As I watched the election results last night, I was paying particular attention to North Carolina and it’s Amendment One vote. Amendment One is a bill that would ban Same Sex marriages, it also bans rights for Civil Unions whether your Gay or Strait. Understand that North Carolina already has a ban on Same Sex marriages. So what is this bill really about? It’s about denying human rights to couples of both persuasions. Rights like health benefits, visitation rights at [...]]]>

As I watched the election results last night, I was paying particular attention to North Carolina and it’s Amendment One vote. Amendment One is a bill that would ban Same Sex marriages, it also bans rights for Civil Unions whether your Gay or Strait. Understand that North Carolina already has a ban on Same Sex marriages. So what is this bill really about? It’s about denying human rights to couples of both persuasions. Rights like health benefits, visitation rights at hospitals, and even parental rights for divorced families. Imagine living with your soon to be wife/husband and they become deathly ill only to be denied access to them because your not family, or the doctor can’t discuss options with you that may affect both you and your love one. How silly and cruel is that? As the results came in, the amendment won by a 20% margin (60% in favor of the ban, 40% against).

Wow! North Carolina is a progressive state and more importantly a swing state in this coming Presidential election. How could this be? Either one of two things happened. Black people either didn’t come out to vote or took the supposedly high moral road. It’s probably a little of both. Either way it’s irresponsible. Homophobia in our community runs hard and deep. Gay rights in my opinion is both a human rights issue and a civil rights issue. Who are we to deny that from anyone one. We not to long ago had to fight the same battles, in fact we’re still fighting to maintain the rights that we have. I don’t agree with abortions, but I don’t have the right to decide what you do with a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her. I’m a straight black male, who am I to discriminate against a gay couple?

Forgive me Father, but I see a moral issue on both sides of this debate. The problem here is that most of us are one sided on this issue. What is moral about denying ones human rights?

I as much as most straight  Black men have been silent on this issue for fear of being stigmatized for defending Gay rights. I won’t stand on the sidelines anymore while rights are taken away from others just because I don’t like their lifestyle or the choices they make. Neither should you! We need to stop being so one sided and look at the big picture.

In the end, the good Black folks of North Carolina was used by a right wing agenda to further their cause. A agenda to take as many rights from us as possible. One by one they are attempting to diminish your voice. Voting rights, Abortion rights, Contraceptive and healthcare, and the list goes on. It’s an attack on all of us. This amendment was never about a ban on Same Sex marriages, it’s already law. This amendment was about taking more of OUR freedoms away. Wake Up People!!!

By The Urban Politician

April 12, 2012

Why are we still spending money with Wal-mart? I know that they have better prices and you can get all of your household needs from them. It’s time to rethink that and watch who you spend your dollars with. Would you spend money with a business that uses their profits to push policies and laws that go against everything that you believe in? Of course not!  Well, if your spending money with Wal-mart, that’s what [...]]]>

By The Urban Politician

April 12, 2012

Why are we still spending money with Wal-mart? I know that they have better prices and you can get all of your household needs from them. It’s time to rethink that and watch who you spend your dollars with. Would you spend money with a business that uses their profits to push policies and laws that go against everything that you believe in? Of course not!  Well, if your spending money with Wal-mart, that’s what you’re doing.

Let’s follow the money….

For starters, Wal-Mart gives 97% percent of their political donations to the Republican Party and their causes. Check here to read article.

Let’s continue with Wal-Marts destructive policies against women. Not sure how many of you know that 1.5 million female workers filed a class action suit against Wal-Mart for gender discrimination in the workplace,  only to have their case thrown out by a 5-4 vote with the Conservative leaning Supreme Court.

Moving on…

Since the killing of Trayvon Martin, Stand your Ground laws in Florida and over two dozen states have been introduced to us. The debate has raged as whether this law was a good law or not. Most would agree that the application of this law is under serious review. I submit that this law is much too vague and allows vigilantism to flourish. If we look at the genesis of this law, you will find the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is at its core.

ALEC Founded in the early 1970s to promote right-wing policies at the state level, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s focus has shifted to favor the promotion of state legislation and regulation that benefits its corporate sponsors. A fact that should come as no surprise given its funding by right-wing foundations and corporate membership fees ranging from $5000 to $50,000. The council boasts a large clearinghouse of research, model bills, and legislative strategies to promote its agenda. Read more about ALEC,  Click here

To the point, ALEC is responsible for writing and promoting legislation such as Stand your Ground, Voter ID, privatizing the prison system and other public services. Wal-Mart among others sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board for ALEC.

How do we get involved…?

Colorofchange.org, an African American organization exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice. Their goal is to empower members – Black Americans and allies – to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black American s and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone. They have circulating a petition among its members and social media to stop ALEC’s corporate members from continuing to support.  As of today, Coke, Pepsi, Wendy’s, Intuit, and Kraft has pulled their support from ALEC.

Wal-Mart has so far refused and has no intentions on pulling their support from ALEC and its destructive policies. Why, because they haven’t seen a change in their profits. African Americans shop at their stores by the droves. We’re spending our money with a company that does not have our best interest in mind. It’s like their laughing at us in their board rooms, thinking that the best place to hide from African Americans is in broad daylight. Let’s show them differently.

It’s time to pull our support from Wal-Mart until it recognizes that it cannot continue to do business as usual. We are paying close attention and we will not continue to spend our hard earned money so that they can turn around and use our money on policies that have an adverse affect on our families and community at large.

Where’s the Movement? You’re Voice Counts!

The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin

 The recent killing of Trayvon Martin, while BEING BLACK and doing no wrong, has caught our attention and angered us all. Yet another young Black male gets killed with no justice.  How could this happen? Where is the justice? Fortunately, the Justice Department has intervened in this case. However, there is a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM going on here. While our outrage is justified, we need to look much [...]]]>

The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin

 The recent killing of Trayvon Martin, while BEING BLACK and doing no wrong, has caught our attention and angered us all. Yet another young Black male gets killed with no justice.  How could this happen? Where is the justice? Fortunately, the Justice Department has intervened in this case. However, there is a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM going on here. While our outrage is justified, we need to look much deeper into the laws that protected George Zimmerman from being arrested, on the spot, in the first place. One of the laws that I’d like to bring particular attention to is the “Stand-Your-Ground” law.

Stand-your-ground

“Other states expressly relieve the home’s occupants of any duty to retreat or announce their intent to use deadly force before they can be legally justified in doing so to defend themselves. Clauses that state this fact are called “Stand-Your-Ground”, “Line in the Sand” or “No Duty To Retreat” clauses, and state exactly that the defender has no duty or other requirement to abandon a place in which he has a right to be, or to give up ground to an assailant. States often differentiate between altercations occurring inside a home or business and altercations in public places; there may be a duty to retreat from an assailant in public when there is no duty to retreat from one’s own property, or there may be no duty to retreat from anywhere the defender may legally be.  Other restrictions may still exist; when in public, a person must be carrying the firearm in a legal manner, whether concealed or openly.”

One of the most powerful lobbying groups, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has consistently been lobbying states to pass this bill. As of this date, 16 states have adopted the “Stand-Your-Ground” legislation.  Those states with “Stand-Your-Ground” laws are: AL, AZ, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MT, NV, NH, OK, PA, TN, TX, UT, WA”. The state of Michigan is in the process of adopting it and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican controlled legislature in Virginia isn’t far behind.

In a striking departure, police departments across the country are against this law. They are unable to properly investigate and arrest perpetrators who claim self defense. In the 5 months after Florida passed this bill there were 10 cases in which an individual claimed self defense, 6 of the cases resulted in death and the remaining 4 were injured. Only one victim is cited for having a gun.

My fear….is now that this case has national exposure….and more people are familiar with these laws….it will be open season on all of us. The Justice Department can intervene in all these cases. It’s time to repeal these laws. It’s time to contact your state politicians and ask them to repeal it. if they are unwilling to do so, then exercise your right to vote them out of office.

While we are going about our daily lives, politicians are enacting laws that continue to violate our Civil Right to walk down the street drinking an iced tea and munching on a bag of skittles while “Being Black.” They are taking away our right to vote and rolling back women’s reproductive rights. WE can no longer take the position that there is nothing we can do about it. Changes need to be made, and it begins with you and I. We have rights, and it’s time that we hold our politicians accountable for their actions. Make it happen people!!!

Where’s the Movement?

Donald Blount aka The Urban Politician

One day the GOP will get a legitimate black conservative voice. That day hasn’t come.

This past Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, the once jocular and front-running, now defiant and rapidly crumbling GOP presidential contender Herman Cain announced that he’s indefinitely “suspending” his bid for the White House — and in the process he killed black Republicanism.

That probably wasn’t his plan, but after running a race filled with gaffes and gimmicks and lacking any humility or substance, Cain left the conservative [...]]]>

One day the GOP will get a legitimate black conservative voice. That day hasn’t come.

• By: David Swerdlick

This past Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, the once jocular and front-running, now defiant and rapidly crumbling GOP presidential contender Herman Cain announced that he’s indefinitely “suspending” his bid for the White House — and in the process he killed black Republicanism.

That probably wasn’t his plan, but after running a race filled with gaffes and gimmicks and lacking any humility or substance, Cain left the conservative movement unharmed and the mainstream GOP alive and well, but he may have finally laid to rest the peculiar strain of political thought that’s been driving black Republicans ever since the kinder, gentler Rockefeller Republicanism of former Sen. Edward Brooke and the late NAACP President Benjamin Hooks was replaced by the talking-point parroting brand that found its ultimate distillation in Cain.

After Cain’s woeful run, American politics may have finally seen the last of the “I’m-not-like-those-other-blacks” candidate — and good riddance.

Cain called himself conservative, but he mostly encouraged supporters to see him as the ultimate anti-Obama — claiming to be the “real black man” in the presidential race and saying America needed “a leader, not a reader.” Yet when the time came, Cain couldn’t back those claims up.

Read more at The Root

For quite a long spell in African-American history, each of us has had to bear the burden of the race on our shoulders. Custom and tradition — and intense desire for equality — dictated that we mind our manners and avoid personal acts and activity that would make the entire race look bad. Thus, we were skittish about eating chitterlings and watermelon, especially in [...]]]>

The former candidate isn’t an embarrassment to the race, just himself. My, how far we’ve come.

• By: Paul Delaney

Job applicants at a career fair in Independence, Ohio, last month.

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

The United States logged yet another month of mediocre job growth in November.

The Labor Department said Friday that the nation’s employers added 120,000 jobs last month, after adding 100,000 jobs in October.

The unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent, after having been mired around 9 percent for most of 2011.

“The unemployment rate has been stuck in the mud all year,” said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs.

November’s [...]]]>

Job applicants at a career fair in Independence, Ohio, last month.

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

The United States logged yet another month of mediocre job growth in November.

The Labor Department said Friday that the nation’s employers added 120,000 jobs last month, after adding 100,000 jobs in October.

The unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent, after having been mired around 9 percent for most of 2011.

“The unemployment rate has been stuck in the mud all year,” said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs.

November’s jobless rate was the lowest recorded since March 2009. The rate fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, and the jobless rate counts only people who are actively looking for work.

November’s jobs report reinforced how much President Obama needs additional stimulus, a tidy and fast resolution to the European debt crisis or some other economic miracle to reinvigorate the economy before the 2012 presidential election.

On the issue of government action to stimulate the economy, there has been some movement in Washington toward extending the payroll tax cut, which is currently scheduled to expire at the end of this month. Economists have said that allowing the expiration of the tax cut — which lets more than 160 million mostly middle-class Americans to keep 2 percentage points more of their pay checks — could be a severe drag on both job creation and output growth.

“If isn’t extended, it will have an impact on consumer spending in the first half of next year because it’ll put a big dent in consumer income,” said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. “To the extent that reduces spending, there will be second-round effects on hiring.”

The other major stimulus program schedule to expire by 2012 is extended unemployment insurance benefits, which allows some jobless workers to continue receiving benefits for as long as 99 weeks. The average duration of unemployment has been near record highs this year, and so ending extended benefits is likely to affect a sizable chunk of the unemployed.

Unemployment benefits are believed to have one of the most stimulative effects on the economy, since recipients of these benefits are likely to spend all of the money they receive quickly and so pump more spending through the economy.

“They say businesses are refusing to look at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford, Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put together from USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”

If every Democratic president disappoints, maybe there’s something wrong with our expectations. Tough love from a fellow traveler.

By Jonathan Chait

"The disappointment and disillusionment with President Clinton are widespread." —Bob Herbert, New York Times, 1993 (Photo: Steve Liss/Liaison/Getty Images)

If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced [...]]]>

If every Democratic president disappoints, maybe there’s something wrong with our expectations. Tough love from a fellow traveler.

By Jonathan Chait

"The disappointment and disillusionment with President Clinton are widespread." —Bob Herbert, New York Times, 1993 (Photo: Steve Liss/Liaison/Getty Images)

If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Negative 34 days into the start of the Obama presidency, the honeymoon was over.

Since then, the liberal gloom has only deepened, as Obama compromise alternated with Obama failure. Liberals speak of Obama in unceasingly despairing terms. “I’m exhausted [from] defending you,” one supporter confessed to Obama at a town-hall meeting last year.

“We are all incredibly frustrated,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told the Washington Post in September. “I’m disappointed in Obama,” complained Steve Jobs, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography. The assessments appear equally morose among the most left-wing and the most moderate of Obama’s supporters, among opinion leaders and rank-and-file voters. In early 2004, Democrats, by a 25-point margin, described themselves as “more enthusiastic than usual about voting.” At the beginning of 2008, the margin had shot up to over 60 percentage points. Now as many Democrats say they’re less enthusiastic about voting as say they’re more enthusiastic.

The cultural enthusiasm sparked by Obama’s candidacy drained away almost immediately after his election. All the passion now lies with the critics, and it is hard to find a liberal willing to muster any stronger support than halfhearted murmuring about the tough situation Obama inherited, or vague hope that maybe in a second term he can really start doing things. (“I’m like everybody, I want more action,” an apologetic Chris Rock said earlier this month. “I believe wholeheartedly if he’s back in, he’s going to do some gangsta shit.”) Obama has already given up on any hope of running a positive reelection campaign and is girding up for a grim slog of lesser-of-two-evils-ism.

Why are liberals so desperately unhappy with the Obama presidency?

There are any number of arguments about things Obama did wrong. Some of them are completely misplaced, like blaming Obama for compromises that senators forced him to make. Many of them demand Obama do something he can’t do, like Maddow’s urging the administration to pass an energy bill through a special process called budget reconciliation—a great-sounding idea except for the fact that it’s against the rules of the Senate. Others castigate Obama for doing something he did not actually do at all (i.e., Drew Westen’s attention-grabbing, anguished New York Times essay assailing Obama for signing a budget deal with cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that were not actually in the budget in question).

I spend a lot of time rebutting these arguments, and their proponents spend a lot of time calling me an Obama apologist.

Some of the complaints are right, and despite being an Obama apologist, I’ve made quite a few of them myself. (The debt-ceiling hostage negotiations drove me to distraction.) But I don’t think any of the complaints—right, wrong, or ­otherwise—really explain why liberals are so depressed.

Here is my explanation: Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president. They can be happy with the idea of a Democratic president—indeed, dancing-in-the-streets delirious—but not with the real thing. The various theories of disconsolate liberals all suffer from a failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline. Instead they compare Obama with an imaginary president—either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president.

So, what if we compare Obama with a real alternative? Not to Republicans—that’s too easy—but to Democratic presidents as they lived and breathed?

One variant of liberal disappointment has taken the form of resurgent Clinton nostalgia. Hillary Clinton, removed from the undertow of partisan combat in her role as secretary of State, has enjoyed soaring approval ratings, while Bill has burnished his credentials with a book on fixing the economy. If Bill Clinton (or Hillary Clinton—admirers tend to blur their identities) were in charge, pine their devotees, they wouldn’t have rolled over on the economy. They’d have fought the Republicans on the stimulus and won. “If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama,” James Carville told a Christian Science Monitor breakfast last year, “he’d have two.” Clinton was known for his slogan “It’s the economy, stupid,” and has become one repository for frustrated Democrats who believe Obama failed to attack the economic crisis with enough vigor. “No one ever had to tell Hillary that,” a bitter Clinton primary supporter recently remarked to the Daily Beast.

Next: Why it’s odd that Bill Clinton has become the object of liberal fantasy.

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?

"He has failed by both the general standards of competent administration and the special standards of the liberal agenda." —Editors, The New Republic, 1980 (Photo: MPI/Getty Images)

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?

"A weak, baffled, angry man." —The Nation, 1946 (Photo: American Stock/Getty Images)

Next: How Conservatives are an interesting counterexample.

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?

"Many liberals are saying good-bye to hoping and praying." —William Harlan Hale, Common Sense, 1934 (Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images)

And this is only the liberal mood during Democratic presidencies.

For almost all of the past 60 years, liberals have been in a near-constant emotional state of despair, punctuated only by brief moments of euphoria and occasional rage. When they’re not in charge, things are so bleak they threaten to move to Canada; it’s almost more excruciating when they do win elections, and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace. (Except for Johnson, who was a bloodthirsty warmonger.)

Is it really likely that all these presidents have suffered from the same character flaws? Suppose you’re trying to find dates online, and everybody you meet turns out to be too ugly. Might it be possible that the problem isn’t the attractiveness of the single people in your town but rather your standards?

Of course, the mere fact that the same people make the same complaints all the time does not render all those complaints false. All presidents screw up at least some of the time, and some of them, like Carter, screw things up almost all the time. What’s more, constructive criticism serves a vital role in democracy, and even unreasonable criticism can helpfully push the boundaries of the possible. Yet none of this justifies or explains liberals’ constant depression.

Conservatives are an interesting counterexample. While they are certainly capable of expressing frustration with Republican presidents, conservative disappointment is neither as incessant nor as pervasively depressed as the liberal variety. Conservatives are at least as absolutist as liberals in the ideological demands they make upon their leaders, as evidenced by the willingness of large chunks of the base to commit electoral suicide by nominating the series of clowns and half-wits who have taken turns leading the polls alongside or even above Mitt Romney. At the same time, they are far less likely to turn against their president altogether. They assail the compromise but continue to praise the man. Conservatives did turn against George H.W. Bush after he raised taxes. But they stuck loyally with his son well through his midterm election. They remained consistently loyal to Nixon and Reagan. They’ll circle the wagons around Romney, too—trust me.

Why? Because conservatives are not like liberals. They think differently.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian has a classic bit depicting the followers of “Brian,” a thinly disguised satire of Jesus, as left-wing activists. The movement contains bitterly feuding splinter groups with such names as the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front, the Judean Popular People’s Front, the Campaign for a Free Galilee, and the Popular Front of Judea—the last consisting of one man—all of which hate each other more than the Romans.

The joke was that left-wing politics has always taken the same form: that lefties in Palestine 2,000 years ago would act pretty much like their counterparts in seventies Britain. Political psychologists have found for decades that the joke is pretty much true. Conservatives, compared with liberals, have higher levels of respect for and obedience to authority and prefer order over chaos and continuity over change. They are more likely than liberals to agree with statements like “It is more important to be a team player than to express yourself.” (Interestingly, libertarians tend to resemble liberals on these measures, which may explain why libertarian politics also so frequently resemble a Life of Brian–esque farce.)

The 1968 Democratic convention—“which consisted of spokespersons for about 253 major ideological factions giving each other the finger through clouds of tear gas,” as Dave Barry put it—is the sort of scene that could not occur within the Republican Party. Or consider the contrast in style between the tea party and Occupy Wall Street. These two movements, allegedly mirror images of each other, perfectly display the differences between the right and the left. The Occupy activists abhor anything that would force any member to subsume his or her individual autonomy to the greater good. Did the drum circles drive everybody else to distraction? Too bad—you can’t tell the drummers what to do, man. There are no leaders, no organized speakers, no attempts at organizing anything except addressing the protesters’ elemental need for food and shelter. The tea party was mostly able to suppress the racist signs that popped up in the early stages of the movement. Occupy Wall Street has been unable to silence a handful of anti-­Semites because it can’t silence anybody.

Democratic Party politics, obviously, do not have the anarchist style on display at Zuccotti Park for almost two months. But liberals’ chronic discontent with their leaders is a fainter version of the same impulses. It is not just that conservatives are more prone than liberals to band together behind a leader in the face of external threat. Liberal politics has a concern with process that is largely absent from conservative politics. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor, defines the contrasting moral styles of right and left like so: Conservatives excel at competition between groups—your team, your nation, your tribe—while liberals care more about fairness within a group.

 

Next: How Liberals’ disaffection has helped Republicans win elections.

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?

This aspect of the liberal style expresses itself as a persistent desire to improve not just policy but politics itself. Progressivism developed a century ago out of a desire to cleanse politics of bosses and transactionalism. Republicans are focused only on dismantling government, and the great movements to reform politics have all come from the left. Some liberals attribute their disappointment in Obama to the excessive hopes he raised about representing better, cleaner, more uplifting politics. But the euphoria surrounding Obama’s election differed only in degree from that of previous presidents. Clinton was the Man From Hope, touring the country with Al Gore and promising the renewing spirit of a younger generation. Carter frequently pledged, “I will never lie to you,” and moved the 1976 Democratic convention hall to tears.

The reality of governing can never fulfill this hoped-for version, and so inevitably liberals recoil. Chris Matthews, who famously thrilled to Obama’s inspirational rhetoric, now complains, “Word is out that Obama is a ‘transactional’ politician.” Jon Stewart put it in even more anguished terms, expressing his disappointment that politics itself did not change under Obama: “He ran on this idea that the system and the methodology are corrupt. It felt like the country was upset enough that he had the momentum needed to reevaluate how business is done. Instead, when he got elected, he acted as though the system is so entrenched that it has to be managed.”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., writing in 1949, assailed liberal idealists who were abandoning Truman for the millennial promises of Henry Wallace and his Progressive Party. Schlesinger defined this impulse as a “fear … of making concrete decisions and being held to account for concrete consequences.” Schlesinger was writing about the left, but his description applies just as well to centrists. Indeed, the unhappy moderate liberals may be the most irrational component of Obama’s let-down supporters. Enraged left-wing bloggers may harbor unrealistic notions of what Democrats could achieve, but they are at least correct that Obama does not fully share their goals.

 

Is it really likely that all these presidents had the same flaws?

What, by contrast, are we to make of third-party activists like Thomas L. Friedman or Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz? They have a president who supports virtually everything they want—short-term stimulus, long-term deficit reduction through a mix of taxes and entitlement cuts, clean energy, education reform, and social liberalism. Yet they are agitating for a third party in order to carry out an agenda that is virtually identical to Obama’s. In a column touting the third-party Americans Elect, the closest Friedman comes to explaining why we should have a third party, rather than reelect the politician who already represents their values, is to say that such a party “would have offered a grand bargain on the deficit two years ago, not on the eve of a Treasury default.” He agrees with Obama’s plan, in other words, but proposes to form a new party because he disagrees with his legislative sequencing.

As political analysis, this is pure derangement. It’s the Judean People’s Front for the Aspen Institute crowd. But these sorts of anti-political fantasies arise whenever liberals are forced to confront the crushing ordinariness of governing. (Matthew Miller, a fervent promoter of Americans Elect, likewise pined for a third party in 1996, on the curious grounds that President Clinton wasn’t doing enough to balance the budget.) Liberal disaffection helped Republicans win elections in 2000, 1968, and very nearly in 1948. All those elections came after Democrats had held the White House for at least two terms, and liberal disgust with politics had built up to toxic levels.

There is a catchphrase, which you’ve probably seen on bumper stickers or T-shirts, that captures the reason liberals have trouble maintaining political power: “Stop bitching, start a revolution.” At first blush it sounds constructive. If you consider it for a moment, though, the line assumes that there are two modes of political behavior, bitching and revolution. Since the glorious triumph of revolution never really pans out, eventually you’ll return to the alternative, bitching. But there is a third option that lies between the two—the ceaseless grind of politics.

Which brings us back to Obama. Is it understandable to believe that his administration has been a disappointment to date? Of course. On the other hand, maybe there is something to learn from the frequent (anguished) comparisons liberals make between Obama and FDR. Part of the reason Roosevelt’s record looms so large from a distance is because historians measure these things differently from political activists. Activists measure progress against the standard of perfection, or at least the most perfect possible choice. Historians gauge progress against what came before it.

By that standard, Obama’s first term would indeed seem to qualify as gangsta shit. His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades. Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like. The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

 

Next: The only president to exceed Obama’s domestic record.

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?

Beneath these headline measures is a second tier of accomplishments carrying considerable historic weight. A bailout and deep restructuring of the auto industry that is rapidly being repaid, leaving behind a reinvigorated sector in the place of a devastated Midwest. Race to the Top, which leveraged a small amount of federal seed money into a sweeping national wave of education experiments, arguably the most significant reform of public schooling in the history of the United States. A reform of college loans, saving hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting out private middlemen and redirecting some of the savings toward expanded Pell Grants. Historically large new investments in green energy and the beginning of regulation of greenhouse gases. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. Elimination of several wasteful defense programs, equality for gays in the military, and consumer-friendly regulation of food safety, tobacco, and credit cards.

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

Did liberals really expect more? I didn’t. But when you dig deeper, liberal melancholy hangs not so much on substantive objections but on something more inchoate and emotional: a general feeling that Obama is not Ronald Reagan. Obama invited the contrast with Reagan himself when he noted during the campaign, “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” And yet so far at least, this country does not feel fundamentally, systemically changed by Obama in the way that it is remembered to have been by Reagan.

But here again, memory is problematic. Reagan, you’ll recall, spent most of his administration raising taxes, signing arms-control treaties, and otherwise betraying right-wing dogma. Yes, his accomplishments were more substantive than Nixon’s or Clinton’s, but they were not quite the sweeping, nation-transforming stuff liberals enjoy recalling in horror. In terms of lasting change, Obama probably has matched Reagan—or, at least, he will if he can win reelection and consolidate health-care reform and financial regulation and tilt the Supreme Court further left than he already has.

And yet Obama will never match among Democrats Reagan’s place in the psyche of his own party, as reflected in the endless propaganda campaign to give him full credit for the end of stagflation and communism, the dogmatic insistence that everything the great hero said offers the One True Path for all time, and the project to name every possible piece of American property after him. Republican Reagan-worship is a product of a pro-authority mind-set that liberals, who inflate past heroes only to criticize their contemporaries, cannot match. If recent history is any guide, they are simply not capable of having that kind of relationship with a president. They are going to question their leader, not deify him, and search for signs of betrayal in any act of compromise he or she may commit. This exhausting psychological torment is no way to live. Then again, the current state of the Republican Party suggests it may be healthier than the alternative.