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

Will Americans Act To Prevent Economic and Environmental Collapse?

I am touring to promote my new book. “The Anti-American Manifesto” lays out America’s biggest problems and what we can do to fix them.

Before I started out, I knew that Americans were angry. With a real unemployment rate of 20-plus percent and a government that gave $1.4 trillion to banks instead of people in need, how could they not be?

Americans have lost faith in “their” government’s willingness or ability to address their needs and concerns. But Americans’ pessimism is deeper and broader than I thought. And their rage is burning white hot.

At the beginning of each event I ask attendees to answer two questions:

Question One: What is the worst problem that you face? Something the government could solve or at least mitigate? The top response is healthcare; either or they or someone they know can’t afford to see a doctor. Other answers include making college affordable and improving mass transit. Some are arcane: at the top of one man’s wish list is the metric system.

Question Two: What is the biggest problem the world faces today? Whether or not it personally affects you, what should be job one for government? Most people say global warming or ecocide in general. Many complain about poverty and income inequality.

“Now think about your two top issues,” I ask them. “Do you think there’s any chance—not a high chance, not even a 50 percent chance, but any significant chance whatsoever—that this system, our American capitalist system and the two-party political structure that supports it, will impact either one of those two issues?”

I reset for clarity. “Do you think you will see any improvement, on even one of those two problems, in your lifetime?” I ask for a show of hands. “Raise your hand if you have any faith, any optimism at all.”

Depending on the city, between 10 and 30 percent of my audiences raise their hands.

Bear in mind, these are Ted Rall readers. Few if any voted for John McCain. So when the man they did vote for urges Americans of all political stripes “to stick with me, you can’t lose heart,” as he did in Madison recently, he’s wasting his time.

According to the latest Gallup poll 54 percent of Americans expect the economy to be the same or worse by this time next year.

If you’re one of those 54 percent of Americans (or 70 to 90 percent of Ted Rall fans) who see the government as unwilling and/or unable to alleviate their suffering, what should you do?

In my “Anti-American Manifesto” I argue that the time has come to stop putting up with a regime so incompetent that it can’t protect us from 19 clowns with boxcutters, who are allowed to fly around the nation’s airspace for two and a half hours because our military prioritizes killing Muslims over defending the United States. I say that it’s insane for the citizens of the richest nation in history to watch their living standards shrink while lawless corporations and a tiny cabal of ultrarich pigs feed off the public trough. Why should we accept a $1.4 trillion handout to wealthy bankers, while the unemployed are told to pack up their children and get out of their homes?

If you don’t think the government will do anything for you, why not get rid of it?

There is one logical answer: because it could be reformed. Well? Could it?

Barack Obama is living proof that it cannot, that the system is broken beyond repair. Because, like him or not, this system is never going to give us a better president. We will not end up with a smarter, more well-intentioned person in charge. He’s the best they’ve got.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen since he took office almost two years ago, he’s not good enough. As I wrote in my book, there’s only one difference between Bush’s policies and Obama’s: opposition. Under Bush, there was a semblance of a Left.

So now Americans are faced with a choice. They can accept that nothing will ever get better, watch the rich get richer while they get poorer, sit on their butts as the planet heats up and the coral reefs die off.

Or they can act.

(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” now in stores. His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL