Perlstein on post-partisanship: 'Millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate'
By David Neiwert Wednesday Nov 18, 2009 6:00amOur friend Rick Perlstein had an interesting interview on Big Think that is a good morning starter. He opens up with a really important point:
Question: Has Obama succeeded on his promise of being a “post-partisan” President?
Rick Perlstein: Well, the problem with Obama’s post-partisan agenda is that he came into it. He came into his presidency at a time when millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate. Don’t consider liberalism legitimate. Don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate. So, he’s in a situation a lot like, you know, Abraham Lincoln faced in 1860 when you had millions of Americans who didn’t even consider what was going in Washington to have anything to do with them.
Yep. And the mainstream right-wing media is explicitly promoting the view that Obama is not a legitimate president.
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Corporate propaganda par excellence.
They are also explicitly promoting the view that he is a liberal, which he is not.
This is all junk politics and part of the oligarchs plans.
Plunder the country and then deceive the people that come out to vote with a pseudo populist.
It is a brilliant deception. The folks fell for it hook line and sinker.
We are in a doom loop.
Yup! the Nazis are on a roll, misinformation and Hatred, ah it just wouldn't be the Nazi Party without there Lies and Mis information.
Remember to say you are a republican is to say you are a NAZI.
The Nazi propaganda machine rolls on and at the rallies and in the State Capitals I shall salute these Nazis and their representatives with the sieg Hiel that way they will feel at home.
the descendants of the members of the third Reich that escaped to south America.
As you mentioned they are using some of the same tactics that were being used when Hitler took over. JMO
The Republicans on the ground, not just the teabaggers, would not know what you're talking about. There is such a distance between middle and working class Republicans and those decision makers at the top of the party, that the ordinary joe does not understand what he sees when he looks at Cheney, Palin, McCain, Armey, etc.
There is no connection or understanding.
F**K him and his meme-producing brethren of the dark. Dammit I'm so tired of these S**TS.
We have class warfare and the working class in America is losing badly.
are fighting the wrong enemy.
The teabagger/birther/deather/KKK idiots are fighting against liberals, and for the mega-corporations that are raping and pillaging everything in sight.
And we don't need to be fighting them - we need to do better at educating them, however distasteful it is to deal with them.
They want their Bibles, the Word of God inerrant, and a 5,000 year-old Earth. They want to homeschool their kids with a knowledge of the Constitution that comes from Judge Napolitano, and American history according to Lynne Cheney.
because we find so much about them to be personally repulsive.
But, we've been successfully pitted against one another while these wannabe fascists are robbing us blind.
What do you suggest?
But education is a combination of a desire to learn and an investment of effort through study/practice. It does not guarantee wealth, nor good fortune, nor peace of mind, nor the simple answers one obtains from dumbing everything down to a literal interpretation of a centuries old religious text written by committee.
The nation needs a good deprogramming.
And they want the corporations to run their lives. Like the corporations did such a good job for them during the Bush/Cheney/Murdoch administration.
I'd say our troubles today have a lot to do with the relief efforts of our government in the 30s. The WPA, TVA, RECs all brought these mostly southern, mostly rural ignorant fools in contact with the rest of the country and gave them a voice. They pay the rest of us back by demanding that the government never again do for anyone what it did for them in the depression. You just gotta imagine FDR looking on from somewhere, shaking his head at these willfully uninformed, ungrateful dolts.
The relief efforts of the 30s only came after things got really bad. They were effective.
FDRs political genius was uniting the working class of North and the South, an act for which he was described as a traitor against his own class.
He was of the Capitalist class and they never forgave him. The Oligarchs also are determined to never allow such a thing to happen again. No matter how much the they plunder the country. Their current concern is that if things get bad enough we could have a return to the 1930s which could bring about a true concerted action of the working class.
Obama is a place holder, he is pro corporation through and through.
Our problems go way back, the Robber Barons held sway until they were busted up in the progressive era but arose again in the international arena.
President McKinley and the Spanish American war set the stage and Teddy Roosevelt though he was anti trust was also pro Imperialism and set about conducting it. The much longer Philippine American war proved the testing ground for subjugating a nation. The handling of Cuba showed that the US was an Imperialist power.
Under Wilson who proclaimed the need to make the world safe for democracy while at the same time being anti working class (sound familiar?), before what turned into the first world war, set up the Creel Committee to propagandize the country into intervening. That tipped the balance in the war.
The world was not safe for Democracy but US Imperialism was off and running. The corporate and imperialist propaganda has unrelenting every since, with only major set back being in the 1930s.
After the war labor and radical unrest set the stage for the Palmer raids, the first great Red scare and the attacks against among others, the Industrial Workers of the World union, a legal labor organization. In 1920 employers launched the anti union American Plan
In 1920 Eugene V, Debs ran his fourth and final campaign for President from prison, he was a political prisoner.
Our problems go back a long ways. It is the class struggle, the purpose of the propaganda has been to make every one forget that as the central issue.
The rest of the story is for another time.
'sticktoativeness', Alice, it's a hard row to hoe. Over the past 9 years, I've seen a number of the documentaries you often link to - I stumbled upon most of them. I often wonder if or how many of the people who post here have ever availed themselves of this information.
Those who have been thoroughly propagandized since birth and then are subject to lousy public education (or worse, Christian education /home schooled)have a hard row to hoe, too.
Add that to the fact that most folks are so busy doing what the corps/media tell them to (i.e., buy the latest gadget, march/ protest against their own best interests, vote for fools, war is good, etc.) they don't have time to THINK and consider the facts/information that is available to them.
They have really been propagandized to accept only sound bites and 140 character texts, and consider the 'evening news' as reality, while rejecting the in-depth stuff they need to really understand the world and their places in it. It's like ADHD on a national scale.
Anyway, thanks for your relentless reminders - I hope more people will pay attention.
To be honest, I really only meant to link the rise in political power of the fundamentalist rural population to the access to modern communication and other amenities that Depression relief brought.
As for your essay on the power of corporate and wealth interests: very interesting. I can tell that it's a dear topic to you. And I do intend to look into your links posted in other comments (when I've got plenty of time).
I chuckled a little when I read your last line . . .
"The rest of the story is for another time."
Did you see the movie "Clue" in the 80s? Tim Curry, as the Butler, says on several occasions "To make a long story short . . .", to which his listener(s) replie(s), "Too late!"
This is the best explanation of how we got here. And like I replied to oldretire, these people simply don't know what's going on or who's running what.
You are right on the money. However....I have tried mightly to communicate these things to these people for years now. I live in an area where they are like locusts. There appears to be no way to get through to them. Do you have any ideas? I would love any thoughts. As far as I can tell they have gone from over the edge to unconscious. They are walking zombie brains. I am afraid we are working our way toward two countries.
The common enemy is the Imperial Corporation.
Their plan is to divide and conquer.
They do this through propaganda.
Links to documentaries are here
Quite right. The post partisanship idea is really inspired by China's example and that Chinese noose is being fitted around America's neck as we speak.
Bye bye freedom, it was nice knowing you.
... we're doing just fine with our homebrewed version of corruption. Leave China out of it.
Especially if you're going to spew racist garbage like 'the Chinese noose' that will fit quite nicely with the eliminationist rhetoric already espoused by the RWNJ's.
the legal and constituional structure of the Government of the People's Republic of China. THERE IS NOTHING RACIAL about it ! It's your future, so please remove your trash from my doorsteep
still don't understand what just happened. They are waiting for the "economy to turn around".
DUHHHHHHH! I got news for ya kiddies . . . . .
Hey Alice,
I can tune in at least 3 "Christian" radio stations here. And when I scan the "dial", I always know when I've found one. Because what I hear is almost always conservative political talk and capitalist apologetics. Also, they sprinkle in a little "red meat" every so often to keep 'em listening: "Muslims are bad, mmmmkay. Gays are bad, mmmmkay. Jews done kilt our savior" etc.
Now I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating in follow-up to your comment that these outlets are obviously just mouthpieces for unbridled corporate interests. After all, Jesus really didn't address macroeconomics much.
Trickle down economics is legitimate? Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining!
Reagan was legitimate?
L'il Bush was legitimate?
LYING is legitimate?
Firing US Attorneys for political reasons was legitimate?
Government is the problem."
Ronald Reagan
And that is now the problem any Democratic administration faces.
are so anti-gov't, why do they want to hold office???
They figured out that if they are going to render the Federal government ineffective by spending it into oblivion, they might as well profit off of it's destruction.
The whole Republican game plan since Reagan has been simply this: Fear-monger the population to control them, while doing whatever it takes to destroy the government's ability to function while simultaneously doing whatever it takes to profit off of that destruction personally.
Republican politicians' plans for the future are to make sure they have enough money and protection to survive the collapse they cause and come out on top of the resulting power struggle.
"When there's blood in the streets, there's money to be made", is pretty much the GOP's motto.
..was to 'starve the beast' through expansion of government spending and tax cuts. When you think about it this policy exposes the deficits don't matter theme as a blatant lie. Deficits DO matter - they are the primary way for the Republicans to handcuff their Democratic successors in office.
Or as you put it, "doing whatever it takes to destroy the government's ability to function."
doesn't work by virtue of their natural ineptitude and greed!
How can one actually govern if one is busy taking vacations and hiring incompetent Horse Lawyers to fill serious and vital positions?
Then they complain when the Metro, a government-run transportation system, doesn't run on time because they have overcrowded its cars. What massive chutzpah!
what oblivious, self-serving, stupidity
BID
What part of 'Democracy' do these people not understand?
period.
the messenger wrote it because he agreed wityh it. Why am I not surprised?
Don’t consider liberalism legitimate. Don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate
WRONG. People LOVE government programs, even right wingers. They are misguided and ignorant due to all the noise coming from the right wing noise machine.
If the above were true, then a majority of Americans would be AGAINST a Medicare like healthcare plans. A majority of Americans would be against unemployment insurance, food programs for kids, school subsidies, etc.
That is simply not the case.
Try again.
Riiiiiiight. As if the smirking cowboy chimp-in-charge who just happened to have a disputed vote tally in a state where his brother was the governor, the secretary of state had voiced her assurance that they'd award the state to him, and the company who made the machines both denied their vulnerabilities AND just happened to be based in Texas.
Legitimate like that?
Or legitimate like the war prosecuted on trumped-up evidence that has cost us over 4,000 soldiers and seen our honor despoiled by war crimes befitting despots and fascist nation-states?
Or legitimate like Orly Taitz' 'hard evidence' - a birth certificate that was proven to be a joke, a photoshop job, but which she nonetheless insists is real?
"...perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate."
If you can't get it right and say "Democratic" president, then your legitimacy is questionable.
Word. My thoughts exactly.
The moron that uttered these words is no friend of Democrats.
thru history since Ur, Akkada and all those civilizations, the powerful refuse to accept the weak. If they would haave the chance of making slaves out of us, that would take place in heartbeat. Only their cause is valid, only their ideas are great, only their religion is the true one. They all believe in Jesus. But, when it comes of help the invalid, to heal the sick, to teach the ignorant, then we are communist, facists, Nazis, and every fucking name they can think of. And that's when you can read about the revolutions that have taken place in history. Because fortunately, they might have the power and the money; but our numbers are bigger than theirs. And when the people say enough is enough, that's the end of it.
69 million voters elected Obama. Are they aware of that fact? Hell no!
Obama is not the President because he is black, because he was not born in the continental USA, because, because, because.
But when motherfucker Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court I didn't really hear too many complaining about it. I didn't see Democratic Tea Baggers raising hell. Fucking assholes
!
I understand now why the French invented the guillotine.
you are an antisemitic prick?
They'll circumcise you at the drop of a yamulke.
And they make AWFUL doughnuts - no sprinkles and they taste like bread!
It's L'il Bush who was NEVER legitimate. He was anointed by the Supreme Court in 2000, when Gore had more popular votes than he did. And in 2004 Bush had a dubious plurality in Ohio, where even RFK Jr. questioned the vote. No, Bush resorted to waging two wars in an attempt to be seen as legitimate. Now we are saddled with massive deficits, ill will around the world and bitterness at home.
Yet these very same imbeciles consider Boosh a legitimate Prez. Even with a margin in victory as close as 5-4. Of course he didn't actually win the elections. At least, not to me he didn't.
If Jesus was in office as a Dem, they'd still say he was illegitimate.
They're acting like children. Come to think of it, most children act better.
I can agree with that..
Pearlstein might be shocked to know that there are many Dems who feel the same way about the GOP with it's party of mostly angry, uneducated white men and their ignorant brides. He might also be shocked that many of us wish for the death of their party which is happening faster than we could have ever hoped for. We're thrilled that the 69 MILLION who voted for Obama aren't part of the teabagger movement which is made up of people who didn't vote for Obama. It's interesting that no one in the media ever points this out. These are the people who are still pissed that they got their asses handed to them in last year's elections. Dream on Mr. Pearlstein. You ignorant morons a also pissed because the GOP is a joke! Only morons vote Republican!
"Only morons vote Republican!"
Morons and the very well-off. Except the well-off know what they're doing and the morons don't know the joke's on them.
to either party anymore. That's the catch!
way to equate the peccadilloes of the Democrats with the mortal sins of the GOP?
Evet was saying (and he/she should correct me if I'm wrong) that the moneyed interests would play both sides for their own gain. This does not necessarily imply that both parties are equally tainted by mammon. The moneyed don't have any party loyalty she/he said, not that parties both had equal money loyalty or had committed equivalent sins.
Jesus, you people don't know who Rick Perlstein is, do you?
Remember when Bill O'Reilly was attacking him?
He's pointing out that Obama has an uphill climb because the right has gone completely wingnutty. And he's right.
No, we know...we just don't agree with you , both the Ds and Rs are in on it, Money runs everything, Gitmo is still open, habeas corpus is still out the window, the ds are gentle, the rs are rough but it all goes to the same place, sorry
...watch the video! As in 'Did any of you..?'...
Short version; these same people who are saying that any Democratic President is illegitimate are the same who will be howling when they think the next dem is going to take away any social progress made under this one. It was an examination of why bi-partisanship will never work with these people, because those that aren't coming into the argument for selfish purposes are coming into it from a position of irrationality. You guys are remarking on the title without looking into the content. Reminds me of a certain large group of Fox News viewers. As in all of them.
why even bother it's just a constant loop of the same old crap.
Well, this one is worth the time.
what is really sad, is there are smart, coherent, people with ideas, in the GOP who are drowned out or kicked out by the reichwing of the GOP. the reichwing noise machine has taken over the party of lincoln to make it an arm of the KKK. and if any moderate GOP speaks up, they are burned at the stake. that is fascism.
the DEMS are the majority in the USA now, but they are inept in making a real change because they are beholden to the lobby masters they serve.
but lets all worry about who wins on dancing with the amer. idols.....
This ass has the nerve to say this after what the Bush/Cheney/Murdoch administration took the U.S. down an economic rat hole???? After that administration took us to war with Iraq for a made up reason. That war is still going on. American military men are still dying there. The Republicans walked away from that and wiped their hands as if it is not their problem anymore. Now they are off to Afghanistan to try to tell a thinking president how to run a war.
Why do the working class Republicans vote against their best interests?
They vote republican because they value what republicans offer. War, hardship, misery. They enjoy it.
Oh I forgot stomping on the weak. They enjoy that also.
Killing old men, old women, young men, young women, pregnant women, children, babies, hadicapped people, you name it, they want to kill it, and do. Ever stop to think exactly who is dying when the bombs get dropped on large cities in the middle east? Republicans don't care, just ask one......
Mr. Perlstein goes into all that in the video.
They hate everyone. Including themselves.
One would believe just from his background as "...the author of "Nixonland." you could infer a level of greed, arrogance and non-tolerance for any level of rational thought but you could actually probe a lot deeper if you wanted.
Mr. Perlstein is clearly proficient at dealing with the lowest level of slime in the republican/conservative movement just from what rubbed off from tricky-dicky and his gangs of buffoons, but may have gotten a new layer of sliminess paling around with folks like Rove, Beck, Hannratty, Limberger, billo-the-clown, et. all. that have a hate agenda all their own. Rickey doesn't even have to do any work to have an agenda, just steel one. That should feel very comfy for Rickey, since hanging around with dickey's crowd for so long should have provided him all the skills he needs.
Since Rickey doesn't speak for me or anyone I know or respect, he should probably try some other location for his automaton recruiting. Maybe he could go over and help Netanyaya steel land from the Palestinians OR to Iraq to help steel oil from the Kurds or best of all worlds, off to Afghanistan to pillage anything he can...We're shipping in plane-loads of money for bribes, payoffs and get-rich-schemes every day!! Rickey would be right at home.....
Jesus fucking Christ, do you people even bother to watch the videos we put up before you shoot off your mouths?
Rick Perlstein is on our side.
Our side? Are we talking about Clinton, Obama, Grayson, Kucinich or Lieberman?
The side that wants to elimiate torture as a national policy and put Bush in prison or the side that just wants to move on ?
All your base are belong to us.
My name is Big John and I told everyone here for years that Obama and the Big Ds would change NOTHING and I was right. Now go and bail out a few more banks with the Bush banksters
David, it is not about left and right, D and R. It is about right and wrong. The Ds are just a big a problem in that regard.
I was harping on this for hours this morning... Oh, well... Thanks for the hard work...
When did Perlstein decide to start calling the Democratic party the "Democrat" party, as the "Republic" party wants us to do?
...a slip of the tongue or in reference to the actual pejorative that the people he was referencing actually use, it's inexcusable! Let's get him!
If Republicans so deeply hate "the state forming new programs to help people", then why did they happily support for Bush43's Seniors' Drug Benefit, the biggest new entitlement program since LBJ created Medicare?
The Drug program ignores basic principles of cost-control and market discipline. It forbids competitive bidding for medicines, forcing the government to pay whatever the pharma companies want to charge for their products.
The program's projected cost is open ended - it adds several $Trillion to the $50 Trillion or more of unfunded liabilities of the US government.
Why was any of this 'legitimate'? I know, IOKIYAR. These people must be delusional.
...all Republican spending is to help make our country stronger, and therefore awesome. All Democrat spending is part of their secret nazi-socio-fasci-gay-alqaida-communist plot to destroy America, and therefore bad, no matter how helpful.
Seriously, it really comes down to party identity; Republicans believe that whatever their party does must be right because they belong to it. They are of the mindset that over 50% of the country they love so much are the 'enemy', and need to be dealt with. The republicans are better able to sell to their base and ignore the rest than the Democratic Party is...
...until the Democrat Party manages to get on the ballot. So far, I haven't seen them.
An imbecile who was installed by a reich-leaning Supreme Court the first time and stole his second term through Ohio's Republican machinations?
The Bush years were illegitimate -- not to mention disastrous.
BID
The Right wing-Nut fringe doesn't count since they are just ignorant, uneducated, brainwashed fools.
Fuck Ron Perlstein. For the ten of millions that consider him illegitimate, I'll wager that close to a hundred million consider him our president. It's all about the numbers asshole and we hold them.
When the fighting breaks out, the cowards will run.
Let's face it, there's a lot of marginal folks out there whose only iota of self-esteem consisted of making sure that the Blacks were further down in the pecking order than they were. They REALLY can't handle a Black president.
Yes New American Nazi Party Formerly the RNC ( Racist Nazi Christian) who are a splinter of the GOP ~(Goofy Opposition Party.
I am so disgusted with these Spineless, Racist Nazi and I do in public call them Nazis to their face. These none thinking Fear and Hate Mongers do not want to stop and they are getting ready to fire the first shot.
You Nazis and Nazi Christians we know who you are now eat this you Gutless Spineless cowards you will not be safe in the hate Mongering halls of your church, you will not be safe on your drives home and most of all you will not be safe in large groups, you see you COWARDS we know who you NAZIS are you DO NOT know who we are.
As far as those Brain Dead Clowns you call a Militia these stumble bums may get lucky but we also know who they are and their families, so keep up your Nazi Right Wing Fear and Hate mongering because you assholes are taking a very long walk off a very short pier.
"millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate."
10's of millions, maybe even hudreds of millions didn't think Bush was legitimately President either. World wide, I'm sure it approached billions.
“Disillusioned” is the word that best describes how many Americans feel after eight years of George Bush and the election of Barack Obama a year ago. Republicans had a majority in congress and the presidency, yet achieved little for Middle America. They betrayed voters by inflating the deficit and growing government, sending men and women into nation-building wars whose purposes are still unknown, and created a culture of moral and ethical corruption in Washington D.C. It was under lax and pathetic regulatory oversight that a Republican president and Republican congress allowed corporations to betray shareholders with questionable and highly leveraged credit default swaps, only to be followed by a $700 billion taxpayer bailout created by the Bush administration—so much for limited government. Republicans are a party without a message and without a messenger.
Last week’s election results in Virginia and New Jersey, where Republican candidates for governor triumphed over their Democrat opponents, say more about the public’s rejection of Obama’s big government solutions and less about Republicans articulating a message to help Middle America. If Republicans think the public is embracing the party again, they are simply whistling past the graveyard, drunk on their own greed, and completely out of touch with the needs of Middle America.
Not that Democrats are offering any worthwhile solutions to address the most pressing needs of Middle America—job creation—but at least Democrats are intellectually honest about their desire for big government, universal healthcare, taxpayer-funded abortions, labor union power, and a litigious society for plaintiff lawyers to fleece the public. There is something, dare I say “refreshing and frank” about knowing where Democrats are on issues that impact Middle America, whereas Republicans pretend to be something they are not.
It is time for the Republican party to stop blindly whoring for the business community and begin addressing the issues that impact Middle America—job creation, affordable healthcare for all, and quality public education for our children. Republicans are a one-trick-pony, where “tax cuts” are their solution for all of Middle America’s problems. It’s because the party cannot articulate rational policy solutions to the real problems we face.
Take healthcare for instance; the Republican solution has been health savings accounts (HSAs). Are you kidding me? We can’t get people to save money in IRAs, never mind HSAs. That’s the best Republicans have got? Why don’t Republicans push to allow consumers to shop for healthcare across state lines, require everyone to have healthcare, and deny insurers from rejecting consumers with pre-existing conditions?
If Democrats have any hope of maintaining power, they too need to put viable solutions on the table for Middle America, where people care a hell of a lot more about jobs and the economy than government-run healthcare, union card check, the protection of gays from hate crimes, and cap and trade. Both parties have failed miserably to address the needs of Middle America, which I suppose is why I feel so disillusioned with both parties.
A. Muser
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com/
Who is this middle America? The petite bourgeoisie?
The working class are the majority of people in this country, they would wholly endorse a truly leftward politic if they ever encountered one.
Meanwhile, of the middle class, the professional specialists, the middle managers etc, many would also support a truly leftward politic.
Are you a spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce, perhaps?
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