« The best of both worlds | Main | A moment of wild surmise »

Whistling past the graveyard...

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday December 2, 2008 08:08 PM

... of Pwog hopes is one Robert Creamer, on Alternet:

Clues Obama Won't Govern Center-Right

Should progressives beware? Has Barack Obama suckered them into supporting a President who will really govern from the "center-right"? The short answer is no.

The long answer is another 1,000 chirpy words from the Creamery. Sample:
... all of the polls show that the November election represented a complete repudiation of right wing Bush-Cheney top-down economics and their Neo-Con foreign policy....

Obama ran a campaign that clearly and unequivocally described priorities that will turn American in a fundamentally progressive direction. His cabinet picks indicate that he will surround himself with people who have experience ... But they do not in any way diminish the fact that America is demanding -- and Obama intends to enact -- a sweeping progressive program the likes of which we have not seen since the New Deal.

...Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are. It once again resides in the traditional progressive center that has defined America's promise since Thomas Jefferson penned its founding document over 200 years ago.

There's a phrase that often occurs to me when I read this kind of dribble. I sternly ration myself to one use of it per year, and now is the time:

Where do you start with this stuff?

Granted that the public is in some sense to the left of the elites -- a proposition I have no problem believing -- how on earth does Creamer manage to infer the further proposition that Barack will do the public's will -- that he "intends to enact" what the public wants?

You can read the whole thing if you like, but I'll tell you right now, Creamer doesn't bridge the logical gap. He doesn't even try to. He just asserts it: the public wants change. So Obama will obviously "enact" change.

It simply must be so.

Don't even get me started with that vomitous high-school graduation stuff about Marse Tom Jefferson and the "promise" and the "founding document" -- I don't have enough carpets that I can afford to eat any of them.

Comments (5)

peter:

I clicked the link just to make sure you didn't make that name up.

MJS:

Yeah. Heh, as Beavis says. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.

And I wish I could have made it up, but reality is always more extravagant than our most abandoned imaginings.

"the traditional progressive center"

How do you summon the will to read this stuff?

I'm glad you do, but it can't be easy...

Peter Ward:

They also feature an article of Katrina vanden Huevel's praising Obama for "good judgment" for "opposing" the war. And continuing by admonishing him for his "terrible pick" in selecting Robert Gates as if Obama were simply a bit confused and not acting toward a particular goal--the maintenance and expansion of US empire.

Taking the recent proliferation of advertising as a key indicator, I think it will only be a matter of time before Alternet becomes completely liberalized.

kali yuga:

If you really want a laugh, check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/5rcvzq

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Tuesday December 2, 2008 08:08 PM.

The previous post in this blog was The best of both worlds.

The next post in this blog is A moment of wild surmise.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31