The Chess Player screwed up.

[Raven]

He just screwed up. He took his eye off the ball (mixed mediphore) and allowed a bunch of hacks to hijack his agenda. We are now at a point where we are hearing "please, please, please, allow this HCR bill to pass...it's the best we can do...be satisfied....we'll do better later....

Fact is: there was no leadership from Obama. He let us down. He owns this. It was his agenda and he left it to others...incompetents or people who figured that the "hungry masses" would settle for any scrap.

Health care in this country is too important to settle for any old thing.

I don't want to believe that Obama thinks that scraps are enough but I don't trust Congress to give us anything else.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Could you be a little more specific in explaining what he did wrong?

Kthnxbai.

[BlueIdaho]

2. Deciding he was a spectator in this "how a bill becomes a law" thing?

Obama seriously underplayed his hand.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. As opposed to what, being a congressman?

[laughingliberal]

11. As opposed to showing some leadership. Presidents can not pass legislation but a damned lot of them

do seem to get what they want from Congress. Especially with their party in power. The silent treatment for weeks on end while the teabaggers took control of the debate was less than helpful. Could have done without his staff hurling insults at the people on the left for standing up for a public option at a time when he still claimed he favored one.

No matter. I really do think Feingold was right on. This is the bill he wanted all along. He's been letting Nelson, Lieberman, et all provide political cover with the left while he worked against us.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. Explain what that means.

Specifically.

[BlueIdaho]

32. No...

As opposed to laying out a blueprint of what features the bill must contain in order to get his signature. He made a decision to leave the crafting of the bill to the congress and that was a big mistake. He now looks like he will sign ANYTHING just to claim a win. He should have used his office to shape the bill the congress would have to create.

Frankly if he had done that forcefully in the beginning he would now look Presidential and the congress would have to absorb all the blame for this disaster.

[lib2DaBone]

40. Yes.. as opposd to being a CONgressman.. He is the Friggin President of the USA..

.this is not High School... IT'S HIS JOB to know what to do.... either that or get the fuck out of 1900 Pennsylvania Ave... move over and let an adult take charge....

[timeforpeace]

4. Touche. That's gotta sting.

[rug]

5. He sacrificed the pawns for the king.

Not to mention the bishops.

[bridgit]

10. Which move is the one where you 'get kinged' and end up with another checker...

On top of your head, um, wait, nevermind...that sounds naughty :blush:

[rug]

14. Maybe you mean hearts, where you try to avoid eating the queen.

[bridgit]

17. Pft, hahahahaha ~

:spray: :thumbsup:

[Raven]

6. Specifically, leadership. He is the Pres last time I looked. He has been

generally absent from this ordeal.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. No, I mean specifically.

"Leadership" is vague and meaningless.

[Myrina]

9. In this Administration it appears to be, yes.

n/t

[bvar22]

19. Touche'

KIll Shot!
Well Done!
:patriot:

I would be laughing if it wasn't so sad.

[Raven]

12. You tell me what he should have done. This was his agenda...his big thing.

He threw it into the arena and let it get kicked bloody. Leadership IS NOT vague and meaningless...in this case it is the absence of action. Anyone who can't see that Obama threw the this into the areaa and then stepped back is not looking.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. So... his leadership was good he was just conspiring for the other side?

You need to make up your mind.

[Blue_In_AK]

15. I have little doubt

that if Lyndon Johnson had wanted a certain kind of health care bill, he would have gotten it through. I doubt that the opposition he had to civil rights legislation, Medicare, etc. was any less robust than opposition to Obama's health care reform, but Johnson got it done.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

18. Well, that's not entirely correct. For one thing, LBJ had Republicans that would work with him.

They weren't the batshit party that they are today. Let me add: He had 68 Dems in the Senate. And 13 Republicans crossed over for the Medicare vote.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

22. On the Civil Rights Act, he had 67 Dems. 27 Republicans crossed party lines for that.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. of course, you both are correct,

the Republicans weren't so obstreperous (i.e., batshit crazy) back then. Still, Lyndon Johnson did have a way of getting things done.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

24. Yup. He was one of the best.

[Generator]

27. Yeah and one other big factor back then

Democrats were actually Democrats. Corprocrats are the new breed.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

35. The Democratic Party at that time was rife with racists.

You think those are "actual democrats"?

[Goldstein1984]

20. Or we could say:

"The leadership has been vague and meaningless."

Obama could have been more forceful, but the Democratic Congress owns this too.

I believe that the President could have done more.

But I think the people could also have done more. Maybe we expected too much from our representatives.

[chimpymustgo]

31. Making deals with Pharma, taking universal health care OFF the table. Not allowing anyone who

favored it in on meetings (while industry lobbyists had UNTOLD visits to the WH). NOT pushing. Gliding in to make a speech every couple of months, while the backlash from the right was erupting. Forcing ALL the compromise to come from progressives working for the PEOPLE - rather than the corporations he's so cozy with.

AND the deal he made with Pharma forced Senators to vote AGAINST drug re-importation which would have made an immediate difference in people's lives.

Obama blew this so spectacularly, you'd think he planned for it to end up this way.

[tabatha]

29. No, he has not.

He said himself that he has been deeply involved with it.

[Tim01]

He begged the repubs to play nice.

He started from a weak bargaining position.
He tried to negotiate instead of leading.

And then there is the very long list of gifts he gave to corporations.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

7. Agree.

[griffi94]

13. maybe he can still salvage something

but i must admit that i'm not seeing much that's different. as to what he could do besides taking a strong leadership role and maybe twists a few arms, idk.
i know unemployment is still high, foreclosures are still high, i still don't have health insurance. I'm not willing to just claim him to be a fraud, but i wish the change could have started at the bottom instead of with the banks. JMO but at the moment it seems as if we're floating in a circle hoping something good happens.

[quaker bill]

16. Not so much

winning the game ugly is still winning the game. This was never going to be pretty. I applaud him for the guts to take it on.

A year or two years ago we were bitching about when we would ever get a President who would even consider the lack of healthcare an actual problem. Now we are bitching about the details of a proposed solution. I see improvement, but then I always prefer a long perspective.

[Raven]

21. It almost seems to me that this administration is a "bait and switch"

support it because it is so much better than the last one but then it's all smoke and mirrors and the people in this country who are hurting are still left out...but maybe not because this Pres is...what??? What is this guy???

[salguine]

30. You know what the crucial similarity and difference are? Honestly, I see both this administration

and the previous one as dismal failures. (And yes, I've seen enough of this one in a year to have no qualms about calling it a failure already. Spare me.) That's the similarity.

The difference is that Obama's didn't have to be. Lets face it, George W. Bush was (at least before Sarah Palin showed up) the stupidest person in America. He was an idiot with a lifelong track record of turning everything he touched to shit. Obama should have been, and had every reason and ability to be, transcendently great, and therein lies he real tragedy.

[quaker bill]

38. There is no bait and switch

it is not smoke and mirrors. Actual change is happening, just not as much as you or perhaps I would like. Folks who are hurting are always left out at some level. This, in part, is why they are hurting. There is nothing new about this.

The New Deal did not reach everyone, thus the "War on Poverty".

The "War on Poverty" did not reach everyone, thus the "Great Society".

Emancipation did not solve all the problems, thus the civil rights movement.

The bottom line is that real universal change is uncomfortable and expensive. Therefore the measures we come up with to address social problems always fall somewhat short. If in 230 years we had come up with a solution, no further change would be needed, and we would not be having this discussion.

[Gregorian]

25. We think of Obama as one man.

The job is far too big for one human. Obama is young. But so was John Kennedy. But then things were probably nowhere near as corporatized back then.

But the buck stops in the Oval Office.

Who, what, where did the attention to leadership get lost, if it did? Could it be that Obama has allocated the health care leadership to others in his cabinet? Maybe he really does not have the skills. I certainly would understand how impossible it would be to have an omnipresence in all of the arenas the president must engage in.

And then the buck stops with Obama.

He knows what the country needs. Could the corporations really have this much power that they can turn a solid man into a timid one? I'm afraid every president is nothing more than a sock puppet now. Some willingly, and others begrudgingly. I hope I'm wrong.

[bvar22]

26. That is one scenario.

Another scenario is that Obama is doing EXACTLY what he has been hired to do.

A Trillion Dollars to Wall Street, no stings attached

A Trillion Dollars to the Health Insurance Cartel (Wall Street's incestuous 1st Cousin)

Increase Defense Spending and keep the WARS going

Protect the War Criminals and Torturers of the Bush Administration

Begin dismantling Medicare and Social Security ("Entitlement Reform")

Bury the next generation under so much debt that any social or Working Class reforms are "drowned in the bathtub".

These are ALL not so hidden goals of the DLC.
Somebody gave a rookie Senator from Chicago a $Hundred Million Dollars and an Up & Running Political Machine BEFORE Iowa.
Somebody expects to be paid back.



The DLC New Team
Progressives Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

It doesn't really matter which scenario is true.
The end results is the same:
Election 2008 was a crushing defeat for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

[Uben]

28. The games not over......

.....he still has his queen and a couple of bishops. A master never shows his hand until he deals the final blow.

[SOCALS]

36. Who even started this ridiculous meme- playing chess?

Was it a paper or some blog?

[Orangepeel]

37. I don't think he screwed up. I think it was impossible to start with.

He could have went at it like he did -- calm and above the fray, which opened the possibility of getting people like Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Landrieu on board -- or, he could have gone at it guns blazing and possibly lost them, too. He wasn't going to get Lieberman or Nelson on board in any way.

[QC]

39. He didn't screw up. This is the bill he wanted. n/t

[arcadian]

41. No. he's playing against a rich, spoiled 5 year old

Who will wreck the board and scatter all the pieces unless you let him win.

[yurbud]

42. it wasn't incompetence anymore than Bush was incompetent

Bush misjudged the Iraqis, Obama has misjudged Americans.