Not Our Friends

Barack Obama apparently continues to believe there is a "silent majority" of Americans who really, really, want him to steer a "middle" course (which is really far-right-wingnut compared to 30 years ago, and seems "centrist" only compared to the World According to Beck) on policy and nominations.

It's now pretty obvious that the reason he harbors this delusion is because he is himself a "centrist" who despises liberals and craves repug approval.

That is a very serious delusion on your part, Mr. President, because:

These people are not, never have been and never will be your friends.

SteveM explains:

The American Prospect's Mark Schmitt wonders why there's as much interest as there is on the left in trying to find ways to align with the tea partiers -- and no, he doesn't just mean Jane Hamsher:

SNIP

I'd say what's going on is that some of us can't quite believe how deeply rooted the Reagan/Limbaugh/Murdoch political narrative is in America, a narrative that says that all evil derives from people like us. We still think there's a hint of FDR in most Americans' thoughts, and there is to the extent that they're entirely willing to accept that Social Security and Medicare largess -- but that doesn't mean they think that we, the people who admire FDR the most and who want to take inspiration from FDR for the future, have anything to offer them. Reagan and Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity and O'Reilly and Coulter and Beck have told these people for thirty years that we're evil, and that's the unchangeable center of tea party ideology.

And some of us just can't believe that. We see people who are angry about the financial meltdown, angry about bailouts, angry about D.C. corruption, and we just can't believe that anger doesn't have an iota of progressivism in it.

It doesn't. It just has revanchism. They hate us, therefore all their theories about what's wrong must define us as the source of all evil -- even if it means that they believe, say, the bizarre theory that ACORN and Goldman Sachs are somehow allies in a sinister White House plot to destroy capitalism. They're not going to come around to the notion that business needs more regulation or the rich ought to be taxed a bit more or a government social program might blunt the worst impacts of turbocapitalism. Those are sinister sophisticated East Coast lawyer/financier/multicultural ideas. They want no part of them.

Some of us can't believe that. So we reach out our hands. We're crazy to try.

Read the whole thing.