The same Democratic president who supported the transfer of $700bn to bail out Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America’s bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America’s most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.
Where is the “epic shitstorm” from the left which Black predicted? With a few exceptions – the liberal blog FiredogLake has assembled 50,000 Obama supporters vowing to withhold re-election support if he follows through, and a few other groups have begun organising as well – it’s nowhere to be found.
Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama’s legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left’s political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party’s leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe.
Gutting the New Deal
i think it has more to do with a long series of false alarms. for two solid years i’ve been told again and again that obama was about to announce deep cuts in entitlement programs but each time that turned out not to be the case. oddly, obama critics on the left seem to think repeatedly raising their voice about something that doesn’t happen gives them credibility, but my impression is that it does just the opposite.
i’ve become very used to ignoring the alarm bells rung by the same old cast of characters, often based on nothing more than a dubiously sourced leak from a closed door meeting. this time, that’s not what is happening. this time, for the first time i believe, obama himself has at least implicitly endorsed entitlement cuts in a public speech. which should be a big deal, but isn’t because the likes of lambert have been pretending this happened over and over before.
on the other hand, there still is time for a big shitstorm over proposed entitlement cuts. any deal has to pass congress, which means that first the particulars have to be ironed out and publicized and then it needs a CBO score. that will take time, which we really don’t have anymore before august 2nd. but that’s why the president is suddenly okay with a temporary extension.
Noz, it didn’t once occur to you that by raising such a big stink, we convinced them to back off? Because from all accounts, that’s what happened.
I’m actually astounded you believe that. It’s not a big secret that Obama has ALWAYS wanted entitlement reform. He’s been talking about it on the record since February 2008. That’s why he appointed the Catfood Commission, and that’s why the Gang of Six proposal he likes so much includes a proposal for another one, except the bar for adopting it will be lower this time. As I wrote the other day, I was told by one of Obama’s former policy advisors on entitlements that Austan Goolsbee was assigned to drum up popular support for Medicare and Social Security cuts. I don’t use unnamed sources lightly, but this one was a slam dunk. I attended that AmericaSpeaks townhall, you didn’t. I can assure you that the intentions to cut benefits (as opposed to actual reform) were quite clear.
And when he keeps talking about the “grand bargain” and “doing something big”, what do you suppose he’s talking about? Giving seniors more money? That’s not in keeping with his recent themes of “pain” and “shared sacrifice.”
Noz, it didn’t once occur to you that by raising such a big stink, we convinced them to back off? Because from all accounts, that’s what happened.
no, that’s not what all accounts say. that’s what the accounts of the people who made the stink in the first place say. it’s a self-serving narrative, not necessarily wrong. but still self-serving so it needs some additional evidence from a source other than the people patting themselves on their back in order for me to take it seriously.
I’m actually astounded you believe that. It’s not a big secret that Obama has ALWAYS wanted entitlement reform.
the evidence in favor of that thesis are those same badly-sourced anonymous leaks that have been causing all the hubbub on a fairly regular basis over the past few years.
oh right, also the statements of some of the people that obama has appointed to various positions, but contrary to the statements of other people that obama has appointed to various positions. which conveniently allows the supporters of the thesis to point to group #1 and ignore group #2 (and also ignore some of obama’s own statements about social security, although it’s not surprising if obama would lie about this if he really did have a secret agenda to gut entitlements all along). you can always cherry pick you way to just about any theory about another person’s motivations because the bottom line is we really don’t know what anyone else is ever thinking.
as i said in my above comment, this week really has been different. it’s the first time that i’m aware of that obama has expressly endorsed enacting an entitlement cutting plan. was that his plan all along, i think the evidence is really weak, notwithstanding the fact that that is the drum that has been beating constantly over here and in a bunch of other sites. maybe that drum beating saved us before, or maybe not. it’s really not clear either way. but what is clear is that all that drum beating has dulled the alarm bells this time around. that’s my main point in my above comment.
Wow, denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Reagan was Obama’s hero. Hello!!
Hard to believe the Democrats voted for this cypher.
Really, he such a sweet man. He has just been under a lot of stress lately. If you REALLY knew him, you wouldn’t think those things about him. You just don’t know the whole story, just what people say, and he is such a private soul that he won’t tell you what he really thinks. You just have to trust him.
Drum beatings and alarm bells notwithstanding, most of the “liberal” or “progressive” establishment outside the congress and all of the democrats in the congress have become dependent on the administration to keep their jobs, including those in the press who need favor and access.
I don’t go by what anybody says about Obama, I just watch what he does, or rather what he does not do. He will not come out of the cone of silence to make a stand. He will not stand up for us, and he has allowed the other side to beat us to a pulp in the public square. The poor fools in the LGBT community have been the last ones to keep their hopes in him and he has betrayed them again n the last two weeks by asking the court to delay its ruling on DADT.
Did you ever watch “High Noon”, especially the part where he goes to everybody he thought was a friend to ask for help? When the chips were down, nobody was willing to take a chance. That is why nobody is coming out to answer the “alarm bell”, not because of any false alarms.
Snuzy your argument is beyond lame. He’s telling us to our face he’s going to do it. He’s to the right of the Republicans on this. Look at all the other neocon things he’s done – and you still want to STFU and wait and see if he does this? This is his most cherished goal.
Wake up Snoozy!
The cult of personality is stronger than the strongest drug.
Surprise!!!
Snuzy your argument is beyond lame. He’s telling us to our face he’s going to do it. He’s to the right of the Republicans on this.
Allie, I agree that he’s telling us that he’s going to cut entitlements. that’s why I said “this week really has been different. it’s the first time that i’m aware of that obama has expressly endorsed enacting an entitlement cutting plan” in comment #3 above. (tho I disagree that he is “to the right of Republicans on this”– the modern GOP is for cutting entitlements too) so how is my argument “beyond lame”?
apparently, you think i am defending the president. I am not. all I am doing is trying to answer the question raised by the greenwald quote in the post: why aren’t people on the left raising more of a shitstorm over the proposed entitlement cuts? the answer is too many cries of wolf blunt the impact when it really seems to be happening. do you disagree? if so, I would appreciate you explain why, rather than just labeling it “beyond lame”
don’t feed the trolls