'Let Down' Liberals Lend Me Your Ears

 Will Rodgers- 'I belong to no organized political party, I am a Democrat.'

When Ed Schultz still lived in Fargo ND and ran a little radio show few had heard of and he had never dreamt of being on TV, I was one of his biggest fans.
Ed raged against the Right and never left the Left behind. He devoted his entire Friday shows to callers who were small business owners and let them do their own free promotional spots. I loved the guy and liked to think my praise of his show in countless emails to MSNBC and CNN played a small part in his being given a cable show. I emailed him frequently and he (or his staff) occasionally responded graciously. I called in a few times and we had great talks and during the lead up to the 2008 election I once came to tears in my support of Ed and our candidate, Senator Obama.

I didn't leave Ed, he left me.

I applaud constructive criticism, but Ed and so many in the Liberal media have broken my heart with their callous disregard for historical facts in their petulant rants against President Obama. I believe in the old axiom that a president needs a push from the people to be able to hold sway and move forward on groundbreaking legislation, but there is quite a difference in constructive criticism and self immolation.

So here are a few facts that we should all keep in mind while working with President Obama for progressive change in the USA.
1. The Liberal hero presidents we all so admire, like JFK, LBJ and FDR all had significantly larger congressional majorities when they passed their landmark pieces of legislation than did the president when he took office. And the supposedly 'fillibuster proof' 60th vote that President Obama had in the Senate was embodied by Joseph Lieberman, who had endorsed and campaigned on stage with the president's opponent John McCain! Lieberman was on record as having been a long time proponent of single payer health care reform, until President Obama. Lieberman did everything he could to sabotage the health care reform efforts of the president right up to the cusp of being kicked out of the Democratic caucus and losing his committee positions. So let's please be real about that whole chapter. In 1965 when Medicare was passed LBJ had a 68 seat to 32 seat majority in the Senate! He had a 295 to 140 majority in the House. Compare that to President Obama's 60 seats in the Senate when he took office, with seat number 60 being Joe Lieberman.  Here's the link...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi%E2%80%8Bki/89th_United_States_Cong%E2%80%8Bress
2. When the president took office we were coming off of 28 consecutive years of conservative economic policies emanating from the White House, from Reagan through W. [Remember, even Alan Greenspan refers to President Clinton as a 'great Republican president' economically speaking because of his decimating of welfare and global trade deals which had been the ultimate dream of corporate America for a century.] President Obama has inherited a nation every bit as crippled by the short sighted idiocy of carnivorous capitalism, as was our nation when FDR was elected. This isn't supposed to be easy. The bailouts were a wise move that FDR undoubtedly would have deployed in retrospect, but sadly, by not allowing our whole system to fail as it did after the 1929 crash there was a little wiggle room left for the Right to weave the Grinch-like lie that 'Our medicine didn't make you sick, you simply need to take more'.

3. And finally, is it too much to keep in mind that President Obama has already accomplished far more good than the two previous Democratic presidents combined? Jimmy Carter is a great man but was not an effective president and Bill Clinton hurt the country badly (especially the working class) with his unfettered trade deals with Asia. It should be clear by now that the Clinton economic boom was mostly a short term money rush caused by our entire manufacturing base fleeing US soil for low wage-regulation Asia. The history books will show that this was the root cause of the stock market tripling in value. And the cash explosion at the top of our economy that led to (along with financial de-regulation from Reagan-Clinton) is the genesis of our continuing housing market crisis.

Those who truly gave of themselves in the Civil Rights and workers rights struggles in the last century feel no shame in asking the president for support on the things they care about most, respectfully and affectionately and without ever even hinting at dropping their support for the most successful Liberal president since LBJ.