Obama Needs to Put His Dukes Up ... FIGHT, DAMN IT!

[BLUSH]

By Marty Keenan

January 20, 2010 GREAT BEND, Kan. - Life is a lot like boxing. And boxing is the best metaphor for politics I know. If a boxing match is so one-sided that one of the boxers is in danger of being permanently injured or killed, the referee stops the fight.

If you think of the Massachusetts voters as a boxing referee, they did President Obama a huge favor by stopping the fight yesterday. Since his inauguration, Obama didn't throw a single punch at the opposition. Meanwhile, he got pummeled by the the opposition.

I wish things were different. I wish things could be truly bipartisan again, and that all Americans rooted for the nation, for the President. But politics has become a bloodsport, and you better knock the other guy's head off before he knocks yours off.

I have written several times now about Drew Westen's remarkable book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. But apparently nobody even close to Obama read the book. Drew Westen's article in today's Huffington Post "Obama Finally Gets His Victory For Bipartisanship," says everything that I would like to say, better than I could ever say it.

Obama's vision, first spelled out in his spellbinding 2004 convention speech, for a return to a bipartisan America where everyone works together, sets aside partisan bickering, and works for the good of the nation was appealing. But both sides have to agree to the deal. And as Obama was elected and extended the hand of friendship to Republicans, they broke his face with a right hook that could knock a barn down.

complete article:


http://www.kansasfreepress.com/2010/01/obama-needs-to-put-his-dukes-up.html

[peace frog]

1. Not Obama's style

Obama is firmly in the "Can't we all just get along?" camp.

[BLUSH]

8. We didn't elect style, we voted for substance

nt

[panzerfaust]

17. No, we voted for empty phrases and vague promises

... which was better than voting for an administration which had made it clear that it would continue to violate basic human rights, deny the ancient right of habeas corpus, keep the country under surveillance by secret police, continue with illegal imprisonment and military tribunals, fight illegal wars, deny healthcare to those without, and to hide all this behind the "war" on a noun ...

Sadly, the difference in rhetoric obscured the similarity of design.

Change?

Brother, can you spare a time?

[BLUSH]

18. I suppose you could say it's a change of 360 degrees.

We're going in circles when we should be moving forward in a straight line. Not even a few zig-zags, just round and round we go.

(Stop this ride, we want to get off!)

[hamsterjill]

26. Then could he please just move over and let Hillary run things!!!!

Sorry, I'm so disgusted right now, that this just HAD to come out. Your observation is absolutely right on target.

I would sure like to see a little more spunk from Obama. You cannot win a fight with an opponent who doesn't always play fair by "getting along".

One would have thought that this was a lesson well-learned from the Bush years.

[AlinPA]

2. I hope he gets he gets up and fights....hard. It's only the 2nd round.

[vw-fixer]

4. Round Two?

Not quite yet. The cut man between rounds still has some more work to do. America to President Obama - welcome to the most thankless job in the country!

[BLUSH]

7. We need to tell Obama we're not ready to throw in the towel ...

... but he has to pick himself up off the floor and start punching.

I couldn't believe my ears yesterday when after the Brown victory Obama said the House shouldn't try to jam through the health care bill. Mr. President, you extended BOTH hands to the Republicans and they bit them off. Stop being deferential to thugs!


:banghead:

[BLUSH]

9. Perhaps this is the beginning ... ?

Obama threatens fight with banks on new risk rules

By Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh – 8 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama threatened to fight Wall Street banks on Thursday with a new proposal to limit financial risk taking, sending stocks and the dollar tumbling.

Obama, a Democrat who is struggling to advance his agenda after a key election loss this week, laid out rules to restrict some banks' most lucrative operations, which he blamed for helping to cause the financial crisis.

"If these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have," Obama told reporters at the White House, flanked by his top economic advisers and lawmakers.

"We should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100121/bs_nm/us_obama_financials

[snagglepuss]

3. MLK "Passive non-resistance only works when the other side has a conscience."

I have been reconsidering lately the value of cool but Keenan hammers it. Great piece. It is so true that politics "today is a winner-take-all bloodbath, and any attempt to extend an olive branch will be taken for weakness, exploited by the opposition in a second."


K & R

[Javaman]

5. Don't hold your breath. nt

[Edweird]

6. He is fighting... he's just been doing it for the wrong team. He made sure there was no PO

in the senate bill. Remember - the senate bill = "I'm getting 95% of what I want".

[BLUSH]

11. The Republicans aren't a team

Remember 2000?





This angry mob, which successfully stopped the recount in Miami-Dade County during the 2000 election standoff, was portrayed by the media as an uprising by Florida voters.

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blfloridagopmob.htm



edit: TEN years later, what have we learned????

[Edweird]

12. I was thinking DLC.

But it's pretty much the same.

[BLUSH]

13. The DLC Pathway is a Dead End

Thursday, January 21, 2010 by The Progressive

The DLC Pathway is a Dead End: Fire Rahm Emanuel Today

by Matthew Rothschild

Rahm Emanuel is responsible for a lot of this free fall.

Emanuel is a DLC Democrat, and he's advised Obama to go in a DLC direction time and time again-and to disregard the progressive base.

On health care, Emanuel kept insisting that the public option was not very important. He helped engineer the under-the-table deal with the drug companies. He let Max Baucus dillydally, rather than push hard for a vote before last summer. And then he and Obama bent over backwards to placate Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman rather than force a vote, via the reconciliation process, on a decent progressive health care bill.

"The only non-negotiable principle is success," Emanuel likes to say. But that's the very definition of being unprincipled. And by being unprincipled, he's delivered defeat.

On the economy, the all-important issue, Emanuel urged Obama to disregard the advice of Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, two Nobel Prize-winning liberal economists, who publicly predicted that we'd have 10 percent unemployment by now if Obama didn't propose a bigger stimulus package last spring. Emanuel and Obama's other political advisers said the pricetag was too high.

Now Obama is paying for it. ... And he needs a chief of staff with the wisdom to help point him down a bold, progressive path. The Emanuel path is a dead end.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/21-6

[Edweird]

15. Indeed. The DLC seems to have taken the positions held by

republicans before they went batshit crazy.

[BLUSH]

16. from wowimthere's thread in GDP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=142629&mesg_id=142629


My God! Do the Democrats ever learn???

by DU member wowimthere:


They are still in pre-Coakley election night lost mode. They don't seem to have learned anything from the MA senate loss.

Debbie Stabenow - Still talking about the Republicans 41 votes and how she's looking at them to see what they're going to do. She will continue to propose legislation and see if they will block it.

Obama - We shouldn't jam the healthcare bill through without first seating the newly elected senator.

The Whitehouse - They don't know what their going to do about healthcare now that they've lost 1 seat.

Obama - We may slim down healthcare reform.

After the MA election they said they got it. Except... they didn't. Like I said yesterday. Healthcare reform could have been done 6 months ago and Coakley would have sailed into the senate seat.

The Democrats are looking slow-footed, lethargic, inept, and weak. They were hit over the head with a two by four and once they regained consciousness they forgot they lost in MA. What does it take for them to get it?



DEMOCRATS we elected you to do something besides talk. I can't believe I've helped elect a bunch of talkers. They can propose legislation but... well... if the Republicans filibuster then... their question seems to be, "I don't know what to do next".

YOU FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE!

GET SOMETHING DONE!!!

You've got 59 seats. Put the Blue Dogs on notice. If you block significant legislation and cause us to lose more seats we will primary you. Tell them, the people expected the following.

-Healthcare Reform
-Cap and Trade
-Regulatory Reform
-Jobs

Tell them - If you stand in the way of what you knew we were trying to accomplish since 2008 then we will run someone against you that will help us move forward on what the people voted us in to do.

The key to fighting Republicans should be a no-brainer:

-Don't continue to bargain with people who will undermine your own chances of re-election.
-You make them filibuster pieces of the healthcare legislation... in public. I guarantee Republicans won't filibuster "pre-existing conditions".
-You use reconciliation where ever you can.
-You use the bully pulpit every chance you get.
-Trash the Republican for the obstructionists they are.
-You don't take your nominees like the TSA off of the table. You call senators like Demint on the carpet and make him continuously answer why he's holding up such an important nominee.
-Stop giving the Republicans 41 votes more power than our 59. That makes no sense.

Help me understand what's going on with the Democrats. We seem to be in a loop. Are the Dems more clueless than I thought.

[GreenMetalFlake]

10. Why do people cling to the foolish belief that any politician is on 'their' side?

Cause they're not. Simple fact. They're just. Not.

[BLUSH]

14. Why do they cling on ...

I guess that makes us Cling-Ons.

Beam me out of here.

[4dsc]

19. What does Obama need to appease the liberals in the party?

Its obvious that Obama need to appease the liberal/progressive base of the democratic party or all will be lost this fall.

[BLUSH]

20. It's not appeasement when you do what you had promised to do.

Where's the real health care reform?

[BLUSH]

21. Waiting ...

He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For

Paul Krugman

Health care reform — which is crucial for millions of Americans — hangs in the balance. Progressives are desperately in need of leadership; more specifically, House Democrats need to be told to pass the Senate bill, which isn’t what they wanted but is vastly better than nothing. And what we get from the great progressive hope, the man who was offering hope and change, is this:

I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill. Now I think there’s some things in there that people don’t like and legitimately don’t like.

In short, “Run away, run away”!

Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/he-wasnt-the-one-weve-been-waiting-for/

[BLUSH]

22. In Ohio, Obama Vows to Keep Fighting on Health Care

In Ohio, Obama Vows to Keep Fighting on Health Care

January 22, 2010, 1:57 pm

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

ELYRIA, Ohio – Conceding his health care overhaul had “run into a bit of a buzz saw,’’ President Obama vowed on Friday to keep fighting for legislation that will “hold the insurance industry accountable and bring more stability and security to folks in our health care system.’’

Mr. Obama came to this Cleveland suburb — where unemployment has hit 10.9 percent, according to figures released Friday — to defend his record and spread the word that his White House is focused on economic recovery and job growth. But with his health care bill in disarray in the wake of the recent Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts, Mr. Obama also sought to send a message that he is not giving up on a health overhaul, his top domestic priority.

“I didn’t take up this issue to boost my poll numbers or score political points – believe me, if I were, I would have picked something a lot easier than this,’’ the president in remarks prepared for a town hall style meeting at Lorain County Community College here. “No, I’m trying to solve the problems that folks here in Elyria and across this country face every day. And I am not going to walk away just because it’s hard. We’re going to keep on working to get this done with Democrats, I hope with Republicans – anyone who is willing to step up. Because I am not going to watch more people get crushed by costs, or denied the care they need by insurance company bureaucrats, or partisan politics, or special interest power in Washington.’’

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/in-ohio-obama-vows-to-keep-fighting-on-health-care/



Keep fighting?

It's about time he started fighting ...

[SammyWinstonJack]

23. heh. Good luck with that.

:evilgrin:

[BLUSH]

25. Would you rather he stay down and be counted out?

If so, say hello to President Palin in 2012.

[VMI Dem]

24. He would need to clear that with Joe Lieberman first.

[BLUSH]

27. Leadership Now!

The Choice

January 22, 2010

by Paul Krugman

So, House Democrats have a choice: do they pass the Senate bill, or do they go back to the drawing board and spend several months cobbling together a plan that’s worse in almost every dimension, generating thousands of stories about hapless Democrats — and almost surely find that Senate Republicans block the new plan, too.

Guess which way they seem to be leaning.

Maybe they’ll come to their senses over the next few days. It would be really helpful, of course, if Democrats actually had a party leader — you know, the president or someone.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/the-choice/

[Toasterlad]

28. Obama's Dukes Are Busy Stroking Corporate "Personhoods"

[BLUSH]

31. Corporations are people too

(If anyone remembers the song, "Kids are people, too.")

Let's all sing along.

[upi402]

29. yeah, now that we're KO'd n/t

[KittyWampus]

30. My goodness BlUSH, you certainly like kicking your own thread.

[BLUSH]

32. yep ... a good kick in the pants is what this administration needs

Weiner On Health Care's Demise: We Lacked Leadership From Obama

Sam Stein

At least one leading House progressive is blaming the White House for the likely death of health care legislation, arguing that President Obama never forcefully made the case for reform.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) told the Huffington Post on Tuesday evening that, with some difficulty, he believed that passing a bill in the immediate future was not likely to happen. Part of the problem, the New York Democrat insisted, was that House Democrats no longer believed that the rest of their agenda was contingent on health care's passage.

"I don't think people are buying it as much as they were," said Weiner. "We have been asked to accept as an article of faith that success on health care was a building block for anything else we do all year. And I think increasingly my colleagues are saying: 'Really? I think we can bounce back OK if we move on from it for now.'"

Another major problem for Weiner -- which other Democratic lawmakers have largely kept to themselves -- is a lack of compelling leadership from the White House.

"There is never a big legislative thing like this that happens without the full-throated and muscular advocacy of the president. They just don't happen without it. Now, they decided we are going to do this a little differently, we are going to sit back and kind of let the legislative process go through its ebb and its flow and its groans... To the credit of the president and Rahm , they've gotten further than anyone else has gotten. But what they sacrificed in that was a clear message where voters came away with the idea of: 'Hey, we are getting something of value here,'" Weiner said

For Weiner, the administration misfired by thinking health care could be crafted through negotiation and not the powers of persuasion -- not using the bully pulpit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/weiner-on-health-cares-de_n_429540.html

[BLUSH]

33. Another example ....

Again with this bipartisan bull$hit ... when will he learn, you can't work with rethugs!

Obama vows "forceful, bipartisan response" to campaign finance decision

by SusanG

Share this on Twitter - Obama vows "forceful, bipartisan response" to campaign finance decision

Sat Jan 23, 2010 at 07:30:07 AM PST

We’ve been making steady progress. But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. By a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned more than a century of law – including a bipartisan campaign finance law written by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold that had barred corporations from using their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks.

continued:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/23/829176/-Obama-vows-forceful,-bipartisan-response-to-campaign-finance-decision