9 thoughts on “The conservative party”

  1. I’m bad. I can’t be arsed to look through DownWithTyranny’s pre-November posts, but weren’t they in the “ZOMG vote for Obama! No point voting Green!” crowd?

    And now they repent? Now when it’s too late?

    I may have a microdot of respect for them if they stick with this new-found insight when there’s an actual election coming up.

  3. The pertinent SocSec graf from Obama’s April, 2006 speech to the Hamilton Project announcement meeting:

    For those of us on the left, and I include myself in that category, too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938, believing that if we admit the need to modernize these programs to fit changing times, then the other side will use those acknowledgements to destroy them altogether. On the right, there is a tendency to push for massive tax cuts, as Peter [Orszag] mentioned from my speech at Knox College, no matter what the cost or who the target is, a view that stems from the belief that there is no role for government whatsoever in the challenges we face. Of course, neither of these approaches really works.

    ~~~~From the PDF linked to at
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017106174

    I think we can safely say that Obama has been using these ideas, often the same words, ever since he went big politically. And probably well before. So they were all there for the Wall Street Big Money crowd to see and hear early on and know where Obama intended to go concerning the great social safety net programs of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. They did not trust Hillary to do their bidding, but they knew Obama would. And, wow, he really has been intrepid in going after that program from 1938 and then the one from 1965.

    Obama clearly identifies himself as being “on the left” in the first two phrases of the paragraph. then takes a swing directly at SocSec, one of those 1938 [so very old fashioned!] programs.

    1938!! So very long ago…. Well, that sets him up to raise the age of full SocSec payments, as St Ronnie and Tip did earlier, because everyone knows people are living so much long and with more years of good health, so they can work longer. Same for Medicare, eh? But he doesn’t say so. [/snark]

    Then he sets up a false dichotomy, between ever so sweetly sensible modernizations and changes which break from the chains of the past and the right’s overwhelming desire for nothing but massive tax cuts.

    But he is coming from the right, from the Corportist playbook, while trying to fool the public into seeing him as a liberal and true defender of the left. [As he did on his profit protection plan for for-profit private insurance companies during his “debate” about mandated health insurance.]

    And the coup de grace: “Of course, neither of these approaches really works.”

    Let’s see. The only program which is dependably there for all eligible seniors is…SocSec. The only program which is dependably there for the survivors of all those paying into FICA is…SocSec. The only program which is dependably there for the disabled (may take several applications, however) is SSDI. They WORK. They should be more generous, but, of what’s out there, they WORK.

    As does Medicare, and had both programs been extended and actually improved, we would have everyone in this nation on Medicare for All right now, no one left out — and with no questions about whether SocSec would “be there” for the younger generations.

    So, Obama lied. Deliberately and cruelly.

    But, the speech is so cleverly worded that Obama has plausible deniability that he would ever damage SocSec (and Medicare) and it’s so very hard to pin him down as to what he would actually DO. We criticized him based on what we knew of his actions back then, but only the occasional slip of allowing a citizen journalist to catch his words in private to very, very big donors put Obama on the record. And by then it was too late; enough of the public had been mesmerized and completely fooled.

    Hallmark of his political career. He is clear about what he will do when addressing his Corporatist masters and donors, then works very hard to bamboozle the public.

    Thus, this speech, while indicative of his true thinking, is not a silver bullet. Even this will not persuade the still deluded.

    Will his new budget and his lies about that?

  4. Re: Use of “Conservative”:

    If it’s Corporatist idea and objective, call the pols what they are, Corportists.

    The cartoon had no Dems telling the union guy he was fired. But Obama and many Dems had essnetially done just that.

    The public needs to educated just as to who is calling the shots. And it ain’t us in the lower economic quintiles.

  5. Lambert did his usual brilliant dissection of Obama Speak on the April/2006 speech to the Hamilton Group over at Naked Capitalism. Good comments as well.

    I hadn’t seen this approach before, but he uses color coding of words and phrases to point out Obama is manipulating the non-insiders and making clear to his masters what he believes and will do.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/obama-at-the-hamilton-project-2006-this-is-not-a-bloodless-process.html

  6. Speaking of the “ZOMG – vote for Obama if you’re in a swing state; don’t think of voting Green” – I could add the names Daniel Ellsberg and Rebecca Solnit – both of the “we must deny R$oney/Ryan at all costs” crowd.

    Glad to see that strategy worked out so well.

    Otherwise, somebody might have wanted to have an Imperial Presidency, not give a god damn if anybody ever got hired, made sure that we never got off fossil fuels until the economy fully recovered such that we could “afford” to think about alternatives, and cut Social Security or something.

  7. Correct on all scores and for those of us who didn’t drink the Kool Aid and vote Obama, “We told ya so.” But, now what’s next? It seems like we’re living Ground Hog’s Day around here. Looking out to the midterms and then Hillary’s ascendance, I see only election cycle on election cycle of the same old same old angst, while we course down the drain.

  8. (I don’t know, Susie. I may not be. Maybe I have him confused with another, more Obotly, Howard who’s well known in the leftish blogosphere?)

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