Obama Gets Left Behind

From drone attacks to Wall Street regulation, President Obama has been unable to please the left wing voters of his party.

Come on now. Is Obama really a “psychopathic megalomaniac”?
I learned of Obama’s problems today.  Not from Ron Paul supporters.  Not from Glenn Beck‘s Drudge wanna-be news site The Blaze. I read about Obama’s psychosis from left wing Democrats.
Everyday I get emails from former members of Move On, a pro-Democratic Party group that was famously active during the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003. They’re complaining about one man: President Obama.
In these emails, one thing is apparent.  When it comes to the left wing liberals, Obama is being left behind.
The left was mostly raptured into political heaven four years ago when they elected Obama on bended knee.  He spoke about things dear to their hearts: closing Guantanamo Bay. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting tough on bankers.

Guantanamo is still open. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, but the military presence remains.  (Smacks of imperialism. That’s something the left hates as much as libertarians do.)  Then there’s the president’s bit about getting tough on bankers. Where has the White House come down hard on Wall Street? Fuhgeddaboudit. This is New York!
One anti-Obama Saturday in my inbox:
Re: Write-in Kermit the Frog!

If being a ‘pragmatist’ or a ‘realist’ means choosing only amongst evils, count us OUT. Obama betrayed the American voters who expected he would not gut the US Constitution. Both parties are the same. And, in a world of infinite possibilities we choose not between the lesser of two evils. In fact, those of us who are not into denial and work at the human rights front lines prefer to face the Republican snake head-on then the confused and gutless Democrat chameleon whining about being a progressive when they are NOT.” — Ezili Danto, human rights lawyer at the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Re: Obama is a psychopath; reminds me of Stalin

There’s a cancer in the presidency called Barack Obama.  We have a psychopathic megalomaniac occupying the White house who could be compared to Nero, Caligula, Stalin, or Pol Pot in his disdain for human life. He and his coven of other like minded DC psychopaths and sociopaths are on a murdering spree and like a third world dictator Obama can have someone and their family (including you) executed or blasted to smithereens with a thumbs up or down. This is sickening to me. They are so blase about murdering that they refer to the hit list photos as “baseball cards”. Killing is a game or a sport to them. There is a “cancer on the Presidency” and that cancer has metastasized throughout Washington DC. It was there before Obama arrived but he brought a whole new and virulent strain with him. Every time there is a shameful incident or embarrassing event perpetrated by “a few bad apples” we hear from the  DC psychopaths that “That is not who we are”. They are incorrect.  It is who they are in DC. It is not who we the real everyday thinking feeling Americans are. I certainly am not one of the people to be included in their cumulative we.” — Alexander Cockburn, writing for his online publication Counterpunch. Alexander is also a columnist at The Nation, though I have a hard time believing this missive will make it passed Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Alex is a firebrand. I’ve written for him once or twice, and he was kind enough to comment on my reporting about the Iraq War for The Boston Globe in 2003 in his Beat the Devil column. This sounds like Alex being Alex, alright. Gotta love his fire.

Re: Bush mighta been better.
Hello!

“Why should the public believe what the Obama administration says about the people being assassinated by drones? Especially since, as we learn in the New York Times, the administration came up with a semantic solution to keep the civilian death toll to a minimum: simply count all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The rationale, reminiscent of George Zimmerman’s justification for shooting Trayvon Martin, is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Talk about profiling! At least when George Bush threw suspected militants into Guantanamo their lives were spared.” — Medea Benjamin, CodePINK

Obama’s dealings with the working stiff, or the perceived lack thereof, plus his foreign policy has caused much of the anger against him among the left wing of the party.
I’m not a blue dog democrat.  I’m a hard hat Democrat from Massachusetts; like the guys who climb telephone poles after hurricanes that vote for Kennedy.  That’s where I cast my lot.
I voted for Obama through the U.S. Consulate in São Paulo.  Obama was different. He was inspiring.  I watched the votes unfold on two laptops — one on CNN, one on MSNBC with emails from my American friends flooding in every minute. My Blackberry was on my lap, blowing up with texts – can you believe North Carolina? It never happens! 
Obama’s winning was like a moon landing.  You noticed it more when you’re overseas.  America did it again, Brazilians told me.  The world can elect women presidents. It’s happened before. But what advanced economy has ever elected a black man? None. Not Europe. Not Latin America. Not Australia. Not even close. They’re not even on the ballot. Only in America. What a country.
Yes, You Can My #@$%!…
Yes, You Can!
It made so much sense.
My former Chicago-based editor from Dow Jones even mailed me a T-shirt with Obama’s slogan on it.
I wore it to bed.
Until I got sick of it.
The shirt. Not the slogan. Or Obama, necessarily.
Thought I have to say that I think the truth, once again, is not yes or no, it is more like maybe.  Maybe, You Can.  That doesn’t sound right. But it’s true. I understand that’s not very optimistic. Americans like to believe we can do anything we want, so long as we work really hard. Yes, we can! We tell ourselves that.  Oh, no…some can. Most can’t. But hey, maybe you can.
That’s a different argument.  I’m talking about equality. A fair shake.  I’m talking about people working hard and having something to show for it, rather than a life of lowering expectations, of moving one step forward and one and half steps back.  Medea and Alex are talking about drones.  Most Americans probably don’t care about drones. But most care about equality and fairness.
I think Obama would win on fairness versus any Republican.
The left is a lot like the right. Bombastic. Deeply ideological. Never happy with their politics.
A liberal environmental activist explains how the left and the right are actually quite similar.…


Know where I learned that?
Antioch College.
You don’t get any more left wing than Antioch College.  When I entered the school in the 1990s, they required male students have a signed contract from female students before they had sex.   The Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender students once hung a sign painted on a white sheet they hung one floor above the cafeteria door. It was for the hetero males. It read: “Don’t blame us if you can’t get laid.”
That was my liberal school.  One adjunct professor with environmental activist blood in her veins, and whose name I cannot remember, explained to me how the left was like the right.
It was one afternoon after class, during the Newt Gingrich Contract With America years, when she drew a basic diagram to explain it all.  When she drew it, she purposely didn’t connect the start of the circle to the end. There was a hairline fracture in this otherwise perfect basic shape .  Where she started drawing the circle, she said, that was the right wing.
Where she ended, she pointed out, was the left wing.  You see how close they are together?  Incredibly close, of course.  In their political angst, they are close neighbors.
The right left Bush behind, too.
They got their wars. They didn’t get the Second Coming.
They also didn’t get to end abortion, or a gay marriage amendment.  When Bush left office, he had around a 33% popularity rating.  He essentially left Washington with his puppy dog tail between his legs.  My bet is he doesn’t miss Washington one bit.
The right doesn’t miss him either.  They think Bush failed them.  Just like the left thinks Obama has failed them.
Another email from Saturday.  This one about George Carlin. Not from Carlin, of course. He is dead.
Re: Voting is meaningless!!!

“You’ll notice there’s one thing I don’t complain about. Politicians. Everyone loves to complain about politicians. They say politicians suck. But where do they think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky….they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. This is the best we can do: garbage in, garbage out.  Maybe it’s not the politicians that suck. Maybe it’s the public. The public sucks. Now there’s a nice campaign slogan for someone. I solved this little problem for myself…on Election Day, I stay home. I don’t vote. It’s meaningless. This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago. People say if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain. But hey, I on the other hand, who did not vote…have every right to complain about the mess that you guys voted for and therefore created.”  — George Carlin. See it on YouTube.