Weak Tea: More Panic than Populist
I wasn’t at the weekend Patriot/Tea Bag/FreedomWorks big rally on the D.C. mall. But the best I can piece together from all sources, is that there was something like 70,000 people there. As Nate Silver puts it, not a giant rally, not a small rally, more like as business-as-usual rally. I agree. If the Malkinites and others want to claim a million or more, fine by me. We can take them just as seriously as we do the Reverend Farrakhan.
Silver, however, is also correct in pointing out that while the numbers have been grossly exaggerated, it’s only at one’s peril if the sentiment expressed at this type of rally gets written off. I agree with that notion as well.
What is important is to place all this in context and that, my friends, remains rather fluid and up for interpretation. I’ll take a quick stab at it.
Here’s my lead: I am not particularly worried about what happened in the mall and I absolutely do not think it symbolized a resurgent Right. Quite to the contrary. What I think we are seeing is an emotional and somewhat emotionally-driven aggregation of a decidedly minority sentiment. We’re watching the frenetic rallying of a political sector that suffered an historic defeat in November and is very much on the verge of suffering another staggering body blow when some sort of national health care plan (whatever its weaknesses) WILL get passed in the coming months. Because it is going to pass. And it will be signed into law.
That this scenario should and would galvanize and incite the most extreme and worked up sector of the populist Right (being led around by the nose by pro-corporate toadies like Dick Armey and manipulated by sub-verbal toads like Glenn Beck) should provoke no surprise. There is nowhere else for these folks to go. No one else to lead them (unless you think John Boehner is capable of such a feat).
If anything, this rally closely parallels the ill-timed anti-war rally that the left sectarian cult group, ANSWER, organized in Washington DC literally a handful days after the 9/11 attacks. They too were panicked. With 90% of the country supporting GWBush after the Twin Tower attacks and with vast majority sentiment at the time favoring a military response to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, this fringe left thought it was the right moment to go into the streets and denounce any impending military action as “racist.” Actually, they didn’t think at all. They reacted precisely the way an isolated and endangered minority does — emotionally and stupidly.
Not a single liberal or progressive politician was willing to associate him or herself with that first anti-war march, carried out while Ground Zero was still literally smoking. Unfortunately, a year or two later, as popular sentiment started to grow against a different war — in Iraq– such pols were also hard to find (in part because of their own cowardice and in part because of the ideologically narrow grouplets who had seized control of the machinery of the anti-war movement).
What happening today on the Tea Bag right has its parallels. But also its departures. There is no bright, shining line that separates supposed responsible elected officials from the zanier elements on the streets like there was in the case of the anti-war movement. There were several congressmembers who addressed the teabaggers out on the mall; so we had national elected officials rubbing shoulders with the whack cases that were waving copies of Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate and equating fairly moderate health care reform with nazism, fascism and communism (though it would be fun to quiz these folks to see if they could properly define any of those terms).
This IS dangerous. But no so much to the Republic as it is to Republicans. Associating the party mainstream ever more with the Beck-oids and the thinly-veiled racists birthers and deathers is not, in the end, going to serve them well. By the time the 2010 election rolls around, some folks are going to be able to say they voted FOR health care improvement while others are going to have to explain they didn’t because they were too busy partying with folks holding up Swatzikas and Hammers and Sickles.
There is GREAT disgruntlement throughout the land today. Much uncertainty, disgust, fear and mistrust of big institutions. But if anyone, including the participants out on the mall, fancy themselves as the tip of that iceberg, they better think again. There are millions of others who are just as angry and upset. But they are angry because they don’t have health coverage. Or because their insurance they do have has screwed and blued them. They have lost their 401K’s not because of a government recovery program, but because of decades of conservative government acting as brokers for Wall Street thieves. And then there are the millions who have lost their jobs and are losing their homes. I am sure that some percentage of them somehow blame it on Obama. yet every poll I have seen shows that twice as many know that this is a catastrophe he inherited from the stumble-bums voted into exile last Fall. They are not likely to forget that very soon.
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Here’s my NeonTommy post of the day. A good report by our reporter Shotgun Spratling on how our mighty Trojans came from behind Saturday to crush Ohio State. Fight On!
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September 13th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Robert Reich’s “March on Washington” for the Public Option?
A fizzle. I mortifying failure.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/13/781450/-DC-Public-Option-Rally-Turnout-Weak
September 13th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
It’s like the bookends of history. It feels like just yesterday that the ANSWER wackos were running around with their BUSHITLER!! signs, and now we see the same moronic batshit crazy rightwing extremists parading with… of course, OBAMAHITLER!!! signs.
Thankfully, the ANSWER wingnuts are relegated to political irrelevance; the question is whether conservatives are smart enough (or brave enough) to push their right-wing loons out of the picture and re-take control of their movement. I wish they would, but it doesn’t look too good right now. Like the housing market, with its next coming wave of foreclosures and Alt-A resets, it looks like the craziness isn’t going away for awhile. Dark days indeed.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
The main pro-healthcare reform rally was last November. There were something like 70 million people there.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:10 am
The fact you find these Tea Party demonstrations attacked on liberal blogs, speaks for itself.
If you judge a movements success by its results, then you must say the Tea Party movement is a success. It is changing, as we speak, a once monstrous Health Care Bill monstrously liberal and expensive, into a reasonable address of the actual problems that exist with our health care delivery and cost problems.
The CA politician written House Bill 3200, if it had been rammed-through and signed by the President, would have ended a number of political careers in Washington, none of them Republican.
The President and his party should be thankful for the Town Meetings and Tea Parties and Southern Blue Dog Democrats. They will be instrumental in saving the Democratic majorities in Washington… maybe.
They may end up saving the Democrats from the bankrupting liberal bastions of San Francisco’s Nancy Polosie and Los Angeles’s Henry Waxman. The kind of liberal left wing policies that had slowly bleed the great prosperous and successful State of California to financial death long before it became obvious the same thing was now happening in Washington.
Responsible adults to the right thing in restricting the emotionally driven illogical behavior of children….and take their lumps for it.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Crackpot rightwing budgeting and tax propositions have bled California and made the state nearly impossible to govern responsibly…along with essentially rightwing interests like the prision guards union. (if you want to complain about the costs to the state of “illegals”, go shout at agribusiness and the rest of their employers, who drive this issue.)
While there are waste issues, unless you consider public education and public services which people apparently support “liberal”, this is meaningless rhetoric. Pass an appropriate budget to pay for the actual costs – and if folks want to vote in a legislature that cuts back services because the tax bite is too high, they will. Creating a super-majority to conduct the most basic responsibilities of governance is a rightwing boondoggle and has proven itself to be completely crazy and dysfunctional – like the hacks, morons and compulsively meanspirited, selfish bastards who promoted it. Granted the people voted for these propositions at various times, but this is a compelety insane, far-right plan to subvert government, not to make it more responsible, efficient, or “conservative.” Edmund Burke would have been appalled by this rat-ass “populism” driven by cranks, demagogues and morons like Woody.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Also – Jim, these phony demos, crawling with racists, neo-confederates and people who are just butt-stupid (look at the ridiculous array of ugly signs, that make an Answer demo seem positively coherent and civil) are now officially a dead issue. They failed. Obama has taken control of the issue – the polls show increasing support and a better understanding of the issues. I’m predicting the public option will be part of the plan – at least in some trigger form, which will either go into effect or guarantee more effectove regulation of the insurance companies.
You’ve lost this issue. We’re winning. Substantive reform will pass the Senate – not as strong as I’d like, but it will lay the groundwork for regulation of this completely fucked up insurance industry and universality. Principles will be in place of universality and the public interest, not private profit, setting the framework for health insurance. That’s big. And these morons who have been lying, drowning in their own hysteria and pissing their pants over a black President, are at the margins. They’re their own death panels, because in 15 years they’ll be irrelevant and utterly expired – metaphorically and probably literally. That they’re quoting Ronald Reagan railing against Medicare (and civil rights legislation) is proof of just how “un-American” and completely ridiculous this Depends crowd happens to be. A joke.
Losers.
Get used to it.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:03 am
A song for the Tea-Bag “Patriots” :
http://www.beautifulhorizons.net/weblog/2009/09/hoofingray-were-the-usa-.html
September 14th, 2009 at 7:07 am
They may be butt stupid, reg, but the point is the right knows how to organize. Always has.
Why wasn’t there a stampede on the mall for single payer health care?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:10 am
I just saw Jim R’s:
The fact you find these Tea Party demonstrations attacked on liberal blogs, speaks for itself.
If you judge a movements success by its results, then you must say the Tea Party movement is a success. It is changing, as we speak, a once monstrous Health Care Bill monstrously liberal and expensive, into a reasonable address of the actual problems that exist with our health care delivery and cost problems.
I rest my case.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Anna – if you think a demonstration of 50,000+ people on the Capitol mall would have moved the health discussion to single payer, you’re living in a dream world. The right hasn’t organized shit – these demos are so incoherent and bile-driven it’s ridiculous. And there’s a lot of organizing for the best possible bill going on as we speak. Lots. You can go to the OFA website and join in if you’d like. I’m not saying that we didn’t drop the ball after the election, or that there’s not a valid issue over whether single-payer should ever have been “off-the-table” (Marc Schmitt at Washington Monthly documented that strategic decision which was promoted by pro-reform groups well before the election and which influenced the candidates.)
But the most salient fact, given the reality we’re currently in is that the pro-reform numbers are moving up – including 55 percent in favor of a public option – and antis are moving down. One of the problems with this issue is that it’s actually complicated in many respects, it touches everyone at a point that they feel vulnerable and it’s huge. Anyone who thinks there was some simple path to reform is kidding themselves. But Obama’s engagement has been far more important and will matter far more than the crazies. He’s pushing firm behind a public option, despite the media and Beltway pressures to drop it. And Obama’s going to win this thing on pretty good terms.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:25 am
‘This IS dangerous. But no so much to the Republic as it is to Republicans.’
I think it’s also a threat to Obama’s physical safety. I’m beginning to get worried.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:26 am
On the other hand…if only Obama had listened to me, every child in America would have a pony by now.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Marc, the Silent Majority is speaking.
It’s one thing for a few hundred thousand liberals who don’t want to work and paid union activists to flood the streets, but it states more when conservative taxpayers take time off from their jobs and make personal sacrifices to attend the protests.
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reg: Crackpot rightwing budgeting and tax propositions have bled California
I’m not surprised that reg comes up with that conclusion. He thinks that all the money belongs to govenment and that we should only be allowed to keep “just enough” of it. He thinks that taxpayers holding on to their own money is the problem rather than wasteful spending and overblown services from the state.
At least Obama has the strategy figured right. He’s only claiming to raise taxes on the “rich” and corporations, and not explaining that those taxes and fees will either affect everyone as higher prices or in private companies being forced out of business. It’s still a major seizure of weatlth from the private sector to give to the public sector, and people are catching on and getting upset.
- – -
Where’s the real panic? It’s with the reactionary Left who sees their agenda being understood and exposed.
Maureen Dowd: Joe Wilson’s ‘You Lie’ Outburst All About Racism
WaPo Promotes Story That 9-12 Marchers Are Racist: ‘They Don’t Even Know What They Are Protesting’
Here’s a proper response to left-wing attacks.
Tea Party Sign
September 14th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Anna – opening a bag of pus isn’t the same as organizing. This was a very modest – and incredibly ragtag, old, white and stupid – outcome given the amount of energy that was expended on it. Even the far-left has been able to produce much better in terms of numbers.
Serious organizing was what you saw that led to Obama’s election. If Obama has made one big mistake, it wasn’t tapping his base early enough on this issue. But the folks who have worked for Obama and are currently organizing strategically to push for a good reform bill are more capable of moving those 10-15% of people in the middle than a bunch of ugly old mouth-breathers shouting about death panels, waving confederate flags and celebrating the death of Senator Kennedy.
Also, watch what happens in the next election cycle with primary challenges to Beltway Dems who fuck up the bill. If we can’t get better candidates elected to replace them and diminish the influence of Blue Dogs, we’re blowing smoke.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Woody – it doesn’t matter what Obama says or does, you’ll wake up a moronic, raving bigot the next day anyway.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Obama is visiting Federal Hall on Wall Street in just a couple of hours to give a big speech on reform of the finance sector. Should be interesting. I wonder what effect this shot will have on the health care debate–perhaps deflect some of the loonier elements.
Anyway, there is, as you would expect, security everywhere, and, as you would also expect, no moron wingers with guns strapped to their backs.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:49 am
reg, your comment is why that protest sign is so appropriate.
Liberals don’t deal in facts and logic but simply name calling. And, don’t forget, Obama was calling the Republicans liars in his speech before Joe Wilson said a word. Where’s his apology?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Obama’s speech on reform of the finance sector should be more facist speech, and, despite what Marc writes, I do know the definition of the word.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Oh and Woody thanks for linking to that great source “Newsbusters” that claimed there were 1-2 million people in DC.
Talk about desperately lying to make a minority of loudmouths the “Silent Majority.”
I understand the “bust” part, but not the “news.”
The “Silent Majority” are reflected in the overwhelming support for reform – including the “silent majority” who favor the public option.
We’re winning. You’re a loser.
The best you can do is generate fear based on lies. That’s all you’ve got. Proud of yourself ? (It’s how Hitler got into power. You’re operating on exactly the same principles and the folks in DC on Saturday were the same types who bought into that hysteria and hate. That’s the irony of Glenn Beck – he’s the standard issue crank demagogue, opportunistically spreading hysteria and lies to divide the country. FOX News is cynically using the timeworn fascist demagogues’ playbook. If this was Chile, they’d be pushing Pinochet to slaughter Allende. If it was Germany in 1932, these are the same people who would be blaming the Jews. No question about it. Exactly the same despicable types, trying desperately to sound “American” by loudly and obsessively recycling our own McCarthyite and John Birch Right’s talking points. Luckily, this is a different time and a different country.)
September 14th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Anyone who considers both FDR and Hitler “fascists” doesn’t even know what planet he wakes up on.
And I should have used the term “Nazi demagogues playbook.” Because more than any academic discussions about the economic policies of Germany beginning in 1933, I’m talking about the Goebbels’ Big Lie, the scapegoating, the manipulation of deep-seated, irrational fears and the willingness to use demagogic technique, no matter how shameful or dishonest, to try to seize political power out of a sense of racial and class entitlement. This is the essence of the question of “fascistic” tactics and strategy, not the question of public spending levels on highways during the Eisenhower years reaching “Hitler” level, Harry Truman threatening to nationalize the railroads or promote universal health insurance and Nixon imposing wage and price controls. No, it’s Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and morons like you deliberately spreading lies, vitriol and barely-concealed racist hysteria. So no, it doesn’t matter how you refine your whine, you have proven yourself a racist dirtbag and a liar who subscribes to the most moronic and/or vile propaganda time and time again.
You don’t have an honest or intelligent bone in your body.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:04 am
reg, if the best that you can do is to compare me to Hitler, then you’re the loser.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:15 am
I guess you’ll find something wrong with these protestors.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Incidentally, the Glenn Becks don’t have to put anything about Obama’s race on their signs or in their broadcasts. They know the resentment is there and they are happy to exploit it.
Joe Wilson, by the way, holds Strom Thurmond as his biggest hero and attacked Thurmond’s unacknowledged daughter for making her very existence known and thus “tarnishing” Thurmond’s legacy of being against “race-mixing.” Wilson is a guy teeming with racial resentments and delusions of South Carolina’s greatness as the catalyst of the Confederacy with one of the least “reconstructed” aggregations of white people.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:25 am
You use the same tactics – lies, smears, racist cartoons and demonization of people who disagree with you by calling them Communists – indeed implying that all liberals are simply trying to bring communism to America.
If the shoe fits. You’ve called me a child molester many times over. Aside from the gay-baiting, which I don’t give a shit about because it doesn’t matter whether I’m gay or not. I think you “lost” rather definitively when you crawled into that sewer. It’s where you live. And yes, it’s the same one Hitler crawled out of.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Once more, for reg, who has no legitimate arguments: Tea Party Sign
September 14th, 2009 at 8:36 am
One good thing about the internet is that if Hitler had access to it like Woody does, he’d have probably never gotten off of his ass…although there’s also a good chance he would have ended up with a daily “news” show on FOX.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:51 am
reg, reg, reg, the Rethugs have always opened a bag of pus and they get their pus people elected and their legislation either repealed or pus laden legislation passed.
to say they don’t organize…I know you understand that they do. they organize the pus…they whip into a froth. just because ‘we’ elected Obama….one very small step for mankind after years of obscenity hardly makes ‘us’ effective. The whole healthcare debate has been dumbed down and Obama has never been for single payer.
Hitler was laughed at as just a pus bag with pussy little followers. Thats who the money boys use to get things done.
C’mon, reg.
But I am also well aware that the fact the pus has risen to the surface to such an extent that a lot people ran screaming from the Republican party is a sign of a very painful slow shift. And its not about from right to left its about more people understanding what sustainability means
September 14th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Your last para is the key…
September 14th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Thank god the California budget is finally going to be controlled and we can get rid of all of the unnecessary spending on crazy liberal schemes:
http://www.modbee.com/featured/story/853507.html
September 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I just got an idea for a new Marshall Plan:
We ship plane loads of the deluded patriots convinced the American way of life, healthcare and food is the best in the world–to France. The get to live there 6 months.
French healthcare system rated numero uno in world as is life expectancy.
But its a terrible thing to do to the French.
But we have to “re educate” our comrades.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I mean Gulag Paris…non?
September 14th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Here’s one difference between right and left and Im not kidding. The left has a lot more experience in organizing protest rallies like the right wing tea party of last week than the right does. Several reasons why: the left is historically more in opposition than the right, which generally holds more power. The right is often a defender of the status quo and sees no need to come into the streets. The left is young and activist. The right is older and full of folks who disdain mixing with the sweaty hoi polloi in the streets. The right gets things done by its closer relationship with the powerful. The left is more powerless and believes it must pressure from without.
That’s why every odd time the Right pulls off a successful street action — be it from the astroturf media show of the Minutemen a few years ago (500 people!) to last weekend’s showing of, what, 83 billion people on the mall, it gets giddy and ecstatic. BY doing so, the right actually thinks it’s leading a MASS movement, a silent majority of tens of millions. It’s a real high for them.
In this regard, the Right ought to spend a bit more time debriefing veterans of the Left. The left, at least the more intelligent sectors of the left, know just how meaningless and impotent those street demos can be if you dont do the political work to build a bigger constituency behind them. From 2002-2006 there were SEVERAL much bgigger anti war demonstrations staged by the left and they added up to a hill of a beans.
A more cogent example is Howard Dean’s crash and burn campaign in Iowa in 2004. I went to those as a reporter and they were HUGE and boisterous and ten times the size of a Kerry or Edwards rally. Problem was, the latter two had plenty of quiet supporters sitting at home ready to vote. Dean came in third. What the Deaniacs didnt figure out, until too late, was that the people who showed up at his rallies were near the totality of his supporters. No one else was left.
Tea baggers beware. There are millions of Americans quietly watching, keeping their fingers crossed, hoping Obama will relieve their burden on health care. They have little desire to be in the street with ding dongs waving rebel flags, and holding up posters alluding to Hitler and Stalin. They rallied last fall at the ballot box. What we saw on the weekend was a modest rally of the losers — to be diplomatic.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:54 am
to be in the street with ding dongs waving rebel flags
That almost made water come out of my nose. Warn me next time!
September 14th, 2009 at 11:26 am
“If anything, this rally closely parallels the ill-timed anti-war rally that the left sectarian cult group, ANSWER, organized in Washington DC literally a handful days after the 9/11 attacks. They too were panicked. With 90% of the country supporting GWBush after the Twin Tower attacks and with vast majority sentiment at the time favoring a military response to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, this fringe left thought it was the right moment to go into the streets and denounce any impending military action as “racist.” Actually, they didn’t think at all. They reacted precisely the way an isolated and endangered minority does — emotionally and stupidly.”
This is fucking disgraceful. I’m sorry but I stopped reading the post after this disgraceful claim. Let’s for a second divorce this debate from the issue of ANSWER, sectarianism and all that jazz, which you’ve, after all, harped on for some time. What you can’t seem to fully admit is that it took a lot of courage and bravery to be in the streets in those days shortly after the attacks. In fact just to raise a critical word about US foreign policy or to correctly prodict that the assault on the twin towers could be used to justify the foreign invasion of other countries, the drastric and yes racist attacks on civil liberties, targetting in particular arab and muslim men, all of this would come into play. I remember that your even colleague Katha Pollitt caught considerable hell for a brave and thoughtful piece, warnign against a messianic form of “patriotism” lurking in the midst, as she suggested that the globe be a symbol of solidarity as opposed to the flag. What you cant seem to stand is that the people you are implicitely denouncing were right about what happenned in the preceding years after 9/11 while so many others, including “liberal hawk”, like Ignatieff, Friedman and others, were wrong. Forget ANSWER, Tony Judt said so much in a devastating critque of liberalism in the Bush years
September 14th, 2009 at 11:40 am
The only coherrent message these teabaggers have is that they don’t like the democrats. You don’t need a march on Washington to know there’s a sizeable part of the country that will never support the opposing party no matter what. The march accomplished nothing. It’s not a “growing movement” and there isn’t a “majority of americans” opposed to Obama. They’re a good-sized minority, but no larger than 30%, and probably not even that.
Just because these folks are throwing an epic hissy fit doesn’t mean the Dems have to change their plans. This was just a distraction. Moreover, these are exactly the kind of people who used the same exact arguments against Medicare in the beginning but who would now fight to the death to keep it. These are the same people who, when the public option goes into effect, will be fighting to keep that too. And these are the same people who are going use the same arguments to attack the single-payer bill in the future (it’ll come eventually), and who will fight to the death to keep that once it’s here.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Marc, yes…historically (italicized) the left was in the vangaurd all over over the world.
When I say “organizing” I meant to include the fact the right, because of its agenda of using people at the grass roots level to support business interests,…is financed and so effectively uses propaganda tools to influence people.
The left rallies to bring change that will benefit the majority the right is whipped into a frenzy out of ignorance to be for or against something that mostly will have a deleterious impact on the majority.
I agree with you NOW that all that is happening on the right is vermin being driven from their own dirty little crevices by their own stupidity.
And the more they do this the crazier they reveal themselves to be thus causing more Republicans to begin to question their values.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Ahmed:
Whatever the larger worries that ANSWER and others had about possible US over reaction, it seems to me that the reflexive anti-war rallies after 9/11 were badly mistimed, and badly misunderstood what people were feeling.
They could easily have expressed their concerns about over reaction by talking about bringing the perpetrators to justice, but that’s not the message they were shilling at the time. Instead they were going with their tried and true, “everything the US touches turns to shit.” People who take that line, are wrong, and I think have no moral ground to stand on, and are utterly unpersuasive to 99.9% of the population. But the ANSWER people are totally bovine in their pursuit of this line at all times and at all costs.
It was their response which was disgraceful and embarrasing. I hate to haul out the reviled Hitch here, but he makes the pretty persuasive claim that it was once the left who stood at the forefront of pressing for human freedom and emancipation, but it’s the extreme left now which has become so milquetoast that, rather than see an ounce of blood shed in any cause, they’d prefer to let tyrants, like the Taliban, carry on. Let me be clear on the point, given the choice between removing a dictator through war, or having no war, they will choose no war. In some cases, that’s a de facto choice to let the despots continue.
ANSWERs responce to the Iraq war may have been well founded–their repsone and timing about Afghanistan was stupid, tone-deaf, and apallingly ill-considered.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I’ll get to Dan O’s objection in a second. But first, briefly, here’s a smart and related comment from Doug Henwood
“I’ve complained before about all the attention that the angry liberals—Air America, Keith Olbermann, The Huffington Posties, etc.—are paying to the nutters on the right, and I’m going to do it again. Not only does this obsession absolve them of developing and selling an agenda, and put them in the position of being mouthpieces for a centrist, business-friendly administration—it reinforces the role of Glenn Beck as an agenda-setter. Just as Olbermann can’t let go of Cheney, Obama’s clearly still in the discursive grip of Reagan.
I’m no fan of economic crises as offering opportunities for political transformation—they could as easily, maybe more easily, break to the right as to the left, and they cause lots of suffering—but I had hoped that the near-meltdown of the financial system might lead to new ways of seeing, thinking, talking. Not yet.”
September 14th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“..there isn’t a majority of americans opposed to Obama.”
Well at least one commenter here gets it. Though it’s not clear even he realizes it.
It’s the economy stupid. Another proposed trillion dollar spending program, called health care reform, was just the tipping point.
You guys really better wise up. You’ve got another 14 months to get it. I’m not the kind to say ‘I told you so”.
Btw, stop the racist behavior.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
You guys also need to learn to count.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
“The best you can do is generate fear based on lies. It’s how Hitler got into power. You’re operating on exactly the same principles and the folks in DC on Saturday were the same types who bought into that hysteria and hate. That’s the irony of Glenn Beck – he’s the standard issue crank demagogue, opportunistically spreading hysteria and lies to divide the country. FOX News is cynically using the timeworn fascist demagogues’ playbook.”
Who’s afraid here?
September 14th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Jim, what we’re witnessing is simply what happens when conservatives get their way for eight years straight and then suddenly find themselves with nothing to do. It’s either twiddle your thumbs until the next election or scream and shout whatever sounds good on the television, which the media is more than willing to air because it’s funny. The same thing happened during Clinton’s presidency. The same thing happened in reverse during Bush’s presidency, as Marc points out.
And stop that smug conservative cliche act. We’re just not getting it? You’re not getting that we tried it your way for eight years and it got us into this mess. And that includes the healthcare crisis. The cost of healthcare is skyrocketing and Obama was elected to solve it his way. The Republicans don’t want to do anything about it, but since the Democrats have brought the issue forward the Republicans have to pretend to care and find non-reform reform goals. The cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of the bill. I guarantee it. Unless the Democrats further water the bill down to appease the temper tantrum-throwing minority.
By the way, this Saturday freakshow was not about costs or taxes. These aren’t policy wonks out there. They’re bitter, hate-filled sore losers.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I love it when the right talks about the Silent Majority (less so when the left does), as the phrase comes from Homer. He used it in the Odyssey (maybe the Iliad?) to refer to the dead.
Thanks for sharing the Doug Henwood quote, Ahmed.
I agree with the gripes folks have made about ANSWER and the lack of effective constituent building during the anti-war rallies a few years back. However, I still have yet to see another liberal/left organization willing to spend the time and effort mobilizing movements or protests around issues where Democrats and/or the administration deserve public criticism. You can see it now in the gaping vacuum where a movement should exist on the liberal/left pressuring Obama for more a more meaningful public health option, not to mention the direction we’re taking in Afghanistan.
While reg may have a point that a 50K pro-single payer rally wouldn’t do much in term of effecting policy, I think such demonstration would take a little attention away from the tea-bag brigades. Never mind that a good chunk of folks at town hall meetings want to see genuine health care reform and an expansion of coverage, the media likes to spotlight loudmouths. At least let some of the spectacle come from the left, I say. It might help to, oh, I don’t know, mobilize more people to take some form action, even if that only means contacting their congressperson.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Nice. And Jack please come back here, often
September 14th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
….oh, I don’t know, mobilize more people to take some form action, even if that only means contacting their congressperson.
I already posted the link for a whole slew of action possibilities for contacting congress reps and signing petitions to wail on the need for a single payer option– the only true reform.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I think Jim holds a lot of wrong-headed views and I don’t think he’s some kind of “typical” independent voter, but he was the only conservative on this site to criticize the Bush administration (not counting the immigration issue which stirred up many Repubs) when they were still in office and I think he deserves some credit for avoiding the complete partisan blindness that so afflicted the other conservatives. As such, I think he’s a slightly better indicator of where a segment of the population stands. A segment that is white, male, conservative on fiscal and military issues, doesn’t really like the Democrats, but is willing to give Obama a chance. I think Obama works hard to make sure Jim knows that while they may disagree, Obama isn’t making radical or idiotic choices.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
…I think Obama works hard to make sure Jim knows that while they may disagree, Obama isn’t making radical or idiotic choices.
Oh boy. Talk about yer can of worms.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Mavis, there is no choice short of a radical one: to provide single payer coverage. Obama doesn’t have to “make sure” of anything except fulfilling his promise of “change”. And change means that we stop making money the bottom line that perverts all conversation and institutions and ideas.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Some facts:
Brief Summary of Legislation
How HR 676 would help!
HR 676 establishes an American-styled national health insurance program. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories. The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans, guaranteed by law, will have access to the highest quality and cost effective health care services regardless of ones employment, income, or health care status.
With over 45-75 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million who are under insured, it is time to change our inefficient and costly fragmented health care system.
* Physicians For A National Health Program reports that under a Medicare For All plan, we could save over $286 billion dollars a year in total health care costs.
* We would move away from our present system where annual family premiums have increased upwards to $9,068 this year.
* Under HR 676, a family of three making $40,000 per year would spend approximately $1600 per year for health care coverage.
* Medicare for All would allow the United States to reduce its almost $2 trillion health care expenditure per year while covering all of the uninsured and everybody else for more than they are getting under their current health care plans.
* In 2005, without reform, the average employer who offers coverage will contribute $2,600 to health care per employee (for much skimpier benefits).
* Under HR 676, the average costs to employers for an employee making $30,000 per year will be reduced to $1,155 per year; less than $100 per month.
_______________________________________________________
Please note that while in England I contributed approximately $1800 per year for healthcare.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Ahemed.. so what’s ur trip? You sit around and read stuff with your Purity Sniffer so you can occasionally erupt in indignant outrage. What you blithely shrug off as sectarianism and all that jazz was in fact a fundamental and deadly political mistake that set back the peace movement a number of years.
sorry to break this to you but the few of us, like myself and David Corn, who early spoke out against ANSWER and caught hell for it by a bunch of dogmatic yick yacks have been proven right. Five or six years too late, the near TOTALITY of the American left is NOW saying the same thing we did back then about ANSWER and finally got the message they were being manipulated by a crackpot cult that belongs out on the mall with their right wing fringe counterparts.
And no, it didnt take courage to march against the war in Afghanistan before it began. I have ABSOLUTELY no shame or hesitation in saying that militarily responding to Al Qaeda and the Taliban was the correct thing to do. The problem is, we never did it properly and got mired in Iraq leaving us eight years later fighting a futile battle in Afghanistan. I supported then and would support again if I had the oppty an intelligent and concentrated effort to militarily disassemble the Al Qaeda and its host government.
While we’re on the subject, as the father of a 25 year old who did participate in the Iraq antiwar movement and went on as you know to become a union organizer, I think Katha Pollitt’s advice to her daughter to NOT display the American flag after 9/11 was politically STUPID and very poor parenting. How’s that?
That flag belongs to all of us and I am not going to cede it to a bunch of beer swilling know-nohings with a hard-on for aggression. Any reasonable parent would have had enough confidence in their own children to know that displaying the flag as an act of solidarity with a national tragedy that killed 3,000 of one’s neighbor would NOT turn your child into a stone or a Nazi. On the contrary, the best way to achieve the latter is to scold them for it.
Anecdotally…. back in 2002 my daughter, then attending Santa Monica College, was in the leadership of a group that organized the first anti-war protest on that campus. They worked for weeks to meticulously organize the affair, planning it all out. At the last moment, as the rally of about 700 began, some friggin’ knucklehead punk kid from the RCP demanded he be allowed to speak even though his folks did nothing to build the event. The young kids in my daughter’s loose organization thought it would be “sectarian”to exclude the young maoist. So they let him speak second or third and what did he do? He pulled an American flag out of his back pocket and stomped it on the ground. A fucking idiot. A assessment my kid agreed with and decided her time would be better spent organizing adult workers than indulging the hormone driven antics of dopey beardless revolutionaries.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“beardless revolutionaries” – WTF ???
Hey, are they trying to pull some kind of bait-and-switch without the beards ? I’m sorry but revolutionaries should have beards. Or was this guy 12 years old ?
September 14th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
“like myself and David Corn, who early spoke out against ANSWER and caught hell for it by a bunch of dogmatic yick yacks have been proven right”
I like David Corn a lot but to see him prostrate in front of O’Reilly was fucking disgraceful. Sectarianism posing as anti sectarianism, mostly from people who wouldnt bother, a Jack said, to get off their asses and out-organise the sects. All that jazz from you, Todd and David meant absolutely nothing in terms of building a more ecumenical anti war movement…
Reread Tony Judt’s, a European trained social dem, scathing indictment of liberals during the Bush era to get the thrust of my critique. In those early days those who took to the streets may have represented a marginal number of Americans but their cries from the hearts and attempts to put the breaks on messianic kind of patriotism, bent on violence and revenge, tinged with racism, was indeed prophetic. Kudos still to Katha for that passionate and brave essay in those heated days.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The marches in the streets begging the U.S. not to bomb Al Qaeda ten days after 9/11 were “cries from the heart?” I think they were the bleatings of mindless cultists.
I linked to Tony Judt’s work and respect him. I don’t think that critiquing the fringe left makes one an uncritical tool of cowardly liberals. Really, Ahmed, you can accuse me of many things… but being soft on liberals? Come on. You’re just soft on the sectarians. You’ve got it backwards.
When you get a chance, you might want to read the published memoir written by Katha’s daughter. Might make an interesting perusal for you.
Any parent with their wits about them doesnt impose upon a high performing. well-read, well-educated and sophisticated teenager a political dogma. Much better to respect and tolerate a slightly different approach than Ma or Pa would take and allow the child a sense of independent and critical thought. Remember that when you marry some fine looking but apolitical mama and have a kid.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Whatever you may think about the article in question, I didnt really read it as some kind of attempt to impose a doctrinaire, shrill view on a child. That article was a mothers advice to a daughters, tinged with sorrow and compassion. There was of course a broader universalist message which, at the time, I appreciated a lot. I say that as someone who has some respect for Katha as a writer and person, even if she bores and annoys me from time to time. BTW, I know that Katha’s daughter, Sophie, is a very good and capable writer herself, who blogs. Her work sometimes makes its way to huffington post. She’s got a memoir? Word? Isnt she only in her twenties? That strikes me as a bit much
ps I’ve been involved with more than a few apolitical ladies, already
September 14th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I figured as much Ahmed. I bet you dont try to convince them of the wisdom of ANSWER
Yes, Katha’s daughter is about the same age as mine.. about 25.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
FYI-Marc and I are discussing this article
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011008/pollitt
September 14th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Ahmed: I’m glad we’re back to just discussing it rather than throwing grenades.
Reg: You got it. Not old enough to grow a beard.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
I forgot to mention that I read the diaries you posted from the Guardian. They were riveting, powerful and beautifully written. Amazing, really, that you bore witness to all of that. Now I’ve added your book onto my to read list
September 14th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Howie: Jim, what we’re witnessing is simply what happens when conservatives get their way for eight years straight….
Huh? I’m a conservative and the Republicans ignored me for the most part. Bush didn’t see any spending bills from Democrats that he could bring himself to veto. Bush was not a conservative. The only thing that he did right was his Supreme Court nominations, and he had to have a do-over on one of those.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
That’s kind of you to point out now, long after you’re done marching to every word Bush said. Yep, that Bush was way too damn liberal for our country’s good. That’s why you guys didn’t give one peep of concern about his liberal policies until after he left office, when you had to downplay his utter failures as being caused by liberal policies.
You truly do live in your own little world — one in which the past is as malleable as the future.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
[...] Marc Cooper says, don’t ignore the teabagger protest in DC this past weekend but don’t exaggerate its influence either. I agree. They aren’t just isolated rednecks livings in doublewides, as FireDoglake implies. Nor are they the leading edge of fascism, as CrookandLiars fears. I am not particularly worried about what happened in the mall and I absolutely do not think it symbolized a resurgent Right. Quite to the contrary. What I think we are seeing is an emotional and somewhat emotionally-driven aggregation of a decidedly minority sentiment. We’re watching the frenetic rallying of a political sector that suffered an historic defeat in November and is very much on the verge of suffering another staggering body blow when some sort of national health care plan (whatever its weaknesses) WILL get passed in the coming months. Because it is going to pass. And it will be signed into law. [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
“Bush was not a conservative. The only thing that he did right was his Supreme Court nominations”
Glad you finally agree that the Iraq war was a complete fuck-up and against our national interests.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
“ps I’ve been involved with more than a few apolitical ladies, already”
You scamp !!!
September 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Ahmed – I hope we can agree on one thing. I’d never fuck a Republican – in the Biblical sense. I recently found out that Eva Mendes is an Ayn Randite, and I have to say when I see pix of her now, that thought gives me the creeps. Honestly, I don’t think I could have ever had more than a casual, fleeting relationship with a woman who wasn’t at least reasonably aware of politics and relatively liberal. Like some folks couldn’t marry outside of their church. Maybe that’s weird, but it’s true. (Reality check: I’m married and wouldn’t touch anybody but my delicious hyper-Democratic wife, but I’m talking about principles.)
September 14th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Howie,
2001-05, blindly trusting the chief executive was patriotic. 2005-08, the jury was out. Now, it’s the antithesis of patriotism.
And, no, Woodman, I don’t think you’re a racist. Just a thoughtless tool of the right, of the tyrants in business rather than government. You’ll only question the system when your billionaire handlers at FOX say it’s okay.
Really, Woody. If you supported Bush’s spending, omerta, and military misadventures and through ’04, who gives a fuck what you think of him now?
September 15th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I didn’t defend Bush.
That’s right. I either accepted or defended some of his policies, but I disagreed with others, particularly his decisions not to veto wasteful Democratic spending. I don’t know if we can say that Iraq was a “misadventure,” as we’re still dissecting the results from The War Between the States, which, unlike wars in the Twentieth Cenutry, was started by a Republican.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:49 am
“we’re still dissecting the results from The War Between the States”
Is that because you’re a moral relativist, a neo-confederate or a total idiot ?
September 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
For what it’s worth I basically agree with Reg. My current girlfriend who I’ve been seeing for a number of years is an artist who both paints and produces films, and is involved on an inner city level in producing community generated art. Her politics are left liberal with some anarchist sympathies. My ex was more academically orientated type, who wrote her grad theses on the history of russian, jewish socialist thought. I tend to be interested in people who, at least, on some level have some sympathy with where im coming from and find my perspective interesting.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am
reg, history takes a long time to see the final results. The end of a war isn’t a final resolution, for which a beginning of that can start after the peace begins.
The differences of the states didn’t end at Appomatox. It continued with Reconstruction and with persecution of the South, and the South was treated worse by the U.S. than enemies of wars that we have had.
The differences were then carried into today’s federal intervention of state and local matters. There wasn’t an end to the division, just a change of venues from the battlefield to the ballot box and to the streets.
On the other hand, if you think that the War Between the States was fought to end slavery, then that was over a long time ago and blacks shouldn’t have any complaints today. After all, the war is over and it’s completeness ended all division.
No, problems have been handed down from one generation to the next, but I have never seen a president so pathetic as Obama, who continues to blame others in the past for problems and his inability to deal with issues today.
Don’t community organizers ever grow up? No, I guess some ACORN’s don’t grow into strong oaks.
- – -
Ahmed: grad thesis on the history of russian, jewish socialist thought
Marc would have been a great resource for that.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
BTW, reg, a quick search on the internet showed me that Eva Mendes was a vocal supporter of barack who has advocated for more social support for the homeless. Not sure how that aligns with her apparent hyper free market ideology
September 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Ahmed – that’s great news !!!! I just read somewhere that she was really into Ayn Rand. Maybe she just loves really bad novels…which I guess I could forgive.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Woody – you’re putting me to sleep just contemplating reading any more of your horseshit.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I should add, too, that a had a bit of a fling as an undergrad with a hillel student, a strikingly beautiful redhead, who I met when she was personning an “Israel advocacy” table. We got into a lengthy debate and she seemed to genuinely appreciate my passion. She was a smart person of the PEP persuassion (progressive except palestine) who “defended” Israel more out of a kind of vague ethnic commitment than ideology. We keep in touch until this day. She is currently working on her PHD, living in Instanbul, studying the way in which the Jewish commitnuties in Turkey remember and commemorate the jewish exile from Spain. She is also, now, judging from her facebook postings, a partisan of J Street. A good thing
September 15th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
A number of people whose insights I respect are or once were Ayn Rand enthusiasts. I think many people read her as an advocate for freedom and integrity, and tend not to pursue the punitive, undemocratic implications of much of her work.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Ahmed, she was “personning” a table?
You mean “impersonating,” perhaps?
September 15th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I admit that I sometimes ascribe uncritally, and proudly to PC discourse. She was “personning” a table as opposed to “manning” it, just cause, you know, its not as if only men can stand behind and staff information or propaganda tables
September 15th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Just don’t refer to her as a woperson.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Michael – my wife thought “The Fountainhead” was really cool when she was in junior high school. (She also loved “Gone With the Wind. ) I just can’t take Ayn Rand seriously at all. It’s so ridiculously reductive and sophomoric. In fact, it’s one of those “intellectual” phenomena that’s almost literally, chronologically sophomoric. My brother-in-law is totally an Ayn Rand acolyte, and discussing anything with him is as productive and predictable as talking to Bob Avakian or a Jehovah’s Witness. His entire family just roll their eyes when he says anything.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Ahmed – how about a bit less linguistic embarrassment and stating that she was “in charge” of a table. “Overseeing” is a bit too formalistic IMHO.
I tend to use “they” as a generic pronoun, even when its technically not grammatic, because “he or she” drives me nuts. I’ve come to terms with “humankind” because I think “human” is a very good word. “Mankind” has started to sound archaic to my ears, or else it makes me think of sinks full of dirty dishes, passing out on the couch after too many beers with the TV on, piles of dirty socks on the floor, etc. etc.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:38 am
“…its not as if only men can stand behind and staff information or propaganda tables”
Isn’t that sort of stating the obvious? Isn’t ‘Manning’ a commonly accepted generic term for mankind Ahmed? Aren’t you making yourself look, and sound, silly by trying to come up with tongue tying, mouthful, linguistic distortions, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, excepting in the mind of the overly sensitive?
“Personning”? Can you see where this leads? Can you see there is no end. Hope you didn’t use this term in front of this ‘person’. I am sure you didn’t, or that would have been the end of a relationship with ‘humankind’.
It makes you look foolish….
September 17th, 2009 at 8:39 am
should be “would have been the end of a relationship with a ‘humankind’.”
September 17th, 2009 at 8:44 am
George Orwell at working rewriting the peoples language…along with their history.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I sympathise with you to a certain extent but it’s true, too, that language, or Orwell would agree, is never neutral. For what it’s worth it’s not a term that I invented but by now I’ve heard it so often that I’ve gotten used to using it. “Manning” for me has become archaic sort of like “mankind” for reg, which is the point of these new terms anyways. It then becomes natural to use language which at its core doesnt posit gender assumptions. Just my opinion
September 12th, 2010 at 12:20 am
I realise this isn’t a very good comment but it made me smile!
Children in the dark make accidents, but accidents in the dark make children.
July 21st, 2011 at 9:10 pm
I don’t know whether it’s just me or if perhaps everyone else encountering issues with your site. It seems like some of the text within your posts are running off the screen. Can someone else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them too? This may be a problem with my web browser because I’ve had this happen previously. Cheers