White House press secretary Robert Gibbs lashed out at the “professional left” in The Hill magazine. He did not name names. But he made some interesting comments:
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it’s crazy.”
“They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
“They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
“There’s 101 things we’ve done” (mentioning both Iraq and health care “reform”).
Follow just one line of thought: The Democrats gave away everything in the health care debate. They didn’t really even try. But to oppose such a sellout is said to be like wanting “Canadian Health Care.” He is adopting the extreme position to confuse the issue, to make it appear as there was no willingness to compromise on a reasonable deal on health care. It’s cagey perception management.
With Iraq, Obama is merely following through with the Bush agenda, permanent occupation. Nothing has changed. Afghanistan was on deck no matter who won the election. Guantanamo is still there and festering. Mere spying on Americans has turned into assassinating Americans. It is all as if George W. Bush were still in office, but … we are not allowed to say that. It’s “crazy.”
There is no mystery here. Gibbs hates lefties. So does Rahm Emanuel, and is logically follows that Obama too has a hard spot for us. Bill Clinton hated the left. But during his years the left was pretty much confined to the “Alternative Media” and Democracy Now! These days there are some prominent leftish voices out there, like Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Warren, Glenn Greenwald, some blogs … and they are attracting attention.
In the Clinton years, the left was frozen out of the debate. Gibbs’ only frustration is that we have a foot in the door. This is, after all, The United States of America, and in this country, there are Republicans, Democrats, but if there is to be a left, we will hire actors to play them.
If Democrats are voted out of power in the coming six years, as they should be, the left will be blamed. And the ultimate insult will be this: Democrats will never acknowledge that having Democrats in power made no difference anyway. They are that dense.
Piece of Mindful 