We Are the Ones We Are Waiting For ... Because Obama Isn't

It's up to us, kids. This White House cannot lead, does not follow and will not get out of the way.

Face it: we elected a conservative.

Steve Benen wrote a while ago that if a republican president had done everything Obama has done, he would be hailed by republicans as the second coming of Reagan. His point was that republican opposition to Obama is pure, anti-Democratic racism. But he was more right than he wrote: Obama is a conservative republican.

Look at the evidence:

Stimulus: Instead of the $2 trillion in actual jobs that every credible economist said was the minimum necessary, we got about $400 billion in tax cuts and $300 billion in actual jobs. Not enough to actually save the economy and make dems look good, but enough to make people view "stimulus" as a failure. Victory: Republicans.

War Crimes: Refused to investigate previous administration, and put pressure on allies not to investigate either. Victory: Republicans.

The Permanent War: Staged fake withdrawal from Iraq, pretending 50,000 troops and 100,000 mercenaries aren't still there. Threw 50,000 bodies into a pointless surge in Afghanistan, brought in Caesar Petraeus to guarantee troops can never leave. Victory: Republicans.

Climate change: More coal, more oil, more nukes, no controls on carbon. Victory: Republicans.

Financial reform: Since Obama signed it, Wall Street profits and bank stocks have soared. NOT reform. Victory: Republicans.

Social Security: Obama appointed a commission to destroy it on the altar of deficit control. That destruction recommendation is now the baseline for legislation. Victory: Republicans.

Supreme Court: Obama replaced the last two pale replicas of center-left moderates with two fanatic supporters of corporate personhood, Wall Street hegemony and Executive Power. Victory: Republicans.

And the one thing that his last desperate supporters claim as a victory: health care deform. Every single aspect of which is even more conservative than republicans proposed in 2008. Victory: Republicans.

Obama is the most conservative president since John Adams.

Liberal Democrats aren't going to get anywhere until we stop thinking Obama is a bumbling but well-intentioned Democrat who just needs better advisors and see him for what he really is: a deeply conservative plutocrat who is getting exactly the policy and legislative accomplishments that he wants.

That the rethuglicans hate him and are willing to destroy the country if that's what it takes to destroy him is not enough reason for liberal democrats to support a president who rejects every liberal Democratic value.

The rethugs hate and attack him because he's a ni**er in the White House. That he's enacting policies more conservative than any republican would dare enact is irrelevant to them.

It cannot be irrelevant to liberal Democrats.

Down with Tyranny reminds us of this from Bernie Sanders on the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday night:

"What these Republicans want, is very clear-- and it's not just tax breaks today. What they want to do really... is to move this country back into the 1920s. They really want to privatize and eliminate Social Security. They really are not staying up nights worrying about what happens when elderly people become sick and have no place to go. They want to cut back on Pell Grants. They certainly want to eliminate the authority of the EPA so that the coal companies and the oil companies can do whatever they want. The Republicans have an agenda. They're pretty open and honest about it. They've rallied their troops. What the president and the Democratic leadership and all of us have got to do is rally our troops, We need a tea party of progressives who are going to demand that the Democratic leadership and the President fight for the middle class and for working families."

Barack Obama has proven over and over again that he ignores respect, but responds instantaneously and generously to abuse.

Time to start abusing him.

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