When will they ever learn?
Today should have been a great day for the Dems. Seriously. The House of Representatives reconvened to help states insure that teachers, firefighters and police will stay on the job, and to make sure funds were available for Medicaid. Of course, the naysayers on the other side of the aisle have no sense of decency and don’t seem to give a shit whether or not their constituents are taken care of… but that whole story has taken a back seat to two other sideshow stories today.
First, Charlie Rangel, he of the 13 ethics violation charges, decided to take TODAY of all days to exercise his right to get up on the House floor to try to defend his reputation. On a day that the Dems should be proudly crowing about doing something good for the people of the country. Instead, Charlie Rangel’s ethics, or lack thereof, would take the spotlight.
Well, the White House could have used that incident to point fingers and blame someone else for their troubles… until White House press secretary Robert Gibbs opened his big fat mouth!
Seriously, Gibbs opened mouth and inserted his foot so far that Linda Lovelace probably gagged.
He gave an interview to The Hill, blasting the “professional left,” by whom I guess he meant the few liberal voices on cable television and, perhaps, radio:
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.
Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
Seriously Gibbs, you want to go there? I think I might be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president. He would have fought for single payer health care, and certainly wouldn’t be sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and asking for billions of dollars more to fund these reprehensible wars, especially while our country and its citizens are drowning in debt.
Even Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) took such umbrage at Gibbs’ remarks that he told Huffington Post the Press Secretary should resign!
Ellison said that Gibbs’s resignation would be an appropriate response. “I think that’d be fair, yeah. That’d be fair, because this isn’t the first time. And, again, people of all political shades worked very hard to help the president become the president. Why would he want to go out and deliberately insult the president’s base? And why would he confuse legitimate critique with some sort of lack of loyalty. Isn’t this what the far right does? Punishes people who are not ideologically aligned with President Bush?”
It’s wrong to suggest that progressives want to eliminate the Pentagon, said Ellison, adding that he doesn’t know a single Democrat who has espoused that view. “I know of none. So I think that was an inflammatory remark that is emblematic of his careless use of language and is an example of why he may not be the best person for the job,” he said. “Gibbs crossed the line. His dismissal would be fair.”
Ryan Grim, who wrote that piece for Huffington Post, will join me at the top of tonight’s show to talk about Robert Gibbs’ verbal diarrhea, along with the two other stories that I mentioned at the top of this post: the passage of the bill for which Congress reconvened today, and the untimely speech delivered by Charlie Rangel.
Don’t worry, my show is over at 8pm ET, just in time to hear Keith Olbermann deliver his Special Comment in response to Mr. Gibbs. I can’t wait for that one.
Just in case you missed it, here’s Charlie, in all of his, um, glory…
We’ll also delve into FireDogLake’s Just Say Now campaign (with Students for Sensible Drug Policy) to legalize marijuana with Jon Walker, and get a news update from Talk Radio News.
In hour two, Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars joins in for our weekly “Fools on the Hill” segment in which we dish about the ridiculous things said on the Sunday talking head shows.
What I also posted from ringoffireradio.com video “Robert Gibbs Drips Arrogance” comment thread hat tip Thom Hartmann listener newsletter:
Robert Gibbs worked for a group called Americans for Jobs and Healthcare that attacked Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential candidacy for lack of foreign policy experience. I suspect ‘professional left’ meant Howard and Jim Dean’s group Democracy for America which supports progressive Democratic candidates like Bill Halter who lost a primary runoff to Blanche Lincoln under suspicious election administration circumstances (fewer polling precincts in runoff than primary in Halter’s strongest county) and Elaine Marshall who defeated Cal Cunningham (the not progressive establishment candidate) in North Carolina. Marshall had already won a statewide general election for Attorney General. Joe Sestak’s success in PA beating Arlen Specter may have also rankled Gibbs. Without DFA Obama may not have won the close states in Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0306-04.htm
I hope that the little change Pres Obama has gotten Congress to pass in health insurance reform, financial regulation (, gender pay equity (Lily Ledbetter Act), will become the ‘new normal’ in a positive context that will lead to the more difficult improvements on civil liberties the ACLU faults Pres Obama for in its report “New Normal.” Progressives shouldn’t drop out in AR they should use Blanche Lincoln’s past derivatives language as a campaign issue to amend the financial regulation bill (if it was taken out of the bill) as well as demand she support Elizabeth Warren for CFPB director.
Thanks for your well-thought out response. The problem is that President Obama’s attempts at bi-partisanship are NOT working. And I am paying attention.
I also believe that your opinion that Obama is “more radical than most of the progressives out there” is flat out wrong… Maybe radical, but certainly not progressive, and definitely not what he told us he’d do during the campaign.
Gibbs’ premise that people outside the beltway “in America” aren’t disappointed in the way Obama is governing is also flat-out wrong. I talk to people all over America every day… I don’t think Gibbs does.
But I truly appreciate your comments, and hope you’ll continue listening and will call in and/or comment here whenever you feel like it!
I’m getting more and more bugged as you keep going on about how maybe Robert Gibbs should be fired. I tend to agree with Gibbs and what he says.
Let me spell it out for you: the more we pass a progressive agenda, the faster it will be rolled back the next time the presidential football changes hands, and it will change hands under the current political climate if we liberals and progressives keep playing by the Republican playbook. Just like George Bush severely undermined more tradition and precedent than had ever been seen before, but a Jeb Bush/Sara Palin ticket is going to push harder.
Obama knows that we can’t keep playing the Republicans’ no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, salt-the-earth tactics because thats not who we are– we’re not motivated enough by hatred and fear to play it that way.
Progressives who complain that bi-partisanship isn’t working aren’t paying attention: it is working, only the other way– the more bi-partisan we act, the more hardened they become, but also brittle and divided. I haven’t heard a liberal pundit once remind us that Clinton finally broke off the Republican rebellion in 1995 over the budget crisis: the Republicans said “No”, as they say now, to a balanced budget that didn’t fit their agenda, saying it was the Democrats fault if it didn’t pass. Clinton saw their bluff and let them block the budget, and Americans sided with the Democrats. Yes, Obama needs to call their bluff too, but we need to stand behind him.
Oh, Nicole, if only I could never hear you say again, “i like Obama, but I’ll call him on it when he’s wrong.” Its not about calling him wrong, its about doing it in a mature, respectful manner– one that doesn’t undermine his clout with the Republicans. We undermine his clout all the time– that’s obvious from my vantage-point from overseas in Japan. This is what Robert Gibbs is complaining about, and let him! Why does Rachel Maddow seem to be the only one who trumpets all the successes Obama has achieved in his last 19 months? Sure, some of the legislation is tepid, but lets take a look at the long-term cumulative effect! The word on his legislative successes– and ours!– aren’t getting out there because progressive pundits are drowning out the news with complaints about their pet issues, playing into the hands of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
How many progressives know that Obama has scored a higher Congressional Report Card for the first year of any President ever? (Rachel Maddow, December, 2009.) Could it be that we watch Fox News too much?
Seriously, don’t you agree that criticisms of Obama’s mistakes work better against a backdrop of his Record Breaking Congressional Report Card, than against the shrill lynch mob that Fox News and the Tea Party are trying to organize with PAC money? Nicole, you’re simply not doing your job if you’re not telling us about the dozens of great things the Democrats pull off every week, every day. I know you’ll say you are, but I a lot of the things listed in the Congressional Report Card I heard for the first time.
I propose that Obama is MORE radical than most of the progressives out there, because he has a plan for Effective Change. Change that really works is more radical than progressive change that doesn’t get passed, or gets rolled back the next time the ball gets intercepted. If I understand Obama’s strategy, its “lets get the country functioning economically a little better, lets find a new Center where a majority of just-plain-folks can work together, and then lets advance this new Center towards the Post-Nuclear Era.” It won’t happen if we keep up the partisan fighting like cats and dogs.
Sure, Democrats will always be like a herd of cats, but the more mature leaders there are out there, who can criticize him from a context of his success rather than a context of his failure, the more unified the us herd of cats will be.