Support The Party

My email in box is crammed daily full of pleas for campaign donations.  The pleas are heavily seasoned with "Rove" and "Koch" and other ooga-booga super scary things.  The overlying message is the other guys are really really horrible.  Well, more horrible than the current administration, so if I don't pony up the insanely popular Affordable Care Act might be repealed.  Oh wait, it's not really all that popular.  Now if it was single payer, or had a public option, it might be worth salvaging, but pointing the taxpayer money cannon down the throats of rich conglomerates (AHIP & PhRMA) with an auto fire setting is not a real positive policy, YMMV.

The Administrations foreign policy of raining freedom bombs from unmanned drones is alarming, their domestic civil rights record is appalling, their justice department is limited to busting prescription marijuana users and an economic policy that is anemic at best.  Still, it is a true statement that a second Obama administration would be far better than a Romney presidency.  The problem is how can the Democratic wing of the Democratic party get the President to not take their vote for granted?  What can the current administration do at this late hour earn back the vote of the left?

After Obama won the Presidency his motto changed from "Yes we can," to "I got this."  His Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, organized a scheme to protect Obama's left flank by giving the heads of several lefty interest groups a seat at the table and explaining the policies of the President.  If any of them objected and threatened action, Rahm would threaten to contact that organizations big money donors and tell them the President demands they withhold support--in short cut off their main money supply.  Jane Hamsher of firedoglake famously dubbed this "the veal pen."  At one such "strategy sessions" certain moderate Democrats were threatened with a primary candidate for weakening the Health Care bill.  Rahm declared that was "fucking retarded."

Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs, frustrated at how ungrateful the President's base was declared we should be "drug tested."  With such open contempt held by senior staff for the base of this President shows a clear political problem.  Reporters who wish to maintain sources declare the liberal wings' discontent as a desire for "ideological purity" when nothing could be further than the truth.  That should be reserved for the teabaggers.  But Gibbs and Rahm have done real damage to the Presidents re-election chances.  How is it possible to actively support the President's re-election without Rahm and Gibby doing a snoopy dance and spiking the football for enacting a center-right agenda?

The health care bill we should be so grateful for was born in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.  A Vampire Squid is wearing the Presidents' jewelry, punctuating the Obama domestic economic agenda.  Upper marginal tax rate increase?  Nope.  Inheritance tax resolution?  Nope.  Employee Free Choice Act?  Not so much.  Lock up a single crooked Bankster for the most massive fraud ever perpetuated in the history of the planet?  Crickets.  I guess I'm just a fucking retarded degenerate junkie for not being fired up and ready to go.