Disillusioned Democrats Turn on Obama as Compromiser

I think the Democrats were hoping for a strong-armed President to push an agenda, but I don't think they were looking very clearly at Obama. He certainly could with the strength of the House and Senate, but from the start of his campaign he's talked about how important it is to listen to the other side and concede when they have a point. He's always been a compromiser, because he's a diplomatic person. I voted for him knowing that.

Now that said, this isn't a bad strategy. Pushing agendas hard would serve to galvanize Republicans against him and may chase him out in 2012. An even more imminent threat is 2010, when the face of Congress may change. The more of a hard-line stance he adopts on issues, the more likely a Republican Congress - or at least a Congress with a few more Republicans in it - would be unwilling to work with him on anything.

I disagree luckydog, Obama seems to be doing a great job of being pragmatic and progressive. Compromise is what successful politics (and marriage, in my experience) is all about. Sure the honeymoon is over and all those with sky high expectations are sure to be disappointed but I think he is enacting a bold and audacious series of policy initiatives which have the potential to transform this nation into a more open and fair society. It won't happen nearly as quickly as I would like but considering the alternative leaders and there agendas I still think Obama is the best person for the job, he ain't perfect but...... Be patient my friends, Yes We Can!

Hey, guys. Have a little patience. It's only been six months, for gosh sake. He'll get there.

seems like we will be hearing hey guys its only been a year, hey guys its only been 18 month,s hey guys its only been 2 and a half years it will come.

Mav

Disillusioned Democrats Turn on Obama as Compromiser

Rewriting the title to reflect the mood,

Impatient Democrats Turn on Obama for not accomplishing their self-projected ideals.

With all the rhetoric of we won you lost, perhaps people should look at who really voted for this President. Yes traditional dems voted for him that is to be expected. But with a huge amounts of independnts out there they are the ones who swung the election. Thats how elections are won. He has to compromise, its not even vs Republicans it also differerent views within the Democrats, some of whom were elected in traditionally red states.

And yet as a Saturday NYT piece makes clear — "Disillusioned Environmentalists Turn on Obama as Compromiser" — youth would appear to have misdirected their anger toward true environmental leaders like Obama, Waxman, and Markey.

Worse, part of the "youth" movement — specifically the website "It's Getting Hot in Here" and by extension the "Energy Action Coalition," which features that blog prominently on its website — has been partly co-opted by people who are in fact anti-environmental, people who have repeatedly smeared environmental champions with false accusations, people who have consistently proposed infinitely weaker climate action than Waxman-Markey.

Fortunately, we aren't in that helpless and hopeless place quite yet. The bulk of the environmental and progressive communities understand that, for all its flaws,

1. Waxman-Markey would complete the transition to a clean energy economy begun in the stimulus bill.
2. It's failure would not lead to stronger climate action anytime soon — quite the reverse, it would all but doom any prospect of national and, equally important, international action for the foreseeable future, precisely the time-frame in which strong action must begin if our youth are not going to be left with a ruined climate (see here).

Source

The bill was undoubtedly too weak, but politics is the art of the possible. Obama only has so much political capital, and he can't spend it all in one place. Unfortunately, the legacy of Republican rule has left us with so many problems that stuff is going to get spread thin. What do these people think, that McCain would have been the second coming of John Muir? Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Excuses, excuses, excuses, the sand time clock, is almost out of sand. And then the Republican fascists will come in with greater class despotism, tyranny, by pointing out that Obama and the democrats were too busy promoting class whoring, which served the class thugs, and fascists for further class dictatorship, not social reform. Social paralysis, caused by class corruption, class appeasement by liberals, allows the fasicsts to come in through the back door. The Weimar social democratic regime, before the Nazi regime, too, corrupted, appeased nationalism, imperialism, and Corporate financing of Nazi shock troops. It resulted in the displacement of false oppositions parties by real class thugs, who defended class tyranny, unlike the whoring social democratic party.

Lampell:

You are describing subordinated, isolated impoverished regimes, whether post colonial or bureaucratic despotism. Sharing poverty is a sure sign that these regimes are the products of class forces, global capitalist subordination, replicating the same hierarchies, deformed middle layers, that occurs within class regimes, that occurs in these post colonial regimes. The "extreme" deformation by Stalinists, post colonial regimes are shadow creations of Global class relations, not "Communism" but class forces deforming into multiple forms of deformed hierarchies.

Real social change, which can only mean international social change, means an end to both class and bureacuratic deformed regimes, created by globalized Capitalism, and an end to class history.