krebscycle

Digby reports that the evil Obama has said mean things about the delicate people on the net who claim to be “the left” or “hippies” or something. She gives us this horrifying, blood-curdling, bone-chilling, even uppity quote:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get – to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed – oh, well, the public option wasn’t there. If you get the financial reform bill passed – then, well, I don’t know about this particular derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and – (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

How dare he!? And her comments section, predictably, explodes into an orgy of self-pity, anger, and demands to let the Democrats suffer the result of their arrogance. As is too often the case, Digby is here part of the usual choir – in fact, she sources this story to Greenwald. who tells us this indicates Obama’s “view of liberal critics” even though a reasonable person might suppose Obama was talking about “us Democrats”. Greenwald interrupts a sclerotic attack on Obama for long enough to manage a hat-tip for this story to – ta da – Jane Hamsher who helpfully explains that Obama was “mock[ing] public option supporters”. But where did Jane Hamsher get the story from? She got it from progressive stalwart and ideological guru Mike Allen. Because Politico sets the agenda. You can see what that agenda is by looking Mike Allen up. At least Mike Allen also tells us that the same day Obama was appointing ElizabethWarren to run the consumer financial protection bureau (something netroots was demanding hysterically for months) and he did that by using a bare knuckle smackdown of the US Senate’s Republicans and Democratic enablers (something else that the netroots has been demanding hysterically for a long time, while assiduously ignoring every instance where they get their wish). 

Less than 2 months from the election and that’s the story Digby, Hamsher, Greenwald, Alterman and others want to tell – a story about a paragraph from an Obama speech selected for them by Mike Allen. And all of them want to interpret the story as a mocking of “the left”, “liberals”, “public option supporters” without the faintest support from the speech itself – because it fits into the narrative. Here’s the response she elicits from the people she calls her “commentators/stalkers”

Mr. Obama has taken me from outspoken supporter, to ambivilant and now with this last comment, to not liking him very much. What an ass. Humor or no, who the hell is he? Who are these people that he has surrounding him? I saw a “Yes we Can!” bunper sticker to day. What a load of shit.
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glenn makes the case that, it’s not that we lefties are mad because of what obama hasn’t done;  it’s because of specific rightist policies that obama has undertaken, in our names.  and we’re pissed.

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Well, this is what I think.  Obama’s loyalty is to the neoliberal government faction.  This faction is part of both parties, but I’m willing to agree that it is much more represented in the Republican party.  I also think that Obama is a true believer in neoliberalism.

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Nice explication.  Sure, Obama is a neoliberal.  It’s so obvious he thinks fucking tax cuts are the answer to everything.  Insane shit.  But Obama is an ideologue. 

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I’m a true leftist–and Obama is out of his depth, just like Carter.  Don’t try that misdirection, man.  There are actually real leftists who see that Obama is a right winger.

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respect for a country that fails to meet its obligations and commitments to its people, and even breaches peremptory norms of international law, thereby failing to meet the minimal standards of the civilized world. So its acting dictator, who evidently knows this stuff well enough to teach it at a preeminent American university, will sadly have to put up with epithets like poltroon, cocksucker in chief, Goldman’s Stepin Fetchit, America’s Andropov, Chancellor Schleicher, the dickslitter’s apprentice, commander bumboy, feckless shitstain, and, even the whole Mau Mau thing like a year before the right-wing mongoloids stumbled on it

And here is the context (at least Greenwald has the decency to link to the full speech – the only one).

  I’m not going to give a long speech because I want to take the opportunity to sit with each of you and hear what you’re thinking, answer your questions.  But let me just say generally, we came into office back in January of 2009 at a historic time – the worst financial crisis that we’ve seen since the Great Depression, on the verge of a Great Depression, in the midst of two wars.  And so the challenges that we’ve confronted over these last two years have been extraordinary.  And we’ve got a long way to go.  This country received a body blow.  And it was already having difficulties competitively.  It was already falling behind educationally.  We had a health care system that was broken, a middle class that hadn’t seen its incomes or wages go up at the same time as their costs were skyrocketing for everything from college tuition to health care.

     And so the recovery has been painfully slow.  We’ve got millions of people who are still out of work, hundreds of thousands of people who’ve lost their homes.  People are anxious about the future; they’re fearful about the future.  And we’re in a very competitive environment, where other countries like China and India have now caught up – in some indicators – and are going to keep on moving because they are hungry and they’ve got some very talented people.

[…]

 Across the board, we are making progress.  Now, I’m making this point for two reasons.  Number one, the changes we’ve made are ones that will take some time to bear fruit.  And folks who are out of work right now, whose homes are underwater right now, who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills or send their kids to college right now – they don’t have five or 10 years to wait.  And so we’ve got to still work very hard in the short term to dig ourselves out of this enormous hole. 

And that’s why having public servants like Dick Blumenthal in Washington is so important.  Because the other side, all they are going to be feeding us is anger and resentment and not a lot of new ideas.  But that’s a potent force when people are scared and they’re hurting.  And so for all of you to support candidates like Dick all across the country is absolutely vital – because our job is not yet finished.  And the agenda of the other side is essentially to roll back progress that we’ve made.  And they’re doing so, by the way, not just by self-financed candidates like the one here in Connecticut, but because of the Supreme Court decision from the Roberts’ Court called the Citizens United, you now have special interests spending – outspending candidates and parties all across America – spending millions of dollars without disclosing who they’re spending it – who they are and what interests lie behind all these negative TV ads.

So we are going to be in some tough fights everywhere, and all of you are going to be desperately needed in order for us to keep moving in a positive direction.

Now, the second reason I’m telling you this is because Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get – to see the glass as half empty.  (Laughter.)  If we get an historic health care bill passed – oh, well, the public option wasn’t there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed – then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that.  And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and – (laughter.)  I thought that was going to happen quicker.  (Laughter.)  You know who you are.  (Laughter.)

The Republic is under a massive counterattack, financed by the Koch brothers and other Bircher-type fanatical right wingers who are desperate to see the Democrats deposed and Speaker Boehner block even the mild level of reforms that Obama and Pelosi have against all odds managed to institute. And the irresponsible, childish, petulant, whiny netroots is following Mike Allen’s script and then complaining that Obama is calling them petulant. If only they could do so in their own country, I’d be happy to see them get what they so deeply want.