Well, he clearly did get a lot done that I would have wanted. Win mentioned health care, as did I in my previous post. It was a start, not a finish. Ditto for financial reform. The Democrats weren't ruthless enough, as the Republicans will be when they next get into office. Scott Walker's tactics were just the latest in increasingly aggressive tactics that the RW has used in the service of essentially sending this country back to the 1890s. I don't think most of them get how divided the country will be between "haves" and "have nots." And I think most of them will just rationalize the divide by maintaining that those who have "deserve" it and those who don't deserve that. Listen to Buffett interview I pointed to very early this morning. He understands both context and the role of chance/luck in a way that most of the RW--at least the "sincere" RW--do not. The Left made a huge mistake in allowing Reagan to win in 1980, not that they really could have foreseen everything that has happened since then. RW aggressiveness and most of their goals since Reagan's time would have shocked virtually all Republican leaders in the 1960s and 1970s, including Barry Goldwater. Reagan himself might well have been shocked, and would, as has been pointed out by people like David Frum, have been labeled a RINO by these people.
But I digress. Big rocks are possible at some times and not at others. LBJ got Big Rocks on civil rights and medicare done because of all of the prep work that had been done in earlier decades, and because he was a southerner who could get at least a few other southerners and many Republicans in addition to northern Democrats to go along with him. The time wasn't propitious for Obama, and they wouldn't have been for Hillary either. Or any other Democrat. Not with this opposition that will exploit every loophole, abuse every minority right, say anything at all no matter how ludicrous or false in the service of its ends.
To not support Obama at all in this context, IMHO, is even worse than not supporting Carter in 1980. I have mentioned before on this thread that I wrote in Barbara Jordon for president in 1980. I was a part of that anti-Carter sentiment. But we've been there, done that, and the consequences of allowing someone like Reagan in the WH is what we see today. It certainly wasn't all him, there have been a lot of things at play, but his attitude of "guv'ment is the problem" is surely a crucial part of what is going on right now. Something that has always been a part of American culture ("Don't Tread on Me" was on one of the flags in the Rev. War) became magnified way out of proportion, a trend was started, memes that need no evidence get put into the cultural psyche, and that can fatal in a democracy. I have been reading several books about the antebellum period, and, at bottom, that was how the Civil War got started. The abolitionists, a small number of people, probably smaller than the Tea Party is today or at least not much bigger if at all, got into the heads of southerners, and southerners started believing that most northerners would end slavery if they got a chance. Abolitionism gradually became a dominant meme in the southern psyche, and the more that happened, the louder the calls for secession grew. Even though Lincoln never said he would end slavery and indeed said the opposite more than once, the south just snapped, and started the war anyway. Most white southerners had at most just a couple of slaves. The end of slavery wouldn't even have hurt most of them much economically. It didn't matter. They talked themselves into a devastating war for something that a lot of them were ambivalent about anyway--while it was a slave society, many southerners, especially women, saw plenty that was wrong with it, not that they actually wanted to end it as such, because as with all entrenched institutions like that, it just wasn't possible to see exactly how to really end it. The North was able to end it gradually over time earlier in the 19th century precisely because it wasn't so entrenched in their social structure.
My point is that people can talk themselves into a lot of things, even self-destructive things--both as individuals and as cultures--and if the RW does get into power in 2013, there will be a great deal of destruction. The RW wanted to let Lehman fail, and then to let the banking system fail and then to allow everyone who couldn't afford the house they were in to be foreclosed on so that the economy would hit bottom and rebuilding would begin. But--what if rebuilding didn't occur, if the destruction of the institutions and sectors was so great that they couldn't be put back together again? Some on the left say, fine let the RW dismantle the New Deal, let income inequality grow even larger, then people will see what is really happening, and will rise up against them. However, my opinion is that people will just rationalize the new order, will say that rewards follow merit, and that this is how it should be.
I have been rambling and need to stop here. I sympathize with your disappointment in Obama. But I strongly disagree with your conclusion. |
