If you’ve been reading along here at Blogging Blue, you’ve no doubt come to understand that while I’m a proud progressive (and a member of the Democratic Party) I’ve been uh……less than enthusiastic in my support of President Barack Obama heading into the November general election. My dissatisfaction with President Obama stems from this promise he made while on the campaign trail in 2007:
I haven’t forgotten then-presidential candidate Obama’s promise to “put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and “walk on that picket line” with workers who were being denied their right to organize or collectively bargain, nor have I forgotten Obama’s statement that “workers deserve to know someone is standing in their corner.”
In fact, I couldn’t agree more with President Obama’s statements – statements that he would have been wise to remember when Wisconsin’s public employees found their rights to organize and collectively bargain almost completely stripped away, resulting in those public employees taking to the streets of our state’s capital to voice their outrage and disappointment. While Wisconsin’s public employees – and those who support public employees – didn’t strike, President Obama’s presence at one of the many rallies held at our State Capitol would surely have been welcome, because his presence would have made it clear that Wisconsin’s public employee had someone “standing in their corner,” to borrow President Obama’s own words.
While I still consider myself a Democrat and likely always will, I’ve grown disappointed and disillusioned by the Democratic president I helped elect in 2008. I elected a president who said he’d have my back, and instead I got a president who couldn’t be bothered to step foot in Wisconsin to stand with our state’s public employees and those who opposed Republican efforts to weaken our unions. In 2008, I was proud to raise money, donate my own money, and donate my time to help elect Barack Obama as our president, but things are different this year. President Obama may have my vote in November, but he won’t get a nickel of my money or a minute of my time, because I’m not standing behind a president who couldn’t be bothered to stand behind me when I needed him the most.
Vote for Barack Obama in 2012? Sure, but if you’re a union member don’t expect him to stand in your corner when Republicans come to take away your rights to organize and collectively bargain, because he won’t be there standing with you. read!
I’m going to tweet him to tell him good luck! but so sorry, can’t make it, have to . . . uh, wash my hair, yeh, that’s it. . . .
He has my vote and I believe Barack Obama to be a brilliant man with a liberal heart and mind. However, when he needed the Wisconsin working middle class, we came through for him. When we needed him, we were all but ignored. He was flooded with emails, tweets, Facebook requests for his presence. The response? Crickets.
Given the litany of reservations I have and a couple of unshakable sticking points, I don’t know that an appearance by Obama would have swayed me. If he had shown up during the protests and wielded the momentum for raising consciousness, driving dialogue, devising a way for union expansion, shifting focus from private sector to public sector… had he truly embraced it and used what happened here as a jumping point for a bolder agenda altogether, perhaps. Perhaps. But no appearance at all, so point moot.
You may have explained this elsewhere (if so, my apologies) but what reason did Obama give for not getting involved in this? Was it something to do with states’ rights or something?
I don’t recall him giving a reason.
Can’t remember who it was or which show, but recently on one of the Sunday political shows (probably This Week) one of the guests mentioned how great of a campaigner Obama was, how much he love campaigning…for himself. But didn’t have nearly the impact or much interest in campaigning for others.
To my knowledge, Obama never gave a reason. He merely admonished Walker in the vaguest of terms. The beltway media context, if I remember correctly, consisted of Conservative pundits denouncing any potential involvement by Obama on the grounds that he wasn’t minding “his own house” in DC, the protests were a state matter and none of his business. The “Liberal” pundits said much the same thing virtually bragging about the “grassroots” character of the events unfolding which had everything to do with unrest developing among the states and nothing to do with matters currently happening on Capitol Hill. In short Liberals issued him a pass, Conservatives gave him a sharp caveat and out of the beltway media ranged from salient understanding that Obama should make an appearance to the Fox-Rovian echo chamber bloviating the “none of his business” stance on the matter, what an authoritarian bully he is for slapping Walker on the wrist, yada yada yada….
And there went the moment.
If the DNC had even sent Biden, I might have been okay with it providing there was keen follow through. Quite frankly, if they had been smart about it they’d have sent Biden first and then Obama. At that time that’s what I thought might happen. But what do I know? I suppose my failed prediction just reveals the vast chasm that has split between the DNC and me. It’s proof positive that I just don’t get it when it comes to the DNC.
What I do find somewhat irksome and troubling is that the Occupy protests did nudge Obama and the DNC into taking baby steps and to shift their dialogue. And now we see the empty rhetoric that emerged from it. So, perhaps it is all for the best that our struggles weren’t subsumed and marginalized in the same way.
I’ve commented previously that I have no interest in bullying the Democratic Establishment as the Tea Party has with the Republican Party. If there’s that much Blue Dog Centrist, Faux-Bipartisan traction in DC, then the weight of it will either uphold the Democratic Establishment indefinitely or it will be the anvil that sends it plummeting. Can’t say which way I think it might go. I can say I won’t be going with the Democratic Establishment until it reinvents itself.
Very interesting post PJ – I’d only that there is one other wrinkle that puts it all together. Because federal workers don’t enjoy the same benefits that the Wisconsin state workers had, if he has stepped in stronger, Republicans would have hit him hard with that. Which might not have been a problem – drawing criticism from your opponents is to be expected. Except that in this case, it would only remind his own supporters of how little he’s done for them and he’d face criticism from his own side too.
He stayed away because he knew it was a losing idea. For once he actually showed a little bit of intelligence.
Again, Dante, the irony of the dumbest guy in the history of DUMBITUDE [continuing h/t to Migosh] commenting on the subject of the intelligence is profound, and certainly to be lost on you.
Dante, ladies and gentlemen, “The STUPID, it burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrns.”
I’ll be going a bit further with my political involvement this summer. I’ll be urging my favorite district candidates running for national offices to immediately disown the DNC, publicly denounce sorryO’s failures to care about average citizens and run on a promise to hold the democratic party (if they are still openly running as democrats)and Obama (assuming he has enough money and clueless supporters to be re-elected) accountable to income equality and small “d,” democratic principles. If this doesn’t happen, I predict NO US Congressional candidates will unseat Republican incumbents.
I hope that puts me out on a limb enough in expressing my feelings clearly. Good morning people.
I do believe it was a political decision on Obama’s part to stay uninvolved in the recall, possibly thinking that supporters of the eventual Dem candidate would come out in any case but that his involvement might instead energize Walker’s supporters. And he may have been right, I don’t know. It shows a cold calculation that doesn’t endear him to me.
The turning point for me with Obama was the day after the 2010 elections, when he had the press conference where he said that he understood people’s concerns about health care reform and was going to put it back on the table. Democrats lost their races because they had the guts to vote for reform and he says something like that the day after they paid the price for their support of his reform. That was my ‘never again’ moment.
And I believe he did give a reason for his lack of involvement in WI, early in the process when people began to question why he was silent and absent. Something along the lines of “you know I’m kind of busy fighting these big national battles in Washington” (I paraphrase).
If Mitt can run even with Obama in the polls in Michigan where Mitt basically said ‘screw you’ to the auto industry, I can’t imagine what’s going to happen here with a very discouraged Democratic electorate that understands that the message he sent may have been unintentional but it was public and pretty clear.
Even offering Obama your vote endorses the Democratic Party’s disdain for their progressive, grassroots base. The only leverage we have to change the tenor of this party is to withhold our votes because “working from the inside” has continued the same consistent rightward creep of Democratic politicians who stand for absolutely nothing. As long as they know we refuse to stand back and let them lose they have no reason to engage our ideas. There will never be a perfect time in terms of electoral stakes ad possible consequences, but Obama is the perfect candidate who has failed on so many levels for us to tune our backs upon in November.
And herein lies the problem. If I remember correctly, a number of progressives decided to sit out the vote in 2010 to teach the President a lesson and look what that got us…a corrupt, uneducated, puppet for a Governor. I may not agree with everything that the President has done but he will have my vote for a second term. He was here in 2010 and Barrett lost that election too. So, let’s put the blame where it really lies…with the 36% of Union households who voted for Walker…talk about not voting in your best interest. And, while we’re at it, let’s blame the Obama supporters who voted for Walker because they didn’t believe in the recall. How crazy is that?! I’m glad the President didn’t come because that would’ve just riled up Walker’s base even more. Besides, if he had come and the results of the recall were the same with Barrett losing, that would’ve been his fault too…he can’t win.
This country is ready for the emergence of a new party or two. The frustration of the Bush-era still lingers, and now the sting of the Walker/Obama combo has hit us all hard in Wisconsin. Senators with their childish “take my ball and go home” attitude left the Republicans the golden opportunity to walk all over us, and Obama’s nuclear-option health care bill is an abomination of procedure. But, at the same time, pinning it all on Walker and Obama gives them way too much credit; they’re just the leaders of their respective gangs. I voted indepenent in 2008, I voted against Walker this time, and I’ll be voting independent again in November.
It isn’t about the people anymore. Its about whatever the majority leader wants to do, but I blame their followers as well. They’re all scum.