Great Expectations and Democratic Disappointment Part 1
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08 September 2010
A failure to attain 'great expectations' is often the fault of one who holds the hope of accomplishment and not the negligence of one who fails to live up to the promise. But how do you integrate this notion into your political views when the one who holds your hope is also the one who runs the country?
I expect a great deal out of President Barack Obama, but I refuse to remain silent when I think he fails to live up to the promise of what his presidency symbolizes. It is clear as crystal to me now that the only thing politicians understand are consequences. All the yapping, criticism, and histrionics in the world won't solve the issue of a Democratic administration not fully comprehending what they had back in 2008 and how they have failed in some respects to live up to the enormous potentialities created by that moment in history.
They don't understand dire situations unless their own access to power is in some way threatened. It is becoming fashionable among the left to try to scare Democratic voters into turning out for the 2010 elections by making Republicans the boogie man. Newsflash: Republicans have ALWAYS been the boogie men to much of the Left. Its the 'we cannot go backwards', 'Republicans will ruin this nation if you don't keep us in power' story. Much of the base thoroughly understands that already. Its why Barack Obama was elected President in the first place.
My response is that Democratic officials should have the fear of being back under Republican boot heels; have it burned into their political souls like an unforgettable catastrophe because only they serve as protectors for the rest of us. Then maybe they wouldn't continue to put themselves in such dire positions to begin with. Instead of trying to scare the base into keeping Dems in power, they should be scaring themselves into moving heaven and earth to do right by their voters 100% of the time.
It should be the base putting the fear of God (so to speak) into Democrats. Or better yet, the Dems in power should be scaring Republicans into fully participating in the governing of this nation. Either do that or get the hell out. After the catastrophe of the Bush administration, there is no excuse for why Democrats should be fighting to hold on to power.
Democrats seem infested with people who want to keep their jobs even if it means turning their backs on their own party leaders, running away from the bills they compromised so badly to pass, or not handing out any earth-shattering/system-changing consequences to big banks, big oil, big insurance, or big pharma. Big corporations have a stranglehold on government and an extra pair of hands positioned securely around the necks of the American people.
The lack of enthusiasm is cause and effect. It's the direct result of a wasted opportunity to change this nation into a better version of itself. How dare those employees like Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel try to make the base feel like ungrateful children. Instead, they should recognize that in this real-life 'drama', the base plays the part of a no-nonsense parent: an omnipresent force who is always involved and is constantly pushing, hoping, and helping our 'child' to excel.
And yes, both Gibbs and Emanuel are nothing but employees. None of the base woke up early in the morning to stand in line for an hour (2 hours... 3 hours....) to vote for Robert Gibbs...or Rahm Emanuel. And they damn well better understand that. The message should be passed on to anybody else content with advising President Obama to stick to the safe, compromised road.
Democrats are in this mess by not acting with ferocious resolve, by bending over backwards to compromise with a party which was kicked out of power, and by being satisfied with doing 'just enough' to check off another item on their 'To Do' list. When certain accomplishments are held up as illustrations of things liberals and progressives should be satisfied with -- particularly when there are gaping holes in specific laws or a total lack of a system change -- it irritates the hell out of me personally.
Don't tell me to be satisfied with the paltry crap you figured out how to finagle, ensnare, or accepted in a bend-over-backwards compromise to a group of people who couldn't care less about whether or not the President is in any way an effective leader for the country. Particularly, that group of people are in the minority within a body of the government which prides itself on 'majority rule'. How they are even able to gum up the works to begin with shows a failure of those in power to keep it from happening.
I don't buy that twaddle, nor will I personally let the President or a single person I voted for be satisfied with just creating a half-a$$ed bill to point to as an accomplishment not seen in ages. 'An accomplishment not seen in ages' only means that generations of lawmakers before now weren't doing their jobs. It is not a foregone indication that lawmakers are particularly doing anything historically outstanding now. Don't expect me to fall over in gratitude as lawmakers decide it's now more politically expedient to do something instead of almost nothing at all; especially when they are forced to do something because of a collapsing financial structure, real estate system, etc.
There are still a slew of other things which have not been taken care of on top of a number of broken-system-sustaining compromises forged out of putting bipartisanship above doing the right thing with the amount of power granted to them by voters (ex: a health care reform bill without a public option, or medicare-for-all type of system).
The frenzy of the word 'change', as used so effectively by the Administration, should have had an asterisk next to it leading to a footnote that read: " 'Change' is defined by the technical definition of the word as opposed to the idealistic definition as envisioned by supporters, voters, idealists, or the otherwise faithful volunteers of the Obama campaign." I should have read the fine print.
'Change' as defined means to make the form of something different from what it would have been if left otherwise alone. Technically, anything even remotely different from the way it would have been is 'change'. Technically, passing one law that modifies one pre-existing system can be classified as 'change'. But is it something we can believe in, though?
I'm sick of hearing leaders feigned outrage against a system that they could be helping (forcing) to change with the power of their laws. Along with that failure, there is also what seems to be a lack of power over their own fellow members who seek to derail such efforts. Don't tell me a damn thing about how the big banks are gambling with taxpayers' money while, for example, getting preferential treatment for being a "Friend Of Angelo", or not passing any backbreaking regulations (or banning certain practices) on credit default swaps... or naked short-selling... or infinite mortgage bundling...or whatever the heck caused the collapse of the real estate market. How much of a "liberal retard" were we to expect any of that to fall away like the old skin off a snake?!
Barack Obama is a brilliant, intelligent man who figured out how to become President of a United States where 250 years ago he would have been considered less than a human being. I absolutely refuse to bury my head in the sand and pretend to choose the average option (Dem) over the god-awful option (Rep). The Democratic base should strive to pull that 'Average' up to an 'Outstanding', and do so by any means necessary if need be. Obama's fortunes could rest on whether he has enough backing from his own party when it comes to making law and changing this nation for the better.
When given power from most of the country, why be content with making waves when you've been granted full permission from the American public to create a tsunami to wipe away decades of unkept promises?
In the next part of this special Verbal Projectile 'Great Expectations Part 2', I'll give a couple of examples of squandered opportunities particularly with the health care bill and the credit care reform bill.
