Daily Kos Week in Review: Obama Budget Edition

April 18th, 2011 7:43 AM

This past week's big story in Kosland was the midweek shift in tone in posts about President Obama. Before Wednesday's budget speech, Kossacks portrayed Obama as a wimp, a Reaganite, and worse. After the speech, he was their savvy, aggressive, progressive hero.

Meanwhile, conservatives were presented as greedy racists. That's a tone that never shifts on Daily Kos. 

1. Obama, pre-budget speech: 'Bordering on fascism'

Mark Sumner:

...Clinton won at the [budget] negotiating table by being willing to lose...He won by not surrendering.

That's a tactic that someone at the current White House just might want to research. Maybe it's time that President Obama set down his Reagan hagiography and start carrying a copy of Clinton's memoirs.

Barbwire:

...Progressive sage Howard Zinn once said you can't be neutral on a moving train. In this case, Obama can't be neutral and nonpartisan on a train that's speeding so far to the right, to the crazy and ridiculous tea party way of seeing government, that there is no Democratic turf left to fight on. By clinging to his pose of wise man in the middle -- a feint that is no doubt much beloved by his corporate and Wall Street donors -- he has been dragged into territory that only a few years ago was considered corrupt, anti-Democratic and bordering on fascism...

...Obama has been pivotal in moving the dialogue into right-wing territory as the primary frame, as the place where the pseudo-battles take place, as the turf where the two corporate-funded parties will now conduct their kabuki... 

ThereIsNoSpoon: 

...[T]he [Obama] Administration helped the investment banks--and continues to help the banks--engage in a coverup of what is probably the greatest heist and financial crime ever perpetrated...And he helped BP cover up the greatest environmental disaster in world history...No surprise then, that the release of populist anger vented out in the form of the Tea Party. Somebody is to blame for breaking this country. FDR wasn't afraid to say just who the villain was, who was responsible for 1929. But Obama didn't want to point fingers, so it's no surprise that the fingers got pointed at him, at Democrats, and at government in general...

 

2. Obama, post-budget speech: smacking down stupid Republicans

LaFeminista:

...Today the President held up the principles of the America we all believed in as children, fair, caring and just; this is not the Republican self centered nightmare of an America of our baser instincts...

Bill in Portland Maine:

...Instead of throwing progressives under the bus, President Obama pulled up in a stretch limo, invited us all inside, served up drinks and hors d'ouvres, and led us in a spirited version of America the Beautiful while backing over the Republican Ryan Plan (aka "Let's Just Make Shit Up and Lie About It") over and over...

JoelGP:

...Ryan and his lil' soldiers sat on the front row [at the budget speech]...

So, the president recognized them and thanked them for their plan and then out of no-where...pow!! He threw a punch that knocked both of them completely out.

And while, they were slowly coming to their senses...Obama dancing like Muhammed Ali-dancing, weaving, bobbing-jabbing with the left-pop!!--side the head-- saying, "we ain't cutting Medicare-we ain't cutting Medicare"-and, "take this for your grandma"-and, "we're not slashing education"-and, "I will not give you cons another tax break"-"yeah shut-up right now, look directly in my face and listen to me you young neocon punks because I am still the freakin' president of these United doggone States and you better not get that twisted!!"...

Slippytoad:

...In 2010...the voters who were unable to see or comprehend who was dragging the entire recovery process down rewarded the GOP with the keys to the House...

Smartly, [Obama] ducked out of view for a few months, and let the GOP do their thing. The radical, extremist nutjobs elected as governors in several states immediately led the charge with vicious assaults on unions...

Then, he let the GOP have a compromise to avoid government shutdown...

The GOP, acting like unhinged Nazi freakazoids, immediately disowned their own compromise, shrieked like crack-addled harpies that it wasn't enough...

...I don't subscribe to the 11-dimensional chess Obama. More like a poker player. And those stupid fuckwits in the GOP showed their weak hand too soon.

 

3. Conservatives: inhumane racist creeps

Laurence Lewis:

...Republicans don't care about the deficit...

...[T]hey do want to use federal money, just so it is spent in pursuit of their Medieval social agenda. But that's just relative pocket change. While Republicans seem actually to want for people in need to suffer and die, they also want to throw unfathomably budget-busting pallets of cash at their favorite budget sinkhole...

...It's an actual tradeoff. Punish more people in need to free up more cash for the Pentagon...

...[T]he only conclusion that can be drawn is that Republican values are not only inhuman and inhumane, they are dangerous and creepy.

The Tmax:

...You are racist. You are all racist. We are all racists, because we live in a racist society. America is racist, and all Americans are racists. The difference between liberals and conservatives in this regard is not whether they are racist, but whether they want to be racist...