‘Put points on the board faster than Plutocrats can take them away’

by Zizi

The one thing the Professional Left (PL) and their Emoprog cohort don’t seem to realize about Pres Obama is that unlike them he KNOWS the depth of nihilistic destruction that the GOP and their corporate backers are prepared to unleash on this country.

Emos have no clue what the stakes are, being stuck as they are on the eras of FDR & LBJ. The Conservative movement has evolved into a more powerful malignant force since their defeats in the 1930s & 1960s. It is a force that continues to destroy whether their minions hold political power or NOT. Destructive force is easier to deploy than constructive building which liberals-Democrats try to do. Our societal building task is harder, less understood and prone to being demagogued by the conservative retrogressives. The PL is oblivious to the asymmetrical nature of our struggle.

We don’t have the institutional structures to fight the plutocrats mano-a-mano on their turf. We don’t! We can only fight them using guerrilla strategies & tactics. No amount of Bully pulpiting or screaming “progressive chants”, or “twisting arms a la LBJ” is gonna dent the power of the wingnuts’ backers. Those are the facts. They have the power and money and nihilistic bent to destroy us all without batting an eye.

The PL-Emos don’t realize that the $32 Trillion that the plutocrats have stashed in tax havens means that THEY DON’T CARE what happens to this country and the people in it. NADA. Unlike the barons of the gilded age who were at least propelled by some sense of nationalism, today’s plutocrats feel no allegiance to this country. It is only a place to exploit for $$$, and feudalize us against our will.

They can and will SURVIVE our demise. Their red state rubes live vicariously through the ideological fog of their corporate masters and are prepared to do their bidding. Why? they don’t believe they themselves deserve anything or social protection beyond the crumbs that their puppeteers give them, so long as they get the satisfaction of knowing that “those people” (minorities, liberals, gays, immigrants etc…) don’t share the crumbs with them.

So that is the America we have NOW, and it is the country Pres Obama must captain at this precarious time. How should he do it?

1. Put points on the board faster than Plutocrats can take them away:

a) He pushed for and got a critical safety net for the poor and the Middle Class in the form of Obamacare bringing our safety nets to 3 (SS, Medicare/Medicaid & Obamacare). The plutocrats’ response came in the form of Paul Ryan’s thrice voted on budget that threatens to privatize SS & Medicare while eliminating Medicaid (“block-grants” are how you kill a program).

2. Fight wildfire with controlled fire:

a) The Chained CPI is the “controlled fire” to guard against the Ryan budget blitzkrieg if GOP gets the reins of power (not that they won’t keep trying). Deaniac explains the policy implications of the Chained CPI on TPV so I won’t do that here. The PL-Emos never tell us what they would do to “SAVE” SS & Medicare/Medicaid if Ryan’s budget gets signed into law by a GOP president. When the WH aide said “we are not gonna be in the WH forever”, what he is referring to is the need for us NOW to shape the future trajectory of the safety net. Cuz if we don’t, the GOP will. It’s as simple as that!

b) Case in point: Women’s dwindling rights.

The women’s movement rested on its laurels and was slow to shape the narrative and state-by-state policy about women’s reproductive freedom. Result? Roe v. Wade is an empty law on the books, cuz wingnut Taliban have systematically dismantled women’s rights state by state, locality by locality. And look where we are today? Reduced to trashing POTUS for complimenting an Attorney General while state after state (blue & red) passes personhood amendments, banning abortion clinics.

Women’s organizations did not fight wildfire with controlled fire. POTUS saved critical women’s rights in Obamacare, while ceding the meaningless repetition of Hyde Amendment in the bill to the conservadems. The real policy benefits for women have been left intact

This is the exact strategy the president is doing with his budget — head off real disaster by making symbolic concessions.