazardous road toward a new way of doing business.
I argued against Hillary for many of the same mistakes Obama has made, that is true, but mostly I argued that she couldn’t win the general due to republican hatred of all things Clinton.
Barack barely pulled out the win, mostly due to republicans staying home or voting for the democratic nominee, something that would not have happend with a different candidate.
No disengenoiousness here and I have a long blogging and commenting record to prove it for anyone who cares to read that many words.
Well, I don’t know who you want in your coalition but I don’t want Joe and Ben in mine. For some, politics is about winning. For others, it’s about having the opportunity to work for what you believe in. I don’t see the point in winning if what you “win” is contrary to your own values.
As for Clinton, do you think I wanted MORE NAFTAS or MORE welfare “reform”. Clinton triangulated liberalism away and then feckleesly frittered away his second term with Monica.
I am more concerned with We The People deciding what a new America might look like with different leadership and then enforcing that vision at the primaries.
For now, however, we are left with the devils we know and they are susceptible to certain kinds of pressure. Pressure We The People seem oddly reluctant to exercise, year after year.
I think progressive politics in America has never had a more diffuse message at a time when it had more potential to explode on the national stage given the right framing.
I am less about blaming any one set of politicians and going to source of our malady.
Us.
Well written and tho’ I am not holding President Obama up to be without flaws and responsibility in some of the failings of critical processes and programs, the stance of this does embody my core beliefs regarding it is always up to We, The People to ensure the quality and values embodied by our government.
And I still tout that if you don’t participate in our processes by choosing not to be ignorant about government leadership, programs and legislation and cast your vote based on this, then you have no basis to blame or rant about the state of our union.
Thanks Jason. Appreciate.
Thanks for dropping by and bearing with my broken record on this subject, Aunt Sam.
With such a pathetic turnout for one of the “most important elections of our lifetime” in 2008, I remain unsurprised by the lack of change in all things political.
With the quiet life desperation most Americans are now living, I am not surprised no one is turning out to protest. Except for those pesky tea partiers.
Another piece of irony unnoticed by many on the left.
Obama was done in by two forces.
First was Bacus. He let all the air out of the tires so the HCR vehicle couldn’t move so it would be easy pickings for republicans to strip down. There’s not enough of the original package that is recognizable by the public and everything inside it is debatable.
Second are the blue dogs. It was a tragic mistake to include their numbers in the Democrat caucus. To be realistic, the Democrat majority minus the blue dogs might still have been over 50%, slightly, but they would have been confronted with the reality the best they could hope for would be 50% plus the VP. They would have been better prepared to tackle issues if they knew up front they would have to fight tooth and nail for ever inch of ground to get a meaningful HCR passed.
Between the two, the republicans realized they were still in control of the Legislature even though they only had 40%. They could depend upon democrats to shoot themselves in the foot and could make them take two steps backwards for every step they took forward on any issue.
Obama’s downfall is his inability to get both sides to the political center because the Democrats can’t come together and unite as a single voice on any subject and the republicans use that to their advantage to thwart every attempt to move forward.
It’s sad Obama may have an even more lackluster presidency than Bu$h.
No surprise that I don’t see it quite this way given the average tenure of everyone in Congress and the relative level of shittiness in the country as a whole.
No one election was going to change that, let alone one man no matter how high the elected position.
Had the democratic caucus actually worked to design legislation that spoke to the actual objections many have with government, I suspect the public would have gotten behind them.
Obama isn’t the first president to inherit a divided country and yet somehow unite us all around substantive and sustainable change.
Well, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before- T. Roosevelt, FDR, Clinton (- +). The fact that the perception now exists that one man, or one election can’t have the desired effects, is an insidious falsehood developed for cover.
They haven’t been effective because of turncoat party members and juvenile obstructionism by the entire republican division of congress.
The “actual objections many have with government,” I presume you are referring to republicans, teabaggers and the like- the current objectors. Where the hell were these over-concerned, suddenly patriotic, now-with-a-voice, rebel- rousers- for the 8 years of tyrannical and completely disruptive rule of their previous God-Child?
Well……that’s what I’ve been waiting for.
FDR took four terms to complete his time in office, had a huge labor movement to boot and 2/3 majority in both the House and Senate and still not much had changed a year into his twelve years as president except for the drapes in the Oval Office.
This comment represents more blaming of everyone but the people who actually write the legislation and are in charge of the party. More government isn’t always the right solution, but that is the only tool democrats have in their chest and the only one they used in 2009.
The president’s new budget is $4 trillion, witha $1.2 trillion deficit and growing!
Creating innovative solutions involves more than blowing the dust off all the legislation you couldn’t get done the last ten years and running it up the flagpole. It involves legislating for the whole country and not just the 54% who voted for your presidential nominee.
Until you change yourself first and demand something new instead of the same old shit, you are going to be waiting for a lot of years for Obama to deliver something he is incapable of delivering alone.
We are the change we’ve been waiting for.
Jason – Thanks for a thoughtful and well-reasoned post. Like many, I’m chagrined by the inertia and obstructionism that has frustrated the ambitions of the incoming Administration, but I profoundly disagree with those ready to pronounce President Obama a failure. I already see substantial accomplishment via executive action alone in addressing what is probably the most serious threat modern civilization has faced – unmitigated global warming – and I remain tentatively optimistic that meaningful healthcare reform will pass – two examples among a myriad of challenges that would daunt even the wisest and most intrepid leader. This cautious optimism extends to others challenges as well.
One phenomenon that troubles me is evident in some of the commentary that tends to accompany posts such as yours. You have challenged “we, the peoople” to act more effextively to advance the people’s interests, and I see a tendency for some to divert that exhortation into a discussion of what’s wrong with the President. I hope I’m not misinterpreted as claiming that there are no faults to be laid at Obama’s door when I say that the tendency to redirect assignment of responsibilities strikes me as counterproductive. To state it succinctly, I think that when there is fault to go around, circumstances improve more quickly when each of us, from the President on down, fixes ourselves before fixing somebody else. The alternative is the barrage of mutual recriminations that aborts all attempts at progress.
I would not make this argument if I believed President Obama were suffering from a dearth of criticism. In that sense, I’m trying to suggest some balance.
That said, we still must decide how best to act for our voices to resonate with the political elite. Criticism remains an important tool, but it should be informed criticism. If an excellent healthcare reform package had already passed, much of the current agonizing would have been averted. One reason the package has floundered has been a decline in public approval that has intimidated the Democratic majority. That decline reflects the relentless opposition from the right, but in my view, it also reflects to some extent negative perceptions fostered by some on the left, which in combination with the right-wing opposition, has left many voters with an unfavorable view of the package. Having familiarized myself with healthcare and the reform effort, I believe that conservative opposition reflects a well-informed belief that the package runs contrary to their interests, whereas liberal unenthuiasm or outright resistance reflects a less well informed understanding that neglects the substantial virtues of the proposals. To put it candidly, if both right-wing and left-wing attitudes toward reform proposals were equally well based on respective self-interests, the public would have a far more favorable view, and we might not be having this discussion.
I’ll end this comment with a question, using healthcare reform as a model. Like others, I’m dissatified with some elements of the proposed legislation while perceiving it as a whole to constitute what may be one of the most significant advances in social policy in many decades. How, then, should I make my criticisms known without suggesting that criticism is all that the proposals deserve? How can I try to improve what is already an excellent effort while informing the public of its major virtues? How can I best help correct public misconceptions that have led to opposition (e.g.,the belief the legislation would increase the budget deficit)?
And how can I help the Administration and Congress get this done before it’s too late?
Fred, thanks for the great comment. You typically make many points I agree with when it comes to the health care debate, so I am unsure what you personally could do to make liberals sound more credible on the issue.
I think the health care reform conversation really went off the rails because the democratic leadership in Congress failed to innovate legislatively. What good things exist in the current legislation were immediately overshadowed by the percieved inadequecies of the effort on both the left and right.
Further, things that weren’t even the legislation, such as a single payer plan, became the defacto goal of the democratic party thus leading to predictable backlash from both moderate and hard-core conservatives, not to mention more than a few fiscally-conservative democrats.
Message diffusion led to message confusion almost from day one.
If I were to define “holding fast”, it would be holding fast to signature Democratic values and programs, for example, MEDICARE. But when a liberal suggests holding fast to this program and expanding it to cover more Americans, it is we who are framed as stupid or radical or out of touch or whatever.
I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. It left me.
Medicare was a great idea forty years ago and has gotten progressively less sustainable ever since.
A plan that would fix the problems with Medicare by way of combining cost centers and perhaps expanding the roles could have had broad, bipartisan support.
Too bad “liberals” never offered such a plan.
You’re on a first name basis with “Barack”? I’m impressed. Maybe he can teach you capitalization.
I’d comment more seriously but you are making the same points again.
Peace.
I am quite sure the president wouldn’t object to someone using his first name. That you would accuse me of being a broken record is more of that irony you folks seem incapable of recognizing.
Jason, you easily come across as thoughtful and genuinely concerned about the workings and and long-term viability of America.
My question for you is- with your presence and contributions to this site, and often with a tinkling of concurrence with “liberal/progressive” ideas, policies and even some of the agenda- ‘Why are you a “republican?”
A 50’s, 60’s, 70’s or early 80’s pat, talking point is not what I am seeking. I think you may fully understand what I mean. But at any rate, could you briefly explain this contradiction?
Easy.
Jason is a bridge builder. He *has* to stand on both sides of the river. The point is, as you said, he comes across “genuinely”. (not speaking for JEM, just my observation)
Haven’t seen a schmoo in years!
Maybe I should have been more precise. I’ll add, ‘what is about what the republican represents and extols as of today, that allows for his preference to be and remain a republican? Yeah, I wanna know how closely he aligns himself with the madness over there.
I became a republican because democrats haven’t gotten a thing done in more than 40 years, so changing that party from the inside seemed a waste of my time and theirs. Plus, liberals mostly whine and lecture and bitch but don’t really do anything about their problems and are seem pathologically unwilling to try something new, despite their marketing literature.
The republican party, on the other hand, is populated with many of the country’s most successful and capable people, they are just a little misguided right now or not even really paying attention to politics if you were to ask many. Like most of the democratic party faithful, I would wager, given the historically low turnout for primary elections.
Conservatives may be recalcitrant right now, but they get things done when they are focused. The last conservative protest against abortion closed downtown DC for hours. The last liberal protest for health care shut down the corner of a park near the Russel Senate Building. Republicans just need an identity to cling that starts further back in America’s past, beyond the modern “conservative” icons of Reagan and Nixon.
If you are really curious, here is the blog I wrote about it in 2008 and another I wrote a few weeks later. Little did I know I would spend the next two years arguing more with people I agree with than with those I don’t, though I probably should have guessed as much given the ascendancy of the democratic party in 2009.
Ah, yes, jason the neo-political wunderkind who is about to make history as the nation’s first Democrat/Republican/Progressive/Conservative/non-ideologue/centrist/patient/non-confrontational/rabble-rouser. Hold fast! If he can now just successfully complete this transformation by becoming a beer-swilling tea-totaller transgendered dairy farmer, he will nearly have “Barack’s” constituency pretty well lined up. THEN you just watch the change that’s gonna come, by golly!
Just don’t ask him what it all stands for, ‘cuz it gets a little fuzzy from there as you might well imagine.
“Just a little misguided right now?”
That’s an understatement at the level of saying “Custer was just a little annoyed with the Indians at Little Big Horn.”
or “John Wayne Gacy was a just little bit preoccupied with children.”
But the real humor can be found in the assertion that the “Republican Party isn’t really paying attention to politics right now.” Um, jason. Don’t look now, but the Republican Party is a POLITICAL Party. That’s what they do. Just who did you think it was you were joining? Maybe a Ladies Aid Group for the Church of By Gawd Cheezus? Or maybe a sleepy old contingent of the Brotherhood of Past Grand Wizards of the Knights of Columbus?
This is too funny, especially given that you take this kind of nonsense (and yourself!) so damned serious, as if we were learning “the new way” from the Oracle at Delphi.
Yeah, you really got your finger on the pulse of the future of politics there, sport. Indeed, you’re NostraDumbAss!
This, in a nutshell, is why “liberals” continue to fail at everything they attempt in modern American politics.
And . . .
That, in a nutshell, is why blowhards like Mr. Blusterbutt continue to “think” they know everything about modern American politics.
“I say it … therefore it is…”
Jolly well isn’t it . . .
~OGD~
Never claimed to know everything. That is your chick.
Well … SJ . . .
You pointed out . . .
Talk about “fuzzy” … Take a wild guess who’s words these are . . .
But the author does say this earlier in the piece…
Sound familiar?
Here’s a hint . . .
~OGD~
Thanks for the total non sequitur. Guess that puts a lie to your continued throwing down of the generational gauntlet, huh?
Funny … in an ironic twist . . .
It is Mr. Blusterbutt who has continually hammered the “generational” problem he has with the “looking-glass liberal Baby Boomers” that have “…never done anything in 40 years.”
Mr. Blusterbutt’s own words . . .
Tell a lie often enough and one begins to believe their own bullshit.
~OGD~
We’ll be waiting for an actual quote with a link instead of another strawman.
Still waiting for a recent evidence of my “continual” hammering of the generational divide.
Lamenting that the left has failed to achieve their stated goals these last 40 years is a factual statement.
That you take such generalized criticism so personally is one more example of the Grumpy Gus Generation making excuses for piss-poor behavior.
No non-sequiter here. Confusing? Yes. But not irrelevant.
It’s just a couple more examples where your prose doesn’t quite match up with your rhetoric. Stands to reason, really, when you consider just how moronic this “new way” politics of yours is. There are the DEMS, on the one hand. And there is the GOP on the other. And now we have jem who is going to revolutionize politics with his NBP approach – which is little more than a legend in his own mind trying to find a “jem nugget” in his Neo-political Bloomer Pudding. No consistency here, sport, and it fouls the air.
You wrote it. You own it.
I am guessing you weren’t born this miserable of a human being. Perhaps you need more hugs.
PS: For anyone who cares, here is the original posted here at TPM.
And if you’ll note . . .
After I directed the readers to the MyRedRoad blogspot article it has since been removed from view but it does remain in cache found here. Other than the time stamps showing the initial posting was at MyRedRoad, why would the author remove that blog?
I think it’s one of the better pieces he’s written.
MyRedRoad @ April 24, 2008, 5:02 AM
bit.ly/-miller-boomer-legacy-MyRedRoad (c&p to browser)
TPM Cafe @ April 24, 2008, 8:58AM
bit.ly/-miller-boomer-legacy-TPM (c&p to browser
I’m sure Mr. Bluster will shunt it aside and blame it all on MY “paranoia.”
Yet like I said, I think it’s one of the better pieces he’s written. Specifically the following graph:
That doesn’t have the ring of the biting cynical line of thought heard ad nauseam lately, but I’m sure it’s someone else’s fault that’s caused the cynicism to rise.
~OGD~
Because that blog should have been down long ago and I linked to the original that was written here at TPM. Paranoia will destroy ya.
Sorry, got the first link wrong. This is the blog from when I first took up a hundred year old banner.
And if you go to that link . . .
Don’t fail to notice the following line in the comment threads . . .
And Mr. Blusterbutt would never never ever ever stoop to the level of absurdity to use labels to attempt to denigrate any of his fellow Cafe members …
Naw, it just don’t happen.
~OGD~
Denigrate? You take comments from 18 months ago as denigration? Allussion to a history of not living up to your words is insulting?
Might want to work on that thin skin of your, duck, else you might start dropping even more feathers than you already do.
Again, your behavior would simply be pathetic if it wasn’t also emblamatic of your generation’s inability to take responsibility for their actions.
Mr. Bluster Butt just doesn’t get it . . .
I take responsibility for my actions. The actions of others are pretty much out of my control. Unlike Mr. Bluster wishing to somehow personally manage every single organism on earth, after 60+ years on this dirt ball I’ve come to the realization that everyone has their own personal hero’s journey.
In mine, I look for the “helpers” not those who control and thereby “hinder” …
~OGD~
Your post reminded me of the words, “hold fast,” tattooed on Joe Plaice’s fingers in Master and Commander.
Great film. I especially liked the Darwin analog. Thanks for dropping by, Donal.
Hold Fast ???
I have a sinking suspicion that Mr Blusterbutt’s entire Naval career was “holding fast” to pen, paper and camera when not consuming large amounts of Cheeto’s and soda and watching Judge Judy in the barracks at North Island Naval Air Station…
YoHo YoHo… a pirate’s life for me . . .
~OGD~
Touché.
Proving … yet once again . . .
That Mr. Blusterbutt lives in the realm of fantasy through film and videos.
I hope he hasn’t turned into an Avatar … yet.
~OGD~
Just goes to prove that age, even those of advanced years such as yourself, doesn’t provide wisdom or intelligence.
So, in this little fantasy land you have created, who is responsible for the last 40 years of devolution, pollution and corruption? Gen X? Gen Y. The World War II guys who handed it off to you in 1980s?
Taking a blog posting from 18 months ago and trying to use it to create controversy today is just more evidence of the pathetic lengths your generation will go to deflect the blame on anyone but yourselfs.
So, just as you say, a generation had everything passed off to them twenty-plus years ago and they are responsible for forty years of problems.
I made sure I had my original sin forgiven before I quit the church.
It has been the better part of thirty years since the Boomers took over. The forty years started with their massive demonstrations that led to a lost decade. Like the 1990s were for Gen X.
Again, the point wasn’t to cast blame and you will notice who picked the nit about generational divides in the first place, though I had not brought it up in this blog or its comments.
I’ll be happy to mea cupla if and when the situation warrants it.
Hmmm . . .
Wow … the blowhard passed up a chance for the last word on one my comments up in this thread? Maybe he just can’t get over the fact that someone would actually comment on something in a way totally unexpected and foreign in his world of never looking at his own motives but always worrying about the motives, actions and/or in-actions of others he can’t control.
His future?
Twenty more years in the wilderness he’s been in…
~OGD~