Looking for the President of “Not Gonna Lay Down and Die”

[McCamy Taylor]

If this were the universe of Gore Vidal’s Duluth, President of Foreign Policy Barack Obama would have his re-election in the bag. He took out Osama Bin Laden, one of history’s most notorious mass murderers. He backed the winning side in Libya. He won a Nobel Peace Prize. He raised foreign opinion of his country from below a “Two week dead possum rotting under the back porch” to just above the “Pleasant smell of freshly laundered clothes.” He hasn’t quit reached “Eau de Cologne” yet, but give him and Hillary some time.

If we had six or twelve presidents, I am sure that Obama would be one of them for life. But we only have one. And this election, people won’t be voting for “Most Likely to Avert a Nuclear Crisis.” This time around they are voting for the President of “Not Gonna Lay Down and Die.”

Americans don’t goose step, and we don’t “go quietly into that good night.” We are the angry, ambitious, disaffected citizens of other countries who said “Enough of this shit! I’m gonna make a better life for myself and my family.”

Right now, hard working Americans are facing depression level unemployment. Massage the numbers all you like, it won’t do the president any good come next November. The folks who are going to decide this election---apolitical, working class---do not read the papers. They do not study trends in unemployment. They don’t have to. They know that one in ten of their buddies, relatives and neighbors is out of work right now, and they know that for every one that is still looking for work, there is another who has given up. They know just how many people on their block are still drawing unemployment and how many have seen the clock run out. They know that their employer keeps cutting back on benefits and denying cost of living raises and laying off those with the most seniority. They know that when their sister---the one who has cancer and can’t work because of her chemotherapy—they know that when Sis swallowed her pride and went down to apply for food stamps, she was told that she only qualified for $10 a month. Ten dollars a month!. That didn’t even pay the gasoline bill to get her to the welfare office and back.

Forget about the promise of health care yet to come. Right now, working class Americans know that one in three of their friends doesn’t have health insurance. And these are friends who are holding down two full time jobs. They know how much the hospital bill was when their cousin had the heart attack, and they know that he couldn’t write that bill off when he went bankrupt and lost his home. Every time they get indigestion they think “Is this just indigestion or is this my heart? Is my family about to go down the one way road to the poor farm? Maybe it would be better to die and let my widow collect the life insurance---“

Except that Americans don’t just lay down and die, no matter what Wall Street may want. When we have a foreign war for oil, we don’t yell “Hurray!” if our son or daughter comes home dead. When our kids are hungry, we don’t get down on our knees and thank God for letting us live in America rather than Somalia. Maybe we would be better people if we uttered prayers of thanks for what we have. But that is not the way that the hard working men and women of America think. This country became the richest in the world, because its workers were willing to forgo vacations and luxuries in order to buy homes, educate their kids, save for the future. And now, the bosses we have made rich want to take away those homes, deny our kids an education and strip us of our safety net? Why? Because we did not work hard enough? Hell, no. They want to steal it, because it is there and because they can. Because when they get down on their knees every night they do not thank God for making them millionaires in the strongest country in the world. No, they pray to God to make them billionaires---even if it means sending their country on a downward spiral to hell in the process.

Anyone who fails to hear the fear, desperation and anger of hard working Americans can expect zilch from them next fall. Yeah, that’s right. Call them dupes for buying the old Nazi Party “Bread and Jobs” slogan. Tell them they deserve whatever they get if they vote with their passion and not their reason. But first, try spending a month---no, a week---sick and homeless, grateful for the food you scavenge out of garbage cans, and then see how hard it is to remain “rational”.

My president, we are not clinging to our “guns and religion.” We are clinging to our anger, because when we let that go, there will be no more hope.

[Skittles]

1. WELL DONE

K&R

[gateley]

2. Wow. K&R. Wow! nt

[Faux pas]

3. KUDOS

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Excellent piece!

But the unreccers are ganging up - I hope they fail.

[MannyGoldstein]

16. Hey! Thrilled to see this made it through the unreccing blizzard!

Excelsior!

[SammyWinstonJack]

36. I rec'd.

:thumbsup:

[woo me with science]

5. K&R

[Faux pas]

6. hmm losing recs, who can't handle the truth?

[bertman]

7. Proud to send this excellent piece to the Greatest. REC. nt

[LaydeeBug]

8. bookmarked. nt

[DeSwiss]

9. K&R

"There doesn't seem to be anybody in the White House who's got any idea what it's like to lie awake at night worried about money and worried about things slipping away. They're all intellectually smart. They've got their numbers. But they don't feel any of it, and I think people sense that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110604538_pf.html">~Former Gov Phil Bredesen (D-TN)

[chervilant]

37. Worse,

There seems to be a plethora of people inside the Beltway who evince a patronizing or condescending attitude toward those of us who lie awake at night worried about money and worried about things slipping away.

Not only do they self-define as 'intellectually smart,' they are dead sure we are not.

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Since this piece if sort of a downer, I am gonna give some specific ways our party can win.

(Reposted from another thread)

Obama needs to get out there and talk about how America was on the road to recovery after 8 long years of Bush/Cheney, but then Big Oil, the Banks, the Health Insurance industry and foreigners poured lots of (if not exactly illegal then unethical) cash into the midterm elections, and now the Republican Congress only knows one word and that words is No!. And the goal of the Republican Congress is to get right back to the policies of Bush/Cheney that threw us into recession and debt, and the only way to stop them is to get out there and campaign and donate and work so that Democrats get a majority---no, make that a supermajority in Congress like the did when they created Social Security and when they created Medicare.

Key words this campaign need to be "trust" as in "You can trust the Democrats to come through with new ideas and programs when the American people are in need." (Pics of FDR and LBJ).

And "jobs" as in "The Republicans sent your jobs overseas. We wanna bring them back home."

And "save" as in "We created Medicare and Social Security. We are the ones you can trust when you want to save these programs."

And "prosperity" as in "The Republicans brought you fear." (Pic of World Trade Center) "We will bring you jobs and prosperity." (wheat fields).

And close to election time, I would throw in a little "The Republican candidate is spending like there is no tomorrow. He thinks he can buy your vote. Tell him that your vote is not for sale. Tell him that you intend to vote for jobs, for prosperity. Vote for a better tomorrow." (Pic of the word "vote)---This one, because high turn out favors the Democrat.

Behind the scenes, prosecute election fraud and prosecute voter disenfranchisement as if the "Civil Rights Act" is something that Democrats are proud of. When Fox calls such prosecutions "partisan politics" respond with film clips of MLK Jr. Americans trust and respect MLK Jr. a lot more than they do Fox. The Republicans have a long, uphill battle with their "Bread and jobs" campaign, because Americans knows that the GOP is strong on defense and weak on the economy. The GOP will have to use a lot of e-vote fraud to "win". Their Nazi styled "Bread and Jobs" campaign will mostly be for plausible deniability when the exit polls don't match and pundits have to explain it away. You know the kind of president I can admire? It's one who vows not to let the GOP get away with another stolen election.

As for money (since it will take a billion or so to win) court all the businesses that have been hurt by Bush-o-nomics. Housing. Manufacturing. Retail. Transportation. Travel. Small businesses. Make friendly with the Unions again. They won't stab you in the back the way the bankers do. This is the one area that I am pretty sure the Obama team will do well. But they will have to find some way to make up for the banking industry money that will all flow to the GOP this time.

Oh, and remember when Karl Rove complained that a real president does not campaign? A real president leads? Ignore him. Don't just ignore him. Do the opposite. Start campaigning on labor day and never stop. Remember Carter's rose garden campaign? Remember how successful that was? And Americans like to be courted. The last thing they want is a president who acts like he deserves the job for his foreign policy successes (think Bush Sr.)

[DeSwiss]

13. I really don't see him trying to change into President ''Touchy-Feely'' at this point.....

Obama "is not Bill Clinton in the sense that he's not an extrovert. He doesn't gain energy by connecting with people," said a Democratic strategist, who worked in the Clinton White House and asked not to be named while offering a candid criticism. "He needs to be forced to do it, either by self-discipline or others. There's no one around him who will do that. They accommodate him, and that is a bad thing."

William A. Galston, a Clinton White House policy adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the midterm election revealed what had always been a "missing middle" to the Obama campaign message. "Hope is a sentiment, not a strategy, and quickly loses credibility without a road map," Galston wrote in a paper released two days after the election. "Throughout his first two years in office, President Obama often struggled to connect individual initiatives to larger purposes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110604538.html">link

While the banking investments firms and allied institutions (along with the people who run them) are the very cause of our current financial predicament, and are likewise the same one's who are funding his campaign.

- It'd be a neat trick......

[dotymed]

31. One of us has the wrong interpretation of this OP n/t

[kentuck]

11. kick and rec!

A deep truth subsides...

[Jakes Progress]

12. K&R. That's why. That's why.

[w0nderer]

14. k&r n/t

[emilyg]

15. k/r

[Joe Fields]

17. Sounds like you agree with what I wrote a couple of days ago...

"Anyone who fails to hear the fear, desperation and anger of hard working Americans can expect zilch from them next fall."

Which is more or less putting what I said in a nutshell. A lot of people who used to vote will stay home. A lot of people who used to be liberal activists will look for independent politicians to get behind, and the leaders who are tone deaf will end up sucking eggs when they see their campaign contributions and volunteer support dramatically dwindle.

[BzaDem]

21. The fact that the OP specifically disagreed with your "lets hit rock bottom sooner" strategy

might give you pause in coming up with a ridiculous interpretation of this OP. But I doubt it.

[truedelphi]

28. Very well said. And for those who think that the notion of

primarying Obama would be a lose/lose proposition, because three percent of the 32% of the Democratic loyalists might splinter off and support some other candidate, I suggest that there is a more potent danger. And that obstacle is this one: - the most significant loss he can experience is not that three percent, but the twelve percent above normal that showed up in early November 2008, and allowed that election to achieve ballots from 62.5% of all eligible voters.

If that twelve percent stays home, as "Why Bother?" is now a serious contender, this President will lose.

[maddiemom]

18. Lay down and die

Well said, as usual, McT. I agree this reaction is bound to happen. Only it does seem to take this country a while to get off our asses and react. Others in the world seem to have been stirred up before us this time.

[maddiemom]

19. P S

Republican candidates are still running around calling us "the greatest country on earth." It takes Jon Stewart on Comedy Central to put up the facts and figures to honestly place us where we are: far down the list of real first world nations in caring for our citizens.

[totodeinhere]

27. President Obama has also called this country the greatest country on earth.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/electionreform/a/ObamaPatriotism_3.htm

[Donnachaidh]

33. welcome to DU! n/t

[Raine]

20. EXCELLENT! nt

:applause:

[indurancevile]

22. knr. well-written. you should send that in to your local paper as an op-ed.

[rusty fender]

23. Eloquent and spot on!

:applause: :fistbump: :bounce:

[Vincardog]

24. Net recommendation: +40 votes (Your vote: +1)

[KamaAina]

25. Wow! You're on fire this week!

Keep it up! :bounce:

[totodeinhere]

26. One thing you wrote confused me.

You talked about a lady who qualified for $10 a month in food stamps. I thought that food stamps payed a lot more than that. I just read today that a family of four can qualify for $660 a month. And I realize that $660 is not very much when you try to feed a family of four at today's hign food prices? But $10 a month? Are you sure that is accurate? Wouldn't a single person qualify for more than that? If a family of four can get $660 shouldn't a single person get 660/4 which equals $165? And again, I know that's not very much but it's certainly better than $10.

Here is the article that mentions $660 monthly for a family of four.

http://news.yahoo.com/usa-becomes-food-stamp-nation-sustainable-160645036.html

[noiretextatique]

29. based on income

as in, in you have some income, you do not qualify for the maximum amount. a couple of WAL-MART employees were interviewed in the article you cited. WAL-MART pays them little money for part-time work, so they are eligible for some food stamp assistance. yet another way WAL-MART receives corporate welfare for its unfair labor practices.

[Ken Burch]

34. They did that to my wife when I was unemployed and she was on disability

They decided that SHE was only entitled to $10 a month in food stamps. The bastards.

[JDPriestly]

30. K&R

[The Backlash Cometh]

32. The next presidential election will be the most underwhelming experience

of my life.

[tavalon]

35. I may not be able to recommend this, but I don't have to just roll over and die

KICK!

[olegramps]

38. You mention bringing back jobs that were outsourced.

How do you propose that this could be accomplished? The fact is President Obama is pushing trade agreements that I have read will actually cost us more lost jobs. He isn't even attempting to repeal trade agreements that when he was campaigning he said he would work to have abolished.

There is only one effective method to protect jobs and that is with tariffs. He should be hammering the Republicans for refusing to rescind the tax breaks that were given to companies to outsource jobs. He should be calling on congress to pass tariffs on goods that were outsourced solely to line the pockets of the greedy CEOs to the same level that they would be sold at if manufactured in the USA.

Our competitors in the so-called global economy have little problem blocking foreign competition with licensing restrictions, time consuming safety testing, banking regulations, studies on environmental impact,etc. I worked in this area in which our company was hamstrung with time and costly hurdles that were solely designed to protect markets until they could develop competing products. In some cases actually back engineering of electronic products without any regard for patent rights. The fact of the matter is there is nothing to recover with since our base manufacturing capacity has been decimated by our representatives in congress who have sold us out.