But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Quote of the Day
Brilliant article in the NY TImes summarizes our disappointment in Obama. He is not the man we hoped he was.
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2 comments:
Amen.
Reply by columnist James Rainey in today's L.A. Times - On the Media: Left's attacks on Obama may underestimate him. Excerpts:
"You knew it would be a rough week for President Obama when one of the sharpest attacks began, not in the familiar precincts on the right, but in the New York Times' Sunday Review section, where an extra-long cover piece bemoaned the president's lack of leadership, fire and philosophical core.
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"But even as a meta-narrative, 'Democrats Eating Their Own,' begins to take form, other liberals are pushing back against the Obama the Meek trope, arguing for a more fulsome look at what brought the country, and economy, to its current state of wretched dysfunction. Front and center in the rebuttal: exploding the theory that more passion and conviction, alone, would have produced more victories.
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"Westen's take landed with enough force to prompt a spate of rebuttals, most notably from Jonathan Chait in the New Republic online. Chait reality-tested several historical analogies and chastised what he called 'a parody of liberal fantasizing.'
"Chait set about to explode the notion that the president — through dint of passion and speechifying alone — can blow aside fierce congressional opposition and special interest lobbying. He mocked the idea that 'uncompromising liberal success' would ensue if Obama merely deployed the 'awesome weapon' of his own rhetoric.
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"[Andrew] Sprung, blogging at Xpostfactoid, compared Obama's challengers on the left to Martin Luther King Jr.'s critics during the civil rights era. 'Let's not forget that many African Americans at times regarded King as an appeasing sellout, much as many progressives now see Obama as one,' Sprung wrote. 'The Panthers and the Nation of Islam were more satisfying to many. King called out his adversaries, but he never shrank from engaging with them. Neither has Obama — though the results have not always been what his base could have wished.'
"And recall: One of the last occasions when cataclysmic failure was predicted for Obama came when the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. Pundits across the spectrum were sure he had no chance of passing a healthcare bill. Just months later, he signed into law a compromise that eventually will expand care to 35 million Americans."
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