This seems to be going on to me...

[butterfly77]

Barack Obama: Scapegoat
I'm frankly puzzled by the meme that the debacle that is the Congressional debate on health insurance reform is President Obama's fault.

Let's review:

1. Not one single Republican has supported it with votes (outside of Snowe allowing a vote to go forward which she subsequently voted "NO!" on.)
2. The major evisceratory surgeries on the legislation have been primarily to appease Republicans and Conservadems who subsequently voted "NO!".
3. The introduction of odious anti-women abortion prevention language has all come from Conservadems like Stupak and Nelson.
4. The biggest obstructionist grandstander in the entire sad affair has been Joe Lieberman who has waved his manhood in front of any camera and reporter that would film it.

And not one thing that President Obama could have done would have changed any of this.

I find it laughable that, in this day and age of huge corporate donations and well-organized conservative political PACs, anyone thinks Obama could have "pulled an LBJ" and strong-armed Republicans and recalcitrant Democrats into submission. That's just not realistic. There is nothing that the administration could offer these people that would stack up against the giant piles of money corporations and PACs funnel into their election coffers. And there's nothing they could offer that would give them any more power, notoriety or "fame" than they get from the grandstanding they are performing right now.

Nothing.

This is a different world than existed in LBJ's day. Besides the more intense impact of corporate funding and PAC money, the filibuster is used today in ways it never was back then. And it's probably worth reminding folks that Obama got elected because he promised to change the way politics is done in Washington. That's a big part of the reason people like me voted for him. He was different. He actually gave us some hope that he might actually be able to bring disparate groups together to solve America's problem.

So when Joe Lieberman pulls his shit and does his self-serving, narcissistic craptastic dance to attract attention to himself, it's disingenuous to suggest that somehow the president could have changed that. He couldn't. Lieberman is a fuck now and would have been a fuck no matter what Obama and Axelrod and Emmanuel and Reid did. Period. That's what Lieberman does. You want to blame someone? Blame the voters of Connecticut. That's a good place to start. Plenty of progressive liberals tried to tell them different, that's for sure.

This is not Barack Obama's failure. It's Joe Lieberman's failure. It's Ben Nelson's failure. It's Mary Landrieu's failure. It's Bart Stupak's failure. It's the Republican's failure. Nothing Obama and Co. could have done would have changed the way these shameless and shameful non-leaders acted.

If he had threatened to veto any legislation that didn't include , they would have said, "Fine. Status quo works for me." And then we'd be no further ahead than we were last year. Or the year before that. Or the decade before that. Or...

About the only fault you could place at their doorstep, in my opinion, is the decision last spring to let Lieberman into the fold and to give him any kind of leadership position. While that argument at least holds some weight, I doubt that most people knew at the time what an incredible fuckwad he'd turn out to be. And, even if they did know, does anyone think Lieberman would have behaved differently if they hadn't allowed him into the fold? He's still a Senator that was a "swing vote" and his leadership position doesn't play into that. He still would have been able to do all the infuriating obstructionist horseshit he's doing today. How could he have voted or behaved differently that would be any worse than what he's doing now???

God help us if we don't extract some good out of this reform. Thanks primarily to Democrats (ugh!), there will be Democratic blood on the floor in 2010 if we don't.

But, in the final analysis, making President Obama the scapegoat doesn't address the core issues that have us where we are today: Corporate influence on campaigns, grandstanding conservatives determined to hijack any issue they can in order to draw power to themselves, and the lack of truly progressive members of Congress. If we want to change this country in the progressive direction, those are the areas where we should be focusing our attention. Not on making Barack Obama our scapegoat.

I'm just sayin'...

http://eclectablog.blogspot.com/

[ShortnFiery]

1. Barack Obama: Scapegoat? OR Lackluster Leader for bleeding more tax dollars from the Middle Class?

:thumbsdown:

[roguevalley]

17. I guess I'm old enough to remember when Presidents kicked the shit

out of their parties and actually led. You know, leadership. Forgive me. I'm old.

[butterfly77]

19. That probably is your problem..

you are old and think like Chris Matthews who believes that people do things the same way he and his crowd did them but,this is a different time.

[roguevalley]

23. Actually, @&^%#, I think that if you are going to be the leader, you

lead. *&$% you by the way. And considering that we didn't have the clusterfuck going on then that we do now, maybe us OLD PEOPLE know something.

Edited for profanity. Oh, and don't disable your profile if you want to be taken seriously around here. that is what trolls do.

[butterfly77]

25. Nothing wrong with ..

getting old. So you don't take me seriously well,Frankly my dear,I don't give a damn!

The problem is that SOME people don't believe in doing things the same way because with this group of people in the house and senate you don't know what you're gonna get with that bag of NUTS!

[DJ13]

2. The WH told Reid to pull both the PO and the Medicare provision to placate Lieberman

Doesnt that place a good part of the blame directly on Obama?

[treestar]

5. No, because Lieberman is a separate human being

Whose vote is needed. Is Obama supposed to threaten his life? And don't give me the chairmanship bull.

[DJ13]

7. Do you always advocate caving in to bullies?

[treestar]

10. You're on the same page as the neocons

No negotiation, no compromise.

Lieberman is there. He's a real Senator.

[DJ13]

14. You're advocating surrender

Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that they are willing to accept whatever miniscule benefits are tossed at them (on the ground that it's better than nothing) and unfailingly support Democratic initiatives (on the ground that the GOP is worse), then they will (and should) always be ignored when it comes time to negotiate; nobody takes seriously the demands of those who announce they'll go along with whatever the final outcome is.

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/12/18/corporatism
Healthcare Reform - Salon.com

[treestar]

3. I still don't think obama is responsible for what Lieberman does

He ought to "fight" Lieberman. How? Threatening him with loss of his chairmanship seems to be the answer around here, yet I don't see how the POTUS controls that, or that it would even change Lieberman's mind if he lost the chair.

[cliffordu]

12. It's nice to understand who can pull his chairmanships

The Prez cannot. Period. Good post.

[lapfog_1]

13. He could have said "I will veto any bill that does not contain

either a public option or expansion of Medicare".

Or "I will veto a bill that has mandates and no public option".

He didn't.

What he said was "Do what you have to with Lieberman to get a bill passed" (and that was reported after the entire Democratic caucus from the Senate visited the White House).

So. He owns it NOW. He may not have been to blame before (we can debate that) but he owns it now. And it's a bad bill.

[butterfly77]

20. Then maybe you would never get your bill ...

because we know as soon as they start over,some more bluedogs/Republicons would begin jumping out of their boxes threatening not to vote unless they can be bribed..

[winyanstaz]

4. Actually he could...very easily...

All he has to do is refuse to sign ANY republican bills that come across his desk.
The Dems could also kick Lieberman off his committees as well.
This "I am so helpless and cant do anything" is all bullcrappy when you are the President and you have a majority in power.

[butterfly77]

21. Majority of what?

a bunch of fake republicons who jump out of their boxes at the appropriate time to stall and change the bill or as they say KILL THE BILL!

[bigwillq]

6. Fault lies with Obama AND the Congress.

Obama is not a scapegoat.

[eleny]

8. It was important for him to use the bully pulpit

But it appears that he decided to work more behind the scenes. Some analysts proposed that the resulting Senate bill is what he supported all along. I don't have an opinion about that because I just don't have a sense of how Obama thinks. He went to Copenhagen in a very public display of his interest in the serious climate change issues. But he stays more in the background when it comes to HCR. So I can't come to a personal conclusion.

All I know is that the Senate bill doesn't serve the interests of the majority of Americans, imo. And I've been waiting for the president to be more public on our behalf. After his short announcement at the microphone the other day when he appeared ticked off I gave up on him because I didn't feel he was in our corner.

[Fresh_Start]

9. So his future Presidential campaign is 'NO WE CAN"T"?

because the poor weak president is not able to be a leader?

[lutherj]

11. This should have been Obama's payoff for all his other concessions

and compromises to the republicans. He should have been working for this from the start. 60% of the people support the public option and the medicare extension. He should have been lobbying congress openly, leaking info on those who are opposing him, and addressing the public directly on TV. If he loses this fight, what's he got left?

[Fire1]

15. And you said a mouth full!! Nail on the head. n/t

[BlueIdaho]

16. Unfortunately, he's the President and this will always be known as ObamaCare.

[angee_is_mad]

18. Kick

and keep kicking.

[demwing]

22. No thing is realistic

when you begin the debate by saying "this thing is not realistic"

[mstinamotorcity]

24. It also seems to me that

no matter what the President does he won't make everybody happy. I mean i don't like the health care bill because i believe that for it to truly be Historic everybody needs to be included in history. But i look at the things that he has been up against in his first eleven months of office. He wants to do things in a different way. But we all know that corporate dollars do not. There are a lot of things people believe that can just be wiped out by the stroke of a pen.Or that laws can become such overnight. As we now see, that is for some who are just starting to participate in the political process,it doesn't work that way. The only way for us to have true change is to start accepting some responsibilities for our own voting actions.That will be a good start. There are some people who didn't know they were being represented by some of the ridiculous suckers we have seen get out on the congressional floor. Please!The posturing ,the grandstanding, the ridiculous rhetoric,the out and out lies,the blatant disrespect.A lot of these Senators were in office for quite a number of years even before our President was thing about running for office. They have been rooted and grounded in hate and corporate greed. The only way to truly get a just bill passed without compromise is to have all the key elements in place before you start.Which would mean putting people in the position who will vote on the best interest of the people.When we start saying about who's fault it is we should not act like we have broke all the mirrors in our house.Blue dogs out for 2010

[Cha]

26. It's so easy for those on the internet

to find an easy scapegoat.