In case you haven't already seen it, this article on President Obama's inner circle is a must read.
The Obama Administration has done some great things. There is no question about that. But the Democratic Party and it's core values are going to suffer a dramatic setback if the White House and Congressional Dems don't get their act together. If we don't make more progress on strengthening the Middle Class (read: jobs and finishing health care), this will go down in history as the moment elected Democrats let the future slip away.
David Axelrod has every reason to be very proud of the work he did in mayoral campaigns in the late 1980. But that was 20 years ago. Attitudes have changes, and the Great Recession demands urgency. The fierce urgency of now. Not the timid mediocrity of "that's not the way we roll."
As far as Rahm Emanuel goes, actions speak letter than expletive - heavy words. And once again, the 90's really are over. The country is different. The Democratic Party is different. Avoiding a much more powerful grassroots coalition and a winning message is not the mark of a "pragmatist" or a "realist." It's the mark of someone whose Beltway Goggles have blinded them to the changes that have taken place in front of them.
There is no shortage of talent that could be elevated or tapped into on a much more regular basis.
David Plouffe's recent op - ed was right on the money.
Austan Goolsbee is a very effective surrogate.
Jared Bernstein and Melody Barnes are already working in the administration. Mike Lux worked in the Clinton Administration.
Robert Kuttner and Jacob Hacker are respected policy wonks who are also politically savvy.
President Obama has all of the potential in the world, but it's just not coming together. The Administration's needs to change, and soon. It's hard to see how that happens without something of a staff shake - up.
Political Wire notes that the rhetorical knives are out for Rahm Emanuel. Set aside Emanuel's use of the "R - word." He shouldn't have used it, and it's good that he's apologized for it. That isn't the real issue here.
The reason progressive and mainstream Democrats are becoming more vocal about Rahm is straightforward: The White House has made a number of major mistakes where there is little room for error, and it's poised to repeat them.
You know, one thing that led to so much disaster in the Bush White House was that Republicans refused to speak out when their leader was wrong. Instead of trying to change some of the mistakes he was making, they rubber-stamped every single wish of that President. That was particularly dangerous to our country when the Republican Party controlled both the Congress and the White House. That attitude caused many of the failed policies that got us into two wars incompetently, and crashed the economy.
The title of this diary comes from today's report in The Hill by Alexander Bolton. And reading the article just plain pisses me off.
Several senior Senate Democrats have intensified their push for Howard Dean to become the next secretary of Health and Human Services, but the effort has run into what Dean allies call Democratic "family politics."
(A big thank you to Howard Dean! :D - promoted by poligirl)
I remember after the loss of 04, listening to Howard Dean talking about his vision for the future of our party and vehemently supporting him for the Chair of the DNC. His message was quite different than the strategies that were used by the DLC in the Clinton years. Dr. Dean believed that we should fight in every state in the union and if we showed up to fight, we win. As DNC chair, he fought for that strategy and netted huge results despite constant critisizm and calls for his removal.
In my previous entry I reported, courtesy of REAL News, on what Rahm Emanuel's appointment to be president-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff means. Simply put, it means that Palestinians are stuck with yet another American executive who thinks Israel can do no wrong and that it'll be a cold day in Hell before he'll even try to behave fairly toward them.
Those who made excuses for Emanuel, claiming it's simply a "pragmatic" move to ensure the White House has a tough guy with whom to bully recalcitrant GOPhers, are living in a dream world. They refuse to accept that the appointment of Emanuel, an extreme right-wing Democrat with a history of using his position in the House of Representatives to bully left-wingers and run vicious primary campaigns against them from the right, reflects Obama's impending hard-right style of governance. Now Obamabots have another jerk to make excuses for: Jane Harman, another Bush dog. Earlier this year, she voted to give telecommunications companies that aided the shrub in his illegal domestic spying program immunity from prosecution. This is not surprising, since Obama himself also believes it's okay to let criminals get away with snooping through your communications without warrants or judicial oversight.
And while pseudo-liberals busy themselves trying to stamp out all criticism of their golden calf, Obama - who collected more corporate money than his Republican counterpart, John McCain, did throughout the presidential campaign - is likely going to use it as an excuse to "delay" (read: bury) all hope of passing health care reform, domestic spending, and other vital actions necessary to pull America back from the brink. This is in spite of calls from more than 15,000 physicians to pass a health care bill that works.
A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to "do the right thing" and enact a single-payer national health insurance plan, a system of public health care financing frequently characterized as "an improved Medicare for all."
"Our country is hailing the remarkable and historic victory of Barack Obama and the mandate for change the electorate has awarded him," said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.
"In large measure Sen. Obama's victory and the victories of his allies in the House and Senate were propelled by mounting public worries about health care," he said. "Yet the prescription offered during the campaign by the president-elect and most Democratic policy makers - a hybrid of private health insurance plans and government subsidies - will not resolve the problems of our dangerously dysfunctional system.
"We've seen such hybrids repeatedly fail in state-based experiments over the past 20 years in Oregon, Minnesota, Washington and several other states, including Massachusetts, whose second go-round at incremental reform is already faltering," Young said.
"The only effective cure for our health care woes is to establish a single, publicly financed system, one that removes the inefficient, wasteful, for-profit private health insurance industry from the picture," he said. "Single payer has a proven track record of success - Medicare being just one example - and is the only medically and fiscally responsible course of action to take."
Young, who points out recent polls showing a majority of American physicians supporting single-payer health insurance, went on to state:
"We see no value in trying to bail out the private health insurance industry, an unsustainable system of financing care that has outlived its usefulness," he said. "By contrast, a single-payer plan would provide direct and much-needed relief to millions of American households at a time of great economic hardship."
"Only a single-payer system can achieve the goal of comprehensive and affordable care for all," he said, noting that the estimated $350 billion administrative savings realized by replacing private insurers would be enough to cover all of the country's uninsured and to end co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. "This would be the perfect way for President Obama to get the country back on track."
Obama's plan, however, falls far short of universal coverage, and allows people to game the system by waiting until they get sick to sign up for insurance, thereby driving up costs. What's more, with the bailout throwing taxpayer money away on salvaging corporate profits, Obama is ensuring that even this pitiful excuse for health care reform is unlikely to be passed. There is something we can do, however. Ralph Nader and other progressives have laid the groundwork to hit Congress from all sides, thus applying pressure on the Legislature to do its job of representing the interests of all Americans.
Check out the web site linked to above, and find out how you can add your voice to the thousands already gearing up to hold Democrats' feet to the proverbial fire.
