12/08 John Aravosis: “There don't seem to be any liberals in Obama's cabinet,”

[democracy1st]

“There don't seem to be any liberals in Obama's cabinet,” writes John Aravosis, the editor of Americablog.com. “What does all of this mean for Obama's policies, and just as important, Obama Supreme Court announcements?”


“Actually, it reminds me a bit of the campaign, at least the beginning and the middle, when the Obama campaign didn't seem particularly interested in reaching out to progressives,” Aravosis continues. “Once they realized that in order to win they needed to marshal everyone on their side, the reaching out began. I hope we're not seeing a similar ‘we can do it alone’ approach in the transition team.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16292.html


More than 80 percent of Democrats say they believe Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) should be stripped of his powerful chairmanship in the Senate if he ends up supporting a Republican filibuster of health care reform, according to a new poll.

The liberal action groups Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America commissioned a survey several days ago, in which they asked more than 800 voters whether Lieberman's position on health care should affect his status as head of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/14/81-of-dems-want-lieberman_n_390797.html


Obama Wants Lieberman To Remain In Democratic Caucus

President-elect Barack Obama has informed party officials that he wants Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats in the 111th Congress, Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.

Obama's decision could tie the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been negotiating to remove Lieberman as chair of the Homeland Security and Government Reform committee while keeping him within the caucus. Lieberman has insisted that he will split from the Democrats if his homeland security position is stripped.

If Lieberman were to continue caucusing with the Democrats without being punished for his campaign conduct -- Democrats say he broke a promise not to campaign negatively against Obama -- the progressive community will undoubtedly be up in arms. For Obama, however, the move may be a shrewd gesture towards reconciliation, in the process taking a potentially taxing political fight off the table.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/obama-wants-lieberman-to_n_142731.html




In early 2005, Samantha Power was working on a follow up to her Pulitzer Prize winning book ""A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," when she got a call from the office of Sen. Barack Obama.

She had never heard of the freshman Democrat who had taken office just months earlier. So Power researched him, downloading the famous address Obama gave to the Democratic convention the summer prior. The two met shortly after -- it was only supposed to last an hour but they ended up talking for four.

"Why don't I quit my job at Harvard and come and intern in your office and answer the phones or do whatever you want?' It was literally that spontaneous," she recalled saying. To which, the senator responded: "Great."

And so it was that Obama scored what was hailed as a staffing coup only months into his time in Washington. Power, who was working at the time for Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was widely considered to be one of the most forward-thinking, gifted foreign policy minds of her generation. In 2004, she was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 top thinkers of the year.

That Obama could bring her on board -- he was, Power said, the first government official to have ever called her -- was emblematic of the different style of politics that the Illinois senator was promising to represent. Far from a down-the-line liberal on international affairs, Power was known for her innovative (if not self-reflectively painful) analysis. On the Rwanda genocide, she concluded that U.S. officials had worked to ignore the problem, not failed to address it. On the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, she once advocated (though later recanted) spending billions of dollars and sending a military force to help create a Palestinian state next to Israel.

The relationship ended on Friday after Power resigned from Obama's presidential campaign. Her comments, made to the Scottsman, that Sen. Hillary Clinton was a "monster" devoted to political opportunism, were responsible for her departure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/07/samantha-power-from-obama_n_90443.html

And yet, while there is an acknowledgment that Power likely had to resign because of what she said, there is also a deep regret that the Democratic Party, for the time being, is losing one of its brightest thinkers. Indeed, even as she worked for Obama's senate office, Power found the time to write another book: "Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World." Her friend and political rival, Richard Holbrooke, proclaimed Obama "very fortunate to have her."

[pleah]

1. K&R

[struggle4progress]

2. This is the John Aravosis who worked for Ted Stevens and for the World Bank?

Complaining about Obama's inadequate liberalism?

What? Maybe Rove put Aravosis on his payroll?

:rofl:

[TheWraith]

3. The same Aravosis who constantly lies and publishes propaganda in order to bash Obama. nt

[sabrina 1]

32. So, what do you think about the issue of Obama's cabinet being

so far to the right of what one would expect of a Dem. President, and the lack of any Liberals in the cabinet? Are you happy about that, is Aravosis wrong? Personally I can't think of any Liberals in the cabinet either. I know he invited Republicans, like Judd Gregg also, but did he talk to any real Progressives at all?

I have to say I never thought about that during the campaign, but from now on, because of the people Obama chose, people most of us who supported him would not appoint as dog-catcher, this will be a big issue in the next presidential race. We should definitely have questioned the candidates about their future cabinets.

[_ed_]

42. It's easier to lash out in an

ad hominem toward Aravosis than to deal with the facts.

[sabrina 1]

46. Yes, attack the messenger to distract from the message. I

did not get an answer so I take it that the message is accurate. :-)

[TheWraith]

49. Have you stopped beating your dog yet?

Ask a question based on a false premise, get a question based on a false premise. Or put another way, I'm sure it would be news to some people that Hilda Solis, Lisa Jackson, Eric Shinseki, Steven Chu, Austan Goolsbee, and Susan Rice are all "far right." Claiming that "there are no liberals in the cabinet" requires that you redefine "liberal" so that you can claim anyone in the cabinet doesn't qualify.

You need to learn to distinguish between your opinion and the opinions held even by most Democrats. You also need to learn to distinguish between facts and things that you want to believe. It's called confirmation bias. Aravosis can't bring himself to say a single good thing about Obama, even to the point of completely inverting the facts about stories, making things up, etcetera, but because it's what some people want to hear, they believe it's factual.

[democracy1st]

8. yes he was a foreign policy advisor for Stevens and also worked for

The Children's Defense Fund,so whats the problem?

[struggle4progress]

14. You mean, besides his long history of wedge-driving? blaming California's black population

for prop 8, or outing folk involuntarily, and so on?

He's a wedge-driver: he tries to build up his own little power-base by a divisive demagogery

[democracy1st]

20. share the link to that story i would appreciate it

[struggle4progress]

29. It was quite noisy for a while in November 2008. IIRC, Aravosis then carefully scrubbed his website.

You can still find some traces of the story in cyberspace. Here's an example:

Race, sexuality, and Proposition 8
Filed by: Alex Blaze
November 6, 2008 3:00 PM

In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, I'm troubled by the resurgence of "blame black people" rhetoric coming from some some gay people ...

70 Comments ...

Thanks, Alex. I read both Savage and Aravosis today, and I have to say I can't agree with them. I'm more angry at the Mormons and whoever else poured money into that travesty ...

Momotaro | November 6, 2008 4:33 PM

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/11/race_sexuality_and_proposition_8.php

[JackRiddler]

17. This is also the Samantha Power who champions cruise-missile humanitarianism...

which is the idea of a monster formerly known as imperialist war.

However, her husband, Cass Sunstein, is in the White House. He's the genius who came up with the idea of having government representatives cognitively infiltrate the "conspiracy theory" camp with official story propaganda.

Aravosis can be personally full of shit but still right in what he says about the Obama cabinet. His key appointments were banksters like Geithner and (until now) Summers, honest-to-god Bush holdovers like Gates and Bernanke and many of the Bush US AGs, and, surely the biggest disaster politically, DLC triangulators like Emanuel. (I won't object to giving a post to Clinton because she was the choice of almost as many primary voters as Obama.)

[EFerrari]

25. Since Obama gave Stevens a Get Out of Jail Free Card

while he left Don Seigelman twisting in the wind, he'd have no problem with John, would he? :)

[struggle4progress]

38. The Stevens case was thrown out by the judge in spring 2009, for prosecutorial misconduct.

Such cases typically require a year or more to prepare, so the prosecution was well along its way long before Obama was sworn in. The current President is unlikely to have had anything to do with the case. I'm inclined to think the Bushistas concluded they could not avoid prosecuting Stevens and so decided to botch the case

[sabrina 1]

47. There was prosecutorial abuse in the Siegelman case also.

Yet Holder has refused to do with that case what he did with the Stevens case.

[sabrina 1]

41. Lol, those inconvenient facts again. You have to stop doing that!

[Winterblues]

45. Sometimes facts are just that.

http://www.adn.com/2009/04/01/743906/us-attorney-general-ends-stevens.html

Holder says prosecutors failed to share key evidence
The Justice Department moved to dismiss former Sen. Ted Stevens' indictment on Wednesday, effectively voiding his Oct. 27 conviction on seven counts of filing false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms.
The decision by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder comes after a new prosecution team discovered a previously undocumented interview on April 15, 2008,

[ProSense]

4. Wait

Power is a liberal, but not Susan Rice?

What about Hillary Clinton, Hilda Solis and Eric Holder?

[TheKentuckian]

7. Clinton and Holder are a laugh. Solis is solid but also rather token and backbench.

Rice is dubious and just as likely in the Obama mold, if not more likely. Power I make no assessment on.

[ProSense]

9. "Power I make no assessment on."

That and your point about Solis, the Secretary of Labor, makes the OP point false.

[Radical Activist]

13. What is the OP's point?

I can't tell why the stories were thrown together.

[ProSense]

15. Come to think of it,

2008?

:rofl:

[democracy1st]

21. You should look in the mirror and laugh at your own self,there's not a person in the world a

individual should agree with 100% of the time.

[ProSense]

24. No, I'm still laughing at this. n/t

[sabrina 1]

26. I had no trouble getting the point. Maybe you should read it again?

[notesdev]

12. Holder is a waste of organic molecules

The banking clan is running rampant in this country and it's his job to enforce the law and put a stop to it, instead he's been asleep at the wheel for 2 years running with zero sign that the alarm is loud enough to wake him.

[SoCalDem]

5. For 40+ years the default switch has been set for conservative

The whole anti-war thing of the 60's & 70's scared the beejeebus out of the powerful, and they set out to make sure there was never again to be uprisings like that ..

The ONLY way to achieve this, was to reset the whole thing to "conservatism/repression", and to make the people "want it that way".

With a full-court press, the media made that the message, and no president, no congress has ever managed to move any direction but further rightward.

Pockets of resistance spring up from time to time, but the media keeps to the message and immediately marginalizes them & tells all of us that it's no biggie..we are and always will be a right-to-center/center-right nation & we loves us some Jeeeeesus & we hate commies & terra-ists, and all is right with the world..

and now a message from the sponsors & then we'll be back with more dancing & singing.

[madrchsod]

16. now in 2010 it`s the war on the old, the sick,and the lame.

it`s a war brought to us by the leaders of both parties.

have you seen that palin girl dance? is`t she just wonderful!

and what about levi`s "sons".....

[madrchsod]

6. power laid a lot of the blame for rwanda on bill clinton.

she is a brilliant lady but she made the mistake of telling the truth.

many years later bill said he could/should have done more to stop the genocide

[JackRiddler]

18. Power would have opened up several war fronts in Africa.

Yeah, the US and France could have done more to stop the genocide in Rwanda -- by calling off their respective proxy armies. The fact is, they did intervene, and it contributed to the disaster.

[blondeatlast]

10. Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, is very pro-union, but from the looks of DU

and the Democratic Party, unions are no longer "liberal."

[madrchsod]

19. she is but obama/duncan policy is not union friendly

and who said fuck them? obama wanted union help but what has he done for the unions? where`s our card check? oh, he had to bailout the banks instead of the guys and gals who need a job.

i`ll support him in the next election because the other side would be a total disaster.

[blondeatlast]

43. I certainly agree--I'm a vocal teacher supporter on DU. nt

[Radical Activist]

11. One of many lies he would go on to tell about Obama.

I can only speculate about the source of his personal animosity toward Obama, but it very obviously is personal more than policy oriented. It's the only way to explain so many efforts to stretch the truth and strain his own credibility.

[democracy1st]

22. share the link to the lies he told,I appreciate it.

[Radical Activist]

33. Refer to your OP.

There are liberals in the cabinet, as several comments have already pointed out.

[struggle4progress]

37. Here are two clear examples: it's easy enough to find others

WH censored "pro-gay" video for two days while deciding whether to issue permanent gag order
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=150862

The President spoke at Boston College. The College, per its ordinary policy, send the White House a video and asked permission to release it. The WH, naturally, reviewed the video before granting permission: they'd have been absolute fools to do otherwise. Aravosis portrayed this as censorship and as the WH contemplating a "permanent gag order"

White House threatens gay orgs before key DADT meeting - don't mention DADT cases or meeting over
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=9390591

The President met with activists before the election to discuss strategies for DADT repeal in the lame duck. As a party to ongoing litigation, the WH naturally did not intend to comment -- which is an entirely standard position. The President made clear that the discussion was to focus on legislative strategies and that he could not discuss the litigation. Aravosis portrayed this as the WH threatening gay activists

[EFerrari]

23. When you have nothing, attack the messenger. n/t

[Radical Activist]

34. Yes, that would be the Aravosis strategy.

It's fair to point it out now and then.

[sabrina 1]

28. You mean the fact that he is gay, and the Obama administration

has been more than disappointing to the gay community? Or is there something else? I'm surprised we haven't seen the denigrating label 'pet issue' used yet.

[Radical Activist]

36. Judging by the above post

Aravosis was eager to be disappointed even before Obama took office. I'm sure he'll find new ways to be disappointed after DADT is repealed.

[sabrina 1]

40. Maybe he was wary. This is after all about his civil rights

and some of the signs coming from the Obama campaign, eg, his admission that he could not support gay marriage, his friendship with anti-gay religious pastors. Maybe Aravosis was not 'eager' to be disappointed, but actually disappointed that the Democratic candidate was not particularly interested in the issues that for Gays, mean living as first or second class citizens. Maybe you would be concerned too if it was your civil rights, your inability to marry or join the military, that were at stake.

[robdogbucky]

27. So is this writer's opinion trash as well?

What is with the CCC? Seemed to have lost their mojo. Read this one, same topic, similar observations, same month. Imagine, people opining after a cabinet is largely picked, unbelievable, eh? So, what is wrong with this writer now?

Obama's Cabinet To The Right Of Democrats in Congress
by: Chris Bowers
Mon Dec 22, 2008 at 14:07

In the 110th Congress, there were 236 Democrats in the U.S. House, 49 in the Senate, and two "Independents" who caucused with Democrats. Of those 287 congresscritters, 74 were members of the New Democratic Coalition, which is affiliated with the DLC. Overall, 25.8% of the Democratic members of the 110th Congress were openly affiliated with the DLC. An additional 31 members of Congress are affiliated with the Blue Dogs, but not with the New Democratic Coalition. If the Blue Dogs are included, the overall DLC-Blue Dog membership in of Democratic congresscritters increases to 36.6%, and 38.1% in the House.

Now, compare this to Obama's cabinet selections. Of the eighteen cabinet members (not counting Joe Biden, who I have seen listed as a cabinet member at times), sixteen are Democrats. Of those sixteen, eight are affiliated with the DLC, or 50%. Obama's Democratic cabinet selections have twice the DLC representation of the Democratic membership of Congress. This list does not include Rahm Emanuel, who will be the first White House Chief of Staff during the Obama administration. Nor does it include national security advisor Jim Jones, who supported McCain during the election...

...The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 69 members in the incoming congress, plus former member Nancy Pelosi (the Speaker resigns from ideological caucuses), plus new membership among freshman. Additionally, three members (Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and Tom Udall) have been elected to the Senate in 2006-2008. Overall, including Nancy Pelosi, 25.4% of the Democratic membership of the House and the Senate in 2007-2008 were Congressional Progressive Caucus members. One member of this group, Hilda Solis, will be in Obama's cabinet. Another member, Xavier Bacerra, was asked to serve as trade representative, but declined.

Obama's cabinet selections, when compared to the Democratic caucuses in the House and the Senate, has a significantly higher representation of DLC members and a significantly lower representation of Progressive Caucus members. If association with the New Democratic and Progressive caucuses can be used as a proxy for ideological inclinations, which voting records have previously suggested it can be, then Obama's cabinet is to the right of the Democratic membership in Congress...

Chris Bowers :: Obama's Cabinet To The Right Of Democrats in Congress


rdb

[sabrina 1]

30. Ssshh, it's hard enough work to try to blur the issue by attacking

one messenger ... :-)

[ProSense]

35. Here he is

today

[xchrom]

31. Interesting notions in the message.

More reliable messengers have made the same observations re:
Summers, et al.

But when it comes to historic election of Obama
Critiques that might otherwise be held as reasonable
Will be held unreasonable in his case.

[bigtree]

39. the fact that this guy would get recs here at DU

. . . is reflective, I think of the reflexive opposition of too many to all things Obama, and, of the willingness to accept any and all criticism as fact.

[sarcasmo]

44. Gitmo still open. Don't ask don't tell still going on. Drones bombing in Pakistan. War still

raging in Afghanistan. Sabre rattle against North Korea. I think I voted for a Dino not a Liberal.

[Renew Deal]

48. There doesn't seem to be any truth to that statement.

Hillary, Holder, Solis, Susan Rice, Sebelius, Napolitano

:shrug: