An Overview of the Enthusiasm Gap
Liberal Democrats are twice as likely as conservative Republicans to stay home this November. Establishmentarian liberals are urging left-of-center voters to ignore the President’s failure to deliver—and his refusal to try—on the issues they care about.
“The biggest mistake we [Democrats] could make right now,” urged Obama last week, “is to let impatience or frustration lead to apathy and indifference—because that guarantees the other side wins.”
“Impatience”? That implies there’s something to be impatient about. That Obama is moving too slowly. But that’s not the case. Liberals don’t see a slow process. They see no process.
And what, exactly, is this “other side”? On issue after issue, Obama has cut-and-pasted Bush’s Republican policies. Which isn’t surprising, given that he didn’t appoint a single liberal to his Cabinet.
The real problem for the Dems is a perception gap.
The Democratic Party leadership thinks it deserves credit. They think they’ve accomplished a lot. “We’ve done the heavy lifting,” bragged Nancy Pelosi, citing passage of the bailout, healthcare and financial regulation bills.
But liberal voters were against the bailout. They see the healthcare and financial reform bills as useless sellouts to corporations.
Loyal Democrats ask: Why are we still in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why is Guantánamo open? How come the President hasn’t come up with a robust program to replace the millions of jobs lost during the last two years?
What’s the difference between you and the Republicans?
A December 2009 piece by Frank Schaeffer titled “Obama Will Triumph—So Will America” perfectly summarizes the perception gap.
Obama, wrote Schaeffer, “thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan.”
“But that wasn’t good enough for his critics,” he laments.
The best option in Afghanistan (as in Iraq) was and remains immediate withdrawal. But as we’ve learned from Bob Woodward’s latest inside-the-White-House tome “Obama’s Wars,” getting the hell out was never considered. So no, it’s not good enough. Not by half.
Schaeffer notes that Obama “gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights” and “banned torture of American prisoners.” Which is true. Sort of.
But there was no substance behind Obama’s rhetoric. He could have signed an executive order abolishing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The torture “ban” exempts the CIA—the main agency responsible for waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Even in the four military branches, Matthew Alexander told The New York Times earlier this year, nothing much has changed: “If I were to return to one of the war zones today—as an Air Force officer, I was sent to Iraq to head an interrogation team in 2006—I would still be allowed to abuse prisoners.”
Schaeffer also claimed that Obama “stopped the free fall of the American economy.”
Say what? Been to a mall lately? If you’re wondering where everyone went, you can find them at the unemployment office.
The thing is, Schaeffer and his fellow Obama apologists believe this stuff. What they don’t get is that no one else does.
“We cannot sit this one [election] out,” Obama said recently. “We can’t let this country fall backward because the rest of us didn’t care enough to fight.”
Dude, you’re the one who didn’t fight.
You didn’t fight with a 59-41 Democratic Senate or a 255-178 Democratic House.
You didn’t promise much—and you didn’t even deliver on what you promised.
Remember your promise to stop the NSA’s illegal domestic surveillance program? Your promise to end “don’t ask, don’t tell”? To let the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule?
On that last point: yet another Democratic sellout. Rather than risk a tight vote before the election, they rescheduled the vote for after the election—after a GOP sweep. Which means the rich will keep their windfall.
Fight?
Mr. President, you don’t know the meaning of the word.
(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” now in stores. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
8 Comments.
Obama has out-Clintoned Clinton. I didn’t think that was possible.
There is a free software product I use. A European developer came out with a version that was for sale, and advertised, ‘Buy our product because we’re not American, and the US tortures people.’ The American who replied said, ‘The US has never tortured anyone.’
And the American who replied was absolutely right. In the George Orwell sense. Not so much 1984, but Politics and the English Language. The US executive branch (under Bush, Jr.) declared that nothing the US does can legally be called torture. Not the rack, not thumbscrews, not electrodes to the genitals. The new, legally allowable term is ‘enhanced interrogation.’ Congress and the courts upheld that new and improved definition.
So, ever since Bush, Jr. left office, Obama has been idealistic and has NEVER employed torture. But neither did the Bush, Jr. administration. And if there’s ever an American Inquisition modelled after the Spanish one and using identical methods, they won’t be using torture either.
That’s the law.
The Democrats promise to be about the same as the Republicans WERE. Only adding Pakistan and the Yemen to places we bomb and kill women, children, and tourists. The great achievements of healthcare that mean anyone who can’t afford insurance goes to jail (where they won’t be counted as unemployed and uninsured), that the financial industry is protected from lawsuits, and that the US has finally achieved a complete and unambiguous victory in Iraq (for the second time, since Bush, Jr. already had one), after which there will still be Americans in Iraq killing the evil women who breed terrorists and the children who grow up to be terrorists, brave and selfless American soldiers who sometimes get killed by husbands and fathers who plant the incredibly evil and banned-under-international law IEDs.
The Republicans promise to outdo the Democrats and their former RINO selves, to make things far worse than they are under Obama.
So choose wisely in the nest election.
yes, the democrats suck. but the republicans suck more. do you think we even would have invaded iraq if boring al gore was president? we probably wouldn’t have even invaded afghanistan! not that al gore would have actually gotten anything accomplished with the republicans (and conservative democrats) blocking any real progress but at least there are some dems who are trying. and for now, that’s all we got. unless you’re ready to lead a revolution tomorrow (and you have some mysterious army of committed left wing americans lined up behind you) i say we take the lesser of two evils for the moment. of course, if your plan is to let the psycho conservatives take over and really make it miserable for the rest of us so that maybe some americans finally wake up and take action there’s nothing i can really say. i don’t blame you. i can see your rationale. but i fear once we go there there’s no turning back. i don’t want to live in an america plagued by armed conflict between the left and the right. the rich and the poor. black and white. at least not any more than it is already. maybe i’m naive. i still hope there’s a chance we can wake people up before it’s too late. ultimately, i think we on the left somehow need to reach out to our brothers and sisters on the right, those that are as angry as we are with the corruption in our government (the tea partiers even!) and join forces to take back our government from the corporations. we might not agree on anything else but we can work that stuff out after we have a government that answers to the people and not giant corporations. and yes, i know the tea party is funded by those same corporations but the people themselves are mostly just ignorant. they just need to be educated. and they certainly aren’t gonna learn anything from fox news. in the meantime, go here: http://fightwashingtoncorruption.com/
Michael, what software product might that be?
As for the elections, I wish I had the luxury to do this past weekend what the great, late comedian advises. You, gringos who have that freedom, should exercise it. More often.
Yeah I’m in the apathy camp. I’m staying home because it really doesn’t matter. And it’s not even a case of not trying (though it’d be nice if they did), they certainly won’t try. It’s deeper than that. We’re screwed. I pray that at some point humans recognize that there are consequences to actions that often times cannot be undone. We can’t fix it, it’s broken, we’re screwed. We can’t move forward until we accept this reality and make decisions based on this reality.
Buceph, thanks for the link. I needed that.
Aggie, I’ll add that anything we can do to help the downfall become more apparent is worth doing. It’s at least a catharsis.