Democratic Party Divided As Obama Inauguration Approaches - FDL

[dreamnightwind]

62. I'm not entirely unrealistsic

No way do I expect progressives to get everything they want (I'm not saying you said that, just elaborating on my position). Often it seems to me progressives don't get anything at all. I can even handle losing on an issue, in fact I expect it.

Where I draw my personal lines is I try to distill what it is that the politician or legislation in question is attempting to do. ACA has some positive things, such as expanding coverage, hopefully it will end the pre-existing condition rejections, and some other things. Overall, though, and there are better examples than health care, but it seemed to me that this reform was intended to lock us into a corporate solution, rather than a less expensive public one. Could we have gotten a public solution then? No, I don't think so. We should, however, have fought like dogs for it, then compromised down to a private system with a competing public option, all the while going kicking and screaming to that compromise as if we had gotten nothing. Instead, Obama secretly negotiated away any possibility of a public option, and also didn't fight for getting Medicare D to be able to bargain down drug prices, like every other country does. It was a giveaway to the corporations, from the beginning. So Obama was never on the track I support.

It was even worse with the handling of the mortgage crisis. HAMP was an absolute giveaway to the banks, very few homeowners were helped by it. Principle reduction for troubled properties was off the table. The trillions lost in deflated assets and blown up securities were paid off on the side of the lenders, then they give us austerity to pay these private debts (and not OUR private debts, not the debts that became overwhelming to homeowners who lost jobs and couldn't sell their underwater homes, but the mortgage originators, and, worse, the imaginary money they had created through insanely leveraged securities on those same mortgages) from the pockets of taxpayers. This was completely unsupportable, and is a good example of corporate Dems working on the wrong side of an issue.

So I don't see the party embodied by Obama, Biden, and Clinton(s) getting us much of anything we need. Their entire perspective is that of the fat cats. Sure, they'll try to put a human face and a gentle hand on it, so they can successfully defeat Republicans in elections, and also because they truly aren't quite as bad as those guys. But they're just a slightly kinder version of the same animal, one which is devouring the middle class, devouring the environment, and actively works to subvert any alternative political models.

Anyway thanks for your post and for its reasoned discussion. I have seen your posts before and know that you're more accepting of our party's direction than I am, though ultimately we may be looking for similar things.