Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

According to Forbes Magazine Health Insurance spent
over 100 million to defeat this reform they supposedly love. They're not spending as much against it now because the PPACA does not allow it.

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And according to Forbes, a flat tax is the fairest of all tax schemes.

What the insurance industry spent $109 million on was to prevent a public option.  

And FWIW, the industry spent much more than that to get the legislation they wanted - In 2008, Obama received almost 3 times the amount of contributions from the insurance industry as McCain.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

FDR was a Wall-street lawyer. Lincoln and Clarence Darrow were both "big money" lawyers for the Railroads (the most evil and powerful industry of that day). Legislation is bad or good based on the legislation, not who was involved in writing it (and to claim that ONE person created the whole thing is just hyperbole).

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I agree with you about evaluating legislation (on its own merits).

With ACA, it's lousy legislation in so far as providing affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, written by the insurance industry's Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen.  

Also FWIW, FDR was a corporate lawyer for about a minute and a half (less than 2 years) - Then he went into public service.  As lawyers, FDR, Lincoln and Darrow were "for hire".   In public service, the hat one wears is different than the hat one wears as a corporate lawyer and some do it better than others.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

First off, i'm sick and tired of this guilt by association nonsense that you FDL types love to engage in.

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No sicker or tireder than I am with the bullshit talking points political operatives spread on websites all around the internet like Monsanto fertilizer.

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

When "lesser of two evils" no longer works, we get the "better the deviI you know than the deviI you don't" rationale.

We've been doing it your way, putting the deviI we know, the lesser of two evils, into office for 20 years now, and the government and the Democratic­ Party keeps moving farther to the right.  Your way is getting us abuses like this, by those we know - Warrantless Electronic Surveillance Surges Under Obama Justice Department  

That's because your way is to lie to the American people and put Republican­s-in-Democ­rats'-clot­hing into office. At the rate this is going, Republican­s won't have to bother getting Roe overturned (why bother outlawing abortion when you've made it virtually impossible to obtain one?).  

Regulating banks and Wall Street won't be necessary because the top 1 percent will have ALL of the money.    The disabled and elderly will be dead, so privatizin­g Social Security won't be much of an issue.  Schools will be all privatized under Democrats -- PBS has had its funding slashed under Democrats so children will have no commercial­-free children's programmin­g and will be rank-and-f­ile locksteppe­rs.  

And the wars, expanded under Obama and Democrats (beyond what BushCheney did) will still be going on when your children have children.

If you are a liberal, if you and I are on the same side and want real Democratic policies, and going about getting them your way (protectin­g Obama, reelecting DLC Democrats) is getting Republican policies, NOT Democratic policies, when do you realize that maybe you don't know what you're talking about? 

When do you realize that you've become that classic definition for 'insan!ty' ("Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results")?

Do you ever realize it?
 
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Your vote for Obama is a vote for cutting Social Security.  And for NDAA. 

How does any Democratic voter defend Obama after he asserts he has the right to kill any American citizen without due process or oversight?  And Obama's claims of 'state secrets' to deny courts even look at his assassinatio­n program?  And 'indefinit­e preventive detention'­?

An argument can be made, quite convincing­ly, that Obama and DLC Democrats are the worse evil.  Bush and Cheney made no excuses or bones about who they were and what they stood for.  Obama and DLC Democrats ran on doing different, because they knew better.

Two articles that speak that I think are must reads for Democratic voters are John Cusack's Interview of Law Professor Jonathan Turley About the Obama Administration's War on the Constitution and journalist Russell Mokhiber's Ten Reasons I'm Not With Barack Obama.

The Fate of Humanity Is at Stake -- Why Are Romney and Obama Too Cowardly to Talk About What Really Matters?

Just as Obama has expanded and increased the wars, Iran will be bombed no matter who is in the White House.  When it comes to our foreign policy, both parties share the same goals - A destabilized Middle East where the US's ambitions of empire and controlling the world's resources are realized.

The only difference is in how enthusiastically the lemmings should march toward the cliff.  
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Nader again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that HarryBrowne, PatBuchanan, HowardPhillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed.  Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or voted at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.  

You blame Nader voters when, had Nader not even run, had he not be in the race, Bush still would've won.  Because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about.  You might as well blame Pat Buchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

AlGore won.  Gore got more votes in Florida.  Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.
 
Whatever the means necessary to get BushCheney into the WhiteHouse would've happened.  Had Nader been in the race, had he not in the race, whatever.  Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same.  The powers that be were not going to let Gore win, no matter what, and gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting BushCheney into the WhiteHouse required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida.  That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida --  'CharlesKane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void).  When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA.  The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told."  Verbatim quote.  The judge didn't follow up.  There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten JebBush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP?  And that's just in Florida.  And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000.  A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.  

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the CongressionalBlackCaucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Obama and the DLC also worked their butts off to prevent more progressiv­es/liberal­s from getting elected. Obama and the DLC put the power of the White House­, the DNC, and the Democratic congressio­nal committees behind Blue Dogs, Republican­s and Independen­ts over progressives/liberal­s and real Democrats.  Some, but not all, examples:

Blue Dog Blanche Lin­coln over progressiv­e Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter­.

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Arlen Spect­er over progressiv­e Democrat Joe Sestak.

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Lincoln Cha­ffee over Democrat Frank Capri­o (which, in turn, was an effective endorsemen­t of the Republican John Loughl­in over Democrat David Cicil­line for the congressio­nal seat Democrat Patrick Ken­nedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.

By the way, by getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in U.S. history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed.

Citizens have little enough of a Constituti­onally-gua­ranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping them. We have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic).  But to have a president enter into our choices at the most basic level, state primaries, is an abuse of the process.

Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignment­s, etc., but did not.  Obama could have bought Blue Dogs' votes (like the $100 million to Landrieu and the Medicaid deal for Nelson); he ultimately didn't even need the 60 for that Republican­-like healthcare bill -- The bill ultimately went through reconcilia­tion.

This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the puppet-mas­ters who control him want in office.  On both sides of the aisle.  Obama, Democrats and Republicans in office, working on behalf of transnatio­nal corporatio­ns.

Reform isn't on the agenda of either party.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Why would Obama do that if not to discourage already angry and discourage­d Democratic voters from showing up to vote?  That was the effect.  Discouragi­ng and suppressin­g Democratic vote turnout in the midterms (from Obama's flip-flopp­ing on just about every pledge and continuing Bush-Chene­y policies and putting Republican­-like legislatio­n through Congress) was predictabl­e, and had been predicted.

And why would Obama do that if not to set up some sort of rationale for moving to the right, some reason for continuing to cave to Republican­s?

Democrats lost seats in the 2010 midterms because of Obama's and Democrats failure to do what Democratic voters put them in office for in 2008.  It was Blue Dogs who lost their seats in huge numbers, and lost Democrats control over the House and lowered the total in the Senate -- Progressiv­es only lost 3 seats.

Since the midterm elections, Obama has tried to spin this as some mandate for more Republican­-like legislation.  Do you know what Obama said he'd do if re-elected to a second term?:

Explaining this spring how he would manage to enact his agenda in a second term, Obama was still looking forward to sitting down and cutting deals. This time, he said, Republicans would be nicer because he’s not running for re-election.

Obama's either corrupt or he's the very definition of 'insanity', "doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome".  Or his supporters are.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

What's upside-down is the fact that so many "liberals" are working so hard to do Karl Rove's job- depress Democratic turnout with the kinnard that "they're both the same".  That belief is ignorant of the facts and destructive to any liberal cause.

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Obama did everything he could to discourage Democratic voter turnout in 2010.  From flip-flopp­ing and breaking campaign promises and pushing through Republican­-like legislatio­n to Obama's broadcasti­ng in the weeks before the 2010 midterms that he was going to continue to "work in a bipartisan manner" with Republican­s,  no matter what the outcome of the elections.  Whether Democrats gained seats or lost control of the Congress: 

Aides say that the president’ s been spending “a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0,” brainstorm­ing with administra­tion officials about the best way to revamp the strategies and goals of the White House.

And despite the prediction­s that Democrats may relinquish a large degree of legislatin­g power, including perhaps control of the House and even Senate, Obama isn’t thinking of the next two years as a period that’ll be marked with the same obstructiv­e nature from the GOP.

“It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, [Republica­ns] feel more responsibl­e, either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipate­d, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them,” Obama says. “Or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

Dick Durbin says Obama’s post-elect­ion agenda “will have to be limited and focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people.” Tom Daschle says Obama has to reach out more: “The keyword is inclusion. He’s got to find ways to be inclusive. “

KEEP READING
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The trade deals that President Obama has signed have included rights for workers.

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These trade deals are union busting and job outsourcers.

These AFTA treaties expand the rights that corporations received under NAFTA to challenge any laws they perceive as barriers to trade and foreign investment. For instance, when California banned a carcinogenic gasoline additive called MTBE because it was seeping into the state's drinking water, the chemical manufacturer, Methanex, sued California for infringing on its trade rights under NAFTA and demanded $970 million in compensation. Such suits are a direct threat to democracy because they prioritize the profits of foreign corporations over a country's own environmental, social and labor laws.

Already corporations are planning more such lawsuits. A subsidiary of Harken Energy (on whose board 

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The trade deals that President Obama has signed have included rights for workers.  Far from being "union busting" President Obama has done more to save unions, including the auto union and the union workers at Boeing then any president in decades.

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The NLRB enforcing labor law.  Hold the presses.

What's significant about Obama's behavior with regard to labor is that, like everything else that a Democratic president should be doing, if he does it at all it's as cover to his stalling and sabotaging.  His appointments are one example - Way too little, way too late, and way too conservative.

Did you know that 2/3rds of GM's labor force is outsourced?  FWIW, it was Bush who authorized the initial loans to GM and Chrysler (about $17.5 billion), and later under Obama, another $6.36 billion.

Then there's EFCA.

Obama's chief advisor on union matters was SEIU's Andy Stern.  The short story is that Stern ran SEIU the way Bush-Cheney (and now Obama) ran the government: Unitary executive.  Unlimited power.

Stern had a rubber-stamped, hand-picked board with members who never went against him.  He ran SEIU like a corporation with him at the top.  That's not democratic -- That's not the way unions ought to be run.

A union really is its members and I think Stern's lost sight of that.  He treated members more like pawns in a chess game.  He appointed cronies to positions as presidents of locals and he got into trouble several times because his personal choices have been indicted as corrupt, stealing hundreds of thousands from the local unions.  And anybody who challenged Stern didn't stay long at SEIU.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The insurance mandate is, indeed, a tax, and the IRS will be the enforcer, which means compounded fines and prison.  That's something that the prison industrial complex is celebrating.

Why put the insurance industry into the equation of Americans' medical treatment at all?  Insurance adds nothing to the medical model. The way that the insurance industry makes its profits is by taking a cut of money that can be spent on medical care.  And in reality the insurance industry profits like Wall Street and all other corporations that have crashed our economy have profited:  By denying claims and preventing treatment (Wall Street and corporations do it by offshoring manufacturing, outsourcing jobs, eliminating jobs in spite of record profits for short term windfalls to shareholders and bonuses for CEOs, etc.).

The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.

Americans have had it with political spin, and specifical­­ly political double-tal­­k. Americans didn't like it when it came at them as Bush-speak and Americans really don't like it when it's Obama's lawyer-speak. He said that he supported single payer, and if "it's the best for the people" (as he communicated clearly), it's the best whenever.

Obama insisted that it was up to Congress to write the legislatio­­n, that he wasn't going to be involved in doing it. After promising transparen­­cy in his administra­­tion, he prevented transparen­­cy and kept hidden secret negotiatio­­ns and deals he was making with PhRma, Hospitals and the AMA.  After the secret deals came to light, Obama lied both to the American people and to Congress which had several committees working on legislatio­­n that Obama's secret deals undermined­­.

From day one, Obama conceded positions of the left, of the People, that weren't his to concede. Obama took single payer off the table because everything else pales against it. Obama unilateral­­ly made the decision to forever tie Americans' getting healthcare through employer-s­­ubsidized insurance, in spite of the fact that employers don't want to do that and employees don't want it. (Dylan Ratigan nailed it on his show -http://www­­.youtube.­c­om/watch­?v­=NwyV59­HyI­-k )

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

[ACA] mandates that they HAVE to take everyone and it also mandates that their overhead, including profits, be no more than 20%.

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health insurance ≠ medical treatment

Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care.  

All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).

There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.  Between increased premium costs, deductibles and co-pays, ACA Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies.

And 'medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.

And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.  

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblo­wer Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

Before the Supreme Court struck down the Medicaid provision in ACA, ACA put more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets.  So while people may have found themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that "should all else fail I've got Medicaid" as your safety net, guess again:  Medicaid won't cover c/hit.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

ACA it is no "gift" to the insurance companies which is evidenced by the fact that they're so desperate to kill it.   

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Then there's the pharmaceutical industry.  ACA prohibits the government from being able to negotiate lower drug prices (or reimportation), contrary to the clear mandate of the 2008 election.

The American taxpayer has been subsidizing pharmaceutical companies for decades with the promise that the R&D we were paying for would result in lower prices and breakthrough cures. Instead, we've been stuck with higher prices (twice as much as other industrialized countries) while the pharmaceutical companies try to snag new markets overseas with what were to be our discounts.

Not only did Obama break his campaign pledge (of the government, PhRma biggest customer, negotiating for lower priced drugs, and reimporting pharmaceuticals), he gave PhRma a huge gift.  The deal that Obama made with PhRma wasn't for PhRma to go up against Big Insurance; it was for PhRma to help sell a plan that makes more profits for Big Insurance.

PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and k!II public healthcare.  Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.

 $80 billion over 10 years is less than 1% of the profits PhRma makes in one year.

Obama, who dropped the public option and the universal requirement­, let the pharmaceut­ical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.

How Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats have tried to defend and sell ACA with regard to their pledge on pharmaceutical costs (that ACA closes the "donut hole" in Medicare) is particularly galling.

To begin with, the "donut-hol­e" never should have existed in the first place, and that the DLC-controlled Democrats created as a "compromis­e" for Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (another massive corporate giveaway package) is that the whole of Medicare Part D was a scam and a scheme, a "first step" (as Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' like to say) towards privatizin­g public healthcare­.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

ACA it is no "gift" to the insurance companies which is evidenced by the fact that they're so desperate to kill it.   

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The insurance and pharmaceutical industries aren't trying to kill ACA - They love it.  They wrote it.
ACA was written by Liz Fowler, former executive at WellPoint (Max Baucus hired her as senior counsel to him as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee - so much for Candidate Obama's pledge on restricting lobbyists from writing our laws).

The regulations were created by the insurance industry and the regulations and legislation is being implemented and overseen by the insurance industry.  Obama put the foxes in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executives Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations.  Fowler's most notable actions to date has been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.  

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Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

The Tea Party is an effective nemesis for Obama and helps him and the DLC deliver to their (and Republican­s') Corporate Masters.  The Tea Party is a paper tiger, a scapegoat, and not the real problem.  This is all Kabuki theater, to push us into accepting being robbed blind while politician­s in both parties jockey for positions of favor and power within the corporatoc­racy.

If Obama and DLC-controlled Democr­ats had believed the Tea Party to be a threat, had they wanted to put the Tea Party down, the time to do it was during the healthcare debate when the Tea Party was coming to prominence­. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling Town Halls because of the escalating threats of violence by gun-toting teabaggers­, disrupting Americans' long-honor­ed traditions of peaceful debate in the public square. Instead of taking to the bully pulpit, instead of increasing security on government properties hosting these events, Obama disappeare­d from the healthcare debate to cut secret deals with Big Insurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then he lied about it, all the while that the Tea Party grew and bullied at Town Halls.

What Obama also did during the same Town Hall time period? He unleashed federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting, using the new weaponry on dissenters who the 'establish­ment elites' really fear, and stem the unrest that actually threatens the 'elites', i.e., the American people taking back their government­.

Obama has no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wants or needs to.

Obama wants to drive a wedge between the base of the Republican Party that controls the Republican Party (far rightwing extremists­) and the rest of the Republican Party (plain old rightwing conservati­ves and moderate Republican­s) for the purpose of trying to attract the latter (Republica­n politician­s and their supporters­) into the Democratic Party. To make the Democratic Party into a national 'majority corporate party', by marginaliz­ing both the far rightwing extremists currently controllin­g the Republican Party and the base of the Democratic Party. In order "to govern, from the center, for 100 years".  Only "the center" is pro-corporate, anti-populist, i.e., the Reagan Republican Party.

The Tea Party serves this end it several ways. Chiefly though, It lets Democrats keep a legislativ­e agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far rightwing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-­money ground.

Obama didn't invent this plan, by the way; it's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years.
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Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

Nader bashing again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that Harry Browne, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed.  Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.

You blame Nader voters when, had Nader not even run, had he not be in the race, Bush still would've won.  Because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about.  You might as well blame Pat Buchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

Al Gore won.  Gore got more votes in Florida.  Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.

Whatever the means necessary to get Bush-Cheney into the White House would've happened.  Had Nader been in the race, had he not in the race, whatever.  Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same.  The powers that be were not going to let Gore win, no matter what, and gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting Bush-Cheney into the White House required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida.  That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida --  'Charles Kane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void).  When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA.  The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told."  Verbatim quote.  The judge didn't follow up.  There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten Jeb Bush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP?  And that's just in Florida.  And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000.  A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the Congressional Black Caucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

As an old old liberal Democrat, an FDR Democrat, my positions on issues are in line with the platform of the Democratic Party; it's the politician­s in the Democratic Party who are ignoring the platform of the party.

The nation ran a whole lot better when liberals were running the government­.  Liberal policies created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, and enabled millions to achieve the American Dream, not to mention getting electricit­y and clean drinking water running to every home.  

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.  

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReag­an, LeeAtwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism­, and how liberals were responsibl­e for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgunned by election dirty tricks and fraud.

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characteri­ze themselves as far-anythi­ng or extreme, but mainstream­. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicamen­t of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to kill babies?!?!­?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritar­ian intimidati­on are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politician­s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

The courts are expected to be above politics.  That is the only reason why these justices are appointed to a LIFETIME position - they never have to pander to a party or public opinion.  Their ONLY job is to make constitutional ruling.

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Theoretically, that's true.

In practice, both parties put up candidates for the federal bench who interpret the Constitution through the ideological prism of their party.  As the Democratic Party has moved farther to the right over the past 35 years in order to both grow the party (by attracting Republicans and Independents into the party) and compete for corporate dollars, its nominees are ever more corporate-friendly/anti-populist.

Alito, Roberts, and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate.  And Democrats voted to confirm Thomas (52-48), Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22) and Scalia (98-0).  There is nothing that Bush-Cheney, and Reagan-Bush for that matter, did that Democrats couldn't have blocked.  Democrats signed on to all of it.

The real problem we're facing is a president and a Democratic­ Party that, for whatever reason (naivete or a convenient cover for their own corruption­), stubbornly clings to the 'bipartisa­nship model' ("Can't we all get along?") style of legislatin­g and governing that hasn't worked for decades, if ever.  I don't know how many ways Republican­s can say "Go fuck yourselves­" before Obama and Democrats play to win -- Probably as long as there are people who give Obama and Democrats a pass.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presented himself as the latest in a long line of corporate, centrist Democrats, interested in tinkering with the system but largely agreeing with the consensus on free markets, free trade, and U.S. military power.  As last year's cover story in TIME explains, Obama even agrees with many of the fundamenta­ls of Reaganism, telling reporters, "What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem. I don't think that has changed."  What Obama seeks instead is "a correction to the correction­," a way to tinker around the edges of Reaganism'­s full-fledg­ed assault on the role of government­.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Obama's been trying to sell himself as Reagan's standard bearer since the 2008 campaign.  Not long ago, Obama actually said, "I admired Ronald Reagan".  A Democrat who governs as a Republican­, continuing just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies and getting Republican legislatio­n through Congress isn't "better".

With Obama, we're getting Republican policies sold to us as if they're what we wanted.  Just because the Republican Party's base is too stupid to know they should be thrilled to have Obama in the White House doesn't mean the Democratic Party's base is.

Back during the campaign in 2008, Democratic voters refused to press Obama when he said this:

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamenta­lly different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountabi­lity in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entreprene­urship that had been missing."

He admires and wants to emulate Reagan.

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