Granted, lately I’m not paying anywhere near as much attention to any of this blogfoolery as I used to, but I’d venture to guess that the manic progressives/PUMA loons are already setting this up as a lose/lose situation for Obama no matter what the outcome is. If he doesn’t pick her it’s, well,  BLLLLAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!! and if he does pick her it’s a cheap political move to get the hippies back in line. Correct?

In regards to NOW…if they’re going to praise him for appointing women (Supreme Court) and not even give him a chance to nominate Elizabeth Warren before calling him a sexist then THEY are the ones being sexist.  “Oh he must be waiting because she’s a woman”.  Get off the grass!

Also in that first article “The Treasury Department, though, continues to be led by mostly men. Of the top 20 officials Treasury lists on its Web site, just five are women.”

25% sounds good to me but you can’t tell really because I don’t know how many percent of each sex applied/were available to be nominated (I don’t know how the TD works) for the jobs in question.  If it were 90% women and 10% men that were up for the jobs and we got the ratio it is now you can call sexism into play (unless the 90% were friggen useless).

Second link…she’s not said she actually wants to be in charge and to be quite honest some people (men and women) are better being a soldier bee than the Queen.  I know I’m bloody useless at being in charge but I’ll work my socks off and be damn good at it for someone else.

Third link…will they ever wait for the sky to actutally fall before they say the sky is falling?

Obama isn’t going to win either way.  If he appoints her “they” will say it’s because of pressure, if he doesn’t “they” will say it’s because of sexism.

I think a leader that considers every option before rushing in boots and all is great, but then I’m weird.

Allow me to implement the English-to-White-Netgressive-WATB Translator:

I’ve been involved in politics since way back in 2003 and I know best and I know Obama promised Elizabeth Warren getting this job as a key part of his platform and he didn’t fix everything in 100 days and he sucks and is a sell-out and I hate him because everything isn’t fixed and now I have to go on pretending to care about politics instead of ignoring it in favor of partying and fucking around like I did for the first twentysomething years of my life and whatever I want I should get right the fuck now because who cares if black people and women and gay people have had to fight for centuries for their rights I am a white pwogwessive with a bwog and therefore I am the base and Obama must kiss my ass and lick my balls just the way I like or I’m gonna go home and bite my pillow and not bust my ass—i.e., vote—anymore!

In other words, Kevin: You aren’t missing a damn thing.

OMG, Oblomova, I remember reading a friend of mine on the Ebay boards complaining about Obama because ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ wasn’t kaput after his first 100 days.  She was soooo disappointed in him and wondering if she made the right decision in voting for him. 

He didn’t say he was god (and THAT dude ain’t all that IMO), that was the other side.

Rebecca, the man did say in his speech in Grant Park (and fwiw, I was there and heard it with my own damn ears) “We won’t get there in one year, or even one term.” Sometimes I think the BEST thing he’s done is not to appease the short-attention-span 24-hour news-cycle idiots who are causing a lot of damage to whatever is left of reasonable political discourse in this country. The Shirley Sherrod case being a shameful exception, of course.

I seriously do think part of the problem is that there are progressives who are reluctant warriors when it comes to politics. Blogging is great for them because it doesn’t require hard work the way knocking on doors, going to meetings, phone banking, etc. does. It still allows them to feel like they’re “activists,” without taking on any of the pain. But really, they’d rather be “lifestyle progressives” or “artists.” And why not? Gardening, playing with your garage band, running a little theater company, having a “progressive” book club—all that is really fun compared to the dull-as-dirt, frustrating-as-hell work of being a community organizer. (For one thing, you have to talk to a lot of people face to face, unlike the interwebz where you can fire a shot across the bow and call it a day.)

Compare that to the GOP far-right who LIVE to win elections, who LOVE to gloat over defeating their opponents—because they truly believe that they are doing God’s work through the ballot box. They will drop everything to show up at a townhall, for example. Where the hell were the netgressives last summer when those circuses were going on?

So it’s one reason I have a tough time taking their angst seriously—I suspect what’s underneath it in some cases is “God, I really don’t LIKE doing this political stuff, so can you please just fix everything, Mr. Only President I’ve Sorta Liked Since I Was Old Enough To Vote, so I can get back to gardening, jamming, book-clubbing, etc.?”

(Which, I hasten to add, is not my assumption about our esteemed host here. I’m surprised Kevin has been able to survive the political blogosphere bullshit as long as he has. Outside of here and Balloon Juice and a couple others, I find most of it dire and drama-laden.)

From observation, some sectors of the liberal or progressive or whatever else they want to call themselves left (no scare quotes because I’m not really trying to start a fight) are being played by the Republicans.

The Republican strategy is to stall, obstruct, and deflect any debate and legislation. One hope from that is that people in general will grow increasingly impatient with the administration, and the broad left will turn on itself and fragment (even further than it already is).

The hoped-for benefits from this for the GOP include keeping its opposition constantly on the back foot, a blithely lazy time for its officebearers as they’ve no need to come up with coherent policies themselves, distraction from its own desperate splits, and impeding anyone vaguely lefty from formulating a coherent and united strategy to try to persuade the populace and push Congress to implement less centrist or RW policies.

Add in some actors of dubious loyalties, often dishonest and trivializing media parroted by some blogs and alternative outlets, and some plain old ratfucking, and that’s your Republican New Deal right there.

And some people fall for it every time.

YAFB, I think you’re right. And Tom Hilton pointed out something in a Balloon Juice comment a little while back which I’m too lazy to dig up, but he was quite right.

The GOP benefits when more people turn off politics altogether—so obstructing and getting people impatient, disgusted, and otherwise disengaged altogether at election time works to their benefit.

Why else do we think the GOP spends so much time trying to make it harder for people to register to vote? Remember their opposition to motor-voter. Higher voter turnouts generally are not a good thing for them. Absent any plans of their own, they have to count on their own always-enthusiastically-rabid base turning out and the Dems fickle, now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t voters staying home.

I’m tired of the drama-queen Dems who will only vote when THEIR issue is on the ballot, or who will only vote if they are “wooed” in the right way, or who otherwise act as if turning up and voting for somebody you are less than totally in love with is some huge moral sacrifice. Christ, most things I do in life are choosing between two less-than-wonderful options. At least now we have the choice between “eh” and batshit-fucking-they-want-to-burn-it-down-and-dance-on-our-g raves-crazies.

Why that is hard for some to understand is beyond me.