Did you see the "brilliant" bit of hogwash NYT is slamming Obama with?

[janedrake]

God, this makes me furious. This "brilliant" professor writes this piece as though Obama rules by fiat, as though everything Obama "should have done" could be accomplished through the Executive branch only, and he accuses Obama of never having addressed things Obama has consistently advocated for from the earliest days of his presidency -- and the comments for the piece are a chorus of 300+ whining "progressives" telling this guy he's written the most brilliant piece of "we-hate-Obama" ever, and how "disappointed" they are that they voted for Obama. They should in fact, have voted for FDR.

I had to vent here, since the comments for this absolutely magical thinking piece are closed. I don't even want to link to this hit job, but if you have a strong stomach, it's called "What Happened to Obama" over at NYT.

[NJMaverick]

This is how the Obama hating wing of liberals gets further and further from reality. The pro-left will only read/believe things that enforce their bizarre notions of reality and dismiss the rest. The PF is as bad if not worse than the Tea Baggers. At least it took financing from Billionaires and the support of FAUX news to get them to their crazy place, the professional left got to their place all by themselves.

[jaxx]

I saw it. I always wonder when some psychologist tries to ply his trade over the internet.

[Ikonoklast]

"What Happened To Obama" is that those still angry over him getting elected decided to 'punish' him for beating Hillary in the general by not voting in the mid-terms.

Fucking assholes.

As if Hillary Clinton is some Raging Leftist who could ram through legislation in a Congress with a Republican majority, using the force of her personality to hypnotize the opposition into doing her will.

[skip_in_boulder]

(08-07-2011 11:28 AM)Ikonoklast Wrote:  "What Happened To Obama" is that those still angry over him getting elected decided to 'punish' him for beating Hillary in the general by not voting in the mid-terms.

Very good observation. I didn't get caught up in the Hillary mania and went for Obama because as far as I can tell Hillary is more of a corporatism than a liberal. And that's not saying anything bad about Hillary as she clearly is an astute politician but it is more to say that is just where she falls on the political spectrum.

[OptimistesMaddie]

(08-07-2011 11:35 AM)skip_in_boulder Wrote:  

(08-07-2011 11:28 AM)Ikonoklast Wrote:  "What Happened To Obama" is that those still angry over him getting elected decided to 'punish' him for beating Hillary in the general by not voting in the mid-terms.

Very good observation. I didn't get caught up in the Hillary mania and went for Obama because as far as I can tell Hillary is more of a corporatism than a liberal. And that's not saying anything bad about Hillary as she clearly is an astute politician but it is more to say that is just where she falls on the political spectrum.

I voted for President Obama for many reasons but one of them was if Hillary were elected do you think for a minute the Right Wing would not have jumped on Bill is back in the WH and he is running the country? They already had their playbooks out....they were prepared.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

(08-07-2011 11:28 AM)Ikonoklast Wrote:  "What Happened To Obama" is that those still angry over him getting elected decided to 'punish' him for beating Hillary in the general by not voting in the mid-terms.

Fucking assholes.

As if Hillary Clinton is some Raging Leftist who could ram through legislation in a Congress with a Republican majority, using the force of her personality to hypnotize the opposition into doing her will.

Although I would've gladly supported Clinton if she won the nomination and became POTUS, I have always believed that, aside from maybe a few small differences here and there, we'd be in pretty much the same predicament that we're in right now and the PL would've been equally unhappy with her as they are with Obama IMHO. At any rate, people really need to get over these counterfactuals about Hillary vs. Barack. He won the primary fair and square and went on to become POTUS. Hillary didn't. End of line.

[Ikonoklast]

(08-07-2011 08:39 PM)Proud Liberal Dem Wrote:  

(08-07-2011 11:28 AM)Ikonoklast Wrote:  "What Happened To Obama" is that those still angry over him getting elected decided to 'punish' him for beating Hillary in the general by not voting in the mid-terms.

Fucking assholes.

As if Hillary Clinton is some Raging Leftist who could ram through legislation in a Congress with a Republican majority, using the force of her personality to hypnotize the opposition into doing her will.

Although I would've gladly supported Clinton if she won the nomination and became POTUS, I have always believed that, aside from maybe a few small differences here and there, we'd be in pretty much the same predicament that we're in right now and the PL would've been equally unhappy with her as they are with Obama IMHO. At any rate, people really need to get over these counterfactuals about Hillary vs. Barack. He won the primary fair and square and went on to become POTUS. Hillary didn't. End of line.

If Hillary had been the candidate and elected president instead of Mr. Obama, the Republicans would have gone just as all-out to destroy her presidency in much the same way.

She would have to deal with the Teabagger Congress, and would have been vilified by the PL as soon as she came to any political compromise.

Ideological rigidity and political purity must be maintained at all costs, even if it crashes the economy.

There is no winning with some of these people, they must have never had to compromise on any issue in their entire lives, personal or professional.

Must be nice, I have never had that luxury.

[Ikonoklast]

Dupe/delete

[janedrake]

At least spotted two intelligent comments:

Comment 123: "To those here who feel disappointed that Obama has not united this nation, you overlook the ubiquitous, relentless forces of global mass communication that have thrived on creating disinformation, fear, and uncertainty at the expense of focusing on the bigger message from the White House. My recollection from his inauguration speech was that – finally – we had a decent, thoughtful, intelligent person in the White House whose goals were to find common ground with on another and to move forward. But mass media has been too powerful.

Further, attempts by Obama to advance his message were met with criticism that he was arrogant and too infatuated with the sound of his own voice. History will note that this president was drowned in ignorant ambivalence by swaths of fearful, misinformed (and somewhat racist) critics who somehow expected one man to be both healer and yet autocratically, single-handedly change the entrenched right-wing extremist elements in this nation whose kung-fu grip on waging war and deregulation could not be undone in a matter of a few years. Well, it could not have happened in this age, and I'm not surprised.

If anything, I am sympathetic to Obama's dilemma: where he cannot move in any direction without being attacked by millions. This is not what I call a presidency – it's more like being caged animal. I don't suppose McCain would have faired much differently, had he won.

The sad thing is that we have come to learn that extremists, in a democracy like ours, can hold such strong influence that our collective voices cannot be part of the legislative conversation. That is what I hoped from this presidency, but it will not come to pass. As soon as the filibuster is eliminated, we might actually see some political movement in this country.

I will be sure to remind my children that the age of the early 00s was a sickeningly sad part of our history, where human decency and fraternity were lost in tribal warfare. McLuhan was right."

Comment 132: "This analysis is reflective not of what president Obama lacks, but of the inability of the citizenry of this country to take on the responsibility to educate themselves before they vote for the people they choose to represent them:

This analysis is a vivid example of how myopic the average voter becomes through apathy. By neglecting our duty as citizens of the state, which brings with it responsibilities that we chose to ignore, we fail educate ourselves to honestly understand the person who will represent us. Instead, we allow interest groups and television commercials to do the work for us and give us THEIR choices, which we then follow blindly, because we were too lazy to do our own work."

[Born_A_Truman]

Yeah, I read it. I also read the hit piece his "cousin" wrote in the Washington Times.

[Willinois]

Yes, I saw it. My first impression is that he's yet another pundit with authoritarian expectations about a President making him feel safe and pushing everything he wants through Congress. He's looking for a liberal Bush.

My second impression is that, based on his description, I don't think he has ever listened to any of Obama's speeches. The writer seems clueless about what Obama actually says.

I notice a number of critics asking if Hillary would have been better. I sometimes wonder whether much of the New York and Washington DC press corps were psychologically traumatized by the 9/11 attacks that happened in their towns. That can make people seek out authority figures to make them feel safe. It lead the press abandon their watchdog role when Bush lied the country into Iraq. And I think many of them are still looking for the kind of farther figure as President. Hillary's campaign explicitly appealed to those voters with her crisis ads and claim to experience. Those voters will never be happy with a President like Obama who fundamentally believes that changes comes from the people.

[janedrake]

I wonder if this professor would have done a similar piece on his hero FDR when FDR signed a Social Security bill into law that essentially excluded women and minorities -- wasn't that, too, "too small a stimulus."

What really sets me off about his piece is that it is fundamentally dishonest - the author completely ignores how much Obama has accomplished, the policies Obama has advocated for, the historic legislation Obama has championed. Completely dishonest piece.

[There Is No Spoon]

I started to read it, then got bored and moved on.

[Eponine]

That's one person's opinion. And someone I've never heard of.

[Cha]

No, hogwash doesn't interest me. But, it reminds me that I saw on another board..someone stated that either Arianna or Rachel said "the President needed therapy". Don't know what context it was in or anything about it. Or, if I should even pass it on..but, it struck me as a particular stupid thing to say about the President.

The stupid is rampant and then we have guys like Milt Shook who are smart and are quite capable of writing about the reality of the Obama Presidency.

http://democratsforprogress.com/forum/sh...p?tid=8186

[Cha]

I just read on The People's View that "the prof made the mistake of admitting he came to his conclusion on INAUGURATION DAY!"!

Here's the "kindest response he could leave for professor".. Whoa!

Quote: Listen up Drew Weston....The president has made many speeches far more eloquent and moving than your example of quality populist rhetoric, but the whining likes of you (still pissed there was no pony under the tree) ignored them and tamped down turnout in the midterms. It's your effing fault you little academic cracker! And as for PO putting Wall Street types in charge of the reform, so did FDR, he himself was one! And guess what you little snot nosed psych prof, it still took longer than FDR's THREE TERMS to get the economy back on track. You also leave out the fact that FDR let the system bottom out by not bailing out the banks. That was a bad idea, but it did save money for public works projects. There has been no national political will to do both since the likes of you killed the Dem's in the midterms.Ungodly that a low rent nobody like you gets this forum when you admit in paragraph one that you gave up on this president before he had even been sworn in! And your utter ignorance in not calculating in the fact that FDR had 67 Democrat senators and PO had #60 neo-con Senator from the Likud Party Joe Lieberman who had endorsed and campaigned for McCain, is STUPEFYING! The president asked for and the Dem's passed everything we've dreamed of through the House and almost none of it was voted on in the Senate because of Lieberman and you leave this out of your analysis. RETARDED!And finally asshole, you were never 'enthralled' with this president as you say you were. If you had been you would be able to answer the question Jon Stewart could not, when it was put to him face to face...said President Obama..."Jon, Why didn't you have your rally to restore sanity before the 2008 election?" So Professor Crotchsniff, where was your article of outrage against the greedy rich in 2008....Hmmmm, not to be found on the internet...did you forget to hit send?

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/08/cy...qus_thread

[Born_A_Truman]

POTUS took the oath of office knowing he was facing an economy that was tanking and possibly another great depression. Add to that, he knew he faced a GOP that would block everything he tried to do and he knew there would be racism. What I saw was a man who knew the responsibility that came with the office.

[janedrake]

Hey, Cha - that was a righteous read from The People's View!

[Cha]

(08-07-2011 04:01 PM)janedrake Wrote:  Hey, Cha - that was a righteous read from The People's View!

He was pissed! I like the comments you posted from the NYT section..very well reasoned.

I'm not reading what he wrote..I'm angry enough.

[jaxx]

This article rebuts the Westen article. It's good, and worth the read.

A lover of fairy tales casts Obama as villain-in-chief
This one is going to hurt.

In what seems like a bid to definitively cement the perceptions of progressives disappointed in Obama, psychologist Drew Westen, a student of the alleged power of stories to shape political perception, has put together his own master narrative about Obama -- a merciless tale of presidential FAIL. It's a quadruple-length op-ed (over 3000 words) on the front page of The New York Times' Sunday Review section -- a rhetorical nuke dropped on ground zero in the liberal heartland.

Westen is a good storyteller. There is real force to many of his charges. But modeling what he says Obama should have done, he tells a simplified morality tale -- highly selective, with a clear villain, and in some points demonstrably false. He makes copious use of political cliches about messaging that fail to take into account the degree to which economic conditions shape audience reception of a politician's message. Founded on the alleged timidity of the 2009 stimulus, his story fails to engage the question of whether Obama could have got a larger stimulus through Congress. And in the end, it devolves into an ad hominem attack with recourse to cheap psychologizing (notwithstanding Westen's protestations of scientific detachment) and unfounded impugning of motive.

http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2011/08...ma-as.html

[janedrake]

Thank you, Jaxx. Bookmarked to read later when I'm not spitting nails.

[suzie]

Is there an effort out there to try one last time and get Hillary Clinton on the ticket for 2012, knowing that by 2016 she'll be too old to run?

Because if you go back and look at this guy's earlier writings, he could only talk about how skilled, competent, knowledgeable and experienced Clinton was--compared to Obama--in 2008.

He also continues to contend that Al Gore lost in 2000 because he kept his distance from Barack Obama. Which is a fine viewpoint if you're an academic who's never worked on a campaign.

But the reality--and I'm talking on the ground in Florida in a part of the state that needs to turn out a certain number of Democrats--is that Bill Clinton was so demoralizing to a number of old-timers who were FDR Democrats that Gore had to keep his distance.

But maybe Professor Western is correct--and Florida wasn't a swing state in 2000.

[Cha]

(08-08-2011 08:15 AM)suzie Wrote:  Is there an effort out there to try one last time and get Hillary Clinton on the ticket for 2012, knowing that by 2016 she'll be too old to run?

Because if you go back and look at this guy's earlier writings, he could only talk about how skilled, competent, knowledgeable and experienced Clinton was--compared to Obama--in 2008.

He also continues to contend that Al Gore lost in 2000 because he kept his distance from Barack Obama. Which is a fine viewpoint if you're an academic who's never worked on a campaign.

But the reality--and I'm talking on the ground in Florida in a part of the state that needs to turn out a certain number of Democrats--is that Bill Clinton was so demoralizing to a number of old-timers who were FDR Democrats that Gore had to keep his distance.

But maybe Professor Western is correct--and Florida wasn't a swing state in 2000.

Thanks for this, suzie...I did not not know he was a Hillary supporter.

You mean, he thought Gore lost because he kept his distance from Bill Clinton?

Gore "lost" the Electoral College vote because of the SC Fascist 5 and, the crooked shits' crooked brother in Florida, and the Corporate US "media" and won the Popular vote.

[Cha]

I saw that link, jaxx, and was posting it too until I saw you had already done it.

It is an excellent rebuttal to Weston's Fairy Tale.

[MandelaObama]

Ugh! Already some of the treepers on my Facebook page are circulating this nonsense by this idiot professor. I can't be bothered to read and dissect all his gibberish but I notice that he spends most of the first page of the article whining about how bad President Obama's inaugural speech was and how it was a harbinger for his entire presidency.

Apparently, if the President had spouted a whole lot of treebagger gibberish during his inauguration speech, he would have magically set the tone for his presidency to be a great success instead of the alleged failure that it is. This is a followed by the token unfavorable comparison to FDR and his presidency (of course customarily leaving out as treebaggers are wont to do, any mention of the Roosevelt Administration's record on lynching and the internment of the Japanese or the overwhelming congressional majorities that Roosevelt had) and so on and so on.

It's just the usual list of whiny treebagger talking points with nothing new of substance. He probably trolled FireDogNorquist to write this article since he seems to have been unable to contribute any new ideas to the debate. I hope he doesn't use the same level of intellectual sloppiness in his academic publications. Just yet another indication that you don't have to be smart to be a university professor