One way to look at yesterday’s election is to say that about 29 million Obama voters from 2008 simply didn’t show up this time around.
Mr. President:
My, things certain have gone south over the past two years, eh?
It’s with a pronounced sense of dismay and something approaching disillusionment that I feel the need to write this letter. Two years ago, millions of committed Progressives like myself went to the barricades for you. After eight years of corruption, ineptitude, and gross mismanagement, your positive message resonated with us in ways that some had feared was no longer possible. Your campaign, unlike so many others, was a celebration of hope and the belief that we’re better when pulling together than separately. Community and the social contract were no longer considered bad and/or evil, and we felt as if you represented our best hope for change at a time when hope for anything resembling change was hard to come by.
Two years later, and I find myself wondering just what happened and what went so terribly, horribly wrong. Was it merely a case of over-promising and under-delivering? Was it that your natural proclivity for consensus-building blinded you to the reality that Republicans don’t believe in consensus? Or is it that the “fire in the belly” we thought we saw in you was something else altogether?
It’s not that you haven’t accomplished anything. In fact, your first two years has been full of accomplishments and many (baby) steps forward. The problem is that it seems as if all we’ve seen are baby steps. So many of the big promises you made during the campaign (ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) remain unkept. In the case of DADT, it feels very much like betrayal.
I understand that it’s unreasonable to expect that you would be able to clean up eight years of accumulated elephant dung in a mere two years. Even so, when Progressives like myself look at the past two years, it’s difficult not to feel let down. So much was promised, and so little has been delivered. So many promises were made, and so few have been kept. What you have done, you’ve done a damned poor job of advertising. Being President is not a job for those who value false modesty. Americans want to know what you’ve done, and we want to know that you’re keeping the promises that were made. Most Americans don’t pay close attention, so you need to tell us what you and your Administration has done. Absent that, most Americans will assume that nothing has happened…which is exactly what most Americans seem to be assuming.
We’re tired of seeing the Republican minority set the agenda. We’re sick of 40 Republicans in Congress acting as if they’re a majority, and 60 Democrats lacking the collective balls to stand up to them. Since seizing power, Democrats have shown themselves to be devoid of courage, will, and vision…and you’re the seemingly uninspired leader of this sorry lot of cowardly lions. Frankly, we deserve better.
Don’t get me wrong. I want you to succeed. I want you to achieve the lofty goals you set during the campaign. I want to live in the successful and united America that seemed so possible when you took the oath of office on the frozen day in January, 2009. It’s just that right now it looks like you’re lacking a functional set of cojones, and that you’re allowing Republicans to set the tone and pull the strings. You want to break bread with those whose greatest and seemingly only desire is to do whatever they can to ensure that you fail and leave Washington in January, 2013 as a one-term failed President.
What I, and millions of Progressives, would dearly love is to see you stand up and tell Republicans where they can stick their intransigence. It’s time to grow a pair, don’t you think? You’re the President; you have the bully pulpit. Your insistence on seeking common ground with Republicans who have no interest in anything resembling compromise only makes you look weak, indecisive, and ineffectual. Why not stand up and show Republicans who’s in charge, and tell them that things really ARE going to be different. I know that you’re intelligent, strong, and more than capable of doing this. After all, you didn’t get where you are without breaking some eggs along the way, right? So why not take off your shoe, pound it on the podium a few times, and tell Republicans that you’re going to bury them? Who knows, perhaps you just might be able to re-inspire those 29 million voters who stayed home on Tuesday.
It’s your move, Mr. President; PLEASE make it a decisive and determined one. I don’t think we can take two more years of weakness, indecision, and half-measures.
Sincerely,
Jack Cluth
