And So It Better Begin
Posted on 19 January 2010
Who could have imagined six months ago that a Republican vowing to stop Health Care in its tracks would become Kennedy’s successor? Do we remember, at Kennedy’s funeral, how everyone spoke of his death being a rallying point for health care? Then came the chaos, brutality and hilarity of all those debates, then the Pharmaceuticals weighing in as the fifty tons of gorilla they are, just as Wall Street had weighed in earlier. Then Obama (just like Bush) gave them everything left that hadn’t already been taken by Goldman (let them eat cake) Sachs et al.
Now here we sit. Has there been a worse president since Herbert Hoover (only he was a Republican)?
When do we face the music, folks – those of us who are progressives (the rest of you can tell us you told us so)? We made a mistake. Obama has made nothing but mistakes – his war, his economy, his promises, his weak-kneed intellectuality. Nothing has worked so I would say he’s finished even before he got started. And for this Massachusetts debacle to happen a day after Martin Luther King Day simply points up the sad fact that we have all seen Martin Luther King (more or less) and Obama? You’re no King.
Am I upset? You bet I’m upset. I would like Obama out of office now except…except…if he could just finally wake up out of whatever dream Harvard-world he’s been living in — wakes up now out of his deep articulate sleep and finally goes after Wall Street with the gloves off, yeah, bites the hand that fed him and bites it hard. Because if he doesn’t he’s going to end up being one more poor fella who fell on his sword for douche bags.
I’m sorry, I’m being particularly unpleasant tonight, but I feel plenty unpleasant as I look at Massachusetts and I see what the Democrats have done to themselves, what they’ve done to us (forget about the Republican’s they’ve always screwed us).
And I hope Obama feels unpleasant too. Worst than unpleasant, way worse – maybe then he’ll actually do something and he’ll do it, not so much with panache, but with power. (for he still has the power). And if he does wakes up and does start acting like a man, if he starts biting those soft pudgy hands around him, then I’ll vote for him again in a heartbeat. I’ll vote for anyone he stumps for.
Otherwise I’ll do the same damn thing they did up there in Massachusetts and I’ll put odds on it that pretty much everyone else in this country will do the same
6 responses to And So It Better Begin
I was profoundly disappointed that Jeff Brown, Republican, won the seat vacated by the Late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the first Republican to make Senator in Boston in decades.
As for Martha Coakley, there have been a lot of criticisms, perhaps justifiably directed at her and her poorly-run campaign.
If I were American, I’d definitely have voted for Martha and when he was a Senator, Barack Obama.
There’s a lot of anger by Bostonians towards President Obama and possibly for good reason.
Personally, as sad as I feel for him, I myself, doubt he will be re-elected. Too many people don’t like the man’s skin colour and I strongly believe that to be true. One only has to watch television to see all the racial behaviours against him and the threats to him and his family.
One person said they did not want universal health care, that that would be socialism and if all Americans were covered, that would affect taxpayers who would have to pay out of pocket so that all Americans would have healthcare coverage. What the Dems are going to do now that Jeff Brown of Massachusetts has been presumedly elected, goes beyond the pale. Universal healthcare reform has been compared to socialism. Well…let me tell you. Here in Ontario, in Canada, particularly in Ontario, we have the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which Pres. Obama has said would NOT work for Americans.
OHIP as it’s called here in Ontario, some time ago, decided to de-list certain specialists so that if you CAN’T afford some of these specialists, you do WITHOUT. If you can, you get the much-needed help and it DOESN’T affect the rest of Ontario’s taxpayers. I can go into my walk-in/appointment-made clinic and the provincial government PAYS my doctor for my appointment. Only a handful of specialists are covered by OHIP. This is….Ontario’s universal healthcare and if that’s considered socialism in the U.S. then I’m glad we have it here in Ontario. I’m sure each of the other nine provinces have their own form of OHIP but it’s possible that other provinces haven’t had specialties de-listed like the Ontario (provincial) government has done.
There’s also a long-waiting list and I know…I’m on several.
Carol, If you think skin color will keep Obama from being reelected, how do you explain him getting elected in the first place? Democrats have got to stop with the excuses.
I’m tired of hearing about how they inherited such a mess from Bush. Just fix it! The problem is, things are getting worse!
Now we are going to hear about how Scott Brown is blocking Healthcare. But the Democrats had 12 months of total power and they couldn’t get it done!
The Democrat party is finished for a generation.
I didn’t know initially whether Coakley’s defeat was a result of anti-Obama feeling in Massachusetts. All the conservative pundits, of course, pontificated, saying that it clearly shows that Obama has been too liberal (I could only laugh at them). A couple days later, post election polls show that in reality many of the the votes for Brown by democrats who had voted for Obama, or more tellingly, the large number of normally democratic voters that sat this election out, were the result of a massive sense that Obama had failed them — the health care bill did not go far enough (in the liberal direction) and, most importantly, that he has been far too easy on Wall Street.
I, too, have been greatly disillusioned by Obama and disgusted by his apparent timidity in facing down the reactionary forces in this country and his apparent refusal to push for the very positions and policies that his supporters thought he campaigned on. I use the word “apparently” for a reason. Like so many other progressives, I had great hopes for Obama, but I also had doubts from the start. His supposed progressive positions were actually stated rather ambiguously, or in too general language. I was also aware of the many columns and couple of books by Paul Street, a Chicago- and Iowa-based radical historian and political commentator who writes frequently on Znet.org, for Black Defender, and in several outlets, and whom I respect enormously. Street has been following Obama’s career since his early days in the state legislature in Illinois and has provided abundant evidence of Obama’s essentially pro-corporate, pro-empire stance. I knew all that, and I found Street very persuasive. Yet I still allowed myself to hope and believe that Obama really was a progressive. It is clear now that he is not.
Stephen, your post resonates deeply with me. I only wonder whether Obama’s failures are properly termed “mistakes,” which would imply he has progressive intentions but has erred in the execution of his policies. If he truly is no progressive at all, then perhaps his actions have been quite deliberate. I really don’t know which description is true. I am heartened by his exceptionally strong language in reaction to the enormously corrupt Supreme Court decision on Thursday giving free reign to large corporations (even foreign ones) to continue at an even greater level their destruction of American democracy. We shall see whether he follows that with any action.
Great conversation. I was on the ground in Massachusetts working with the Coakley campaign for nearly 5 months from the primary right through the general election. I sat in the room with her almost daily. The depth of her and the campaign’s hubris and inexperience was breathtaking. She and her senior staff spent precious time “measuring the drapes” talking about who was going to be her chief of staff in DC, what DC neighborhood would be best for her dogs, what Senate committee assignments she might get.
Added to that, her campaign manager had never worked on a campaign at any level (including local dog catcher) ever in his life. One of her law school friends was her senior adviser and was a clown and epic bootlicker.
And after she won the primary, she just shut the operation down. She took 3 days off after the primary win, 8 days off at Christmas, and 3 more days off at New Year. She also tended to come in at 10:30 am and leave by 5 pm. All of the consultants were hopping up and down to try to stop it but to no avail. We were laughed at (literally) and patted on the head (metaphorically) and told to “relax, she’s going to win”. Finally, she hated meeting “regular people” and it showed.
While there is certainly plenty of blame to go around, Martha Coakley ran the worst political campaign in the history of American politics. In that sense she got exactly what she deserved. However, it is a tragedy that 46 million uninsured and those with heartbreaking preexisting conditions are the ones who may be bearing the brunt of a clueless party that got blindsided by a clueless campaign and candidate.
Fascinating and so sad. It speaks to this whole strange concept of some people feel they are just better than others, deserve more, get more. In so many cases those people do get what they don’t deserve (have been getting it for centuries). Every once in awhile, though, it goes wrong for those kinds of people — in this case it also goes wrong for millions, as you say.
The only positive piece I see is that maybe there is some way to put the public option issue back on the table, since that was what so much of the protest vote (it seems) was about and, of course the laughable bank bailouts. It would be nice to see some movement there too. If one pays attention to the State of the Union speech there is at least some rhetoric in that direction and where there’s smoke, hopefully there will be some fire.
Thanks for your insight here…
“In so many cases those people do get what they don’t deserve (have been getting it for centuries).”
I’m reminded of this line from Success
‘My victories were never my own
Just mistakes gone wrong’
A victory for the Republican(Martha’s defeat) with millions bearing the brunt. Thanks for reposting Walla’s comment.