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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 7 October 2012
“With the election seemingly in the bag, Obama was tempted to run out the clock.”
Obama wins? So what?
We’ve all seen the first presidential debate. Barack Obama was flat as a bug on Mitt Romney’s windshield. But I don’t think it changed anything. I’m going out on a very shaky limb and say Obama is still going to win.
For a day or two the commentators might feign surprise at how close the election got overnight. I don’t believe it. I think Mitt Romney has about as much chance of becoming president as Pussy Riot does of headlining the opening ceremonies at Sochi.
With the election seemingly in the bag, Obama was tempted to run out the clock. He thought all he had to do in the debates was take a knee three times while Romney twisted himself into knots running away from all the extreme positions he was forced to take to get the nomination, and never really believed in anyway, insofar as that political polygamist believes in anything other than Mitt Romney. But playing defense isn’t working. Obama needs to make this election about something.
The next month is his opportunity. I still believe the American people will say no to the thugs and extremists who have seized control of the Grand Old Party. They’ll say no even when the face of that party is a bland white guy who’s about as scary as Liberace.
But what are they saying yes to?
I’m not privy to the workings of the big brains in Obama’s war room, but if they’re serious about winning, they need to spare a little bandwidth to come up with a few progressive ideas they intend to implement when they do.
I’m no wonk, but here are a couple of thoughts to get that conversation started.
Mitt Romney said, in an unguarded moment, that 47% of the people are basically less than full citizens because they pay no federal taxes. It’s a cruel thought, but he has a point. Half the people pay no income tax because they have microscopic incomes. Therefore I propose:
Raise the minimum wage to ten dollars an hour. Once we do that, tax all income from the first dollar at five percent. Every working citizen a taxpayer, every working person makes a somewhat less than miserable wage. And everyone has a financial stake in the government.
Social Security needs fixing, the conservatives aren’t wrong about that. But killing it by privatizing it is not the answer.
The right way to secure Social Security is to remove the ridiculous cap on the Social Security tax. That tax should apply to all incomes, from the first dollar to the billionth and beyond. That one, simple fix nearly cures all that ails our national old age pension.
Obamacare has been a huge bone of contention. The conservatives don’t know what it is, but they hate it. The progressives know what it’s not, and they hate it.
Here’s the way out of that box. Half-socialized medicine. I say half because we’ll always have two-tiered health care. The rich will always get all the health care they can buy.
Obama can call it the public option or Medicare for all or socialized medicine; he can call it what he likes. It’s not important what he calls it, it’s important that he calls for it. It’s yet another chance to make his victory about something.
Obama can’t afford to spend the next month playing defense while Mitt drools all over himself trying to speak out of both sides of his mouth with a forked tongue. If he wants to move the country forward in his second term, he has to do more than win. He has to make it crystal clear to the Republicans, you lost.
The GOP didn’t get that message in 2008. They were so sure a miscarriage of justice had deprived them of the power that is theirs by divine right, they refused to recognize the results of that election. They treated Obama like a hostile foreign power, unworthy even of diplomatic relations.
The Republicans are in such deep denial that they actually believe a majority of the nation agrees with them. They have repeatedly and explicitly called this election “a referendum on Obama.”
Well we’re going to have that referendum, and Obama is probably going to win. Again. I believe the Republican party is going to receive an anti-mandate from the American people on November 6th.
I still believe Obama is going to win; it’s all over but the counting.
But when he wins, will it count?
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ABOUT Allan Goldstein
Allan Goldstein lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jordan, and a minimum of two cats. His op-ed newspaper column,“Caught off Base,” has appeared in San Francisco’s West Portal Monthly for the past decade. Satire, invective and humor are specialties.
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By Aviva Shen
9 comments on "Obama wins? So what?"
October 08, 2012 8:42am
I don't know what Obama's problem is, but he does have to show more backbone in fighting for the working Americans. Perhaps he's just nervous and unsure in debates. Perhaps he's tried too hard to compromise with the Republicans.
Perhaps, as the first black (or half-black) president, he's tried too hard to be agreeable. Well, he'll never satisfy the Republican racists who will hate him because he's a black guy in the White House, period. So he'd better think about pleasing all the white voters who supported him because his policies were friendlier to their class; in doing that, he'll also please the black voters who were ecstatic (and rightly so) about his election.
He'd better remember those who voted for him, and why they did, and forget about appeasing the Tea Party yahoos. If he wants to do the right thing. If he wants to be remembered (say, as the president who finally ushered in universal health care), he'd better gird himself and fight for what he believes in.
Americans don't want appeasers of racists and billionaires to represent them.
Remember that, please, Mr. President.
October 07, 2012 2:03pm
The disappointment that is Obama was certainly foreseeable, but his complete sellout to the banks exceeds even the extremely low expectations I had when he was elected. We just had the biggest financial scandal in history. U.S. net worth declined 40%, yet prosecutions for financial crimes are at 20 - 30 year lows.
Meanwhile, like many writers on the "left," Goldstein seems to believe that taxes fund government, or pay for Social Security. This is fundamentally incorrect.
Where do the taxpayers get the money to pay taxes if the government doesn't spend it out into the economy first? And where do the dollars come from when those Chinese and domestic "lenders" buy bonds?
Answer: The government is the monopoly producer of dollars, and the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by *anything* except how much the economy produces to purchase. The taxes make the money valuable (dollars retire an inevitable liability), they do *not* fund government.
Even this blog published a summary of a more correct viewpoint here: http://www.nationofchange.org/enlightened-economics-there-alternative-13...
Also recommended is Professor Randall Wray's post about this: http://rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household...
"Money" quote from Wray: "With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since. Since 1776 there have been exactly seven periods of substantial budget surpluses and significant reduction of the debt. From 1817 to 1821 the national debt fell by 29 percent; from 1823 to 1836 it was eliminated (Jackson’s efforts); from 1852 to 1857 it fell by 59 percent, from 1867 to 1873 by 27 percent, from 1880 to 1893 by more than 50 percent, and from 1920 to 1930 by about a third. Of course, the last time we ran a budget surplus was during the Clinton years. I do not know any household that has been able to run budget deficits for approximately 190 out of the past 230-odd years, and to accumulate debt virtually nonstop since 1837.
... The United States has also experienced six periods of depression. The depressions began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929. (Do you see any pattern? Take a look at the dates listed above.) With the exception of the Clinton surpluses, every significant reduction of the outstanding debt has been followed by a depression, and every depression has been preceded by significant debt reduction. The Clinton surplus was followed by the Bush recession, a speculative euphoria, and then the collapse in which we now find ourselves. The jury is still out on whether we might manage to work this up to yet another great depression. While we cannot rule out coincidences, seven surpluses followed by six and a half depressions (with some possibility for making it the perfect seven) should raise some eyebrows. And, by the way, our less serious downturns have almost always been preceded by reductions of federal budget deficits. I don’t know of any case of a national depression caused by a household budget surplus."
October 07, 2012 10:54am
Imagine standing next to a man in a debate that starts off not only lying, but deliberatly changes what he has said for the past many months. Not only that, but that man has diarreah of the mouth-he just won't stop talking. He ignores the moderator of the debate over and over, won't stop at his time limit, interrupts continuously. This is not situation where anyone would feel comfortable facing. What to do? Be as bombastic as the other fellow is being? Have diarreah of the mouth and not give that man a chance to speak ? Seems like that is the only way to stop him-unless you are honorable, a gentleman, who knows you have told the truth and have been presenting it the people of the country for months, and through the acts you have managed to push through before being met by a Congress determined to destroy your efforts. Perhaps the best choice is that, and to continue going straight to the people, bypassing this egocentric liar and hope the American People have the sense to see through the lies. AT the same time, you could show more backbone, look the audience in the eye, show the courage of your convictions in your manerisms (maybe even get a phychologist to explain how manerisms transmit their own message to an audience)-all that would help, certainly. And I hope Obama does just that.
October 07, 2012 10:41am
0 minutes ago Collapse
If the debate had been judged on points, and there had been a deduction for distortions and outright lies, Romney might well have ended up with a negative score number.
October 07, 2012 10:59am
Right you are! It takes a certain amount of practice and expertise to tell 27 lies in 38 minutes. That expertise in lying should- I say SHOULD--scare the pants off those who were thinking of voting for Robme.
Although I think Ryan may have outdone him during the speech he gave at the REpublican Convention. Since the lies GW told to get us into two unfunded, illegal and immoral wars doesn't seem to resonate with the Republicans, I doubt either Robme or Ryan will impress them with these new lies coming from their own candidate.
October 07, 2012 9:45am
Robert Becker is right, i think.
I think the worst thing about Obama's presidency is that in 2016 the voters will be very tired of the Democrats and so will pick a Republican. So the net effect will have been to extend the lifetime of the wars and the hundreds of useless foreign bases by 8 years.
But the reality is, if we can't learn from the most economically successful country on this planet (China) that the key to prosperity is a small military, no foreign bases and no foreign wars, then we will continue to spiral downwards.
October 07, 2012 12:03pm
"I still believe the American people will say no to the thugs and extremists who have seized control of the Grand Old Party. They’ll say no even when the face of that party is a bland white guy who’s about as scary as Liberace."
What is scary about a bland white guy who's about as scary as Liberace, is that someone-Who?-some, unelected someone we don't know, and didn't vote for, is pulling his strings. The scary Liberace guy wants to be President, but at what cost to the nation? He has no coherent policy, no conviction, no integrity or honesty, nothing but a burning desire to be elevated to "king." There is nothing in a business background that expects morality, conscience or even empathy. His background speaks only to his ability to skim, skimp, and skeletonize-which he says he intends to do to the nation. "Cut out all things that we must borrow money from China to do." He did not mention our military, only PBS and Medicare-the "infrastructure" of our economy. When did we become a militant nation who's only manufacturing base is weapons of war and destruction-economic and human destruction? Regardless of how "scary" this guy might seem, we should be scared of anyone who cannot show his hands because the strings might show.
October 07, 2012 9:32am
the best lack all conviction
"Obama needs to make this election about something."
Since he hasn't made his presidency about something significant, other than halfway health care and dicey domestic checks on the worst of Bushism, why would you expect him to make this election about "something"? You still are drinking the Koolaid that Obama is about something beyond himself and conventional political party power centers. Holding power is the "there there" and you enhance his presidency because it's far less onerous than the GOP juggernaut. Though different from the void of Romney, Obama shies away from true content, or programs that would help people (item: the failed mortgage support program). And thus lacks vision and scope.
To be a good debater in this sort of theatrical debate (less about ideas than perceived conviction and power rhetoric), it matters if you transmit the impression you believe in something like values. What Obama's debate performance spoke to his absence of conviction, especially as Lakoff would say, his failure to make politics a moral quest driven by actual human values (progressive or otherwise). The conviction void that is Obama was on full display, and it wasn't pretty.
October 07, 2012 12:18pm
I have to disagree with your assessment that Obama lacks a moral compass. I think he has been consistent in his speeches about where his compass guides him. However, he is not as well versed as Bill Clinton at explaining himself extemporaneously. His speeches show well though out, cohesive and coherent ideas, but on the stump, he moves from almost making a valid point, to another topic without completing the moral argument. It happens at times to people who have many points to make but have been brought "into the weeds" but the audacity of their opponents mendacity. I have argued with many family members who use ad hominum attacks, circuitous logic, and "bullying" tactics to redirect the argument from the issues, to attacks on the person. They are impossible arguments to win because first, one must either argue their flawed logic, and second, one must get back to the principles and issues at hand. It is difficult at best, for a principled person-a person who thinks rationally, to enter this kind of "emotion" driven personal attack using baseless reasoning, and irrational" logic." That is why Obama lost. That is why he is better making his case on the campaign trail, than side-by-side, in person. Romney "won" by lying about everything he has said up to now, and by pummeling the President for not getting done what GOP obstruction prevented-because the entire GOP wanted Obama to fail, more than they want the nation to succeed.