Not Enough

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So the liberal-marginalizing circle is complete: If you criticize the corporatist compromises in Obama's legislative successes, you're a purist "firebagger" even worse than obstructionist repugs. If you praise Obama's historic successes, you're a blindly worshipping "Obamabot" in denial. And if you dare to support Real Democratic candidates against corporate-owned Blue Dogs, dare to defy the DNC's top-down Failure Campaign by organizing liberals at the grass roots, you're "absolute fucking idiots."

Last week saw a tug-of-war between the call-attention-to-accomplishments crowd and the it's-not-enough-to-avoid-catastrophe crowd. Count me with the latter.

First, Rachel Maddow explained how much the President has done:

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Full transcript here. (This segment came at the end of the show, so scroll down.)

Yes, it is indeed more than any president has accomplished in 18 months since booze was illegal.

But if he doesn't find a way to inject a trillion dollars into the economy before Labor Day, it will all be for naught. Republicans will sweep massive majorities into Congress, and by this time next year Obama will be packing his bags in impeachment disgrace. Over what, you ask. Over being a nigger in the White House, of course. Repugs will have super majorities and won't need any better reason.

They will repeal every single accomplishment, and history will remember Barack Obama as the appeasing moron who ushered in a century of teabagger rule that turned America into a dystopian basket case that made Haiti and Somalia look like Sweden.

Because "more than any president has accomplished in 18 months since booze was illegal is still not enough, as Bob Herbert explains:

The oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the war in Afghanistan and, above all, the continuing epidemic of joblessness have pushed the nation into a funk. All the crowing in the world about the administration’s legislative accomplishments — last year’s stimulus package, this year’s health care reform, etc. — is not enough to lift the gloom.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats have wasted the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity handed to them in the 2008 election. They did not focus on jobs, jobs, jobs as their primary mission, and they did not call on Americans to join in a bold national effort (which would have required a great deal of shared sacrifice) to solve a wide range of very serious problems, from our over-reliance on fossil fuels to the sorry state of public education to the need to rebuild the nation’s rotting infrastructure.

All of that could have been pulled together under the umbrella of job creation — short-term and long-term. In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Obama’s historic victory, and with the trauma of the economic collapse still upon us, it would have been very difficult for Republicans on Capitol Hill to stand in the way of a rebuild-America campaign aimed at putting millions of men and women back to work.

Mr. Obama had campaigned on the mantra of change, and that would have been the kind of change that working people could have gotten behind. But it never happened. Job creation was the trump card in the hand held by Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but they never played it. And now we’re paying a fearful price.

SNIP

Employment is the No. 1 issue for most ordinary Americans. Their anxiety on this front only grows as they watch teachers, firefighters and police officers lining up to walk the unemployment plank as state and local governments wrestle with horrendous budget deficits.

And what do these worried Americans see the Obama administration doing? It’s doubling down on the war in Afghanistan, trying somehow to build a nation from scratch in the chaos of a combat zone.

Read the whole thing.

Kevin Drum says Herbert gets it completely wrong, citing the so-worn-it's-invisible excuse of what's "politically feasible." I rarely disagree with Kevin, but he's the one who's wrong here.

Political feasibility is not an obstacle a President faces; it's a condition he creates.

If he doesn't rally the liberal Democratic base with a declaration of war against the corporations, the republicans and the Blue Dogs who want the President and the nation to fail, then we will indeed fail.

Digby on the polls showing repug voters counting the minutes to November:

You can't help but wonder if the Democrats have decided that having the votes of "liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates and those living in either the Northeast or West" just aren't worth having so they are going to fight the Republicans for every last one of those John McCain voters. How else to explain the ongoing derision of their rank and file? ("They look like absolute idiots" is the quote that comes to mind.)

If going for hard core Republican votes isn't their strategy, then someone might tell the president that for the next four months he might want to knock off his patented "one from column A one from column B" routine and stop making false equivalence between the Democratic base and teabaggers and lavishing praise on Blue Dogs who repeatedly punch hippies and stab him in back. Of course, as I said, it's always possible that the highly professional strategists have decided to purposefully depress the Democratic base and just fight mano-a-mano for the Republicans. Judging by the rhetoric and behavior it's the most logical assumption at this point.

I do hope the Dems enjoy the scandal and impeachment circus once the batshit insane Republicans get the gavels. I know the media will.

Steve Benen worries about polls showing Democratic voters "not nervous" about the November election and thinks the cure is selling Obama's accomplishments:

If Democratic voters realize that a radicalized GOP is poised to make significant gains in November, Dems are more likely to show up to prevent that from happening. The combination of Democratic successes -- breakthrough legislation on health care, student loans, Wall Street safeguards, etc. -- and Republican hysteria seems like a capable antidote to the enthusiasm gap.

But that means the party has quite a bit of educating to do over the next four months, because if Pew's research is correct, the Democratic rank-and-file has no idea how devastating the elections might be.

At Firedoglake, Jon Walker sees the doom-for-dems polls undermining Democratic resolve to force the stimulus that would save the election for them.

Anyway you slice it, the numbers are bad news for Democrats. Cook points out that Democratic voters are less enthusiastic about voting, and the generic ballot has swung in the Republican direction. This dire warning from Cook will send Washington Democrats into a further panic, which will probably result in them doing even more things that will crush enthusiasm among their base. They’ll ramp up their misguided faux deficit fear-mongering while millions struggle without a lifeline in the recession.

Democratic self-destruction is something we've all learned to live with over the past 40 years. But this time, it won't just lose them the election, Congress and the White House.

This time, it's going to bring on the Greatest Depression.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ...