I never had much HOPE to begin with (2 Updates)

But sometimes I really wish it didn't have to be so damn predictable

A lot more people are unhappy than otherwise would have been --- the standard liberals, the populist independents and the "hope and change" new voters. That group may overlap some, but I think they are actually distinct. The liberals know that government is a cesspool but believed the public option (and later, the medicare buy-in) gave them an avenue for future change and saw it as a demonstration of progressive power in Obama's Washington. The independents thought that Obama's promises to keep lobbyists out of the White House and operate with transparency and accountability meant that he was going to upend the dominance of special interests. The final group thought that by the sheer force of his personality and talent for persuasion the fighting would stop and everyone would sit down at the table and work together. And I would imagine that all of them counted on him using his public popularity, good relationship with the press and superior rhetorical gifts to push for his agenda.

Instead we have seen teabaggers packing heat at town hall meetings, Democrats arguing with each other on cable news 24/7, the public option used as a bargaining chip, secret deals cut with the medical industry and Obama making his last speech on the subject three months ago. It has not just been an ugly spectacle, it has soured a lot of people on the promise that Obama brought to Washington. His own ratings are tanking right along with healthcare reform.

It's like watching the Saints and Cowboys game without the 4th quarter comeback to make it interesting.

Update: In the (still active) Haloscan comments, David points us to this week's Bill Moyers' Journal where Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner discuss this President's utter failure to lead a fight for change from the status quo corporate oligarchy in any significant way. Certainly not on health care, and certainly not on finance reform.

Longish excerpt, but a key one:

BILL MOYERS: I was thinking about both of you Sunday night when President Obama was on 60 MINUTES and he said...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: Then on Monday afternoon, he had this photo opportunity in which he scolded the bankers and then they took it politely and graciously, which they could've done because the Hill at that very moment was swarming with banking lobbyists making sure that what the President wants doesn't happen. I mean, what did you think as you watched him on 60 MINUTES or watched that press conference?

MATT TAIBBI: It seemed to me that it was a response to a lot of negative criticism that he's been getting in the media lately, that they are probably looking at the President's poll numbers from the last couple of weeks that have been remarkably low. And a lot of that has to do with some perceptions about his ties to Wall Street. And I think they felt a need to come out and make a strong statement against Wall Street, whether they're actually do anything is, sort of, a different question. But I think that was my impression.

ROBERT KUTTNER: I was appalled. I was just appalled because think of the timing. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the same week when the president finally gives this tough talk on "60 Minutes," a very feeble bill is working its way through the House of Representatives and crucial decisions are being made. And where is the President? I mean, there was an amendment to put some teeth back in the provision on credit default swaps and other kinds of derivatives. And that went down by a handful of votes. And to the extent that the Treasury and the White House was working that bill, at all, they were working the wrong side. There was a there was a provision to exempt foreign exchange derivatives from the teeth in the bill. That--

MATT TAIBBI: Foreign exchange derivatives are what caused the Long Term Capital Management crisis--

ROBERT KUTTNER: Sure.

MATT TAIBBI: A tremendous problem.

BILL MOYERS: Ten or 12 years ago, right?

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. And, Treasury was lobbying in favor of that. There was a provision in the bill to exempt small corporations, not so small, I believe at $75 million and under, from a lot of the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requiring honest accounting. Rahm Emanuel personally was lobbying in favor of that.

BILL MOYERS: So you had the Treasury and the White House chief of staff arguing on behalf of the banking industry?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. Right. And so here's the president two days later giving a tough speech. Why wasn't he working the phones to toughen up that bill and, you know, walk the talk?

Well because it's Obama's job to talk a pleasing talk while Wall Street walks all over the rest of us. That's been the key difference between Democrats and Republicans for most of a generation now. One party specializes in selling the oligarchy's agenda with a feel-good ad campaign while the other specializes in a more visceral, aggressive approach. The ad changes according to fluctuations in the public taste, but the product the establishment pols of either flavor are selling is largely the same turd sandwich.

At the end of the Moyers interview, Kuttner says something interesting.

One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it's not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly.

I'm not so sure we should be scared of the teabaggers anymore, though. If liberals aren't going to offer any serious opposition to the perverse co-opting of the American political system by the rich and powerful to the ever-expanding detriment of the rest of us, then by God somebody's got to. And this is why I'm glad to see people like Jane Hamsher start to draw the same conclusion I've been on for some time now.

There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, "bailout" Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country's resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we've worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging.

Liberals who want to have an effective voice in affecting real progressive change during the coming political upheaval had better start thinking more about the substantive things they have in common with people in the teabag movement and less about the superficial things they admire about their phony President.

Upperdate: More from the comments. (I'm going to fix the comments form once Haloscan dies, don't worry.)

H.I. McDonaugh says,

Stop voting for either of the two main parties then. All you and other bloggers did during the election was make fun of any outsider type movements and defend the major parties, or at least one of them. Now you're saying they are both the same?

Wise up when it matters.

But, in my interpretation of events, the 2008 landslide result was less an endorsement of Obama as a person and more a desperate popular mandate for change. Shoving Obama into office was, at that point, the absolute best thing an angry public could do to express its dissatisfaction.

That's what national elections allow us to do. They don't allow us to fill out a detailed survey of all of our minute likes and dislikes. There are electoral reforms I might suggest that can help refine how the electorate communicates via the vote but that's another discussion. Suffice to say, during the four year event, we get an opportunity to scream incoherently but loudly at established power.

The problem then becomes what to do next. Too many people who call themselves liberals these days get so caught up in the cult of personality they build around the winners they create (Clinton and now Obama) that they cease screaming once election time is over and just turn over the initiative to the cult leader.

Democracy is (or should be) much messier than that. Just installing an ambitious turd who is slick enough to capitalize on your anger isn't enough. You have to keep screaming at them if you want to get anything done. You make the turds you elect work for you by never letting up on them. Because the second you stop screaming is the second they go right back to listening to whoever is paying them the most.

And that's something that the teabaggers (at least rhetorically) get right which most establishment liberals do not.