Obama Has Betrayed the Progressives Who Got Him Elected -- So Now What Do We Do?

Yep, Obama has been a dud so far. The warmongers seem more entrenched then ever. The right wing continues to dominate public discourse. No regulation on Wall Street. Mountain top removal mining continues. No torture prosecutions. And on and on. What happened to "yes we can".

Peacenik doesn't know what to blame it on. Fox news and CNBC and the rest of the mainstream media have certainly been anti-Obama. And the rightwing fringe, the Glen Becks and Lou Dobbs, certainly get more coverage then they warrant. Can Obama re-capture the progressive vibe. He better do it soon, or else the U.S. will embrace another kind of change, the wrong kind. The Sarah Palin kind.

Posted by Allison Kilkenny, True/Slant at 5:40 PM on August 31, 2009.

Total withdrawal dates and single-payer healthcare were never seriously part of the agenda. They were nice, empty promises, made to get elected.

Though he's barely over six months into his first term, President Obama faces a critical time. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, support for Obama is dropping, and Greg Sargent theorizes this is due to waning support among Democrats and liberals.

Sargent's theory makes sense. Ask any Democrat or Progressive why they voted for Obama, and you're likely to hear a range of grievances extending from he's better than Bush to Nader wasn't on the ballot, but others say things like he said he'd bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, or he promised healthcare reform.

Read on...

The First 100 Days

posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 11/07/2008 @ 3:31pm

At the end of this remarkable week, we're starting to look ahead to the First 100 Days of the Obama presidency. Already, we're hearing calls in the mainstream media warning the new administration "not to overreach." And working overtime, the Inside-the-Beltway Punditocracy continues to reveal its ability to ignore reality--even while describing itself as "realist"--with its claims that this is still a center-right nation, despite all evidence to the contrary.

But as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes in today's New York Times, "Let's hope that Mr. Obama has the good sense to ignore this advice...this year's presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies--and the progressive philosophy won."

Read on...

Peacenik thinks this would be a good beginning. And Peacenik is keeping a scorecard.

Dion gets no lift from raising glass with Greens

SIRI AGRELL
October 15, 2008

Stéphane Dion may have been toast the moment Elizabeth May offered to bring the wine.

Election watchers say the Liberal Leader made a strategic miscalculation backing the Green Party throughout the campaign.

In helping her bid to join the televised debate, observers say, Mr. Dion gave her a platform to draw away votes his party desperately needed to unseat the Conservative government. Her performance in the forum raised her profile and that of her party, and appears to have bled votes from Mr. Dion in several close races.

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Peacenik doesn't particularly agree with this article. Peacenik didn't make it a secret that he supported the Liberals in this vote in the Guelph riding. There will be lots of analysis and lots of blame being tossed around. Keeping Harper to a minority is a huge accomplishment given the tenor of the campaign. Peacenik is concerned that so many voters seem to buy into the Conservative anti-tax, anti-green ideology.

Too many voters don't seem concerned that the Conservatives believe what Bush believes. Peacenik thinks they will be concerned very soon. Liberals and progressives have to start positioning themselves now. They will be picking up the pieces of what is left of the Canadian economy once the Harper/Bush policies play out.