Obama blues

Glenn Greenwald has written persuasively that the Office of the President is a powerful force in affecting bills that are being debated on Capitol Hill. I have seen the same thing, witness health care: The president was helpless, sat on his hands, as progressive ideas such as Medicare opt-in, Public Option were being discussed. (In fact, he had bargained away a public option before the process even started, but that is off-topic.)

When all that was left was a bad bill, when Public Option was gone, when cost controls were gone, when AHIP and PhRMA had everything they wanted, the president flexed his muscles, threatened, cajoled, bribed …anything and everything to get his bad bill passed.

To those liberals and progressives who are still waiting for his little light to shine from under that bushel basket, please. Accept reality. He’s powerful, he’s interested, but he’s a Blue Dog – a Conservadem. We’ve got ourselves another Clinton.

From Greenwald:

Here’s Politico today on last night’s victory of Blue Dog Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Matheson in Utah over his liberal primary challenger:

He was the beneficiary of late support from Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s grassroots organization, which used e-mails, text messages, and campaign mailers to urge Democrats pull the lever for the incumbent.

Similar to what they did for Blanche Lincoln, the Obama White House unleashed its OFA Army to help protect a Blue Dog incumbent against a progressive challenger. Being able to do that, or not do it, or doing it in the other direction (i.e., to support the primary challenger) sounds to me like some pretty substantial leverage to use over members of Congress.

We are seeing it here in Colorado, where Obama is doing everything he can to support the campaign of Conservadem corporatist Michael Bennet over Andrew Romanoff.

And this is not new, nor recent. It started on November 8, 2008, with the appointment of conservative Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. From there we got appointment of Conservadems to fill vacant senate seats (with the exception of Illinois’ Roland Burris, appointed as a slap in the face of Obama by Rod” Blagojevich. Conservadem Tammy Duckworth was slated to take that seat. Burris has been squeezed out now by this supposedly weak and ineffective president.)

Progressives need not apply for work in this administration. That’s all.