Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:36pm — lambert
Concluding an extra-long thumbsucker on the FT piece everyone's talking about -- about how Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod are destroying Obama's presidency, a process that Obama is completely unaware of -- Steve Clemons advises Obama:
[G]et back to putting good policy before short term politics.
"Get back?" Oh, really? When would that have been?
FISA? TARP? No HOLC? The too-small stimulus? The health care clusterfuck, including deking "progressives" on the so-called public option? The non-existent employment package? No financial reform? No rollback on executive powers?
When, exactly, did Obama ever put good policy before short term politics?
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Comments
this is probably true in some respects
valerie jarrett, david axelrod, and robert gibbs are pretty good at messaging, but none of them really knows enough about governing to be able to craft credible messaging to convince people that the govt is governing. axelrod particularly has been a campaign adviser for what, two or three decades?
rahm emanuel, useful as it is in some quarters to have a minion who mails dead fish to people as messaging, probably knows enough about governing, but the mailing-dead-fish talent can only take you so far with the public.
Oo oo... I know!!! It's a movie: "Groundhog Day, Part DooDoo."
In which the Democratic base gets mailed a dead fish every single goddamn day for four stinking years.
JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream
comment of the day!
lolol!
i may have to take back what i just said then. it could very well be that the whole point of the obama administration IS to blatantly [rather than covertly] mail us a dead fish every day for 4 years.
If he doesn't
get rid of them, he's dead meat in 2012.
he has said several times
that he's ok with being a one-term president, and i actually believe him when he says that. i don't think this is going to be a useful cudgel.
Maybe he knows his Corporate Overlords chose him as prez to
send a message to their usual minions, the Repubs, that they had to get their act together and show proper deference to the Corporate Overlords. As in the just couldn't be so obvious about trashing the illusions of democracy and a constitution....
It was obvious that any remotely well-known Dem would win against whomever the Repubs put up in 2008. And, initially, it looked like Hillary had a lock on the nomination.
She must have seemed too threatening to the Corporate Overlords, so they looked around for the best possible way to defeat her bid: Take the black vote away from her. And Obama had shown in both the IL legislature and the US Senate that he understood power must be deferred to.
That he knew how to talk a good game to libs and progressives while actually doing what the Corporate Overlords believed ought to be done. Even when radiation was contaminating well water of his IL constitutents, he bravely walked back his demand for regulation to a more well-mannered and deferential call for self-regulation by the nuke power plant owners.
Alas.
When the Dems lost the MA special election
I posted this on DU:
Naturally, someone responded thusly...
Rahm is such a convenient scapegoat...
It's almost as if Obama planned it that way.
Nah. He'd never do that. He only uses his 11-dimensional chess skills for good, not eeeeeevil.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
The bitter irony for me
During the primaries, the main argument my New York liberal creative class friends threw at me was: "How can you support Hillary? Her campaign is a disaster, she can't run it. But Obama is running a brilliant campaign."
I would point out to them that the skill set for running campaigns and the skills set for governing the nation were quite different. But they just got this glazed look and tuned out.
I hope you also pointed out
that she spent less money than he did and got more actual votes.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
more for less is such a disaster
Isn't it?
I did a fair amount of volunteering in NV and CA and it was a well run operation. Granted, the Hillary supporters weren't driving around removing Obama signs and intimidating Hillary supporters by defacing other people's property (true stories from where I was at the time). Not to mention their misleading information to voters in the NV caucuses. Looks like his sleazy campaign translated into sleazy governing.
Only tyrants rig elections.
obTube
Get back, Jojobama!
Heh
Had to log in just to say that was exactly what I was thinking.
Never mind policy, just get back to where you once belonged - Chicago politics.