Reply #15: Let me say a few words on my own enthusiasm gap

[Doctor_J]

I actually believed, while writing checks, phoning, walking the neighborhoods in 2008, that this would be a transformative presidency. I really thought we had Boner, Limpballs, and Murdoch on the ropes. I thought we were electing an outsider who was going to take the country back from the gangsters who ran it into the ground since 2000.

I wanted Obama to pardon Don Siegleman and fire all of the Rove-appointed US attorneys during his first week in office, just to show the Repukes that their crimes had not gone unnoticed, and that this president was going to avenge their most hideous offenses out of hand, without waiting for permission. I wanted investigations opened up into the lies that Bush told to start the illegal invasion of Iraq. I wanted some sign that those of us who came to loathe Rove's version of the US were going to get our country back.

I thought that the election results made it quite clear that the country didn't want the Repukes running the economy or anything else any more. We rejected their economic theories, their corporatism, their opposition to civil rights, their corruption, terrorism and fear-mongering, their incompetence. It should have been quite clear to the president's team that they had the upper hand, that the electorate wanted them to run the country without any of the Repukes' failed ideas intruding. Instead, the president immediately "reached across the aisle" and "compromised" with people who America wanted shut out of the government - period. He (and the congressional Dems) conceded to all sorts of Repuke demands HCR, only to see them not vote for it anyway. He cozied up to Wall Street, and they proceeded to shit all over him after he'd given up his dignity and his mandate to appease them. Someone wrote here the other day that "He had to give on to the repukes otherwise he wouldn't have gotten their votes". So what? Stand your ground, and then go on TV and tell the people something like this:

"you voted me in to undo the disaster that Mr. Boner and Mr. McConnell laid on the country. Well, I can't, and I am not going to listen to the same failed ideas that got us here in the first place. They insist on staying on this same road - well, it's not going to happen while I am here. Their policies, tactics, media machine, and lies were rejected soundly, and I am here to make sure that that repudiation is enforced.

Since they won't let me undo their legislative disaster, we will do what we can without them. The DoJ will, within a year, find out who leaked Valerie Plame's identity and why, and the persons responsible will be prosecuted for treason. Governor Siegelman will be freed, and the DoJ will get to the bottom of the fraudulent election and malicious prosecution that led to his incarceration. Election tampering and political prosecutions are federal offenses, and so the AG will pursue them as such. The political firings in the US Attorney's office will be investigated in open court. David Iglesias will head a new corruption task force that will unearth and publicize every detail of this outrageous corruption of the high levels of law enforcement. Starting immediately the military brass will work with me to pursue the most aggressive withdrawal schedule feasible for President Bush's war that has destroyed our nation's treasury and morality. The AG will, within the month, research the legal minutiae that we need to take care of so that gay Americans can enjoy the same privileges as everyone else. Finally, Governor Howard Dean will convene a committee, working pro bono, to figure out how to get health care for everyone in this country. We are the only industrialized nation where people go without. By the time I leave office that won't be true any more."

Instead, he let the same people rejected convincingly by the voters tell him what to do. The implication was, time after time, that Boner and McConnell and Beck were more important to him than the people who elected him. Still a Dem, still a liberal, still a believer that the Republican party is a far more dangerous enemy that Al Qaeda, but just not as enthusiastic as I was 30 months ago. I also agree with Frank that this is a bad omen not for this election, but for the future of the US