See: Progressives Ask: Is It Obama, Or Is It Us?
Left-wing activists described the year leading up to Barack Obama's election as exhilarating, empowering and exciting.
Now, if you ask progressives gathered for the America's Future Now conference in Washington, D.C., about the first year and a half of his presidency, they say:
"Frustrating."
"Sobering."
"Brutal."
At least, those were the reactions of, respectively, union activist Nick Weiner, University of Minnesota political science professor Dara Strolovitch, and Steve Peha, who heads an education reform consultancy.
"I had hoped for something different," Peha explains. "I had hoped for the president who ran for office, and not so much the one who's in office."
Peha says he's a pragmatist -- he knows that campaigning and governing are different. But "what I wish is that President Obama had worked a little less for his ideal of bipartisanship and a little more for the people who elected him," he says.
This is the prevailing feeling at this week's America's Future Now conference. And no one is hiding it.
There are several things to remark upon here.
One, the Obama administration has easily been the most partisan administration that this country has suffered through since Johnson. His "take it or leave it" strategy for ramming through his health-care scheme is example enough of that. On that charge, the progressives are talking out their ass. They wouldn't know what "bipartisanship" was if it reached across the isle and slugged them.
Two, Obama is the most progressive President this country has had since Woodrow Wilson. Again, his health-care scheme is proof enough of that. We could also talk about his high tax policy and his regulatory policy per Cap and Trade. Then there is that whole financial crises fiasco created by the progressive geniuses Barney Frank and Chris Dodd that Obama managed to make much worse. He even seized control of GM for goodness sake. GM is now a government run enterprise strait out of the Mussolini play book. What do the progressives want! Any more progressive and and this administration would be considering controlling political speech by taxing internet news aggregators or bringing back the "Fairness Doctrine" to radio.
Three, Obama cannot realistically satisfy his hard left supporters. These are the people on the fringe of reality, more inclined to look at working through the constraints of the law and the constitution as backsliding and evidence of a spiritual weakness. These people were going to turn on him no matter what. That doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the schadenfreude while watching his own snakes turn on him.
Heh. . . Here is some "Hope and Change" good and hard you "progressive" dip-shits.
It's both of them
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