As MSNBC rehashes the exit polls in Virginia - where the GOP apparently won a clean sweep of the state wide offices - as someone on the scene I believe that part of the Democrat disaster DOES lay at the feet of President Obama AND Congressional Democrats. Yes, Creigh Deeds - who I STILL do not understand how he won the Democrat primary - ran a campaign that was crappy as Hell. The national Democrats have failed to deliver ANYTHING to date other than the recently passed hate crimes bill that was attached to the defense spending bill. For the GLBT community, with a "fierce advocate" like Obama, who needs an enemy? Talk is cheap and, sadly, all that we have seen from the White House is talk. Ariana Huffington has a great post at Huffington Post that looks at Obama utter failure to govern as he promised when he campaigned while reviewing a new book by David Plouffe. Here are some highlights:*
Plouffe's book arrives at a crossroads moment for the administration -- exactly one year after the election, and one year before the 2010 midterms. A lot has happened in that year, as the audacity of winning has given way to the timidity of governing. But in recounting how the campaign team -- and the candidate -- not only had the audacity to win but was able to keep that audacity alive, day in and day out over the long nearly-two-year slog of the campaign, Plouffe has also shown the Obama White House the way forward. The book is a powerful reminder of what the country voted for last year -- and could serve as the trigger for Obama and his team to refocus and remember why the election mattered so much.
*
Indeed, reading the book, I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, "that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?" How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?
*
How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?
*
How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he "would not forget the middle class" choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?
. . . . the Obama White House doesn't have to give into the conventional wisdom now. It just has to get its mojo back.
*
One way the White House can do this is to have everyone there read Plouffe's book, filled as it is with page after page after page of reminders of who put Barack Obama in the Oval Office. . . . if the president wants to make sure he doesn't let down the millions who believed he really would change the rotten system, he should read the The Audacity to Win from beginning to end -- and rediscover a whole host of things he knows, but seems to have forgotten.
Plouffe's book arrives at a crossroads moment for the administration -- exactly one year after the election, and one year before the 2010 midterms. A lot has happened in that year, as the audacity of winning has given way to the timidity of governing. But in recounting how the campaign team -- and the candidate -- not only had the audacity to win but was able to keep that audacity alive, day in and day out over the long nearly-two-year slog of the campaign, Plouffe has also shown the Obama White House the way forward. The book is a powerful reminder of what the country voted for last year -- and could serve as the trigger for Obama and his team to refocus and remember why the election mattered so much.
*
Indeed, reading the book, I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, "that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?" How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?
*
How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?
*
How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he "would not forget the middle class" choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?
. . . . the Obama White House doesn't have to give into the conventional wisdom now. It just has to get its mojo back.
*
One way the White House can do this is to have everyone there read Plouffe's book, filled as it is with page after page after page of reminders of who put Barack Obama in the Oval Office. . . . if the president wants to make sure he doesn't let down the millions who believed he really would change the rotten system, he should read the The Audacity to Win from beginning to end -- and rediscover a whole host of things he knows, but seems to have forgotten.
*
There are still three years left in Obama's term, but I am beyond disappointed. As Cleve Jones stated on MSNBC tonight, Obama has failed the GKBT community in many ways and it is critical that the GLBT community hold Obama - and the Congressional Democrats - feet to the fire. Full equality for GLBT citizens will come from FEDERAL action, not the states and those who give pretty speeches and then do nothing need to be made to realize that our money and our votes can no longer be taken for granted. So far, we in the GLBT community have failed to loudly and clearly send that message.
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