A few weeks ago I did something I hadn’t done since 1971—there was an election and I stayed home. Prior to this I had a perfect attendance suffrage record. It didn’t matter whether we were electing a president or deciding whether to allocate town funds to dump gravel on a dirt road, I was there to cast my vote. So why did I sit out the Massachusetts statewide election to choose candidates to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate?
I suppose part of it was that the candidates induced in me roughly the same amount of excitement I feel when I buy a box of cereal. Martha Coakley will head the Democratic ticket. Ho hum. She’ll easily defeat Republican Scott Brown because: (a) this is Massachusetts, and (b) Scott who? But it wasn’t boredom that kept me from the polls; it was my utter disgust with the Democratic Party. Is it too early to declare the Obama administration a failure? I don’t think so. Break out the t-shirts with Obama’s picture and the slogan “I Voted for Change and All I Got Was This Stupid Pandering Democratic.”
Sound harsh? My view of Obama isn’t nearly as low as that I feel for those who blithely follow him as if he’s the messiah. Where the %#$@*& is the outrage? Obama has been, in many ways, worse than George Bush. Think that’s an exaggeration? Bush’s final defense budget was $513 billion; Obama’s will be at least $534 billion (and perhaps a $100 billion more). George Bush touted the Defense of Marriage Act –signed into law by that faux liberal Bill Clinton, by the way–and Obama’s Justice Department is spending tax payer dollars to defend it from legal challenges. Bush set up the Homeland Security Administration; Obama invented the concept of “sovereign immunity” to declare thousands of Intel and CIA documents off limits from public scrutiny. Many of those documents relate to torture the likes of which occurred at Abu Ghraib and for which Bush was excoriated. Candidate Obama said he’d put Americans back to work and had a plan to do so; President Obama told a December 9, 2009 Brookings Institute gathering, “There is only so much government can do.” Candidate Obama said he’d pull troops out of Iraq within 18 months; President Obama says it will be longer and that we need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Candidate Obama pledged to reverse global warming; President Obama’s administration contributed a parsimonious $85 million for a $350 million international initiative to develop green technology. At Copenhagen he pledged that the U.S. would cut greenhouse emissions by 17% by 2020; the Europeans pledged a 30% cut!
This isn’t the half of it. Health care reform is in such shambles that the best we can hope for is that nothing gets passed. And how about all those new laws to protect labor organizers, limit CEO salaries, limit access to assault weapons, and pump money into education? And can you even imagine how liberals would have reacted had George Bush gone to Oslo to accept a Nobel Peace Prize and used the occasion to defend war?
Many of my liberal friends who so desperately want to believe in Obama cast the blame on Congress. I see their point. If you’re a progressive thinker and you don’t live in Vermont, chances are good that you’re un- or underrepresented in the U.S. Senate. I never expected much from Republicrats like Harvey Reid (NV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Mark Pryor (AR), Ben Nelson (NB), or Arlen Specter (PA). And I have nothing but pity for my neighbors in Connecticut who must endure Chris “Love-those-Banks” Dodd and Joe “Allow-me-to-kiss-the-insurance-industry’s-Tush” Lieberman. The ones who really get me, though, are the poseurs like John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein and their say-anything-to-be-a-player morals. And don’t get me started on the deplorable Nancy Pelosi in the House.
This said, how do we explain the fact that Obama isn’t battling for what he says he wants? Ronald Reagan rammed his agenda through a Democratic Congress, and George Bush never had the “super majority” supposedly needed to pass important initiatives. Lyndon Johnson was willing to bust heads and butts to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Wake up people! The Democrats are frauds. Okay, so most of them aren’t Neanderthals like Jim DeMint (SC), James Inhofe (OK), John Cornyn (TX), or Mitch McConnell (KY). But let’s not kid ourselves.
Change isn’t happening because Democrats reside in the same corporate pockets as Republicans, something Ralph Nader has been trying to tell us for years.
Voting for Democrats is like continuing to go on dates with an attractive escort who repeatedly dumps you and sleeps with someone else. I’m done with the Dems. I’ve changed my voter registration to independent and I plan to vote for Greens and true progressives. If that means Republicans win elections, so be it. I’ll hardly notice the difference and my conscience will be clean.--LV
I suppose part of it was that the candidates induced in me roughly the same amount of excitement I feel when I buy a box of cereal. Martha Coakley will head the Democratic ticket. Ho hum. She’ll easily defeat Republican Scott Brown because: (a) this is Massachusetts, and (b) Scott who? But it wasn’t boredom that kept me from the polls; it was my utter disgust with the Democratic Party. Is it too early to declare the Obama administration a failure? I don’t think so. Break out the t-shirts with Obama’s picture and the slogan “I Voted for Change and All I Got Was This Stupid Pandering Democratic.”
Sound harsh? My view of Obama isn’t nearly as low as that I feel for those who blithely follow him as if he’s the messiah. Where the %#$@*& is the outrage? Obama has been, in many ways, worse than George Bush. Think that’s an exaggeration? Bush’s final defense budget was $513 billion; Obama’s will be at least $534 billion (and perhaps a $100 billion more). George Bush touted the Defense of Marriage Act –signed into law by that faux liberal Bill Clinton, by the way–and Obama’s Justice Department is spending tax payer dollars to defend it from legal challenges. Bush set up the Homeland Security Administration; Obama invented the concept of “sovereign immunity” to declare thousands of Intel and CIA documents off limits from public scrutiny. Many of those documents relate to torture the likes of which occurred at Abu Ghraib and for which Bush was excoriated. Candidate Obama said he’d put Americans back to work and had a plan to do so; President Obama told a December 9, 2009 Brookings Institute gathering, “There is only so much government can do.” Candidate Obama said he’d pull troops out of Iraq within 18 months; President Obama says it will be longer and that we need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Candidate Obama pledged to reverse global warming; President Obama’s administration contributed a parsimonious $85 million for a $350 million international initiative to develop green technology. At Copenhagen he pledged that the U.S. would cut greenhouse emissions by 17% by 2020; the Europeans pledged a 30% cut!
This isn’t the half of it. Health care reform is in such shambles that the best we can hope for is that nothing gets passed. And how about all those new laws to protect labor organizers, limit CEO salaries, limit access to assault weapons, and pump money into education? And can you even imagine how liberals would have reacted had George Bush gone to Oslo to accept a Nobel Peace Prize and used the occasion to defend war?
Many of my liberal friends who so desperately want to believe in Obama cast the blame on Congress. I see their point. If you’re a progressive thinker and you don’t live in Vermont, chances are good that you’re un- or underrepresented in the U.S. Senate. I never expected much from Republicrats like Harvey Reid (NV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Mark Pryor (AR), Ben Nelson (NB), or Arlen Specter (PA). And I have nothing but pity for my neighbors in Connecticut who must endure Chris “Love-those-Banks” Dodd and Joe “Allow-me-to-kiss-the-insurance-industry’s-Tush” Lieberman. The ones who really get me, though, are the poseurs like John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein and their say-anything-to-be-a-player morals. And don’t get me started on the deplorable Nancy Pelosi in the House.
This said, how do we explain the fact that Obama isn’t battling for what he says he wants? Ronald Reagan rammed his agenda through a Democratic Congress, and George Bush never had the “super majority” supposedly needed to pass important initiatives. Lyndon Johnson was willing to bust heads and butts to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Wake up people! The Democrats are frauds. Okay, so most of them aren’t Neanderthals like Jim DeMint (SC), James Inhofe (OK), John Cornyn (TX), or Mitch McConnell (KY). But let’s not kid ourselves.
Change isn’t happening because Democrats reside in the same corporate pockets as Republicans, something Ralph Nader has been trying to tell us for years.
Voting for Democrats is like continuing to go on dates with an attractive escort who repeatedly dumps you and sleeps with someone else. I’m done with the Dems. I’ve changed my voter registration to independent and I plan to vote for Greens and true progressives. If that means Republicans win elections, so be it. I’ll hardly notice the difference and my conscience will be clean.--LV
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1 comment:
I'm not quite as apocalyptic as you, but close. I'm definitely not giving my money to anybody except Change Congress. The corporate lobby is the problem, IMO, and the one that we need to address before we can fix anything else.
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