Stoic
I AM NOT going to apologize for criticizing the President and the Dem Establishment.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
I guess I'm going to have to provide my bona fides here else I get called a repuke troll.
I used to run a website called FightingDemocrat.com. I was a regular poster (and financial contributor) here under the nom de guerre of "fightingdem" (with which I had over a thousand posts) since at least 2002. When I shut down that site I changed my handle here to "stoic" and started from scratch. I guess my point is I have been posting here for over 8 years in one capacity or another.
I was the Dean Meet-up coordinator for my county in 2003 and 2004. I went to Iowa for Dean, Ohio for Kerry and ran for my county Democratic Central Committee in 2004. I was on the ballot in 2008 as a delegate for that son-of-a-bitch John Edwards.
I have donated thousand of dollars and hundreds of hours to Democratic committees, candidates and causes. I had, while Gov. Dean was chairman, donated $50 a month to the DNC. I was a card carrying member for the DNC for over 8 years. I have also been a voting Democrat since I turned 18 almost 36 years ago.
And yet, around here, when I criticize the President and the Democratic Leadership, I am routinely treated as a repuke troll, disloyal to the cause, unhelpful and a leading contender for undermining our control of Congress and the Presidency.
It was all good and well when I was going hyperbolic against the Repukes but heaven for-fend I bring a little of that when criticizing our side (and believe me when I say I bite my tongue here quite often).
Many of us have been vocal about the direction President Obama and the Leadership was taking the country when it became apparent within months of his taking office. This Third Way, New Democrat, Punch-The-Hippies-At-Every-Chance style for many of us was going to bring disastrous consequences for the Party and for the country. And now that they've dug themselves into a hole the knee-jerk response is to blame the critics for not being sufficiently loyal to the cause and for undermining the Party and the President.
Yeah, right.
As for all the "victories" the President has achieved, well, you might be impressed by these crumbs but they're not enough to overcome the failures of leadership, of policy and of getting the right job done.
Yeah, the Republicans are monkeywrenching the government, but Obama's response was more compromise and to continue to try to find those few "rational" Republicans to sign on to his "middling" policies before everything collapsed. Dear Mr. President, ain't working. You need to make a full-throated, uncompromising argument for policies that will bring jobs that not only provide a decent living wage but treat people not making a million dollars a year with dignity. You need to protect us from the environmental depredations of, well, just about every corporation in the country and, please GET US THE **** OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.
AND UNLESS you, dear reader, are prepared to criticize and yell and make a nuisance of yourself and stop closing your eyes to the direction our leadership has brought us to you will be complicit in what is to come.
And frankly, servility is just not my style.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8817454
First thing, 36+ years is a long time to be so stupid about politics, but there are primitives that have exceed that record.
The Dems have the WH, the House, and had a fillibuster proof Senate (they still have 59 seats in the caucus), so the Republicans couldn't do anything. This primitive needs to stop with the lies, it isn't helping his case, though I've noticed how hard that habit is to break for them. It's certainly not the Republicans fault that Dear Leader spent the first year of his presidency focused on healthcare while ignoring the economy.
Otherwise, this thread could take a turn or two.
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