That squeaking sound you hear is the mighty war cry of outraged liberals

Oh good god:

So you’re disillusioned with Obama. So you watched The Who play "Won’t Get Fooled Again" during the Super Bowl. So you’re mad, and you’d like to do something about it.

Well, don’t sit around being a whiny liberal, the kind of softy Rahm Emanuel likes to insult. Don’t retreat into cynicism, either, or such pointless barroom analysis as "All politicians are alike" and "The big money runs everything."

No, do something constructive — something, moreover, that RahmObama will clearly understand. Give Obama a primary. [...]

If you feel betrayed by Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan and mercenary forces in Iraq; by seeing him kowtow to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein; by his plan to donate 30 million taxpayer-subsidized policies to the health-insurance business, and you wonder why Guantánamo and NAFTA are still open for business, then it’s not too early to start thinking about 2012 and who might run against the incumbent now stationed in the White House.

Yes, let's wait two years and then run a symbolic, doomed, ineffectual primary challenge against Obama!  And then when it fails, vote for him anyway!  But do it grudgingly and unenthusiastically.  Just imagine the awesome power of our eventual collective mild disapproval—that'll teach him a lesson he won't soon forget!

And this, my friends, is why the left (or the "left") in this country has become less than a joke.

Comments

[InThecity]

It makes me think no one was around during the Clinton era. Same exact stuff. Of course, the same people running stuff are the same from that era, so no surprises there.

What I really want to know is, why am I not supposed to have any memories pre-2001? Both Dems and Repubs like it that way...

[Donald Johnson]

It might be ineffectual, but I think it'd scare Obama quite a bit and lessen his chances in the fall. Teddy Kennedy's run against Carter might not hurt him later in the year against Reagan--I'm guessing some Kennedy voters then joined the Anderson campaign. Carter lost by a big margin anyway, but all that liberal criticism probably lowered his liberal turnout. Also guessing there--I haven't seen any studies (or bothered to look, for that matter).

[pb]

I think you're being a little hard on John MacArthur. He supported Nader in 2000 and has been consistently critical of the Democratic party as well as the American political system as a whole. I don't think he's suggesting that a primary opponent against Obama is the only solution; just one that he thinks many people could support.

[John Caruso]

I didn't mean to bust MacArthur's hump specifically, and you're right that he's written some good stuff (like this). And I'd agree that if he's putting this forward as just one tactic among many it's not without merit, though I'm not as convinced that that's what he was doing (especially since he took a glancing shot at more radical notions).

But if a primary challenge is the best we can come up with after two decades of genocide, wars, and corporate and planetary sellouts by Democrats, wrap it up. And in reality even this tepid suggestion goes light years beyond anything most liberals would contemplate no matter how disgruntled they might become; I talked to one Democratic voter in 2008 who agreed entirely with Kucinich but was too timid to vote for him even in the primary, out of a fear that that one vote would give Hillary Clinton a victory over Barack Obama in California (a horror too awful to contemplate, apparently, based on the tremendous policy differences between them). Imagine the counterarguments to MacArthur: "But if we support Dean against Obama in the primary, Evan Bayh will be the nominee! Waah!"

Just shoot me now.

[ms_xeno]

I'm all in favor of this. Let the idiots bash one another instead of ritually flogging Nader, or McKinney, or some other Leftward straggler for once in their miserable lives.

[gets popcorn]

[Devin Lenda]

The official discourse can be likened to packrat middens, it turns out: sweet on the outside but actually composed of hardened urine and feces.
http://devinlenda.blogspot.com/