Author: Patrick

In other words a repeat of what happened in 1968?

It could very well be.

First the Unions, now this…

First a report from ABC News:

The frustrations and the fears that progressives feel about President Obama were on full display Thursday as thousands of them flocked to Minneapolis for the sixth annual Netroots Nation conference.

Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold said he hoped that Obama will be re-elected, but he urged the president to stand up to corporate interests, demanding that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling become a focal point of the 2012 campaign.

“Sometimes we have to be very direct with the Democratic Party. Just as you have long pushed our Democrats to stand up for their ideals, I’m here this evening to ask you to redouble your efforts because I fear that the Democratic Party is in danger of losing its identity,” Feingold said in his keynote address to a crowd of around 2,400 progressive activists and bloggers here at the Minneapolis Convention Center, the most ever for the event.

Specifically, Feingold ripped Priorities USA, a super political action committee started last spring by former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton.

“I think it’s a mistake for us to take the argument that they like to make that, ‘Well, what we’re going to do now is, we’re going to take the corporate money like the Republicans do and then after we win, we’ll change it.’ When’s the last time anyone did that? Most people don’t change the rules after they win by them. It doesn’t usually happen. It never happens,” Feingold said. “You know what? I think we’ll lose anyway if we do this. We’ll lose our soul when it comes to the issue of corporate domination. People will see us as weak. People will see us as corporate-lite. We’ll gut our message. I think it’s not just wrong, I think it’s a dumb strategy. It’s dumb because people will not believe us if we do this, so I strongly disagree with those who are trying to create these PACs. I know people want to win. I understand that. I like to win, too. And I know that today’s Republican party has found more ways to play dirty, so I empathize with the desire to fight fire with fire, but Democrats should just never be in the business of taking unlimited corporate contributions. It’s dancing with the devil and it’s a game that we will never win.”

“It’s not just campaigns and contributions,” Feingold noted. “We have to say to the president, ‘Mr. President, Jeff Immelt is not the right guy – the CEO of GE is not the right guy to be running your Jobs & Competitiveness Council, not when your company doubled its profits, increased his compensation, and asked its workers to take huge pay and benefits cuts.”

Then, there is this; seems like the White House and grass roots are talking past one another — Via The Hill:

President Obama’s communications czar sought to soothe frustrated liberals Friday, telling them Obama needs their support to win reelection.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer faced a grilling during an appearance at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal bloggers and activists meeting this year in Minneapolis.

Pfeiffer faced tough questions from Kaili Joy Gray, an associate editor for the liberal blog Daily Kos, who often reacted to the communications director’s answers to questions with an audible sigh or a skeptical, elongated “OK.”

(“Frankly, we’re all a little sick of hearing about that one,” Gray said of Pfeiffer’s mentions of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.) Hecklers sometimes interjected during the Q-and-A, voicing their skepticism toward Pfeiffer and accusing him of being evasive in his answers.

Pfeiffer admitted that the administration has been “frustrated” with its critics on the left, but pleaded for their support heading into 2012.

“We can either work together and finish that work that we started in 2008 or we can be relegated back to the sidelines and see what a Republican president … does to this country,” he said at the event, which was streamed online.

Pfeiffer said that Obama is “absolutely” counting on his liberal base to turn out in 2012.

It’s no secret that liberals have been frustrated with the Obama White House, which has differed with the left on a host of foreign policy and economic issues.

The administration also has sometimes been frustrated with its liberal supporters.

This friction was perhaps best reflected in former press secretary Robert Gibbs’s criticism of the “professional left” in an interview with The Hill last year. The comments sparked outrage from progressive activists who saw that phrase as derogatory.

“Sometimes when our friends attack us, we get frustrated,” Pfeiffer said of the White House’s relationship with the left.

“I also know that beyond that, without a lot of the people in this room today, Barack Obama would not be president of the United States,” he said at the outset of the program.]

What you are seeing here; is what the CIA refers to as “Blowback.”  For every action, there is a reaction and consequence for that action.  You simply cannot straight lie to, or overreach in your promises to your base of voters and then when the election is over and you have won that election; tell your base to “kiss off” and show them to the door.  When you do this, you lose support.  You would think that Democrats would have learned this lesson, when Bill Clinton was in office; but I guess the Democrats are not the party of learning.

This is not to say that Republicans have never done this; sure, they have — President Ronald Reagan did this back during his run for the White House back in the 1980’s with the Christian Coalition.  Reagan gave the Conservative Christian group a place at the table, listened to their concerns; gave them some lip service and proceeded to ignore every one of their issues.  Truth is the only reason Reagan won that second term is that the Democrats ran a lousy candidate.

This is not to say that Ronald Reagan could not bring people together, that he could do.  However, he was not one that was going to be told what to do by any particular group.  That is because Ronald Reagan knew that he was the President of the United States and not the President of the Republican Party or the Conservative Christian community.  This is the same lesson that President Barack Obama is learning now in the White House and the lesson that the progressive community also has to learn.  That is, that the President of the United States of America is the President of the people; all of the people, not just the progressives that worked to get him in there.

This is not to say that I am not empathic to their frustrations; believe me when I say that I am.  I understand how they feel; those grass roots people worked very hard to get this President into the White House and now they feel like they have been conned.  The problem was not that these were stupid or anything of that sort.  The problem is that the President knew what he was doing; in other words, he was stringing them along like little sheep and them, desiring a change from the previous President; ate it up.  In other words, they were played and were played hard.

This is not to say that this is first time that this has happened; nor will it be the last.  As long as there is a Democratic Party and as long as there are people foolish enough to believe that millionaire limousine liberals honestly give two flips about them, this will continue to happen.  You ask, “What about the Republican Party?  Do they not do this?”  In a sense, they do, but usually, Republicans are not standing around with their hands open, wanting a handout from the Government.  If any at all, the business owners and individuals in that party seek relief from an oppressive tax system that makes their lives miserable.  Sometimes they get relief and sometimes they get lip service — as they did with George H.W. Bush, of who also was not elected to a second term.

The point is here, that when lip service and lies happen in the Republican Party, most of the time, things happen, as in elections are lost.  In the Democratic Party, it is considered business as usual.

Others: CNN, The Politico, The Nation, Hot Air, Taylor Marsh, Shakesville, Balloon Juice, The Gateway Pundit, TPMDC and FrumForum, The Moderate Voice, The Note, Washington Post, CNN, Weasel Zippers and The Daily Caller — more via Memeornadum