It has been a Junius Horribilis for President Obama. [...] Apparently Bryson will have to clean up his own wreckage. This White House has too many other pileups to deal with. – Pileup at the White House, by Dana Milbank
“Well, the truth of the matter is, as President of the United States I have got a lot of responsibilities. …” – Pres. Barack Obama
LAME EXCUSE by Pres. Obama not to show up in Wisconsin. It’s also insulting to Democrats, activists and labor.
In interviews with local radio stations across the country, this beauty stands out to me as defining. Hey, but I’m a liberal who believes unions are the foundation of the middle class.
That’s obviously not where Pres. Obama stands, evidently believing that corporations grant workers rights without a fight.
The kicker is hearing Pres. Obama talk about the Wisconsin recall as if it was all about Tom Barrett. It’s the same mistake Barrett made when he carved the union fight out of his campaign. Blue Dog Democrats and their conservative brethren are why unions have fewer allies today.
One question about Pres. Obama’s fear of taint strategy in Wisconsin resonates: Why didn’t Obama at least send Joe?
“Well, the truth of the matter is, as President of the United States I have got a lot of responsibilities. …”
Pleasing Wall St. and Big Pharm, proposing benefit cuts for middle-class Americans, composing a secret kill list…
Now as President; or even just as an individual, it was his choice not to go to Wisconsin. But, going to fundraisers in Chicago and the Twin Cities (he literally had to flyover WI) days before the recall then stating, POTUS/responsibilities blah blah blah… is flippant
It is very sad but union workers are an anthropological subset that Obama has no connection to at all. They loved the Clintons don’t forget. As I have always said the Dems were a mere means to an end for him. He knew the limo libs who do a lot of funding could never resist the chance to make MLK dreams come true but they forgot the substance of his message..it is character not color that counts.
Why is everyone assuming that poor Bryson did not have some sort of medical event? If it was a seizure out of the blue then he could be in serious trouble like Ted Kennedy.What a heartless response from everyone.
I just have to laugh when people like you bring up MLK! If he was alive today do you really doubt he would be an Obama supporter?
You know what solo….. the term “people like you” just shuts down the conversation. It says all anyone needs to know.
If you don’t like that term you should stop using one prominent African American to justify your hatred of another.
Gotta disagree with you on that one, Lake Lady. It’s this statement I’m replying to that does it for me. Dr. King was against turning America into a perpetual war machine. He was in favor of economic justice. Both of those issues where many of his supporters in the civil rights movement disagreed with him. Sometimes, they disagreed enough to go their own way. Barack Obama would have been one such supporter, assuming he saw the value of protest in the first place, which he quite clearly has not.
MLK would have been in his eighties if he were still alive today, Who knows how much of his mind and spirit would have survived all the stresses and fears he had to deal with? Soldiers aren’t the only ones who experience PTSD. Anyone who lived a life like Dr. King’s would have been a candidate. I suspect he’d have been proud that an African American could finally be elected President. I doubt the MLK of the Fifties and Sixties would have been his supporter, though. At least, he wouldn’t have been for very long.
A…I don’t hate anybody certainly not Presdient Obama, I think he would make a fine writer of books and giver of motivational speeches and B…You don’t own MLK buddy.
I never claimed to own MLK and I am not the one who brought him up!
MLK is alive today. His name is Dr. Cornel West. Dr. West speaks truth to all power and is hated today by the power structure just as MLK was hated by the supporters of the powerful when he was alive.
Only the names ever change; not right and wrong or truth and justice.
Next time you should think your comments through before you hit submit! MLK is alive today? LOL! Yikes!
So you try to read MLKjr’s mind, then you mock others for suggesting his ideals are still alive today in others.
You are an incredibly sad little person.
BTW, what was your point again? What IF MLKjr would be supporting Obama today? What does that even mean? That we have to ignore his dismissive attitude toward unions and progressives?
Hey Solo, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he’d be disgusted at your flippant regard for freedom of speech. Maybe you should make amends by just shutting up now.
On the one hand your complaining about my flippant disregard for free speech and on the other hand your telling me to shut up. Way to be consistent.
JJamele, both of my lost comment were meant for you!
Bad grammar aside your comment makes little sense. I fail to see the connection between whether MLK would be an Obama supporter or not and Thomas Jefferson/free speech? Sorry but I don’t speak gibberish.
Actually, I’d say that’s all you speak.
But let me connect the dots for you:
You: “If he was alive today do you really doubt he would be an Obama supporter?” Claiming that an important person from long ago would support your position.
jjamele: “if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he’d be disgusted at your flippant regard for freedom of speech.” Caiming that an important person from long ago would support his position.
In both cases, the person making the claim is absolutely sure that the person in question would support his position. The main difference is that in jjamele’s case, that claim was made sarcastically.
Since it’s been firmly established by another breathless Obama supporter that my mental gifts aren’t up to snuff, I think we should be able to agree that if I can see this, it must be pretty damn obvious.
First, of course after I catch JJ saying something stupid you respond by claiming it was just sarcasm. he was just kidding. Right!
Second, unlike the time of Jefferson there is thing called video tape that’s been in existence for oh about a century or so. Which means we have hours and hours of recordings of MLK in his own words expressing his beliefs. So people like me can say with relative certainty whether or not he would be an Obama supporter.
Back in Jefferson’s day, they had a thing called paper. Now, we have a sort of substitute for paper called web pages. Jefferson’s thoughts are just as accessible as King’s, and you’re clearly just as unaware of what either thought despite that availability.
Cujo359: Which do you think has a greater impact on people? A video recording that anyone can viewed on YouTube or the written word on a website? Which medium do you think is easier to manipulate?
Having done a bit of editing work in both media, I can say without hesitation that it’s as easy to fool people in one as the other. All it takes is people who are unwilling to examine their preconceptions. You’re a perfect audience, in that regard.
Why? Because Obama is black? I really don’t think that is what MLK was all about. If it was, what makes that any different than any other form of racism?
That was addressed to Solo’s comment that MLK would be an Obama supporter if he were alive today.
Taylor no matter how hard you try you simply will never be able to escape the reality that the reason democrats lost in Wisconsin is that most people in that state didn’t agree with the recall in the first place. Most Wisconsinites don’t believe that elected officials should be recalled simply because the side that lost the previous election don’t agree with their policies. Most Wisconsinites and I suspect most voters across the country believe that elected officials should only be subject to a recall if the official in question commits a crime while in office or is guilty of some sort of official misconduct. I share that opinion! Dems turned out in 2008 but decided not to turn out to vote 2010, lost then decided they wanted another bite at the apple. Wisconsin should be a lesson to all voters, elections have consequences! When an election comes around your sides decides not to turnout and your side loses whatever the consequences are of your inaction you will have to live with them until the next regularly scheduled election. But of course why accept any of that when scapegoating President Obama so much more fun?
Oh, good grief.
If Democrats can’t be bothered to craft a recall election that started because of collective bargaining being gutted around the fight for the middle class then there isn’t even a fig leaf between the two big parties, with Democrats no longer standing for anything that helps lift wages.
Barrett left the union – middle class argument out of his case to oust Walker, so voters were left to make of what they wanted, leaving the void to benefit Walker.
That Obama supporters are sucking the recall argument up as the reason Wisconsin couldn’t have been won if Democrats AND OBAMA had made the union argument illustrates just how far right Democrats in the era of Obama have gone.
Obama supporters could care less about union & middle class, because it’s all about the star candidate.
But it goes along with Obama picking a right to work, anti-gay rights, state to hold the Democratic convention.
This quote made me laugh Taylor (not because your wrong) but because I hear almost the exact same from conservatives here in South Carolina about Romney. They DETEST Romney calling him some “slick Wall Street guy that doesn’t know grits from concrete”. Of course they detest President Obama more. One of my neighbors, a self-described South Carolina “good ol’ boy” that has a Harley and a pickup truck had a t-shirt made that says on the front:
What’s the difference between Obama and Romney? Their color.
On the back it says:
Citizens for a Real Conservative President
While their are definitely differences between Obama and Romney, they both are and always will be beholden to Wall Street. That’s why President Obama didn’t send the big guns into Wisconsin: unions aren’t sexy but corporations/Wall Street are downright HAWT! He knows who butters his bread. And it isn’t the middle class…
Oh, T-Steel, that is PRICELESS.
“Barrett left the union – middle class argument out of his case to oust Walker, so voters were left to make of what they wanted, leaving the void to benefit Walker.” Void? If a video tape of Scott Walker talking to one of his billionaire supporters about divide and conquer wasn’t enough to get Democrats to the polls, nothing Barrett could have said or should have said would have made any difference. Star candidate? Wrong again Taylor, this is about your deranged hatred of all things Obama. It’s about you being a naked ideologue, the left’s version of a teabagger. Ignoring facts and clinging to your hate regardless. Taylor there is a special election going on today in Arizona to fill the seat vacated by Gabriele Giffords, are you going to hold President Obama responsible for the results of that election as well?
um… Since you don’t know or can’t tell the difference between a special election and a recall, whose foundation took fire on the dismantling of collective bargaining, there’s really not much point in me exchanging the finer points of the need for strong framing and messaging to winning.
First, I am well aware of the difference between a special election and a recall election. That’s neither here nor there.
Two, Governor Walker’s dismantling of collective bargaining wasn’t a sufficient enough reason to justify him being recalled. Again I might add the majority opinion in Wisconsin that you no doubt will ignore. There was nothing illegal or unethical about what Walker did, changing laws is what politicians are elected to do! Walking had a documented history of anti-union behavior, if unions/dems don’t like what he has done since being in office too bad. Maybe next time they will get up off their asses and vote.
Solo 12 June 2012 at 3:37 pm
Again, a majority opinion taken after an election where the Democrats didn’t make the case of why voters must recall Walker, beginning with his efforts to depress wages by eviscerating unions, isn’t convincing.
Barrett and Obama didn’t make the affirmative case for unions, the middle class, and protecting wages, so voters were left to only ponder the fairness of recalling Walker on its own merits.
I wrote it the day it happened, but I’ll say it again. Wisconsin was lost by the Democrats before the voting began.
Your sentence is true (Wisconsin was lost by the Democrats before the voting began) but not for the reason you think. Dems lost because the recall was unjustified.
Solo 12 June 2012 at 4:13 pm
That’s no excuse for Democrats, including Pres. Obama, to abdicate their responsibility to make the case for the middle class and holding up wages through union participation through making the case that Scott Walker was the villain depressing both.
It’s a fundamental tenet of Democratic philosophy or at least it was until the Obama era.
There’s no shame in losing a battle, but it’s disgraceful when you don’t even wage the good fight.
“Barrett left the union – middle class argument out of his case to oust Walker”
And that is why he won the primary election. Public employee unions don’t have much support anywhere anymore, it’s time face the facts; even FDR was opposed to public employee unions for goodness sakes.
With all respect, Pres O’Bama can shove that answer up his ass.
One of his responsibilities is the leader of the Dem Party. In Wisconsin, the core of the party faithful, union workers, middle class,and poor were under attack , and the core mobilized. The response of every Dem politician should have been to show up and support them, regardless of the possibility of a loss. Because if you expect people to lay it on the line for you, then you have to lay it on the line for them.
The Wisconsin recall was the political story for over a year, the stakes were known, the Democratic coalition in Wisconsin was under attack. The response should have been a full mobilization by all Dems. The Repubs had no problem with a national response, neither should have the Dems.
In this instance the Pres and the national Dems are an embarrassment.
Disrespectful violent rhetoric aimed at President Obama (With all respect, Pres O’Bama can shove that answer up his ass) tickles your funny bone doesn’t it?
First you couldn’t tell the difference between a recall and special election, now you’re confused about a turn of phrase thinking it’s literal.
The tone of the first sentence makes his personal feelings towards President Obama clear! It also renders reading the rest of his comment unnecessary.
No kidding. One of the responsibilities of any politician is to keep his base strong. What this episode demonstrates to me is that labor is no longer part of the Democrats’ base, at least when they have to decide between them and that other part of their base, Wall Street.
Eventually, I suspect labor will get that message, too, but not before they’ve been mostly legislated out of existence.
Labor didn’t “pick the wrong battle.” It made the mistake of assuming they were part of an army in the first place.
I’m with LiberalJoe as regards what the president can do with his answer. Solo may not accept this, but when one votes for a presidential candidate, there is faith that said candidate will be most of what he claims to be. With Pres. Obama, that faith was misplaced. It is not derangement or hatred, but a strong feeling of being tossed off the Titanic with no life jacket while the captain rushes about tending the slights of the 1st class passengers.
I’m with LiberalJoe. I stop short of blaming the loss on Wisconsin on Obama but I do blame him for paying lip service to organized labor but failing to follow up with actions. I don’t expect him to control the outcome; it would just be nice if he had our backs. I’ve concluded long ago he does not.
President Obama can make excuses all he wants, but he flew over the state, but he couldn’t stop at least one rally or something for Barrett. Give me a break !!
“Since it’s been firmly established by another breathless Obama supporter that my mental gifts aren’t up to snuff…”
_______________
Man, why bring me into this? How many times do I have to tell you I couldn’t care less about the endless Obama debate that rages here? Or your passive-aggressive insults? And for the record, I didn’t say your mental gifts weren’t up to snuff. I said I was smarter than you. As evidenced by the fact that you’re perpetually complaining about the evil and mendacious Mr. Obama. I think the smart(er) move is to stipulate to the point and move on. But like a moth to a flame, you keep coming back to kvetch some more. And that’s cool. But I have no desire to participate in the proceedings. So – again – please stop name-checking me.Thanks.