Changelings 3

As I have mentioned, there has been much gnashing of teeth amongst some Lefties because President Obama hasn’t turned out to be a fierce fighter for things that are politically impossible. (He is subject to wrath which, by rights, belongs to the U. S. Senate, which has turned inertness into an art installation.)

Much of this results from projection. President Obama’s campaign slogan was “change.”

Persons have poured into to that word whatever they wanted without paying attention to what he actually said.

Lefties poured into it, among other things,

• single-payer healthcare (which I support but which he said during the campaign was, in his opinion, a non-starter),
• withdrawal from Iraq (which he promised and is working on),
• closing that symbol of shame, the prison at Guantanamo (which he is working on but which I think he should have just done, and done quickly, so that it was fait accompli),
• withdrawal from Afghanistan (which would be directly counter to what he said during his campaign, desirable though it may have become–I certainly would like to see my son withdrawn).

Righties, deciding he is a scary black man, poured into it from their own paranoia a bunch of stuff which I won’t even attempt to list. In their construct, he is, rather than a slightly to the left of center middle-of-the-road American pol, an amalgam of Abbie Hoffman, Karl Marx, Albert Schweitzer, and Che Guevara from another planet in some kind of parallel universe.

Now, some lefties, because he hasn’t done stuff he didn’t promise and is fighting a calcified Senate to do what he did promise, have been, dumping on him. (Where they get the idea that the way to get stuff done is to dump on their friends is beyond me. Mithras expresses my puzzlement succintly. John Cole dissects the illogic of it deftly.)

Certainly, I did and do support President Obama, but I did and do not delude myself into thinking that we agrees on lots of stuff. I wouldn’t have his job for the world and I’m glad he wanted it.

And given the track record of Republicans (and anyone who thinks that track record would change if they got back in is from LalaLand–I want to gag everytime I hear Republicans fulminate about “fiscal responsibility,” as if they would know a responsible fiscal if it bit them), I would have voted for a dead rat had it headed the Democratic ticket.

And, honestly, what you really rather have President McMaverick and Vice President Beyond the Palin?

Much of the discontent on the left goes back to not blanking listening to Obama the candidate in the first place (and the rest goes back to forgetting that successful progressive change in America has almost always been fiercely and unrelentingly fought by them what has).

Patrick Frank, a Facebook friend and a friend on Facebook, in a comment in a Facebook conversation, described what Obama meant when he talked of change as well as anyone I’ve read (quoted with permission):

“A lot of the change Obama was talking about had to do with ending the bitter partisanship in DC and around the country and bringing people of good will together to solve problems. With the rise of the neo-fascist tea bag movement, as well as some on the left who see compromise as sellout, we see schism actually on the rise, as opposed to receding. (others may disagree with this analysis)…This widening gulf is deeply unsettling to many Americans…That’s my take…More later…”

And, by God, President Obama has tried mightily to accomplish this change, the change of which he spoke. But Republicans have no interest in “bringing people of good will together to solve problems.”

No mistake: the partisanship in Washington comes from the Republican side of the aisle and to the extent it has grown on the Left, it has done so in reaction to the Right.

Governmental dysfunction: it’s a Republican thing.