Prefatory note by Patrice Greanville
BO: The Untouchable.
Anyone halfway familiar with the topography of American political blogs soon recognizes that the gianormous Daily Kos is, by its own admission, little more than an appendage for the Democratic Party establishment, a rich platform for apologetics of the centrist kind, beginning with the man (still) in vogue, Barack Obama. Make any criticism of the current POTUS, let alone a systematic analysis of his betrayals, and all hell is guaranteed to break loose, with all the poisonous, snide and often condescending fury that mainstream liberals are capable of mustering, which, incidentally, is plenty. Take it from me, it’s not an edifying experience. That is one of the many reasons I give this opinion tent a wide berth.
Irrevocably centrist
“Kossacks” tipify the extremists of the center who see nothing wrong with ganging up on Republicans, low-hanging fruit when it comes to picking off scumbags, criminals, and assorted enemies of the people, not to mention that GOPers often waste no time disguising where their true allegiances lie (remember Texas rep Joe Barton abjectly apologizing to BP for being brought to task in the wake of the Gulf fiasco?), while giving a glowing pass to Democrats, in the name of LOTE or whatever other nincompoop reason they manage to contrive.
This is the kind of mind that endorses Rachel Maddow, and her MSNBC confreres’ brand of self-inflicted half-blind journalism; that applauds the likes of Jonathan Alter and Bill Maher’s ludicrous shilling for Obama, and that is ready with invective for anyone who should deviate too far from electoral politics as usual, all this while the world is literally going to hell on account of massive misleadership or (as is the case with the salvation of numerous species) no leadership at all. Meantime, as the examples of Chris Hedges (who even wrote a book about the subject, pronouncing liberalism dead), Michael Hastings, Matt Taibbi, Rob Kall, Michael Green and others indicate, intelligent, principled liberals are abandoning the DLC catechism of permanent obeisance to corporate power in increasing numbers, and moving sharply leftward in what is becoming an embarrassing show of rejection of the American establishment’s chief legitimacy instrument.
DK however retains considerable traffic and commands attention. Like a slowly melting berg, it can still do some damage. That’s why some people take a deep breath and stick around. Their thankless (but politically important) job is to inject solid information and mature perspectives into a large audience that could prove critical in eliminating the Democratic Party as the eternal lesser evil option, and provide some rectification to the self-indulgent dreck that passes for commentary on the site. A few days back, Tony Wikrent, who uses the handle NBBooks, posted an excellent essay that quickly caused some turmoil. The snide comments soon arrived, but also some simply memorable defenses. This is the kind of post that almost redeems the Daily Kos. (See it all below). I’m not sure what political space Wikrent occupies. My hunch is that he’s currently in the left-liberal trench, still in the ranks of the Democratic party, albeit quickly losing trust. A final point: Although we do not agree entirely with the author’s positions, his was a brave post and deserves recognition. —PG
PS/ Don’t miss the comments [selection] at the end of the piece. One, I believe, sums up the situation particularly well.
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WED JUN 19, 2013
Obama did not save the economy. Social Security did.
by NBBooks, Daily Kos
Some Kossacks are getting pretty upset that more and more of us are coming to the realization that President Obama is a corporatist shill who has done very little to help improve the economic situation for working Americans. There is a recommended diary as I write that asserts “Obama SAVED the US Economy” and argues that it was Obama’s “massive stimulus and jobs package that rescued this country from Soviet-style collapse.”
In a word: bullshit.
It was Social Security — an “automatic stabilizer” that was created to help remedy the First Great Depression — that saved the U.S. economy. Along with a few other “automatic stabilizers” that were created in the same era, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps.
Even before Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, there were a few economists who warned that we needed a stimulus package that was over $1 trillion. And the thing about those economists is that they were the very few and very rare economists who had been correct about the Wall Street bubble economy of the 1990s and 2000s and who explicitly identified the housing mortgage securities market as being the probable fuse for a coming financial collapse, such as Tom Palley, Joe Stiglitz, James Galbraith, and Michael Hudson.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was estimated to be $787 billion at the time of passage, later revised to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019, according to Wikipedia. Of that $831 billion, $288 billion, or a full third, went to “tax relief” which even conservative economists like Mark Zandy admitted provides the least amount of stimulus bang for the buck. Only $144 billion went to assist state and local governments, $111 billion to infrastructure and science, and $43 billion to energy. A mere ten percent, $81 billion, went to programs that directly assisted the most needy and most destitute of our fellow citizens.
But, let’s be generous and say that Obama’s vaunted stimulus provided $543 billion to actually stimulate the economy (that’s $831 billion, minus the $288 billion wasted for useless “tax relief.”
By contrast, Social Security paid out $557.2 billion in benefits in 2009; $577.4 billion in 2010; and $596.2 billion in 2011. (See 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of The Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds.” United States Social Security Administration, April 25, 2012, page 241.)
That’s $1.73 trillion in Social Security benefits in three years.
That’s what saved the economy, not Obama’s relatively paltry $543 billion. Say another $600 billion for 2012, and you’re looking at over $2 trillion in Social Security benefits over four years. What do you think would have happened without that $2 trillion in Social Security benefits? What if there had not been the New Deal legacy of Social Security — that no conservative ideologue could stop, obstruct, or derail — to act as an automatic stabilizer for the economy?
Then we’d be looking at a “Soviet-style collapse.”
And now the economic dolt we have as a President wants to impose a cut in the one automatic stabilizer program that was most responsible for saving his sorry excuse for a Presidential administration?
At this point, anyone who believes it was Obama’s stimulus program that saved the U.S. economy is such an imbecile and simpleton on real economics that it borders on moral turpitude.
There were some other claims in that recommended diary that defy belief. The U.S. a leader in “clean energy technologies”? Really? I want to see what moron put together a report laying out that fanciful claim. As the MIT Technology Review article on the April 2012 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?”, the U.S. is leading the world in the amount of money invested in clean energy technologies. So what? The U.S. is the world’s biggest economy. As the MIT Technology Review article noted, the U.S. is lagging in getting new technologies into production and to market.
Saving the auto industry, is one thing Obama can take credit for. But read the inside account of the debate between Obama’s advisers (such as that provided by Ron Suskind in Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President), and it was a very close thing. Had one particular adviser not interjected a crucial argument — “How will it look if we let hundreds of thousands of auto workers lose their jobs, while we hand hundreds of billions of dollars over to save Wall Street bankers?” — it could easily have gone the other way. In the end, the decision was made because of the damn optics, not because Obama and his economics team had any real sense of the economic struggles and everyday life of working Americans.
People who defend Obama at this point, I dismiss as people who are comfortably ensconced in nice, middle class professional jobs. The professional class. They are complete and I am coming to believe, nearly irredeemable idiots on questions of economics.
You want a good litmus test to judge someone on economics? Ask them what they think of free trade. And if they say they are opposed to it, ask them what specifically are they going to do to put that opposition into effect.
I was part of a radical splinter group that tried to confront the UAW leadership on its support for Bill Clinton’s NAFTA. (I write “Bill Clinton’s” because though it was formulated and negotiated under Papa Bush, Bill Clinton took full ownership of it.) So if you want to know what went wrong with organized labor in the 1980s and 1990s, I think I can tell you.
They forgot what it was like being poor.
And that’s exactly the problem with Obama and those who don’t see what a disaster his economic policies have created out here in flyover country. From what I can sense, anyone who fails to distance themselves from Obama’s economic record is going to get creamed in 2014.
That does not mean that people are going to embrace the Republicans. Most people know that the Republicans have been obstructionist dickheads. They laugh bitterly about how comical is the Republicans knee-jerk opposition to anything Obama. But they also laugh bitterly when they see Wall Street banks and oil companies making record busting profits, while they search desperately for a job that pays more than nine or ten dollars an hour.
I think the political answer lies in a full-throated attack on the money power and a remorseless repudiation of all Democrats beholden to that power. The first candidate that declares war on Wall Street, with a viable plan for restoring the primacy of Main Street, wins.
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SELECT COMMENTS (good, bad and mediocre)—
The first comment on this list, by wisepiper, is exceptional. Apparently someone among the Zombie Kossacks assailed the author for NOT attacking the Republicans. We have covered that elsewhere so we’ll just ask you to check the post. Indeed, in 2008, without any doubt, the Dems could have driven a stake through the heart of the GOP vampire and be done. Instead, they offered the monster a hand to get up from the canvas and continue the Kabuki. This was a calculated move on the part of Obama and the DLC. That betrayal should never be forgotten. —PG
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* [new] This DIARY is excusing Republican behavior? (108+ / 0-)
A big part of why we’re all in this fucked up mess is that the president you are intent on running interference for spent virtually his entire first term excusing Republican behavior.
President Obama rescued their sorry asses time after time after time. A political party that an ever growing majority of the people had come to recognize as bad actors was rehabilitated as responsible governing partners by this cynically manipulative or hopelessly naive president. (Pick either. For whatever reason, Obama breathed new life into these destructive fucks, and for THAT history will judge him harshly.)
WTFWJD? LOTE? I sincerely doubt that.
by WisePiper on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 12:37:32 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
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* [new] President Obama has … (40+ / 0-)
… managed to negotiate the Republican Congress into the worst poll ratings in the history of Congress. At the same time, he has ended DADT, provided a stimulus that revived the economy, got us out of one war, is moving us out of another, destroyed terroism’s worst actors, come out in support of marriage equality, saved the automobile industry, helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, jump-started health care reform, slapped down billions of dollars of money spent against him in two elections, has changed a million regulations dealing with such diverse topics as emissions standards to mortgage lending, settled a multi-billion dollar case with banks, and on and on and on.
Oh, and did I mention, while the President was accomplishing all of that, it is the Tea Party GOP that has ended up with the worst polling in history? He’s given you, if you are the least bit interested, an opportunity to help rid Washington of the Republican economic saboteurs ruining our economy and our discourse. You never seem interested in that, though, but I thought I’d bring it up.
The fact that you’d come in to defend this drooling-and-yet-still-somehow-shrieking diary says a lot about you. On a final note, thanks for the rational words, NedSparks! I enjoyed reading them.
I would tip you, but the man took away my tips.
by Tortmaster on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 01:26:42 AM PDT
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* [new] All true. (52+ / 0-)
But, objectively speaking — many Democrats thought they were voting for the anti-Bush.
They really thought the wars would end, the killing would stop, the bankers and war criminals would be spanked, education would get on the right foot, the middle class would stop being crushed, Social Security would stop being threatened, and many other good-government things people fantasize about.
I have never blamed President Obama because I don’t believe that presidents have much power at all. But, I can see why people feel frustrated or disillusioned.
I can empathize with disappointment based on unrealistic expectations.
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* [new] I knew he wasn’t a liberal. (14+ / 0-)
He campaigned on focusing on Afghanistan, for one thing. People heard what they wanted back in ’08. And now their sad that all those things they imagined aren’t true. But he’s still doing a decent job, under the circumstances. Reality based community? As if.
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* [new] Step 1: Order us to vote for the lesser evil (32+ / 0-)
Step 2: Mock us when we remind you that the evil remains.
There are several variations of this but they all include ordering the DFH to fall in step and march off to the polls and then ridiculing us after the election for voting against our beliefs.
I’m coming to the place where it’s more fun to be ridiculed for actually voting for something I believe in.
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AKA (1+ / 0-)
SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!!
Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted. -Carl Sagan
by RF on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 08:42:03 AM PDT
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Mentioned Republicans in maybe 35 words and (75+ / 0-)
spent hundreds of words criticizing the President. Didn’t discuss how Bush wrecked the economy in the first place. No, he blamed Obama, didn’t talk about how Bush placed two wars on America’s credit card and didn’t even put them in his budget. No, blamed Obama. Didn’t talk about how the Republican congress won’t pass jobs bill after jobs bill after jobs bill…. No, blamed Obama. Doesn’t talk how Republicans don’t even want to raise the minimum wage, for working people….No, blame Obama. Doesn’t talk about Republicans want to sabotage the healthcare law so that people will have to force to do without healthcare….No, blamed Obama.
What does this say? This is excusing Republican behavior, this is showing how hatred of Barack Obama is the most important thing for some of these people. When someone can ignore the really hurried despicable behavior of Republicans who are against women’s’ rights, gay rights, the rights of the poor, against the environment, and this individual comes on a website to call Barack Obama all kinds of dirty names….. This individual is disingenuous at the very least and I have to wonder if this realy Rhince Prebus….
by NedSparks on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 12:12:33 AM PDT
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Actually, I read through all the comments (56+ / 0-)
and I think the responses to this diary fit the description of ‘hijacking a diary.’ Any time anyone wants to do a hit job on a posting that criticizes Obama, they line up the same people to ridicule and taunt the writer.
Just look at the names, and think about the number of times you have seen them swoop in together to attack a diary that they dislike. It’s not about making a cogent argument, it’s about shutting down the diary.
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