Friday, October 01, 2010

The headline I've been waiting for

I've admired Rabbi Michael Lerner for a long time now. Here's the title of a recent article (originally published in Tikkun):

Obama (and Biden) Have No Clue About What’s Bothering Their Political Base

Take a look at this excerpt:

President Obama is now traveling the country seeking to rebuild the enthusiasm he generated in 2008, and seems clueless as to why it is not there. And the Democrats who followed his lead seem similarly clueless. They imagine that we, their political base, must have had unreasonable expectations that somehow a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president could overcome the Republican party of “no” and the powerful institutional constraints built up over many decades. So they try to explain to us why they failed to pass the legislation that we, their political base, would have wanted.

It’s easier for them to believe that their liberal and progressive base is naïve than to acknowledge that we are not alienated for their failure to pass appropriate legislation, but for their failure to fight for such legislation. And our upset with Obama is not that he didn’t accomplish what he couldn’t accomplish, but that he didn’t do the one thing he could do: consistently speak the truth, tell us and the country what was really happening in the corridors of power and what the constraints are that he was facing.

It’s one thing to make compromises after you’ve struggled for something you believe in, another to make the compromises without ever trying.

Finally someone has put words (precise and focused words) to the deep disappointment I've been experiencing.

Thank you, Rabbi.
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