A volley from an exchange with Michael Hood
Michael, you are depressing me with your disappointment in Obama.
I see Mr. Obama as an extraordinary person. In a history where America has had a few pivotal intellects in that chair, Obama is a rational President in a time of public chaos resulting from the inevitable decline of the American Imperium, the ascent of Fox, and 24 hr. Intertube News.
What I had hoped for is a charismatic intellectual who could explain reality to a public fed on Fox and Friends. I had hoped that Obama could bring Reagan’s skills to a dysfunctional democratic party. He lacks that skill.
My disappointment, however is not just with the President. I do not care for the view of politics as a contest between star athletes. I want my country and my world to be a better place. What I see in Pelosi, Reid and the modern Democratic party is a dysfunctional team.
When I criticize Pelosi and Reid for their failure to support Obama in his first Congress, you tell me that they “outmovemented” BHO. OK. Obama, so far, has not been a movement politician. Now three years after his election, I do not see an Obama “movement.” In our own state, who represents Obama? You and I can easily identify politicians with strong Clinton connections. As 2012 approaches, there are movement politicians across the US. So far, however, the progressive movement has outmovemented Obama and we have all lost.
Movements are LOCAL, something the Obama campaign has failed to understand. The Dems sorta get it but the “movement” they are still stuck in died a long time ago … the labor:bourgeois liberal coalition is not a movement. Middle class professionals send THEIR kids to private schools or live in selective communities. The tax system is set up to protect the bourgeois liberals .. although not as much as it protects the über wealthy right. Todays “civil rights” leaders are buppies and fashionable gays … they have no common cause with the SEIU and much less with the AFL.
Stick gay marriage in the labor union faces and support the NEA vs. the middle class parents and you EFF UP.
In contrast, the The Koch/Tea party is a weird team built on the foundations of a local political soil largely abandoned by Obama AND by the Dems. That local soil is what makes a robot candidate like Romney viable.