It requires 60 senators to defeat a filibuster (which Mitch McConnell promised on EVERY vote), and of the 56 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucused together when Obama took office (Al Franken’s seat was months being decided, as was Obama’s own Illinois seat), 17 were folks like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who represented red states and often voted accordingly. Some, like Jim Webb and Evan Bayh, soon left the Senate, and Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy only made targeted votes due to failing health.

Read the whole post, but I think you need to re-think your philosophy toward Obama. If folks like you had his back, he would have a whole lot easier time pleasing you.

While this failure of the Democrats to be the vehicle of true reform is galling enough, it is mind-boggling in the extreme that people of modest economic means can get bamboozled into supporting faux-reform movements like the Tea Party, which is bankrolled by the right-wing Koch Brothers, zealots for unbridled capitalism.

Don’t look to our current Capitulator-in-Chief, President Obama, for any answers. He’s to the right of Richard Nixon on issues like strengthening the EPA’s clean air standards or understanding the value of Keynesian economics when there is a lack of demand in the economy. Obama, as commentator Christopher Hedges rightly noted, is “a disaster” for his liberal base in the Democratic party, someone “who speaks in the traditional language of liberalism but [who] has made war against the core values of liberalism, which is a concern for those people outside the narrow power elite.” Obama and the feckless Democrats who squandered their majorities in both houses of Congress have managed to empower the avowed enemies of middle class, working class, and poor people (i.e., the vast majority of the populace) by appeasing and compromising at every turn with these enemies, seeking their support when they should have fought against them. It’s an old story by now, well documented by many political observers. Obama and his band of spineless Democrats have set back the cause of progressive politics for at least a generation.

Firstly, turkeys don’t drown when it rains, that’s a myth. Check Snopes and see for yourself.

Secondly, the blue-collar comedy porn bit you quoted is from Ron White, not Larry the Cable Guy .

I can tell you’re NOT a good ‘ol boy! (Probably an intellectual snob liberal…)

Knowing about human nature, then, we should know how to deal with turkeys. On a rainy day you need to keep them in the coop. You do that by attracting them with food and approval. Well fed turkeys will love you, and will not drown.

You need to be down-home and play simple-minded if you want the majority to listen to you, not like what I am writing now. I am an intellectual snob.

The problem is that people like me need to dumb down the tone. A “preachy” tone is guaranteed to fail, and Obama has that tone, bless him. If you want the turkeys to love you, you need to appeal to their sense of being included; being like a popular comedian “Larry the Cable Guy”, who subtly suggests that he can’t understand why people hate gays, while seeming to endorse anti-gay rhetoric. The message is delivered by appealing to the sense of fairness while pretending to share the bigotry.

If “Larry” were to preach about how it’s OK to be gay the audience would start launching tomatoes, but by making low-key statements to the effect that he doesn’t get why people hate gays, and massaging his identity as “one of us” he gets the core message across without offending anyone. He teaches without being condescending.

Playing the bigot, yet voicing the absurdity, is best illustrated by a joke he tells: “This guy says he hates gays. So I ask him if he likes pornography. He says ‘Hell yes!’. Well, do you like pornography with women only? ‘No, I like to watch men and women having sex.’ Well, do you like to see the men with small d**ks? ‘Hell no! I like to see huge, throbbing c**ks!’”

See the difference? The turkeys love him, and they learn some progressive values painlessly. We progressives need to understand this. It is snobbish and boastful to lecture people, especially those who are in great fear, and will reject any message that is focused on the pedantic. We are “one of them” and they are “one of us.” We are all in this boat together!

Like my momma used to say,

“You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.”