Centrists don’t want to the do the right thing
Stuart Zechman, writing about centrists such as Obama, states:
It’s not that they desire or welcome obscenely high foreclosure and unemployment rates –don’t get me wrong– but it’s that they don’t agree that New Deal-style policies to help ordinary people are worth the cost in terms of shifting government into an adversarial relationship with finance and industry. They don’t want the kind of government that has the kind of responsibility we’re talking about, and so they’ll tolerate and even excuse double-digit unemployment and the banks’ rampant fraud rather than accept that role.
Stuart is still falling into the “they’re not evil” trap.
The fact is that high unemployment keeps down wages, and that keeps down the costs of their big donors—big corporations. It is a win for them. As for the foreclosure crisis, almost any sensible solution would require some sort of cramdown, which would hurt the financial firms which are centrists largest donors.
No, actually, while centrist politicians might in some theoretical “how many angels dance on pins” sense prefer that there not be a foreclosure crisis, they don’t mind that much, and high unemployment is a positive for the people they actually work for.
You can’t serve two masters. Centrists serve major corporations. If they can do something for ordinary people that doesn’t hurt those donors, sure, they may do it, but if not, forget it.
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look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
I think we all should adopt T-Bear’s Doris Day approach to these matters. It’s much less stressful, and some would argue downright blissful…in its ignorance.
God, how I love Doris Day. She’s what America should be. Here’s to Doris Day. Enjoy!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
Nice, Blizzard. To it, I add…..
“The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, ‘This is jessamine, this violet, this rose.’”
“But at last Dahoum drew me: ‘Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all’, and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it appeared to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. ‘This,’ they told me, ’is the best; it has no taste.’ My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part.”
It’s mostly a self-serving myth that, in general, the quiet are the wise.
Stuart Zechman sent a link to Swampland, where I have been posting to let me know about the discussions here.
Anon, whom I had, also, seen there even referred to me in a post.
After Reagan (who was elected when I was a child) Bush Sr with eight tolerable years of Clinton (who’s mistakes I hold most responsible for the financial meltdown with the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and his refusal to regulate derivatives) having a tolerable president such as Obama is better than the alternative, but, nothing to dance in the streets about.
He, clearly, ran from the left and governs from the center. (Clinton refuted Bush Sr.s remarks about “liberal liberal liberal” by always running as a centrist).
Two things that fueled liberal Democrats are now hard to find:
Unions
Civil Rights activists
The only somewhat strong force is from the Universities.
By contrast, corporate America and far right Evangelical Churches are stronger than ever.
It is easy to forget from our history books how liberal Democrats ever made large victories in America and Western Europe. The Great Depression shut down most of the corporate elites.
Western Europe had another ten years of economic uncertainty from the end of the second world war until the mid 1950s and, therefore, had an era of progress lasting twenty five years rather than fifteen (late 1929 until Mid 1945 – almost 16 years).
I, absolutely, do not believe that Obama is evil. I believe he, like John Kerry and Bill Clinton wishes not to offend anybody and likes to find a place where we all can be halfway infuriated rather than anybody being totally infuriated.
The Tea Party, brought to you by the Koch brothers, wishing for lower taxes, a balanced budget, increased military spending with no cuts to Social Security are so mathematically impaired that they are, already, I believe, well on their way to self imploding.
So, with two years of economic stagnation and constant infighting between a far right house sworn not to compromise and a centrist Senate along with a centrist president where is the anger going to show up from?
Left is the only political direction left untried for 30 years.
Stuart’s ideas for a brighter, more liberal future I admire.
Just stating that Obama is only with us half the time (if that often) is not as productive.
Anon, whom I had, also, seen there even referred to me in a post.
Must be a different anon. We are legion. I’ve never been to Swampland (that’s at “Time,” correct?)
I, absolutely, do not believe that Obama is evil. I believe he, like John Kerry and Bill Clinton wishes not to offend anybody and likes to find a place where we all can be halfway infuriated rather than anybody being totally infuriated.
“absolutely?” Does this mean that you know him personally or have spent much time around him. It’s awfully difficult to know someone “absolutely,” or even “very, very well.” Or is that just rhetoric?
It’s fairly clear to me that Obama is willing to substitute his judgment in favor of representing the judgment of the people who elected him. He lied repeatedly about what he was going to do when he got in office. The argument or discussion in the set of posts, above, is whether or not his economic policy is evil (meaning that it is intended to benefit a few while being sold as benefiting the whole of the economy, as opposed to benefiting the whole of the economy while being sold to benefit the whole). As far as I can tell from what people have written, above, there is general agreement that his politics are evil (that is, he lies to get what policy he wants).
(O/T: Why would people want to frequent a website called “Swampland?” The name sounds as though the people who set it up hold the people who write there in contempt. They didn’t name it “The Wetlands” or “The Biologically Diverse and Useful Area” or “The Tropical Rainforest.”)
He, clearly, ran from the left and governs from the center.
Obama only governs from the center for those people who have a personal definition of what “the center” means. If you use the English language definition of what the term would mean, then he does not.
In order to avoid repeating myself, I refer to my earlier comment, above.
Relatedly, for those who have not read it, Jon Walker has written a dialog between a Progressive and a Corporatist Democrat.
Unless I have misread them, I don’t think that anyone in any of the posts above supports the position of the Corporatist Democrat.
While Utopians trash talk those who do not subscribe to their ethereal vision of Nirvana, resulting in having people who just want to get this nation out of the ditch being shouted down.
WaPo is a pretty unreliable source, but these graphs illustrate what I was talking about in regard to the the FDR policy years 1932-1968.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101196.html
“It’s not that they desire or welcome obscenely high foreclosure and unemployment rates …… ”
somehow ‘they’ are not responsible for the consequences of thier actions – only their “desires” count – wherever do these people (‘they’) get their moral compass from?