"If the liberal renaissance is only a dream...."

[Clio the Leo]

Looking at the broader picture at the end of Obama's second year is a chastening exercise. Those thermospheric hopes of late 2008 for some kind of great liberal renaissance have steadily descended through the lower layers of atmosphere, burning upon re-entry, fighting turbulence and bumpily touching ground with the cabin's decidedly non-euphoric occupants just relieved to have hit the Earth in one piece. As of now, no future missions are scheduled.

What happened? The two frustrations noted above define and reflect the two broad interpretations of the past two years. The first is that the disappointments are Obama's fault. I expect you know the litany: he hired an establishment-centric economic team, he didn't fight hard enough, he folded his hand too early to Republicans and Wall Street and pharmaceutical companies, he endorsed his predecessor's terrorism policies, he and his people spoke disparagingly of the liberal base, and so on.

All true. But let's suppose Obama had hired a fiery populist economic team; pushed for a stimulus package twice the size of the one he got; taken on the pharmaceutical and other big lobbies; somehow unilaterally shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility; and spent the past two years whipping American liberals into a paroxysmal state of dudgeon against corporate America. Would things be any better?

Doubtful. In fact they'd probably be worse. He might be sitting on a record in which his signature stimulus and healthcare bills went down to bruising defeat. They may not be very popular, but at least they passed. And while liberal activists would have been happier with a more aggressive posture toward banks and Wall Street, the fact is that Wall Street hates Obama as it is. At least the Dow is up 30% since he took office. Imagine where he'd be if it had gone in the opposite direction.

What does this comparison tell us? That something else has been decisively shaping our discourse besides Obama's shortcomings. And here resides the second interpretation: the Republicans have become more nakedly than ever the party of rich people and corporations, and those rich people and corporations are uniting with Republicans to do everything in their power to block even mildly ameliorative reform. By all appearances, these people believe the country is theirs to run, was somehow stolen from them in 2008, and they're just going to oppose everything until they get it back in 2012.

I lean toward this interpretation, but among what we might call the "professional liberal" class of advocates and pundits, it seems I'm in the minority. Hence the classic liberal circular firing squad that's been on display in Washington over the tax deal.

But I can't really blame the president for not being liberal enough. It's not a liberal country. I do, however, blame him for being in denial about the nature of his opposition. They want to destroy him. He still seems to think he can seduce them, as if they were no different from the couple of conservatives on the Harvard Law Review whose respect he won when he was its president.

The 2008 mojo is gone. He'll never fully get it back. The great liberal renaissance, even if he serves two terms, is not going to happen as some had pictured it two years ago. What seems more likely, at best, is a recovered economy, some foreign policy breakthrough that nudges humankind toward a more peaceable existence, and modest advances on green jobs or national broadband expansion or environmental protection on the margins.

This will be hard for Obama to accept, and harder still for liberals. He may now never be quite the transformational president of our dreams. He can, however, still be a successful one, which is a new kind of mojo and is worth something, because most presidents aren't. But even that won't happen if Obama and liberals keep at the mistrustful bickering. Everyone, from the president down, should recalibrate their hopes, deal with the new reality as it is, and keep their ire aimed at the forces that think the country is theirs by default.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/14/barack-obama-democrats-republicans

[Kolesar]

1. Politics is no longer framed by: "Vote for bush or the terrorists will kill you"

That is what has changed.

[COLGATE4]

2. The tyranny of reduced expectations. 'Better half a loaf', 'recalibrate

your hopes', 'glass is half full', etc. etc. ad nauseam. The point is not that Obama blew it - which he did. The point is that blowing it wasn't necessary. This meme just buys into his theme song of "compromise" whereby anything the Rethugs will finally deign to let him (and the American People) have is immediately trumpeted as a great victory. You've got to be kidding me.

[StreetKnowledge]

9. Reduced Expectations?

Whatever we get will eventually be destroyed by these fuckers.

IMO, nothing short of massive civil unrest, and not the kind that goes to voting stations, is going to get the United States back on its path to success. The future is going to get far, far worse than it is now, and it probably won't be in our lifetimes that things truly do get better.

As for Obama, he's not a Democrat. We need to realize that now. He's selling out to the GOP just as Clinton did. If we want to make a statement about liberals being able to fix things, we need to remove the man in the White House and do it very, very publicly. But since the overwhelming majority of American voters will still back him, we're in the situation of being effectively disenfranchised. We can see the cliff coming, but there isn't a damn thing we can do to stop if from going over the cliff. So, all I can say is get off the train before it gets there, and pray the mess that is going to befall the United States does not end up engulfing us all.

[rucky]

3. "The great liberal resistance" makes good economic sense, too.

It's not just about what *we* want, it's the philosophy that a rising tide lifts all boats. I truly believe that bold progressive policy would've made a noticable difference in these first two years of Obama's presidency and the Democrats would be stonger than ever if they had just believed the same or at least communicated the vision more passionately.

[tularetom]

4. So...we should just give up and accept this sorry situation?

Tempting for me, I'm an old fart and barring complete social collapse, I'm probably OK for whatever time I've got left.

But I've got kids, grandkids and great grandkids. and I'd hate to think I knowingly sat by and let America turn to crap.

Good article and probably true, but I think I'll keep bitching about Obama, the rest of the weenie Democrats and the corporate stooges that comprise the republican party.

[quaker bill]

8. Reality is reality

one can rail against it all one wishes, but it remains the same. Things did not go deep enough to be truly transformative. Just as well really as really transformative events are generally quite unpleasant, in fact it is the unpleasantness that drives the transformation.

I think we may have dodged a bullet here, as the transformation, had it occurred, would have gone far more right than what we are seeing now. Yes, in fact there still is a far more right wing position, which will be left unexplored, for now.

[msongs]

5. maybe even a blue dog can learn new tricks in the second 2 years nt

[old mark]

6. The peole in this administration are not even Democrats as I grew up with them.

Truman was president when I was born, and things were still good with the OLD/REAL Democratic Party till maybe Carter or slightly after...but by Reagan's 2nd term, the Democrats became a "Me, too" party, taking their points from the GOP rather than finding their own programs and policies. They have gone downhill ever since. "It's not a liberal country" because the old Liberals died out and the "New Liberals" are not liberals!


mark

[polichick]

7. "If the liberal renaissance is only a dream...."

There's no reason to support the Democratic Party.