We previously discussed the disconnect between Democratic leaders and liberal voters in the increasing complaints of leaders like Vice President Biden over Democratic “lethargy.” Democrats in Washington once again seemed shocked that voters are not eager to fight for their retention. Now, Biden has added the helpful advice to Democratic voters to “stop whining” about things that they did not get in Washington and to “buck up.”
The “buck up” comment was meant as an improvement over the “whining” comment. It turned out that “whining” was not greeted by voters as an improvement over “lethargy.”
Here is the latest statement:
“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward.”
By “everything [we] wanted,” I assume Biden is including the fulfillment of our treaty obligations to investigate and prosecute war crimes such as torture — which the Administration blocked.
I assume it includes removing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which the Administration is trying to preserve by asking a court not to impose a national injunction freezing the policy.
I assume it includes allowing dozens of privacy lawsuits to go forward against companies, which the Administration blocked despite evidence of unlawful surveillance by the Bush Administration.
I assume it includes allowing torture victims to seek review in federal court, which the Administration has successfully blocked.
I assume it includes protecting pristine areas along the East Coast from drilling, which the Administration has fought to open up for development even after the BP accident.
I assume it includes reducing the faith-based programs of the Bush Administration which raised concerns over the separation of church and state, which Obama expanded.
Well, it includes a lot of things that democratic and independent voters wanted. What they got was a Democratic majority saw power as the end to itself rather than the means to fight for principle. For civil libertarians, “those folks who are against everything that we stand” include the Obama Administration which has been a perfect nightmare in the adoption and expansion of Bush policies.
Yet, Biden wants civil libertarians, environmentalists, and liberals to stop whining and buck up. The Administration made a cynical calculation that liberals and civil libertarians and environmentalists have no where to go and that they have to support the Democrats regardless of these obnoxious policies. Now, they are simply shocked that voters are not enthusiastic about their continuing in power.
The Democratic leadership has conveyed that the only principle that they are committed to is their retention of power. All other principles — torture, the environment, privacy, free speech — are immaterial to that one overriding goal. They just do not understand why everyone does not see it that way.
Well, I am one of those whining, lethargic voters and I cannot get myself to buck up to support leaders who turned their back on such core values. Perhaps if enough Democrats are replaced, the party may rediscover the benefit of being principled and standing for something other than their own insular interests. They need to actually represent something other than “we are not as bad as those guys.” The problem for voters is that, by retaining these leaders, we reaffirm that they cynical calculation by the White House was correct. There is no reason why Democrats should fulfill their commitments in these areas if voters do not hold them accountable. I know some on this blog may disagree, but I personally think I will stick with the whining for now.
Source: Real Clear Politics
I mean christian fundamentalists reside mainly in the United States.
Brazil doesn’t have the Christian fundamentalists. They are nearly uniquely American. Elaine, we must be reminded by Tony C. that we need to elect these fundamentalists in order to move forward.
Tony C.,
There you go again…putting words in my mouth. You talk a lot–but you don’t listen very well.
I said: “Greenwald said in an interview with Amy Goodman last fall that his choosing to live in Brazil was less of a choice and more of a forced situation because of the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in this country.”
You responded: “I have no hint Glenn lives in Brazil in PROTEST of DOMA…”
Did I mention anything about his choosing to live in Brazil as a PROTEST to DOMA?????
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FYI: Here’s what Gleen Greenwald said in his interview with Amy Goodman last fall:
From Democracy Now!
Leading Political, Legal Blogger Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/30/glenn
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney, political and legal blogger at Salon.com.
OK, Glenn, so you’re here in New York, but you’re flying home to Brazil tonight, very relieved to be doing that. And you’ve written about your choice to live in Brazil with your partner. Talk about that choice and what the whole battle over gay rights looks like to you from Brazil.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, actually, it’s not—and people who are in my position—it’s not so much a choice as a forced situation. And the reason is, is because we have a law in this country that was enacted with the virtually unanimous support of the Senate, signed by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, called the Defense of Marriage Act, that not only allows states to refuse to recognize the same-sex marriage, even if it’s legal in other states, but, even worse, it explicitly bars the federal government from according any rights whatsoever to same-sex couples based upon a recognition of their relationship, which means that people who are in my situation, namely American citizens who end up with a partner who is a citizen of another country, are unable to live together in the United States.
They have two choices: they can either live in the country of their foreign spouse, if they’re able to do that, or they can be in the horrific position where they’re forced to live thousands of miles apart on a different continent, in different countries, from the person with whom they want to spend their entire lives. And so, gay couples in the United States don’t have any immigration rights whatsoever; heterosexual couples who are bi-national can be here. Whereas in Brazil, a country that has the largest Catholic population in the world and was a military dictatorship until 1985, they do recognize same-sex couples, like most of the civilized world, and I’m therefore able to live with my partner there.
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BTW, I don’t need a lecture from you about the meanings of words. When words or definitions of words are no longer commonly in use, they are noted as “archaic” in the dictionary…at least the dictionary I use. I didn’t see the definition that I was
thinking of when I used the word expatriate noted as “archaic.”
One of my dear friends–now deceased–served on the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Langauge. He was a wordsmith and I considered him to be a valuable mentor.
Then again, you’re the world’s foremost expert–maybe you can give me a better word than expatriate to use that also means “one who has taken up residence in a foreign country.”
One more thing: What definitions of “mature” and “sterile” do you do think I should infer you’re using in the following statement?
“One of the things we learn as we mature is that certain words have implications beyond their sterile definitions.”
@Swarthmore: How, exactly, will they make abortion rights go away? They would have to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the only way they could HOPE to do that is through the courts, with a conservative president appointing new judges to the Supreme Court. Until a new case reaches the Supreme Court, they have no hope of it.
The courts do not care how vociferously people demand the law be changed, or what their campaign promised, or anything else. Conservatives are LYING about what they will do to abortion rights because fools VOTE for them when they lie, and they know they will never have to do ANY work on the issue because it is settled law.
As long as I am at it, let me point out these “moral” laws only affect the poor and lower middle class. If an upper class girl or woman wants an abortion, there are a dozen first-class hospitals in industrialized countries around the world happy to do it on demand. Same thing holds for drug use or prostitution. These morality laws are inherently unfair and only enforced on people that cannot afford international airfare.
@Elaine: One of the things we learn as we mature is that certain words have implications beyond their sterile definitions. It is why “conservative” means far more than the literal definition of the word, it has connotations. It is how the label “pro-life” can carry the threat of enslaving women. No normal person is “anti-life”, when I reject the “pro-life” position I am rejecting all the connotations of that position, everything it IMPLIES.
The word “expatriate” is almost never used in the modern world to just imply somebody is living abroad; that was the case when a citizen living outside of their own country was a very unusual circumstance. “Expatriate” is usually used in the sense of somebody having been expelled from their country, or in the sense of “non-patriot”, somebody that is rejecting their country.
The reason Greenwald said that is that he is a homosexual and in a committed relationship to a Brazilian citizen, as I understand it he cannot sponsor his lover for citizenship, and his lover cannot live and work in the USA for long with Glenn, due to the DOMA. The pragmatic choice for Glenn is to live with his lover in Brazil and work remotely from there. I have read him daily for years, and he has discussed this situation in the past. I may not recall fine details of those posts, but to my knowledge this decision to live in Brazil is a pragmatic dilemma any couple from different countries might face if prohibited from marriage and citizenship.
I have no hint Glenn lives in Brazil in PROTEST of DOMA, I think DOMA is in protest of his relationship and he has chosen the benefits of his relationship over the benefits of living and working in the USA.
I obviously do not speak for Glenn, but this is my informed understanding of the matter.
Tony C.,
“No estimate of Republican power in 2011, after the electoral dust settles, will give the nut jobs any power to do anything about their agenda. Birthers, whatever, all that is talk and an army of strawmen designed to distract you from the real issues.”
I have not been distracted from the real issues. You can choose to believe that. I don’t really care what you think about what I think…or the political decisions I choose to make
“Has your Congressman refused all funds from lobbyists, refused to meet with lobbyists, and rejected all corporate donations to his campaign? Does he keep open books that anybody can examine? How about his personal finances? Has he done everything in his power to keep his previous campaign promises, or are those just for show? Have you checked?”
Questions…questions…questions! In some of your responses to me, you’ve told me what I think and what I was implying in some of my previous comments. You know so much–why don’t you just answer those questions you posed to me yourself.
Carlyle,
I’ll listen to contrary arguments. I don’t consider myself the most conventional thinker. In fact, I’ve had a number of arguments/discussions with other liberals who have spouted party/administration talking points with which I’ve disagreed. But in the end, come November, I think each of us should do what we personally feel is the best–or the better–thing to do.
To mix disciplines, this sounds like using arsenic to treat cancer. In small doses it works, but they don’t know exactly how and why it works and when too much is used death can result.
Those who suggest precipitating a crisis will lead to a new more balanced congress can offer no real guarantee that will happen. It is as likely that electing more, and more radical, Republicans will only shift both the Republicans and the Democrats to the right – not to the center – to gain votes, and could lead, eventually, to the dismantling of most progressive achievements.
Why would anyone (other than the Tea Party) want to dismantle the advances benefitting the general public which progressive measures have achieved? And we have the actual words of those politicians, both Republican and Tea Party, to indicate that is exactly what they wish to happen. Unless we think those are just campaign promises which they really have no intention of enacting?
Tony C.,
Greenwald said in an interview with Amy Goodman last fall that his choosing to live in Brazil was less of a choice and more of a forced situation because of the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in this country.
The word expatriate has more than one definition–one being the following: “One who has taken up residence in a foreign country.” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.) I think it was not inappropriate to call Greenwald an expatriate. You are free to disagree with me.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/29/5200358-gop-for-big-government-in-a-small-uterus Women have to be very diligent about not letting the republicans take over. They will make abortions rights go away very quickly.
Elaine.
Your arguments make sense, what I am trying to point out is that contrary arguments can also make sense. Sometimes a counterintuitive action is more likely to work than the obvious one.
On principle I am always against the conventional wisdom just to be ornery but that does not mean that I don’t think the counterintuitive arguments which I generate have merit. Consider this to be my contribution to an out of the box solution brain storming session.
Elaine.
Glen Greenwald and Radley Balko are my two favourite commentators. I visit both their blogs daily.
Elaine.
I believe that the reason that the Democratic elite are going out of their way to insult their voter base is because they want voters to stay home and let the Republican win seats in the house and senate and maybe full control of both. This may not make sense to you or me, but obviously it does to Obama and Biden.
If you want to be spiteful to elite democrats, go ahead and vote for Democratic candidates but the insults will already have ensured many Democratic leaning citizens will react from emotion and stay at home.
I agree with you that the Republicans are well beyond crazy and the Democrats not completely lost to rationality but that means that the Democrats are more likely to delay the necessary crisis and leave more time to boil all the citizen frogs. I believe that most US citizens have beliefs that prevent them from accepting action necessary to bring sanity back to US politics and that until a crisis occurs that shatters the scales on their eyes no improvement is possible. Republican government precisely because it will be irrational and incompetent will lead to the crisis more quickly than continued Democratic rule will.
Where we disagree is that you believe that it is rational to choose the lesser evil, Buddah’s slow road to Hell while I believe that Democratic government is still so awful that the only rational action is to do what one can to hasten the crisis which is coming anyway by the slow road or the fast road.
@Elaine: Glenn Greenwald has claimed he does not vote; I would not describe him as an “expatriate,” he visits in the US for interviews and TV appearances all the time. He does live in Brazil, his boyfriend is a Brazilian citizen and they cannot have a residence in the USA. But the word “expatriate” usually has the connotation of being banned or rejecting one’s country, Glenn has not done that. I believe he lives elsewhere for pragmatic reasons, he wants to live with the person he is in love with, I don’t think it is an ideological symbolic protest rejecting America.
No estimate of Republican power in 2011, after the electoral dust settles, will give the nut jobs any power to do anything about their agenda. Birthers, whatever, all that is talk and an army of strawmen designed to distract you from the real issues. Has your Congressman refused all funds from lobbyists, refused to meet with lobbyists, and rejected all corporate donations to his campaign? Does he keep open books that anybody can examine? How about his personal finances? Has he done everything in his power to keep his previous campaign promises, or are those just for show? Have you checked?
Why do people bother quoting celebrities that agree with them? Doesn’t anybody think for themselves? It is this reliance on incantation, this aversion to actual analysis, this dependence on others to do their homework that has led this country to its current state.
Seriously speaking, this is the rampant disease in this country. Pick your celebrity, Brad Pitt, Joan Walsh, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly, Ron Paul, whatever: and then parrot them blindly. Nobody can argue their case anymore. Leading thinkers no longer provide any food for thought or new ideas to consider, because nobody is considering anything, they just provide ill-considered conclusions and everybody else is just a dittohead.
Joan Walsh is just wrong, her argument is based on a false premise; that the Obama administration wants to reign in corporate power. Read the last paragraph. Then say, WHAT?!?!?! Obama and the Democrats are handing corporations power as fast as they can collect their now-unlimited campaign contributions to the DNC. Neither side will reign that in, the only thing that can come close is new ideological faces that will not go along with this corruption. How do we get those? By making room for them to run, by throwing out incumbents and, if necessary, electing crazies that would be easier to beat than existing incumbents.
Joan Walsh is a consistent Democratic Party cheerleader, she will NEVER say she thinks Democrats deserve to lose. EVER. That should be your first clue that her response is not a result of reason, it is the result of raw emotion. The same goes for Chris Matthews (the show she was on). Just because somebody famous said something does not mean it makes any sense.
Carlyle,
I’m a regular reader of Greenwald’s blog. I respect Greenwald who tells it like it is.
Let those Democratic-leaning voters who choose to stay home in November–stay home. Are you suggesting that I should withhold my vote from a Congressman I want to have representing me again in Washington just because he’s a Democrat? Another reason I choose not to withhold my vote from the Democrat running for re-election in my district: His Republican opponent is a birther (he claims he isn’t one now) who posted signs on his residential property in 2008 showing Obama dressed as Osama bin Laden…a Republican opponent who also asserted in affidavits that Obama was born in Kenya–not the United States–and that Obama had ties to the Muslim faith through an extremist cousin from Kenya. I certainly don’t want THAT Republican serving in the House and representing my district.
I believe it’s best to make important decisions when one’s head is clear and one’s thoughts aren’t jumbled up with feelings of anger and frustration. You can believe me when I say I have been very upset with many things the Obama Administration has done and with many of the Democrats serving in Washington. I just happen to believe the Republican party is worse than the party that is in power now. Nearly every time I listen to Republicans speaking on the news or read something they’ve said in the paper I cringe.
I don’t know if I’ll vote for Obama in 2012–if he decides to run again. There’s a possibility that I may not vote in that election. Time will tell.
Glenn is an expatriate who now lives in Brazil. I don’t know if he still keeps a residence in the US…and if he still votes here.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/2010_elections/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/09/28/ok_no_more_whining Joan Walsh,the Salon editor, remains firmly in the camp that voting for democrats is the right thing to do.
Glen Greenwald’s latest article on this issue and my comment on it.
Blouise, Elaine M and Swarthmore Mum.
Maybe you are correct. Voting for a Democrat is the least bad choice as if you refrain from voting from emotional reaction to their insults, you will actually be doing what Obama, Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party elite want. However many Democratic leaning voters are going to stay at home and the Democrats are going to lose seats as is their leader’s desire.
MDTurley
Is it whining to want to vote FOR rather than AGAINST?
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I don’t know if your question was to me, but I would say it is not.
Whining is a word both VP Biden and Professor Turley used. I simply continued using it in expressing my view.
American Heritage Dictionary defines whining as:
To complain or protest in a childish fashion.
There is nothing childish about complaining or protesting about an important issue. Which is why VP Biden was remiss in using it.
In this case, everyone will have to determine if they think the results will better advance their agenda if they choose to vote for Democrats or let them lose even more power than the polls already indicate will happen.
Of course the polls can change in 5 weeks and the choice may become a less soul-searching activity.
Is it whining to want to vote FOR rather than AGAINST?