Only More LIberals Can Fix This Clusterfuck

Back in December, I composed, but never posted, the following:

No matter who you blame for the current economic clusterfuck - banks, corporations, rich assholes, rethuglicans, democrats, Obama - and I can make the case for each - the bottom line is this:

None of them pays any price for rejecting liberalism.

That's the whole problem. When even Proud Socialist Bernie Sanders discusses helping the unemployed in the context of the reducing the deficit, the grounds of debate have soared so far to the Randian Insanity extreme that economic reality is no longer possible.

The president, congress and the media all behave as if no one who makes less than a quarter-million-dollars per year is of any consequence politically.

That's because no one who makes less than a quarter-million-dollars per year makes any of them suffer political consequences.

This cannot and will not change from the top.

It can and will change only from the bottom. That means building a broad, strong foundation of working class and middle class people who demand their government work for them, not the plutocrats.

Yesterday, Digby brought us this:

Jamelle Bouie in The Nation offers a bleak analysis of the liberals' leverage in a world where nobody cares what they think:

[T]his proposal is further evidence that the debt ceiling negotiations were an intentional decision on Obama’s part. The president genuinely believes in deficit reduction, and chose to use the debt ceiling as an opportunity to cut spending with significant bipartisan cover. Obama hasn’t been fooled into these negotiations, nor is he playing rope-a-dope or a complex game of 11-dimensional chess. This is what he wants.

What does this mean for liberals? Well, they can complain and attack Obama — they’ve already begun — but criticism from the left has yet to budge the president, and it’s doubtful that this time will be any different. Demonstrations sound great, but they don’t actually carry a high chance for success; if your only option for changing the political calculations of a president is protest, then you’re probably too late to the game. Likewise, a primary campaign against Obama sounds like it might work, but outside of activist circles, there is little appetite for a challenge. The Democratic establishment is satisfied with President Obama, and will work to ensure his reelection.

Indeed, given the importance of presidential elections, Obama will be able to count on organization and support from every member of the Democratic coalition. Moreover, if a deal comes through, it will probably help him with independents, who support modest reductions in entitlement spending.

Simply put, liberals don’t have much leverage over the Obama administration, which, unfortunately, makes our concerns — and our anger — a second-order consideration at best.

As Steve M., who identified the real problem behind the lack of liberalism long before anyone else, wrote in December regarding the Bush tax cut betrayal:

Where are the demonstrators? Where are the leaders? What are people on the left doing?

Oh, yeah, right -- they're staring at screens. They're reading Kos and DU and FDL and HuffPo. They're watching Rachel and Keith. They're blogging and commenting and tweeting.

I'm no better. In fact, I'm the worst. I'm not out there. And I'm enabling screen-staring several times a day.

But if we hate Barack Obama now -- oh and, yeah, the Republicans too -- maybe we need to close our laptops and let these guys know in a real-world way.

And maybe -- just maybe -- there's a cause-and-effect relationship between the fact that we haven't done anything like this and the fact that we keep getting screwed.

What have you done today to stand tall for liberalism?