The President needs more progressives in his Administration?

[kentuck]

I think our job would be easier and our country would be better off, if the President had more progressives around him, to balance the moderates and conservatives that are giving him advice. I think the President needs to hear new voices.

It would be reassuring to know the President was getting other opinions. For an even better balance, he could ask someone like Paul Krugman to offer advice and opinions on economic matters or someone like Robert Reich on labor policies. I do believe our President needs to hear more progressive voices in his Cabinet. I think the truth should be straight out front about it. We need more progressives in our government. We need solutions, not the status quo.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. His appointees are a reflection of his thinking.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Precisely. Birds of a feather...

[jgraz]

32. screw the middle class together?

:shrug:

[zipplewrath]

5. Yup

I've come to realize that Obama is much easier to understand, and predict to some sense, if you realize he's getting the legislation he wants, and is supporting the congressional candidates he likes. His hand isn't being forced on many of these issues. He wants to fight a war in Afghanistan, he wants folks like Spector in the Senate, he likes Lincoln, he wants centrist legislation that avoids the most progressive features. He wants mandates and cadillac taxes and doesn't really care about single payer or public options. Oh, and he is extremely uncomfortable with Gays and Lesbians but feels an need to accomodate them, but only as much as necessary.

[izquierdista]

7. It's amazing!

You must be clairvoyant! It's like you just....just....paid attention! Wow!

[zipplewrath]

8. We get different explanations

Rahm did it.
Congress forced him to.
He had to deal with the Blue Dogs.
He owed Spector.
Lincoln is an incumbent.
He got stuck with this war.

The excuses are many and tortured. Taken as a whole, the more consistent explanation is:

He's doing what he wants to do.

[izquierdista]

30. You've come to the fight

armed with Occam's razor.

[zipplewrath]

31. Ha!

Yeah, some times it feels like a gun fight though.

[tango-tee]

44. Clear, concise, to the point.

Brava, zipplewrath!

[Spheric]

49. +1 /nt

[Edweird]

10. That about sums it up.

[ThomCat]

13. Yes, I think that has been pretty clear for almost the beginning.

:(
He is doing what he wants, and he is giving us what he wants to give us, and getting what he wants to get. He's mostly succeeding as far as he seems to define success.

I don't understand how so many people can keep doing the dance to argue that he's simultaneously the best and most capable president ever (so we should all give him 100% unconditional support) but also totally helpless and hamstrung, and unable to accomplish absolutely anything at all (so we can't hold him responsible for all the failures or expect any kind of actual measurable results or progress from him).

That conflict between him being powerful and him being helpless disappears when you realize that, yes, he really does have immense power as President, and he really is using it, but just for the most part not to help us. We only get token amounts of his attention or concern, and token amounts of the positive results.

If it seems that corporations keep getting the vast benefits and we're a song and dance instead of real reform, that's clearly deliberate too. Who do you think is going to give him hundreds of millions of dollars after he gets out of office? Us? Who is going to decide how powerful he gets to be as a statesman after he leaves office? Us? His future is in the hands of the dealmakers in Washington and in corporate boardrooms, and he's been shaking their hands since the day he started campaigning for president.

We're just the rubes who voted for him.

[zipplewrath]

18. It is a bit of congnative dissonance

I could understand if he had "one bad bill". You could credibly claim that he was just "forced" to pass it. More than one president has such a bill forced upon them in some sense.

But when it is 18 months of excuses, it starts to border on the incredible. You can't simultaneously claim how effective he is, and also claim he is also merely a victim of his environment. Either he is accomplishing his goals or he isn't. You can't have it both ways.

[Hannah Bell]

14. or: like most presidents, he's enacting the agenda of his financial backers.

[ThomCat]

16. Do you think ANY president enacts policies that don't have his own

visions and goals in them?

Financial backers have a hell of a lot of influence. Nobody ever denies that. But the President's own goals and ideas are the lens and filter through which it all gets enacted while he's in office. He gets to shape it all. His views are going to be stamped indelibly in everything that happens.

[Hannah Bell]

19. so long as the visions of the president don't step on the toes of his financial backers.

[ThomCat]

21. I don't think there is ANY fear at all that Obama's views

differ in the least from those of Goldman Sachs. And Goldman Sachs has the power to get almost any other major corporate player to sit at the take and work things out. So I think we're going to see Obama's vision on playing out very smoothly in tandem with the will of his financial backers.

The whole first 6 months of Obama's term was a honeymoon between him and Goldman Sachs. I think they'll have a long and happy marriage.

[LWolf]

11. Yes. If he wanted to hear progressive voices, he'd have appointed them. nt

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

46. There are none so deaf as those who choose not to hear.

It is almost like they are trying to drive Progressives out of the Party. Rahm BRAGS about "preserving private delivery of healthcare" and "open markets" for education reform and calls us "f!@king retards".

You can point to many other appointments that are very similar to these Wellpoint choices.

At this point, if you don't see the handwriting on the wall, it's because you refuse to look at the wall.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/15/ignacia-moreno-superfund/
By Brad Johnson on May 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer To Run DOJ

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s “primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.

http://counterpunch.org/kenfield08142009.html
The Return of Michael Taylor
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration
By ISABELLA KENFIELD
Weekend Edition
August 14-16, 2009


Michael R. Taylor’s appointment by the Obama administration to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 7th sparked immediate debate and even outrage among many food and agriculture researchers, NGOs and activists. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it. He is reviled for shaping and implementing the government’s favorable agricultural biotechnology policies during the Clinton administration.

Yet what has slipped under everyone’s radar screen is Taylor’s involvement in setting U.S. policy on agricultural assistance in Africa. In collusion with the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations, Taylor is once again the go-between man for Monsanto and the U.S. government, this time with the goal to open up African markets for genetically-modified (GM) seed and agrochemicals.

[LWolf]

48. The message couldn't be any more blatant.

Have Democrats gotten the message yet? That voting for someone because they have a "D" after their name doesn't guarantee that they will uphold Democratic principles?

Neoliberals need to be voted out of office.

[Individualist]

12. Absolutely.

His New Democrat thinking.

[Radical Activist]

17. Like that conservative Linda Solis!

Obama said during the campaign that he would have a cabinet of diverse viewpoints, including people who don't always agree with him. That's what he did.

More liberals are at the policy adviser level where they aren't as noticed by the public.

[Mithreal]

26. Good counterpoint. And we could say that about a few others as well.

Not all of Obama's picks have been conservatives or DLC'ers. I agree with Chad.

[bvar22]

22. Exactly.

The DLC New Team

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

[OHdem10]

2. It appears the Consrvative Wing of the Party rules the roost.

They probably do not want any pesky progressive up there.
After, all what would the Republicans think???

[Mithreal]

29. The Regressives are jealous of the New Dems playing their game better.

It's like a seesaw, these elections, and the corporatists wisely invested in both sides.

I just wish the Rethugs hadn't gone so batshit that all their moderately sane members started pushing Progressives out of the so-called Dem Big Tent.

It's a ratchet.

[Hydra]

37. Natural progression

The drift to the right continues. That necessitates throwing more and more people out of the Dem tent in order to keep the march going.

The insane thing is that they still want our votes, while we're shouted down.

[Mithreal]

50. +1

:hi:

[old mark]

4. More than how many? I don't recall any at all! nt

[villager]

6. The unreccers betray their non-progressive hands already!

But it does explain a lot about them...

[branders seine]

9. his appointees are as conservative as he is.

well to the right of center, even in DC, and WAY to the right of the American people.

[ThomCat]

15. It was scary how quickly we started seeing people

rationalize the appointment of people with neo-con credentials here even within days of Obama taking office. :(

We had clear signs from the very beginning that Obama was swinging hard right from day-one, and all we heard, like a mantra, was that we weren't allowed to judge anything until he had been in office for at least a year... No, at least 2 years... No, at least a full term.

:(

[zipplewrath]

20. I was a tad guilty

When they first started, I raised an eyebrow, but thought that I had to be realistic and understand that alot of the "qualified" people were going to be folks from the Clinton Administration. He could still "lead" them towards where his vision was. When I saw a few folks like Dean get totally ignored, I thought that there was probably still some "bad blood" and it wasn't particularly indicative of anything. I said Rick Warren was just a "rookie mistake". And in July, when he was signaling that the Public Option was dead, I was sorta like Dean and just thought it was a bit of stage managing to get it out of committee, and the senate.

But by deep in the fall, with the escalation in Afghanistan, the torture photos, his defense of the toturers, and his speech on Gitmo, it was starting to become obvious that I was kidding myself. Spector and Lincoln just solidified it all for me. Truth is, McCrystal is a classic example. His "sin" was basically suggesting the policy wasn't working. Instead of taking it as an opportunity to get out, he fired the guy and looked for someone who could ensure that we would keep trying anyway.

He's a centrist getting exactly what he wants. If anything, he is frustrated by constantly being pulled left, as we see in how hard he has to be pushed on DADT.

[branders seine]

34. "centrist" is generous.

Cenk Uygyur was right. Obama's record is more conservative overall than reagan's.

[zipplewrath]

45. That's a double observation though

Reagan wasn't nearly as conservative as he is remembered. Truth is, he pissed of "true" conservatives (the economic ones, not the social ones) alot during his day. Go back and read the papers. Conservatives were PISSED at the time. Read David Stockman's book of the day. Reagan never even TRIED to balance budgets or eliminate the Dept of Education or any of their other dreams.

So observing that Obama is a bit to the right of Reagan says as much about Reagan as it does about Obama.

[EFerrari]

39. I bet a lot of people, myself included, went through a similar process. n/t

[laughingliberal]

40. That was pretty much the road I traveled. nt

[tango-tee]

43. The Warren invocation fiasco

at the inauguration was one helluva start.

PS: Hey, Thom! Sending hugs your way, my friend.

[ThomCat]

47. :)

[jgraz]

23. You mean more than the zero he currently has? Probably.

[cordelia]

24. More than none

would be a good start.

[saracat]

25. He needs to find some liberal thinkers for sure and he needs to throw the bipartisanship out the

window. Somehow the message needs to be gotten that it isn't just about winning but about what you do when you win.It is those actions that determine whether you WIN again.

[Mithreal]

27. Wonder who he will pick for the Office of Undermining.

[bvar22]

28. More important than the Liberal vs Conservative ...

...is the Right vs Wrong divide.
Most of the people that Obama has chosen to put in powerful positions have been
historically and demonstrably WRONG on almost every issue they have ever stood for.

The DLC New Team

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

"By their works you will know them."

[glitch]

35. Like Milton Friedman, they no doubt believe they were only wrong because they weren't allowed full

reign on their idealogy.

Time to double-down and prove to everyone that they were right all along.

[Rex]

33. YES!

[Jamastiene]

36. K&R

Well said. I couldn't agree more.

[Bryn]

38. I completely agree with you.

He needs to listen to Bernie, Dennis, Alan Grayson, several others who are progressives. And yes he needs more of them around.

[laughingliberal]

41. K & R nt

[tango-tee]

42. K&R!

[Name removed]

51. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[joe black]

52. shit in one hand and wish in another.

see which one fills up first.