Here’s a good article about Obama.

Diary by David Bromwich.

It would emerge later in his comment on Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan: ‘I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen.’ One can’t imagine Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy saying such a thing, or wanting to say it. They had known ‘those guys’ all their lives and felt no tingle of reflected glory. Obama has not yet recognised that his conspicuous relish of his place among the elite does him two kinds of harm: it spurs resentment in people lower down the ladder; and it diminishes his stature among the grandees by showing that he needs them.

There was a vote for financial reform today, which predictably was filibustered. Predictably, every Republican voted against cloture. Predictably, Ben Nelson did a Ben-Nelson-type thing. Predictably, Obama talked about being disappointed. The entire thing was so predictable that I wouldn’t be surprised if news organizations simply published a speculative draft they’d written last week.

Besides how predictable it was,  I think it’s important to acknowledge how funny it is that they are only voting on financial reform in mid-2010. The economy crashed in late 2008. It’s been over a year. It’s only now that Congress is trying to pass some type of reform. Nothing terribly radical. And even that fails.

After the financial system was crippled, it only took the American government one and a half years to fail at even getting to a vote.

Everything about this is great.

I’ll avoid blaming the Obama administration (even though I like blaming them for every ill in the world up to and including the weather), though it really does highlight why some have soured on his administration. Any legislation they propose starts disappointingly (so you get one disappointment), then doesn’t even pass (you get your second disappointment there), and then finally passes in an even more disappointing form (third disappointment). By the time the bill passes, you aren’t sure if you’ve just witnessed a political victory, or if you’ve stared at some sort of Lovecraftian horror right in the eye and realized life itself is pointless.

So healthcare reform is finally a reality.

Say what you will about Obama, but now it would be hard to argue he hasn’t done anything.

The substance of what he’s done? That’s a bit more complicated. It always is, isn’t it?

So, healthcare reform vote on Sunday, apparently.

At various points during this process, individual Democrats, as well as groups of ‘progressives’, suggested that they would not vote for the bill unless it had various provisions that would actually make this bill a decent step towards fixing the problems inherent in America’s healthcare.

The overwhelming majority of these people have completely changed their tune, even though the bill hasn’t improved. Serious healthcare reform hasn’t really been tried this time, but now, desperate for scraps, people are clinging to anything they can get (even if it’s arguably worse than the status quo) and berating everyone who disagrees.

Bernie Sanders caved, because he got some funding for clinics. Russ Feingold… I don’t even know what he got. Probably nothing. Dennis Kucinich held out for the longest, and now he’s given up. Not because the bill is better, or because it’s even worth passing. His reason is simply that failure to pass the bill would damage Obama’s presidency.

You would think that what’s damaged Obama’s presidency is trying to pass this thing. But no. Apparently what’s damaging to Obama is people opposing it. I’m not really sure why anyone wouldn’t want Obama’s presidency to be damaged at this point, anyway. All he’s done with it is to legitimize torture and murder, give more money and impunity to rich bankers, and further establish the Democratic Party as a corporate whorehouse.

Whenever a liberal talks about conservatives “voting against their own interests”, remember this bill. I have the feeling this is going to be the new ‘voting for the war in Iraq’. Everyone is assured that it is the responsible thing to do, the only serious option. In a few years, everyone will be trying to come up with excuses for why they voted for this bill. “I was for it before I was against it”, etc.

The entire episode is important to show that when they are actually needed, those ‘heroes’ in Congress and the Senate who supposedly hold real values are useless.

I figured the year 2010 would be hard for Obama and the Democrats, but I certainly didn’t expect it to become so bad, so quickly. You wouldn’t necessarily expect one Senate seat to cause so much drama, but I think it’s mostly because of people’s pent-up anger and refusal to justify terrible governing anymore, rather than the loss of the seat itself. It certainly seems to have damaged the White House. The clearest sign that this moment might be the before-after split of this presidency is who gets the blame. Previously, left-leaning activists, progressives, and dedicated liberals were being targetted as the main obstacle for the Democratic Party. Their standards were too high, insiders said. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Obama said. Fucking stupid, Rahm said. In the last few controversial issues, you could easily find a large contingent of the establishment blaming ‘the left’ for being unreasonable. This time, though, there is little of it. No one’s blaming Coakley’s defeat on how unreasonable her supporters are. It’s easier to blame when there is no consequence (losing votes), but when you’ve actually turned what seemed like an emerging Democratic majority into a huge mess, you’d be better off handling it very, very carefully instead of insulting the only people that can save you.

Scott Brown won because people in his state wanted him to represent them. Martha Coakley had every advantage possible, and still lost the elections. There are no exit polls to paint a clear picture on what exactly happened. There are some polls done by Research 2000, which focused on people who voted for Obama and then voted for Brown, or voted for Obama but decided to stay home this time. Obama voters who supported Brown or stayed home say that Obama has not been strong enough, his policies have not gone far enough, he has not been tough on Wall Street, and his healthcare proposals are insufficient (this is a state that already has mandates, keep in mind). People who voted for Obama and Brown, regardless of party affiliation, believe that neither Brown nor Coakley actually had their economic interests at heart. Even among Republican voters who supported Obama, those who claimed Brown represented them better were 42%, whereas 52% thought neither candidate represented them well. In general, the results show that those who voted for Obama and now voted for Brown (or did not vote for Coakley or Brown) aren’t satisfied with Obama’s performance, not necessarily his ideology, and the Democratic-leaning ones seem to be voting out of a punishment spirit rather than because of fear of liberalism.

Howard Dean was interviewed by Chris Matthews, and he tried to explain that he thought the results were partly a punishment to Democrats, intended as a wake-up call. Matthews seemed to find this idea incomprehensible, but it really isn’t. I would say that other than those who think of themselves as strategists, most people aren’t opposed to voting for any of the two parties, regardless of national majorities or party principles. It’s something that might elude people who see everything as part of a simple, straight line of ‘political ideology’.  It can seem strange to vote for a person that is less close to your ideal candidate than the opponent, but that’s only if you are only focusing on the maximum amount of good on that one particular election, not on any sort of long game.

Scott Brown was Massachussets’ choice as a representative for the state. Call me naive, but I would hope that, since this is supposed to be a representative democracy, he will actually represent his state. I don’t really think this is as simple an issue as “being in power = I do whatever I want, no matter how vastly different it is from what my state generally accepts”, regardless of what he said on the campaign trail. If he isn’t accepted by his state, they can always vote him out. Brown has to face re-election in 2012 since he is only finishing Kennedy’s term; unless he plans to run for President in 2012 (or has no concern for keeping the seat), I would imagine he’s not going to go full-blown right-wing. I don’t think it’d be a great idea. But what do I know? I just have this crazy notion that representatives should represent, but that might just be me.

Maybe Obama would do better if he was actually governing for someone. There’s that old saying that goes “if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”. Something like that. Obama is kinda like that, I guess. Except it’s more like, if you try to please no one, you end up succeeding (and pleasing no one)”. He doesn’t really give the impression that he’s governing for anyone. He’s not really acting the way his supporters want him to act. I remember he used to quote an old line of FDR which went something like “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it”. I don’t really disagree with the spirit of the line, but there’s a difference between making someone do it and having to beg someone to even consider it. A common theme in liberal writings these days is humiliation. They feel like they have to exert an insane amount of effort to receive the minimum attention from the person they supported, and they often don’t even get that minimum (single-payer advocates were kept away from health care discussion panels, for instance). No one is going to suffer through indignities willingly and forever, eventually they’ll stop voting or caring, and grow resentful of their tormentors.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that people who voted for Obama wouldn’t support any of his policies if they weren’t coming from him. If he had ran on most of the things he’s done, he wouldn’t have been received enthusiastically. It’s not really uncommon to find examples Democrats disparaging Republican healthcare proposals during the 2008 campaign and now accepting them (or similar ideas) because they are part of the terrible Democratic health care plan. People can only do this for so long. For Bush, it was about six years, before his popularity collapsed completely and he became a sitting duck. For Obama, it looks as if it’s less.

I believe in democracy, I guess. I mean, I’m not crazy about it. It’s not the greatest thing in the world or anything. It’s alright. Democracy is often going to yield results I don’t like, and that’s alright. That’s just the way it is. I do think an effort should be made to govern for everyone, not just for your own coalition (ideally, the benefits of your form of government will reach everyone so you’ll convince them). I don’t necessarily think that just because conservative-leaning individuals didn’t get their guy elected for President, that means they should be safely ignored and treated like garbage (though I enjoy doing that). It’s certainly a good thing that an elected official tries to actually pay attention to what the entire country thinks. That being said, it’s better to represent someone (the people who elected you and supported your platform) than to represent no one. If you are being criticized by ‘the left’, and you are being criticized by ‘the right’, and you are also being criticized by ‘the center’, then what exactly are you accomplishing? Nothing at all. You are doing a crap job.

I don’t like saying that people are stupid. It’s a convenient excuse for political outcomes. It’s also only partly true. People are stupid about some things. They’re very perceptive about some other things, though. I think that, today, a lot of us realize that arguments against Obama that we thought were silly during the campaign season were actually pretty accurate and truthful. Similarly, arguments to defend Obama that we thought were reasonable ended up being complete nonsense. This all happened even though we thought those people were so crazy, and our guys were so sane, and how could anyone possibly vote for anyone other than Obama? This tired defense of Obama’s administration that goes something like “he’s doing what he can! he’s being pragmatic! this is what I expected him to do” is ridiculous, and people aren’t stupid enough to fall for it. People can tell that there’s a difference between ‘trying to do something, and not succeeding entirely’ and ‘doing the exact opposite of what you said you’d do’. Obama’s ‘pragmatism’ is mostly doing the opposite of what he campaigned on. That’s not really a compromise, or pragmatism, or ‘centrism’, that’s just shameful lying. People aren’t stupid, they know there is a difference between Obama, say, not being able to remove lobbyist influence entirely, and Obama actually making backroom deals with pharmaceutical lobbies. he can’t sell his idea that he is trying hard but it takes time, fellas, when it’s clear that he’s not trying at all.

I’m pretty interested in seeing what happens during the 2010 elections. I can’t see them being positive for Democrats at all unless they seriously accomplish something this year, something tangible and undeniably good that no one other than hyperpartisans will oppose. I can’t see that happening unless Obama actually leads the party to achieve outcomes that are favorable for voters in reality. Not outcomes that they’ll try and sell as positive, but outcomes that will feel as positives to voters. There’s no real evidence that Obama can do this, or for that matter evidence that he would actually believe in the inherent good of these outcomes. I’m not really expecting him to try and do anything because of some awakening, some revelation that he must be a good President. I just hope he realizes he needs to try and save himself.

I’ve read liberal and center-left leaning websites, columnists, and forums ever since the Presidential campaign of 2008, not only for information but also to see the way people think, the way they understand political issues, and their thoughts on various issues. After the first year of Obama’s presidency, it seems clear to me that there are large schisms within the groups of voters that supported Obama, mostly because of their interpretations of his behavior and deeds. Some people are opposed to Obama’s actions as President since they are the complete opposite of what they expected and often indefensible from any moral standpoint. But some people aren’t opposed, or even upset. They are along for the ride, and annoyed at the fact that people are opposing Obama, who they consider a ‘good man’. I hardly ever agree with anything conservatives say, but they were not far off the mark about Obama being a figure that people were too caught up with, and this refusal to get upset at him or break with his policies in any way is going to hang from his supporters come election time.

Barack Obama once said that he was a sort of “blank slate” that voters projected their own views onto. Lately, the phenomenon appears to have gone beyond mere projection and turned into something else, that seems to resemble “replacement” more. As if they are trying to be Obama, as if people need to put aside their own thoughts and feelings and reactions and try to just think of what’s going on in Obama’s brain instead, a sort of overreaching empathy that falls more into role-playing. And you know, empathy is not necessarily a bad thing, but generally when we try to understand someone’s predicament, we don’t just ignore our own. The entire tone of the issue has turned personal to a scary degree. Obama is not really there to be your friend. There is no need to understand him as a ‘good person’; in fact, it’s likely an obstacle, much like it’s an obstacle for the perennial neighbor who can’t understand just how that nice fellow a few houses down the street turned out to be a serial killer. I don’t really know what I’d do in Obama’s shoes, but that doesn’t really matter, since I am not him. Considering the magnitude of the decisions Obama and the Democratic Party have to take, the results of their actions should be considered much more important than the politics behind them. Should be.

And yet, the typical talking points of the debate largely involve the politics and the sentiments, and they are successful. I feel like what happens is, by using these arguments from the politicians’ minds, supporters start feeling like they are a part of that process, like they too are taking those decisions for the politicians’ sake, and can thus rationalize them.

The effect of this weird tendency to believe oneself to be a ‘part’ of the process is that politicians are almost free of serious repercussions. For that I have to applaud them: they’ve almost managed to get rid of the consequences of their purely political decisions by openly acknowledging them as purely political decisions. In theory, the danger of a decision taken for purely political reasons is that the people who you represent and who voted for you are going to be (rightfully) upset at you. That’s not really happening here, because people accept the decisions as political, a fact of life to deal with. There’s little need for Obama to weight the pros and cons of breaking with his base, since large parts of the base seem to have decided to just excuse him and stand by their man like a good wife.

There is no danger or fear of reprisal partly because of that acceptance of ‘political reality’ (which in itself is a strange thing to accept, as it’s merely taking the conscious decisions of free-willed individuals who can and should answer for them and treating them as something that just happens, or is simply there), and partly because liberals simply want to win. Everyone does. If you ask leaders of political movements, they’ll tell you that such movements can’t be sustained unless they have some victories, however small. That desire to win often overrides all logic or reason, and it’s understandable, but detrimental and hard to shake off. When most Americans talk about the possibility of voting for a third party, they’ll inevitable hear the words “that’s just wasting your vote”, which is a reflection of that ‘winning mentality’: your vote preferrably should be used to win, where the definition of winning is “my vote corresponds to the winner”. At the end of the day, many Democratic Party supporters can be swayed by the thought of their party getting a victory rather than the principle of the matter, of the content of the “victory” in question.

The question is, how low can this go? This is only Obama’s first year as President, and already the refusal to see him for what he is looks misguided and sad. Earlier today he stated that he never ‘campaigned for a public option’, a deceptive statement (if not a bald-faced lie), and way too many people were willing to actually try and defend this. Before, people had defended his “Bush on Drugs” approach to terrorism in a way that makes one wonder just how honest and real those people’s opposition to Bush’s own policies was. Obama’s political machine is quite powerful (as an aside, it’s actually really interesting to see how quickly administration talking points are used by supporters on forums and websites, with such frequency and so little difference that you have to wonder if the supporters are paid plants), but it’s been showing its limitations, and the politically active ‘progressives’ have in many cases grown bolder in their opposition and even derision towards Obama’s policies. We could argue that these are outliers, and the average liberal or liberal-leaning Obama voter still supports him. It’s a fair argument. But even though in an ideal world, every voter would try to reach conclusions on his or her own and be wary of immediately trusting any argument, the truth of the matter is that just as Obama and the Democrats’ PR can sway many voters, there’ll be a large amount who’ll be swayed by the outliers, especially in these sensible times when people can’t afford being patient or understanding.

I’m not sure voters are going to be as loyal to Obama as some were to Bush. At least not the ones paying attention. When I saw Obama’s big healthcare speech, it seemed very clear to me that he was pushing and antagonizing his own activist base; he painted those who wanted real, serious reforms as being part of the problem, because they were demanding too much. I don’t recall much discussion about this on post-speech analysis, but over the past few months the Obama administration has been more overt and open about their willingness to play hardball with their base and the more liberal members of the Senate, while coddling and appeasing conservative Democrats who are hardly liked by anyone (though can be a convenient scapegoat). That, combined with the establishment’s derision of liberals who refused to accept the healthcare reform bills as anything other than a massive fraud, makes for a delicate situation. At this point it’s very clear to many dedicated Obama voters that he is more than willing to go against them openly and decisively, and is more concerned about other power bases. I’m not really sure that level of hostility is going to result in a political win.

The 2010 elections will be quite important. Obama’s failing at holding his side together, but his opposition is not in particularly good shape either. It’ll be interesting to see whether voters once again fall back on the ‘lesser evil’, ‘hold my nose’ approach, or if the disappointment at the failed promises of change will be the last straw. What I hope is that people don’t simply leave the political process in despair. The upside to Obama’s election is that he managed to mobilize large groups of young voters who became more concerned with politics and learned to be more vigilant; perhaps this first year is an additional lesson in who to watch out for. I know it’s been that for me.

The year 2009 is the ‘end of the decade’, but if something defines it, it’s the fact that it’s not an ending, or a new beginning. It’s the year that shows people of my age and generation that the 00s were not some aberration. Everything that happened during the 00s, politically, was standard. It just happened more out in the open this time.

The fact is Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress have turned out to be willing  to not only ignore the wants and needs of the people that voted for them, but to openly antagonize them and paint them as enemies unless they conform to whatever legislation Obama and Congress want to pass. It’s a blow to people who came of age in the Bush era and wanted to believe that, for once, they weren’t being lied to. These are the people that grew up in a culture of cynicism and irony, who wanted to lower their shields just for once, who wanted to cast a vote that wasn’t part of a ‘least possible harm’ calculation. They’ve been abused by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress that they put into power.

It’s been encouraging, though, to see that these people, who voted for Obama expecting a competent and honest leader, can see that he is anything but. There were a lot of spirited defenses for Obama during the early parts of the year, but they’ve slowly become less common as liberals and young voters realize they would just be fooling themselves. They’re justifiably outraged, but not always hopeless, or cynical, or defeated. There’s a very real possibility that the movement that grew out of support for Obama can exist without him, and maybe even against him. All good things.

American politics do seem very hopeless, but I think that more and more, people are getting the right idea, which is to simply be honest and true to values. Instead of apologizing for politicians’ calculations, or defending them because ‘they’re better than the alternative’, why not simply say ‘I don’t agree with this’, or ‘I can’t support this’ ? There is such a thing as too much of the big picture, especially when the big picture generally consists of little more than your uninformed speculation about future events.

I liked Obama during the election season and hoped he’d win. Too bad he has turned out to be less than adequate. Better to be honest about it than to enable these low standards.

People like to laugh at ‘dumb Americans and their politics’, but the truth is a vast number of Americans have caught onto these lies quickly enough, at least when compared to my home country. The political situation in Colombia, especially with regards to Venezuela, is actually really interesting in the sense that it’s about as close to a test tube experiment for cognitive dissonance as you could ever hope to be able to run in the real world. We have Alvaro Uribe, a right-leaning President who is keeping himself in power through re-election schemes, and then our neighbor country has Hugo Chavez, a left-leaning President who is keeping himself in power through re-election schemes. If you ever wanted to look at double standards, this is your chance. Colombians somehow manage to simultaneously believe that Alvaro Uribe should be re-elected, for a second time, because well, he’s just that good, and it’s his project that needs to be finished, and we need continunity, and look at all the improvements, and it’s the will of the people, and more reasons. That other guy, though? Chavez? He is making a mockery of governing, he is conning his people, he is a dangerous dictator, he is perpetually in power and damaging democracy, if people want that they should vote for a successor, etc. A similar phenomenon happens in Venezuela.

I’m not really a supporter of either, which I suppose is why I find the situation so amusing and their behavior so evidently similar. Even though the city I live in is not as pro-Uribe as many other parts of the country, it’s still strange to see so much support for a second re-election, when his presidency’s had a truly incredible number of scandals and controversies. The country’s corruption problems show no signs of improvement, and yet if Uribe can manage to be legally re-electable (through dubious means), he’ll handily win, in all likelyhood. I suppose this is what happens when there is such a large political vacuum: the first clever person to notice can fill in for as long as he or she wants.

So what is better? Voting for a guy you like that turns out to be terrible, or not really having anyone to vote for and seeing a really terrible guy remain in power? I won’t know until next year, but right now I wish I’d voted for a worthless liberal that actually won. At least that way you feel like you own the problem.