Don't trust fair weathered librals

[angee_is_mad]

interesting post that reminds me of so much what we read on here.

http://reachblack.blogspot.com/2010/01/lesson-learned-dont-trust-fair-weather.html

Perhaps you'll hear from a "frustrated" voter who claimed to walk 100 miles to canvass for Obama. And that voter will tell you that Obama is weak because he didn't fix eight years of bad policy in his first year of office. This voter will wax poetic about a time when he or she once made out to Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" song. And, if you're lucky, this "disenchanted" voter will lecture you on how Obama should have done XY or Z without the necessary votes in Congress because Presidents FDR, LBJ and GWB were. . . (sigh) I don't know . . . special?

And you’ll certainly hear endless criticism of the Democratic establishment and stupid mistakes by the candidate.

But if history is any indicator, you might also hear pundit after pundit talk about the "protest vote" or those who deliberately chose to sit on their hands to "teach the Dems a lesson" (assuming they are qualified to teach whatever that lesson may be).

What lesson, you may ask?

Well, the same lesson Dems supposedly learned from their great teacher, Ralph Nader, in 2000. That oh so persuasive "lesson" that only the truly progressive, ideologically pure, intellectually superior must teach to the masses of mindless "Obamatons," "kool-aid drinkers," "cult members" - feel free to add any of a number of condescending pejoratives -who are just too emotionally swayed by the President's swagger to remove the rose-colored glasses when judging this President and his policies.

You'll hear it, and you'll know it verbatim. Why? Because you've heard it a million times before. Which speaks to one of two possibilities:

1. Democrats are extremely dense; or
2. Liberals take themselves way too seriously

But whatever you hear, ask yourselves this . . .


When was the last time the self-righteous liberal actually did something? Sure, they talk a good game. They're well-read. Articulate. Impressive. And I'm certainly not saying that they don't do good work on a local level. But please name the last time you saw a legitimate sustained social movement from the left? Because it seems that such victories (if any) have been few and far between in a generation of conservative dominance in our national politics.

See, there's a lot of history to fall back on. Most will cite the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist movement, the rally for labor rights. But those things happened decades ago. Of course there's the current struggle for marriage equality. But, while long overdue, don't look towards the ballot for success stories as far as that's concerned either.

What am I getting at?

Liberals better start looking in the mirror. Liberals better start reevaluating how they relate towards the very people they claim to represent. And they better start talking to rather than at the American people.

There's a long list of what went wrong in MA. But, if any of it has to do with "disenchanted liberals" or an apathetic base. . .]

[NJmaverick]

1. I read the whole article it was an outstanding read

this guy or woman really gets it.

[angee_is_mad]

4. love this part

" Fair-weather liberals are guilty of the very crime they accuse this President of passing onto the American people: they talk a good game, but they don't do much. They pimp the legacies of their predecessors from social movements gone by, but rarely have any ideas of their own (or any practical means to accomplish such goals). They forsake what gains they do make (see 2006 and 2008 elections) because change requires more than lofty rhetoric. And they come up with self-defeating plans to teach others a "lesson" like . . .

Voting a tea party endorsed Republican to fill a, now formerly, Democratic seat.

Thanks Massachusetts."

[Cha]

2. Thanks, angee! Good One~

I wonder how many of the extra 100, 000 votes that brown got were of "the lesson" kind?

How many were "I want my country back"? Confused voters in both cases who are responsible for Mass having a teabag senator now who believes in torture and climate change is not man-made.

<snip>

"A NOTICEABLE DROP-OFF IN QUALITY"


"It now belongs to Scott Brown -- a conservative who supports torture, opposes Wall Street accountability, supports more tax cuts for the wealthy, opposes economic recovery efforts, opposes Ted Kennedy's life's work on health care reform, and doubts that global climate change is the result of human activity.

And says things like, "In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them."

It's admittedly tiresome to hear any political observer say, "In the good old days...." Those days were rarely as good as anyone remembers, and prominent thinkers of the day have been complaining about the next generation being less impressive than the last for as long as we've had the printed word.

But a once-storied Senate seat that belonged to Adams and Kennedy is now filled by a dim-witted wingnut, and that's a real shame -- for Massachusetts, for the Senate, and for all of us.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (50)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

[Cha]

3. Yeah, the kind who are asking

..no telling that President Obama is a "wimp" now bc he's doing things his way instead of what they think should be done.

They're the fooking wimps...sitting behind their puter chairs while he's out doing freaking Everything.

[Born_A_Truman]

7. I heard that Wimp crap all during the primarys

Yelling that Obama needed to get down in the dirt, when the majority of voters were sick to death of DIRT!

[Born_A_Truman]

5. Piss & Moan

That's all I've seen here (not here here) since the election.

[treestar]

6. the teabaggers were out there marching

but the Progressives never were, and Congress could see that.

The right also gets fired up and works hard even when down. The progressives, if DU really represented them, quit when they don't get everything they want.

IMO even if we somehow got single payer they'd be finding fault with it. They find fault with everything, so being "superior" is part of it.

They also don't consider consequences. All the wimp/toughness talk - if Obama really did what they supposedly advocate, it would not necessarily result in anything good. So he vetoed the bill with no public option because it had none - my thinking is the same exact posters would be talking about how cold hearted that was and the millions who could have been insured had he just compromised.

They seem to know so much better how to handle things, but that is only in their minds.

[Hansel]

8. Amen to everything you said.

Ed Schultz ranted and raveed all summer and when callers would call in to try to get him to organize some rallies he would pooh pooh it. No it was up to the Dems to just "come around".

Where were all of the bloggers who wanted that public option? How hard would it have been to churn out a response to the Tea Baggers. And now they are all blaming Obama for betraying them and being weak. I can distinctly remember him telling them he needed them and that the hard work had just begun. Change isn't easy. And what did they do? They sat on the sideline and sniped.

[angee_is_mad]

10. and wrote posts encouraging not voting to prove a point

and when candidate lost they are wondering what happened.

[Hansel]

9. Excellent article. And dead on. nt

[KittyWampus]

11. The Teabaggers did get out. But so did the Dems. Sadly, the Media just focused on the TeabaggerstEa

There was a big rally for Single Payer. It got no press.

So there is a massive problem.

The Teabaggers were organized from the top, down. With big money.

The Left hasn't really even got the Unions.

Who exactly is going to pay for all the tv ads and newspaper space for the Left? And that's if media outlets would even agree to run the stuff.

[angee_is_mad]

12. is markos, jane, arianna

not the left? Hell they are on tv all the time.

If those 3 can go on msm and bash Obama, why can they go on msm talking about rallies.

Noticed I said RALLIES and not protests. Rallying around HCR to make it better and not protesting the Obama Administration and killing HCR.

[Born_A_Truman]

13. Speaking of protests ...

How did the TeaBagger's "day of strike" today go?

Did they bring the country to a grinding halt and I missed it?

[FrenchieCat]

16. I don't know.....

Guess Fox didn't do as good a job promoting it...
too busy fellating Mr. Brown!

[treestar]

18. True, when did these assholes ever rally around Obama since he was elected?

All they do is snipe! Then they call him "coward" and the like. And accuse anyone trying to back him up of "cheerleading" as though that's a bad thing.

They never cheer on a single god dammned thing, or help in any way.

It's a mental disorder that they have to be superior and they'd be doing the same thing no matter what. If single payer itself had passed, they be calling Obama a wimp for dealing with the drug companies or the AMA or whatever.

[treestar]

17. So true

that's why calling them "wimps" is so unfair. :mad:

[cliffordu]

14. Kicketty. I've been saying a mickey mouse version of these

very things for years.

[Tarheel_Dem]

15. Truer words were never spoken. Keyboard commandoes, and armchair..

pundits aplenty, on the left. I think most figure that donating to a blogger is "activism". There's a rift in the party now, and I have to say that I hate the leftbaggers every bit as much as I do the teabaggers.