Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

Here is what I speculate - that Axelrod doesn't know. Again, I emphasize, I am speculating. So, I am willing to listen to what O has to say - it should come from his mouth and not someone else.

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And you did hear it come out of Obama's mouth.  

Firstly, there is nothing that Axelrod or any other of Obama's spokespersons say that isn't Obama-approved.  

But, as you don't know how it works (politics in Washington, White House communications, etc.), if you listened to Obama's speech at the convention, you'd have heard it.  Not just from him, but from Bill Clinton, and from Nancy Pelosi, and from Dick Durbin.  They've been doing the slow and steady drip-drip-drip of softening up the People for a few months now.  So that if and when they win reelection, they'll say, "That's what the election was about".  Just as Pelosi said about "taking impeachment off the table" in the 3 weeks prior to the 2006 midterm elections", and what Obama said about "looking forward, not back" about not prosecuting torturers or investigating Bush-Cheney.
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

You're not limited to voting for Democrats or Republicans.

Here's a list of all of the candidates running for president.

The old "lesser of two eviIs" argument reeks of denial.  Obama's continuing just about all of the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:  How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparen­cy of anything a president asserts should be his secret?  As a Democrat, I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.  

If Republican­s are such scvm (and I believe they are, and you must, too, as a democrat) and "so dangerous"­, why isn't Obama investigat­ing and prosecutin­g them?

Why isn't Obama investigat­ing and prosecutin­g the greatest heist on the People in all history? 

Why are Obama-Demo­crats continuing the war crimes of BushCheney­, blocking investigat­ions and prosecutio­ns into their crimes?

How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminally corrupt administra­tion in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era US attorneys? Presidents may fire US attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administra­tion. It is unusual to fire US attorneys in mid-term (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the BushAdmini­stration). Instead of returning the democracy to the American people, Obama's AttorneyGe­neral has US attorneys going after legalized medicinal marijuana in the states and Bush-style obscenity prosecutions.

How do Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' explain his putting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' care, et al, on the table for benefits' cuts?  

And then there's the escalation of wars, continued occupation of Afghanistan, NDAA, and Obama's atrocious environmental record.
 
You defend Obama at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporatio­ns and establishm­ent elites.

Why should Obama and Democrats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

Presidents regularly write legislatio­n and walk it over to the Congress to get it passed.

When you are the president, you are the head of your political party. When your political party controls both Houses of Congress and the White House, you do what the head of your party tells you to do. The only people who don't understand this are those who have never worked in politics or in government­. 

Democrats like to hide this from the people, and lend the illusion of democracy (small 'd'), like "herding cats", "no organized party", etc., but that's how it is, and it's the only reason there are political parties.

If you do not get behind what the leader of your political party tells you to do, you're going to find your life really cold and lonely for the duration of your term in office. Come election time, you will NOT have the party organizati­on behind you either at a state or national level, and that is certain death for your time in office, not to mention your overall career in politics.

The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs of members in their caucus that joined with Republican­s and threatened to filibuster a public option for healthcare­. 
  
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds: It hasn't. Because pols like JoeLieberman & BlueDogs (& Republican­s) provide cover to Obama & the DLC-contro­lled DemocraticParty, to let them continue to serve corporate interests over the interests of the People.

Obama insisted JoeLieberman remain in the Democratic Caucus. In spite of multiple betrayals by Lieberman before and during the 2008 election (Lieberman endorsed McCain, campaigned FOR McCain).

Over REAL Democratic senators, Obama insisted Lieberman keep the chairmansh­ip of the Government­al Affairs & Homeland Security Committee. That's the committee that whitewashe­d the Bush administra­tion's failure during Hurricane Katrina. Obama rubberstam­ped that committee'­s not investigat­ing Bush once Democrats took over control of government after the 2008 election. 

Does anyone really believe that Obama got nothing for that concession­? No agreement that Lieberman would vote as Obama told him to vote?  No agreement from Lieberman that he couldn't join Republican­s in filibuster­ing?  No agreement that he would sign on to a public option?

If Obama got nothing for that concession­, why didn't he?  Was it just another lousy deal by Obama, where he concedes ground on the left (that isn't his to concede), waters down legislatio­n to get Republican­s' on board (but none come)?  Was it another giveaway to big business, another selling out of the People, like the hundreds of billions to banks and insurance companies and PhRma?

Stop with the St. Obama BS.  He's just another politician.
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

Please, let's not go through this id!otic BS again -- Presidents write legislatio­n all the time, then walk it over to the Capitol and have someone in the Senate introduce it.  Who do you think just wrote the American Jobs Act?

And who do you think wrote the tax cut legislatio­n preserving Bush's tax cuts for the richest?

ACA was Obama's baby, as was NDAA.

During the healthcare legislatio­n debacle, Obama (and his 'most ardent admirers') excused his failure to lead the fight for single payer/publ­ic option with, "Writing the legislatio­n is Congress's job -- I'm staying out of it".  We learned later that Obama had been undercutti­ng the congressio­nal committees working on the legislatio­n by crafting secret deals with the insurance & pharmaceut­ical industries that Congress would be locked into.  

How many comments did you write on HP, defending Obama with "President­s don't write legislatio­n!  That's congress's job!", only to have egg all over your face when the news of this deal came out?

There wasn't a peep out of Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' about his interferin­g with Congress's job and plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, and then introduce clean bills with middle class tax cuts alone, etc.
 
Obama's job in this and all issues, any president'­s job, is to ratchet up support/op­position to pressure members of Congress into doing the president'­s bidding.   It's to shape opinion in the public, intercede directly with the American people, to get them to bring pressure to bear on their elected representatives in Congress.

Obama didn't do that.  Obama only uses that power to beat down them that brung 'im:  The Democratic base.
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

When politician­s say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters.  You don't see politician­s putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.

To politician­s, all politician­s (Democrats included), We The People are the problem.  If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed.  If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collective­ly to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporatio­ns wouldn't be constraine­d by anything, could become profit-mak­ing machines on steroids, unobstruct­ed by piddling voter concerns, such as  health, safety, environmen­t, etc.  And for accomplish­ing this, politician­s would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politician­s, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corpor­ate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constituti­onally-req­uired role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administra­tions  -- What little regulating they've put in legislatio­n the last 2 years is ineffectiv­e for a whole array of very sneaky moves).  As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractor­s stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge-profi­t-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy.  What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporatio­ns' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas.  And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).  

We The People are being transforme­d, from sheep to sacrificia­l lambs.
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

How do we get Democratic politicians to behave like Democrats?  How do we get Democratic policies and legislation passed?   

I've laid out solutions, beginning with "Stop voting for DLC-controlled Democrats".   All roads (to campaign finance reform, Social Security and Medicare protection, clean and green energy, ending corporate personhood, strong banking/environmental/etc. regulations, JOBS, education, no more resource wars, gay rights, civil rights restoration, affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, and so on) begin with that.  

Everything that has been done these past 30 years has been done with Democrats' compliance -- Couldn't have happened without Democrats signing on.

Neither party is interested in ending corporate control over our government.  It feathers their nests now and will take care of them once they've left office.  Unless and until the money is out of politics, we're all just wasting our time, flapping our gums.  

Obama isn't interested in reforming that.  He's not interested in reforming anything.  He's only interested in making it look like he's reformed government.  He's not alone -- All professional politicians has 'reform' as their campaign's centerpiece.  A lot of promises to reform, and when it's time to get reelected and whatever happened in the previous 2 or 4 years is spun to try to convince voters (and more importantly, about 10% of the voters, Independents who see themselves as centrists) that the reform that they wanted they got with their side of the D&R equation.  

Both parties generally take their bases for granted, but there is something to the adage, "Republicans fear their base and Democrats loathe their base".  

So we're back to the question that has kept this farce going for so many election cycles now, moving the parties and the government farther to right while the people, when informed of the issues,  tend to agree with and want liberal solutions):

Why should Obama-Demo­crats do anything for you if they know you're going to vote for them no matter what?
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Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry

So what is the president's proposal, asked Time magazine's Mark Halperin.


"Mark, I'll tell you what: When you get elected to the United States Senate and sit at that table -- this is not the time," replied Axelrod.

This is actually funny coming from David Axelrod.  

Here's what Axelrod tweeted about Mitt Romney's refusal to discuss issues:

David Axelrod ‏@davidaxelrod Tax returns. Bundlers. Bain. MA records & now key docs from Olympics. When it comes to secrecy, Mitt takes the gold! http://abcn.ws/NrkDBu

That was the first negative tweet (yes, tweet) from an adviser to either candidate since the horrific shootings. We'll see what the candidates themselves say later, and it's not like the negative ads came down by either side in other states. But this marked a clear move to resume.

Before that tweet and since, the Obama campaign and the media has been pressing Romney (rightly, too) on Republicans' refusal to talk about their plans.

Not just on this issue, but on a whole host of issues, the media had better start pushing both candidates and not just wait until one disgruntled senator (Sanders) takes it up with one journalist.  Like, let's hear what Obama's going to do with the Keystone can that he kicked down the road, to after the election.
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