Netroots Nation learns about “Free Milk and a Cow” the hard way

{{snort!}}

It appears that Netroots Nation is dissatisfied with Obama:

The message to those in the room for “What to Do When the President is Just Not that Into You,” a Netroots Nation panel, was be more demanding, don’t take no for an answer and compromises aren’t good enough.

Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military for running afoul of its anti-gay Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, provided a visual when an Organizing for America volunteer stood up and asked him to support Obama in 2012. The man said he did not support gay marriage — “civil unions?” he offered weakly — and Choi promptly ripped up an Organizing for America flyer he had been given and threw it back in the man’s face.

The four panelists — Choi, immigration reform supporter Felipe Matos, America Blog writer John Aravosis and Fire Dog Lake Founder Jane Hamsher — said they are planning to hold the White House’s collective feet to the fire for its decisions on civil rights, whether it would hurt Obama’s reelection chances or not.

Yes!  Ok, you’re 3 years too late.  Some of you knew that he wasn’t the Azor Ahai and Prince who was Promised back in 2008.  Remember the sad little letter that Jane Hamsher and friends published in The Nation back in the summer of 2008 when they pleaded with Obama to take the left seriously?  And how did that work out?

What’s really funny is that it wasn’t too long ago when Jane Hamsher was characterizing us bitter holdouts as “a certain kind of woman” and now she *are* one.  I’m willing to forgive, Jane, and I certainly don’t want to single anyone out, but it’s time you guys acknowledged that we’re not the trailer trash knuckle draggers you thought we were.  We’re just a whole lot quicker on the uptake.

But it seems like the newly minted bitter knitters don’t quite understand how to implement the strategy:

“I would probably vote for the president in the end, but I’d also do everything that I can to shame him,” said Aravosis, who writes about gay rights issues. “But I don’t think they realize how damaging that is.”

{{cue the Streisand}}

Oh, my man I love him so, he’ll never know

All my life is just despair, but I don’t care

When he takes me in his arms, the world is bright, alright

What’s the difference if I say, I’ll go away

When I know I’ll come back on my knees someday

For whatever my man is, I am his forever more!

No, John, that is not how you do it.  If you signal 16 months out that you are going to give Obama your vote no matter what he does, then he doesn’t have to do anything for you.  Oh, sure, I understand you’re scared.  We’re all scared shitless about Republicans getting the upper hand.  But if their policies are going to get implemented anyway under Obama, you can’t lose by opposing him.  Strenuously.

There are a couple of ways to do this:

1.) Direct your political contributions to an escrow account to be given to a politician that wants to run next year, either as a primary candidate to Obama or as a third party candidate.   Do the same with incumbent Congressional Democrats who keep drifting right.

2.) Find that third party candidate or primary opponent.  If you can’t find one, promise to vote as a bloc for the Green Party or Socialist or America’s Renewal (I made that one up).  You have to gird your loins and tell the Democratic Party that they are finished if they don’t start toeing the line. Then, you have to do it or they will never take you seriously.  This is how Republicans do it.  You will never get your mojo back until you learn to say “No!” and mean it.

3.) You’re not going to like this last one, John, but here goes: Start talking up Hillary Clinton.  Yep, there’s no one Obama fears as much as Hillary.  She’s the only legitimate candidate who could challenge him in a primary and then scoop up all the working class people the Democrats left on the table last time.  I have no idea if she would run but a Hillary threat is your best bet.  Not only would she get Democrats’ attention, the Republicans will start to worry too.  Plus, you owe us for being such an egregious misogynist twit in 2008 when she was hands down the most ready to lead.  (Wow, that was really embarrassing.)  Her candidacy would be equally historic. And I never say never.

You guys are going to have to get over the number the anti-Hillary people did to your heads in 2008.  She is a politician, one of the best we have, who really knows her stuff and isn’t afraid to take on her enemies (Ooo, she told him.  Still gives me chills).  Being a political person is not a bad thing- when you are trying to elect a politician to work for you.  That’s where you guys made your mistake in 2008.  You wanted a political virgin.  And you got one.  Not only was he inexperienced, he sold his maidenhood to a bunch of bankers.

They used places like DailyKos and FireDogLake as big focus groups to figure out what makes lefties tick and then they used those things against you in 2008 so you would turn to the person they picked for you.  Obama never did run on Democratic principles.  His whole shtick was to run as an aspirational candidate.  He was whatever you wanted him to be, like Belle de Jour.  And you guys ate it up and doomed the rest of us.

I warned you in 2007 at YearlyKos2.0.  I told you that the appeal to the emotion and the response to it would be dangerous to us and that it was very important focus on what we value and not how someone makes us feel.  You are very slow learners but you are finally where we were in 2008.  Better late than never.

Welcome to the light.  Now, don’t fuck it up.

*****************************************************************************************************************

THIS is the song you want to sing to Obama:

Epiphanies: My Dawning Realizations about Barack Obama

Dawning realization

Epiphany: a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure b : a revealing scene or moment

Yesterday, Riverdaughter suggested that we make this “Epiphany Weekend” at TC. The idea is to look back over the past couple of years and recall the epiphanies that we had early on that made us so highly skeptical about Barack Obama as a candidate for President.

For me, the very first wake-up call I had about Obama was this diary at Dailykos way back in September 2005. In the diary, then Senator Obama lectured the Kos community about “tone, truth, and the Democratic Party,” which defending Democratic Senators who had voted to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court. In the diary Obama strongly criticized people at Dailykos and other liberal blogs who wanted Congressional Democrats to stand up for Democratic principles and stop rolling over for Bush on every issue. (I have used bold type to highlight a couple of sections.)

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists – a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog – we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda….

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don’t think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don’t think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don’t think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

It’s this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts’ confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don’t think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence…

In the rest of the diary, Obama attempted to make a case for the kind of “consensus-building” we have been watching since he moved into the White House–the kind where the Democrats compromise their values ahead of time and continue to compromise them in the face of Republican (and Blue Dog) objections.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more “centrist”…. Too often, the “centrist” label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don’t think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don’t work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of “framing,” although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It’s a matter of actually having faith in the American people’s ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

Of course Obama never made clear what “core values” he would be willing to stand up for.

Reading this diary was my first wake-up call–it gave me my first real clues to who Obama really was. Before that, my only impressions of him were based on the speech he had given at the 2004 Democratic. He had come across to me as really smooth and slick, but nothing he said in the speech was really earth-shaking and none of it was memorable enough to stick with me. Still, I think I my overall impression was positive. But after reading Obama’s Kos diary, I my impression of him started to turn more negative.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: “It’s the President’s Justice Department.”

I’ve been waiting for the W.O.R.M, but so far nothing. In his daily press briefing today, Robert Gibbs responded to a question by Jake Tapper on the Justice Department’s brief supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):

Q Does the President stand by the legal brief that the Justice Department filed last week that argued in favor of the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act?

MR. GIBBS: Well, Jake, as you know, the Justice Department is charged with upholding the law of the land, even though the President believes that that law should be repealed.

Q I understand that. But a lot of legal experts say that the brief didn’t have to be as comprehensive and make all the arguments that it made, such as comparing same-sex unions to incestuous ones in one controversial paragraph that’s upset a lot of the President’s supporters. Does the President stand by the content, the arguments made in that brief?

MR. GIBBS: Well, again, it’s the President’s Justice Department. And again, we have the role of upholding the law of the land while the President has stated and will work with Congress to change that law.

In other words, yes, the President agrees with the argument that essentially draws an analogy between incest and same sex marriage–the same argument used by the Bush Justice Department!