I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the President while he was campaigning. My problem with him since then is that he doesn’t appear to be the same person. We as progressives deal in a media environment in which the assumption is that we are a conservative country. This despite much evidence to the contrary. And there is some evidence that the GOP is misreading the public in this way again. Mike Lillis via Andrew Sullivan:
But while Republicans are hoping Brown’s victory foreshadows a GOP landslide, a number of political experts are warning that the country’s restless anxiety — as evidenced not only in Massachusetts, but in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Florida as well — is less a backlash against Democrats in particular than a rebuke of the business-as-usual politics of Capitol Hill in general. Even as unemployment soared and housing markets tanked, voters have watched lawmakers bicker endlessly over a stimulus bill that proved too small and a health reform proposal that remains unfinished. Meanwhile, the banks have bounced back on the wings of a taxpayer bailout, paying out billions of dollars in employee bonuses this month while the jobs crisis outside Wall Street only worsens. In such an environment, some experts caution, incumbents on both sides of the aisle could find themselves surprisingly vulnerable in November.
I have no doubt that he will give a stemwinder of a speech. I’m just not sure what he really stands for anymore. I want to see him fight. He will bring up again a call to end DADT, but we’ve heard this before. He will announce some spending freezes. He is beginning to play more and more on the conservative side of the field. I hope we see a change in this. Not just from the speech, but from his actions.
I’m still bewildered by the Democratic Party’s inability to pass anything progressive or within a fairly centrist Democratic Party agenda. We shouldn’t go Bill Clinton’s way. No small ball. The country needs more.
As an aside, can anyone tell me the last major piece of progressive/liberal legislation that has been passed in the country.
