Bob Herbert

Dear Friends,

Bob Herbert's column in The New York Times this morning (here) demonstrates why he gets paid for writing columns, and I write this blog out of frustration.  In any case, he eloquently says what I have been ineloquently saying about the problem that the Democrats have created for themselves. 

But voters do not feel that the administration and Congress have delivered the fundamental change they were seeking when they swept President Obama and huge Democratic majorities into office nearly two years ago. Forget about the crazies in the Tea Party for the moment. Forget about the ugly Republican obstructionism that is based on the idea that the failure not just of President Obama but of American society itself is the G.O.P.’s quickest ticket back to power.

The Democrats are in deep, deep trouble because they have not effectively addressed the overwhelming concern of working men and women: an economy that is too weak to provide the jobs they need to support themselves and their families. And that failure is rooted in the Democrats’ continued fascination with the self-serving conservative belief that the way to help ordinary people is to shower money on the rich and wait for the blessings to trickle down to the great unwashed below...

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, commenting on the president’s recent $50 billion transportation infrastructure proposal, said: “This is about long-term economic growth. This isn’t about the next 60 days or the next 90 days. This is about how do we get our economy fully back on track, how do we get the millions that want to work back to work, and how do we repair the economic damage that’s been going on not just over the past two years but over the past 10 years.”

Well, that’s the drum the Democrats should have been pounding in the earliest days of the Obama administration, and they should have backed it up with a dramatic rebuild America infrastructure campaign and every other job-creation measure they could think of, including public works projects for the young and the poor and the hard-core unemployed.

With the nation losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month in early-2009, the president and his allies in Congress could have rallied the citizenry to participate in the difficult work of nation-building here at home. He could have called on everyone to share in the sacrifices that needed to be made, and he could have demanded much more from the financial and corporate elites who were being bailed out with the people’s money.

Unfortunately, the President and the Democratic leaders in Congress did not do that.  Even though President Obama made a couple of great speeches a couple days ago, his follow through is as usual lacking.  Nothing again today.  A speech in Milwaukee and a speech in Cleveland and then silence once again.  It is hard for even me to believe that he truly cares about the economy.  What happened to his promise to fight every day, every hour, every minute.  The gap between the President's rhetoric and his actions is larger than the Grand Canyon.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal