David Axelrod’s message to liberals who are upset about Barack Obama’s embrace of George W. Bush’s policies: You shouldn’t expect any better. “My admonition would be: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,” he said to them yesterday.
The top Obama advisor apparently believes that Barack Obama doesn’t need to do anything more to satisfy the liberals who were Obama’s base of support in the 2008 presidential election. He asks us to look for the “good”.
Barack Obama’s refusal to even consider single payer health care reform. Was that the good we’re supposed to be thankful for?
Obama’s support for expanded offshore drilling – is that good?
Is the “good” Axelrod was talking about the way that Obama sent his lawyers out to argue that homosexuality is akin to pedophilia, and to declare that the President has the right, as George W. Bush said, to keep secrets from the American people even when ordered by a court to share the information?
Breaking his promise for open government by covering up evidence of torture and refusing Freedom Of Information Act obligations is the good we’re supposed to be thankful for?
Is Obama’s work to give public money to support the “clean coal” hoax good?
How about Obama’s broken promise to reform the Office of Faith-Based Initiative’s corrupt system of religious patronage? How is that good?
Are we supposed to think it was good of Obama to continue George W. Bush’s policy of delaying endangered species protections?
Is keeping the prisons of Guantanamo Bay open good?
Is it good that Obama has organized kangaroo court military tribunals and declared that he embraces Bush’s belief that the President can keep people in prison without any criminal charge?
Are we supposed to categorize two record-breaking military budgets in a row as good?
Are we expected to place Obama’s opposition to marriage equality in the “good” column?
How about the continued expansion of government electronic surveillance of the American people? Is that good?
Really, what is this “good” that David Axelrod was talking about? Barack Obama has consistently worked against the liberal vision of what’s good, supporting a right wing version of morality instead.
When we liberals declare the withdrawal of our support from Barack Obama, we’re not making “the perfect the enemy of the good”. We’re merely being consistent in opposing the same old bad policies that we opposed under George W. Bush.
Obama shouldn’t expect a second term.
When I read these friendly “reminders” of how Obama betrayed is supporters, I can only think that the Rightwingers should laud Obama for these decisions. He’s literally become “Their man”, so why are they silent?
They want the POWER back.
If only the right-wing could silently accept Obama’s gifts. I hear them continue to complain rather loudly that he’s a socialist even as he gives the corporate sector gift after gift in the form of policy and money from government programs.