Letter 2 America for February 1, 2013

Dear America,

As it turns out, perhaps Barrack Obama's worst enemy is his own party.  It looked during his last term as though he was throwing away his presidency with both hands as he capitulated and cultivated his adversaries, but it must be remembered that his party had control of both houses of congress when he took office, and for a period of time in 2009, the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in The Senate as well as the majority and the speaker-ship in The House.  With that kind of fire power, they should have been able to work their and The President's will pretty much unhampered.  But that didn't happen.  Instead, Mr. Obama and the Democrats were forced to accept insurance reform instead of a single payer system that would have ensured medical care for everyone.  The Affordable Care Act was an advance in that regard, but it was half a loaf, and the other half remains to be gotten... by this president or perhaps the next if we're lucky.  Then there was Dodd-Frank, which was intended to reign in the financial industry so as to prevent future disasters like the one that we are still digging out from under.  It was designed to make the banks responsible for their own failures and to prevent some of the abuses that still to this day, no one has gone to jail for.  It was to impose the Volcker Rule, which would ban or at least limit proprietary trading--that is trading for the benefit of the bank rather than for account holders--by the big banks, but with the help of the Republican Party, that provision...the central provision...of Dodd-Frank has yet to be implemented because the period of legislative hegemony from which the Democrats benefited with the health care reform bill expired before they could do much about Dodd-Frank, what with conservative Democrats aiding the Republicans in their stalling tactics.  Despite fulminations to the effect that partisan agreement could be attained in a matter of days by Republicans like Senator Saxby Chamblis, it couldn't be, and in the end, the bill took months to pass, and when it did it was so watered down that none of its goals was actually realized.  The proponents' notion with regard to financial responsibility for failures was that the biggest banks would fund an escrow account to be reserved for bailing them out when they were on the verge of failure, and it also was to create a system by which they could be liquidated and no tainted lucre would accrue to anyone who profited from the bad behavior.  But the Republicans prevented that kind of provision, which was intended to put the banks' own money at risk rather than that of the taxpayers.  It got eliminated on the absurd Republican conservative complex (Rcc) premise that it invited failure by providing for a way out.  So, despite a period that could have been worthy of FDR, we got half measures that favored the plutocrats who control our politics, and we got a president who looked for all the world like a poor alternative to Hillary Clinton.

The 2010 elections buttressed the impression that President Obama was a weakling and a failure as he took just the opposite course from the one he should have taken.  Instead of realizing that compromise means to Republicans that they get everything they want and you learn to like it, he hired Bill Daley, a former J.P. Morgan executive, as his chief of staff and tried even harder to cultivate his adversaries...an effort that demonstrated itself to be just another failure in short order.  So The President turned in the only direction left to him...toward the electorate.  He went out on the trail and told The People exactly what had happened so that they had something to believe besides the Rcc and Republican propaganda that was as much out right lies as it was dogma and political doctrine.  He stopped conceding the debate and pointed out that we've had thirty years of supply side economics as the rich have gotten richer while the workers of the world have stood still.  He demonstrated that the failure of compromise as a political motif in Washington wasn't his doing, but was rather the constant obstructionism of the Rcc and the Republicans, and the American people finally understood what was happening.  But what got left out of all of that was the role of the "blue dogs" within The President's own party, and about that he could do nothing as the only alternative to them was more Republicans.  Now, Mr. Obama has prevailed and the election of 2012 has given him a mandate that is being reinforced by all the polls, and he is using it rather than trying to be a nice guy and invite the Republicans into the tent.  He has set the stage for a victory on immigration reform, and the Republicans were effectively hamstrung...until Harry Reid gave up his promised reform of senate rules regarding the filibuster.  Now, The President has staked out his position on immigration reform, in particular that there will be no preconditions to the changes needed in the form of border strengthening requirements.  He has the power to say that because his administration has done more in that regard than any administration in the past twenty years, and the facts make that abundantly clear, but despite the fact that he has the public's ear on the substance of the matter, the Republicans still have the filibuster, thanks to Harry Reid and the blue dog types within the Democratic Party.  So, while he will send a proposed bill to The Senate, the Republicans can thwart him with the filibuster and persistent distortions of fact that they will gradually turn into public perceptions if they can keep it up long enough.  Once again, the Democrats are poised to sabotage their own president and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and it's all because they are afraid of failure and a return to the minority in The Senate.  And ironically, this course they have chosen is probably the only way that they could guaranty such an advent.  The progressive agenda will fail once again to be implemented, and both the opportunity to make progress in our nation toward a genuine social conscience and the majority in The Senate along with the trend toward recapturing The House will be wasted.  Eventually, the voting public will come to accept the notion that even when they vote Democrat, what they get is Republican governance, and they will get sick of trying to give the Democrats the opportunity to lead.

But take heart.  In two years, that is in 2014, there will be another election, and if the Democrats can hold onto The Senate then, they will get another opportunity to use the power that the electorate keeps giving them.  Let's hope that by then, someone over there has learned the lesson that Barrack Obama did.

Your friend,

Mike