It's time to get over Obama. [View all]

[grasswire]

It's time to get over Obama.

It's time for Democrats and progressives to look past him. Time to focus on policy, not personality.

We Democrats and progressives have no leverage over him now. Nothing compels him to act on Democratic principles and traditions and issues. Time and again he has shown us our de facto impotence now that we elected him twice and he enters the lame duck limbo.

So it is past time to stop expecting change.

We hoped after Bush. Lordy, we hoped. The reality of our impotence is a bitter pill.

But he just doesn't matter that much any more. Now that we know what we know.

Now we must focus our efforts directly on policy and on those who ARE listening to Democrats and progressives, those who do not betray our principles, those who will crawl across the broken glass to resist Republican creep, those who strategize and maneuver with all their strength and cunning. Those who act in defense of the middle class, the poor, the hungry, the disabled, the marginalized, the homeless, the desperate and those who have lost hope.

We must, still, push back against TPP and NSA excess and chained SS and food stamp cuts and all those matters that threaten every family domestic and global. We must push back against deregulation. We must push back against corruption in politics.

And we must, still, acknowledge progress as it comes.

But we waste our time keening about our POTUS.

The order of the day must be strategy for 2014 and 2016. It must be commitment to the cause of timeless traditional and true Democratic values. It must be POLICY.

Look beyond this day. Look beyond Obama. Let history write his legacy, whatever it may be.

Yes, criticize failure or omissions. Not to "bash", but to instruct, and to lay down the markers for history. To say: This is not worthy of the Democratic heritage. This is not in sync with our values.

Then rise above. Use the Civil Rights movement as a model. Prevail. Overcome. Provide an alternative for America that is populist, fresh, compelling. Eschew the third way, the mushy middle. Stand FOR something.

We can. Yes, we can.