“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser
Bring back the Bull Moose party. We need FIGHTING progressives. I’ll do it if no one else will
Post the website when you’re done.
Jesus. You know it’s bad when even a spineless centrist like Obama is calling them on their shit.
I don’t really remember Obama as spineless lol what is he spineless about?
Look he’s a politician they suck but acting like Obama wasn’t one of the best presidents we had in like 40 years is silly.
Remember how he ran on hope and change? How he presented himself as a progressive? Then how he failed to close Guantanamo, never even tried to codify abortion rights, didn’t bother prosecuting the Bush administration for their war crimes, did a bunch of war crimes himself, and expanded the surveillance state? Because I do.
And like the other commenter said, he completely capitulated to the Republicans when they invented some bullshit about how outgoing presidents aren’t supposed to appoint justices or whatever.
Obama personally promised me that he’d close Guantanamo, when I was a kid at one of his campaign rallies. He straight-up lied to me and didn’t close Gitmo.
Supreme Court Justices among other things.
If that’s your biggest gripe I’d say it isn’t that bad.
People usually bring up the increase in drone strikes on Obama not realizing he was taking steps to prevent American soldier’s death.
He tried to get healthcare, changed his stance on gay marriage and stuck to it.
Obama was fine. I’d even argue good compared to his contemporaries.
“Stop whining and Vote Blue No Matter Who”
“Great, I’m voting for Mamdani for Mayor”
“WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! Not like that!”
This is one of those platitudes that is too vague to be of any real value.
It’s like telling someone to be confident. “Just figure out what you need to do and do that thing!”
Yeah - the centrists and neoliberals will take this to mean “do more centrist and neoliberal things”; progressives will take this to mean “do more progressive things”; the DNC will take this to mean “give more money to centrist and neoliberal consultants and ignore what people are actually saying”. Not helpful in any sense.
So, in an unironic, but still very sarcastic and disappointed sense: thanks Obama 😒
Seriously, maybe tell the Democratic leadership to pull their head out of their ass and listen to people - as you did back in 07-08, which carried you to victory. And then gasp follow through on what they say, up to and including taking a page out of the GOP playbook - just do things that are helpful to normal people and say “fuck you, make me” when centrists and republicans try to stop you. We now have an imperial presidency, after all, so why not try to use it to do some good when (or if 😓) non-fascists get into power again.
This is exactly it. Unless we get really specific, this shit is more of the same middling platitudes, and different audiences will only hear what they want to hear. Seriously disappointing, and not at all helpful.
Ex-politicians like Obama (but not just him) need to shut the hell up unless they have PRACTICAL ideas that we can use. Someone like Obama should understand that his words have gravitas (love your username btw, fellow Banks fan I presume?), but his rhetoric goes straight in the garbage unless it’s backed by actionable ideas.
"You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates,”
So he called out Cuomo by name? No? Who’s the coward really? He’s out there telling Dems/lefties to get shot in the face by “riot gear” his and his VPs admins put in the hands of police, and he can’t even grow enough of a spine to tell Dems to honor their own primaries. What a disgrace. Apparently the protesters and activists are the ones he thinks need to toughen up, because he clearly doesn’t think any specific politicians need to.
I noticed that, and that it’s a private fundraiser. Ok. When will the DNC actually stop shutting out the voices of the ones who miss needed working hours to vote for your candidate–or not.
He’s pleading with people to fund the DNC, when DNC-backed candidates are often the most useless losers on the ticket.
Honestly, I don’t care too much about this kind of private fundraising. Do I wish we had a system that was different, yes, but he’s not actually running for anything. He’s getting money for the party in general. If people wanna pay X to have dinner with Obama, I’m pretty indifferent about it. It’s like a rent party for people who have no community, no solidarity, and no sense. I wish they would donate directly to candidates that need the support because I don’t trust the DNC to make any decisions, but they probably would not be donating to the people I want anyway.
I think town halls are important though and if a candidate only has time for fundraising and not to listen to their constituents then that’s a problem. Unfortunately these kind of fundraising events are the way a lot of Dems get funding since they don’t actually inspire people with their platform.
I guess I’m remembering leaked tapes from HRC’s private banker fundraiser.
Yea, it helps if they’re not two faced or scummy to begin with so that their private events aren’t them admitting to lying about their beliefs etc too. See Romney for a great example of exactly the issue, but honestly it’s just a quiet part out loud thing. We all know these are the conversations they’re having regardless of how much they pay for the plate.
Yes and I hope people are waking up to the fact that liberal isn’t left, nor neoliberal, and socially left neo/lib also isn’t left.
As Democrats debate who should lead the party, Obama encouraged them to channel their energy into the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, saying the off-year elections could be “a big jumpstart for where we need to go.”
“Stop looking for the quick fix. Stop looking for the messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates,” Obama said, calling out the New Jersey and Virginia elections, according to the excerpts of his remarks.
RTFA
I did read the article. I even quoted it. That absolutely does not address the fact that pouring money into races (which he said needs to be done in the article) is useless if the candidates don’t actually help people. The NJ race features a 53 year old who’s been an office holder since 2018. She’s part of the “New Democrat” caucus who are pro business centrists.
He’s calling for more of the same. He’s not asking for “hope” or “change”. I mentioned NY because that is an example of what the future of the party should actually look like.
Hope and change was always a lie to just get into office and then hand it all to businesses. I mean fuck the ACA insurance mandate was basically holding citizens hostage and forcing them to pay healthcare insurance providers whether the insurance actually left them with enough money leftover to use their “access” to healthcare or not.
Fuck all the navel gazing about how it would bring insurance costs down. A public option would have done more.
I was definitely using them mockingly here, but I think he actually did want universal healthcare. Congress fucked us over bad. The ACA is unfortunately a huge step up from what a lot of people had. Plenty still fall through the cracks, but the ACA was largely an improvement for people, especially after the federal penalty was removed so people were no longer fined.
He absolutely did want universal healthcare. Bill Clinton did too. They both tried. They were both shut down.
A public option would have done more.
Yes, it would have. Damn it, Obama, why did you vote against…oh wait.
He’s literally at a fundraiser with a bunch of pro-business fucks giving this mealy-mouthed speech. He literally expanded all the worst parts of the Bush admin which are now being pointed at US citizens like mass surveillance.
No he didn’t explicitly vote for it himself, but he admitted himself that if he had run in the 80’s he would have been considered a Republican. For fucks sake, “Obamacare” was actually “Romneycare,” can we stop acting like the entire party apparatus as a whole doesn’t deep throat big business? Because it fucking does and it doesn’t matter if he didn’t directly vote for that himself, he’s still part and parcel to the people who make it this fucking bad. That’s literally the people he is giving a speech to here.
I don’t even disagree with your points on where the party was or is, or how left Obama really is/was, but the neutering of the ACA to what we got wasn’t Obama’s fault. It barely got through even as a Republican-based idea, and from then for two terms on any other efforts were subjected to “just vote no” mentality.
You deliberately took his words out of context so you could lambast him with an imaginary dis of Mamdani.
The NJ race is a former Navy pilot who already beat five other candidates for this race. You want to say no one else had a chance?She won four terms in the US Congress. It’s her or the republiQan now; you had four years to get someone “who would help people” and once again there’s nothing.
This is bullshit “leftist” whingeing that mean old Obama and the mean old DNC are keeping the socialists down with their cheatin’ ways and it’s bullshit.
Socialists, communists, and whatever ist you wanna ist still have to run, still have to raise and spend large amounts of money, and still have to put up with mindless attacks from the right and, now, “left” to get into a position to help people and that’s before they do a single thing in office. It’s really difficult and mostly boring so if you can’t be bothered to find someone to support, try not to cast us down the well of fascist incompetence again.
I didn’t take them out of context. He admitted he thinks there are some great candidates that we should support but doesn’t have the courage to back the one needing it most, or alternatively he doesn’t support him. I didn’t imply he dissed mamdani, just that he’s a coward for not talking about one of the most watched races in the country at the moment. The DNC is actively not supporting the winner of a dem primary. Pointing that out is not “whingeing”. I’m also not saying he’s mean. He’s either a coward or doesn’t care. Possibly both.
I also didn’t say she didn’t have a chance, I’m saying to a certain extent it doesn’t matter (though I always tell people to vote at the bare minimum). What are the dems in congress doing to stop Trump right now? Oh, that’s right, at best nothing, and at worst voting for his policies. The same old Dems with the same old policies are not going to stop Trump.
You are clearly having a different conversation than anyone else here because no one was attacking you unless your name is Obama. If you want to be indignant, be so at your faves who apparently can’t get anyone to like their policies enough to start a grassroots movement, or better yet at the people pushing this country to the right. Leftist are running candidates and raising money and supporting them getting things done, and if you actually cared about that you’d have something to say about the fact that Dems aren’t supporting mamdani instead of acting like pointing this out is somehow a dis.
Yeah, that’ll get the neoliberals fired up. Jesus Christ.
coming from the guy who helped to pay the way into trumpism… yeah they should “toughen up” but it should’ve come already in his tenure.
Literally the guy who said “we need to look forward, not backward” when it came to prosecuting the Bush admin for fucking war crimes of all things and then expanded, codified, and legalized the mass surveillance and the drone wars… Which are now all being used against US citizens.
I don’t think we need to hear from the Signature Strike, Surveilance State, and gross expansion of executive power guy right now
“There’s been, I gather, some argument between the left of the party and people who are promoting the quote-unquote abundance agenda. Listen, those things are not contradictory. You want to deliver for people and make their lives better? You got to figure out how to do it,” he said.
“I don’t care how much you love working people. They can’t afford a house because all the rules in your state make it prohibitive to build. And zoning prevents multifamily structures because of NIMBY,” he said, referring to “not in my backyard” views. “I don’t want to know your ideology, because you can’t build anything. It does not matter.”
O noes bougie lib has a points! Quick, blame something on that centrist think tank that went bankrupt in 2011!
“I don’t want to know your ideology, because you can’t build anything. It does not matter.”
Dag, yo.
It’s funny how he takes the most prominent issue that cuts across liberal vs. leftist ideological lines — anybody can be a NIMBY — and then blames it solely on the leftists.
How you figure he’s blaming “the leftists” for NIMBY?
How do you read the paragraphs you quoted, if not that? Do you think he’s addressing the neolibs when he says “I don’t care how much you love working people” and then scolds them about housing?
Because they are the ones who care about shit like environmental regulations and not polluting our cities to make new housing, especially when so much property is being held and unused by an investor class who refuses to release it until they have a profit on the deal. I have lived in two northwest cities in the last 15 years where the downtowns are barren with empty buildings that could be sold, torn down, and built into apartments. But noooo in each city they’d rather clearcut the wooded areas and build there instead all the while whinging about environmental regulations making it costly.
Whatever the fuck happened to that Eminent Domain shit? Why aren’t we using that for the good of housing people?
