Progressives: Stop enabling Obama

As if I didn’t already have about 228 reasons to vote Green in 2012, and to tell other people on FB, my blog, etc. to do that, the fact that Social Security hater Alan Simpson will remain cochair of Obama's debt commission is just another.


Second, the Democratic co-chair, Bowles, also wanted to partially privatize Social Security when he was the Slickster's chief of staff. Look at the other commissioners. Paul (nutbar) Ryan, for example. Obama's stacked the deck on this issue, folks, including stacking the deck on this commission.

When will "liberal" blogs, or even allegedly progressive mags, like The Nation stop being apologetic for him?

It took more than two decades of third-party votes, even to the point of winning electoral votes and Congressional seats, in the late 1800s, before progressivism of any sort entered the political mainstream.

Real liberals and progressives must stop “enabling” neolibs.

Hopefully, by laying it on the line, Salon's Joan Walsh will encourage the anti-enabling:

The Obama team seems to think 2012 will take care of itself, as long as they burnish that shining Obama "brand," which requires reaching out to Republicans and independents and ignoring the pesky left, with its old culture-war grudges and its subversive demand for greater economic fairness. I've heard some smart folks speculate that the White House may even welcome a Republican takeover, the better to "let Obama be Obama," and continue to play out his fantasy of being a Democratic Ronald Reagan, creating a generation of what he used to call "Obamacans" and realigning politics for his lifetime.

If anyone in the White House still believes that, they are delusional.

Sadly, Joan, Mayor McCheese himself still believes it, and that's the problem.

Beyond that, Walsh also notes he "doesn't get" the other side:

Apart from accepting too many Republican prescriptions for the economy, Obama also waxes vague and platitudinous when asked about the extreme forces he's up against, like birthers, Beck and Limbaugh.