I went out to dinner on my birthday with some good friends to my favorite restaurant. As we scooped up various delicious comestibles with oddly spongy read the talk turned, as it will, to politics.
Midway through the conversation, a couple of the people I was dining with were explaining to me why Barack Obama was sure to lose the 2012 election.
We live in an America where the G.O.P led House just passed a budget killing Medicare. We live in an America where the Republican senator from New York held actual hearings because of his racist perception of some nebulous threat of Islam in America. Speaking of Islam, Republicans from Oklahoma recently passed a law banning Shari'a law because Oklahoma was thisclose to electing an Imam as governor and mandating burquas. We live in an America where women's reproductive freedom is under attack. We live in an America where Republican fiscal responsibility means taking money away from poor and middle-class people and giving it over to corporations.
And all my progressive friends ever want to talk about is why Barack Obama, who has had the most legislatively successful first two years in modern presidential history, who has advanced a genuinely progressive agenda, is such a disappointment.
I'm willing to throw some good money down that Barack Obama not only wins in 2012, but wins easily. The only legitimate candidate that the GOP can seem to find is Mitt Romney and he seems shockingly willing to run against his own record in order to pander to the loud and reactionary Tea Party wing of this party.
But, in the meantime, it would be nice if we on the left could invest some real energy exposing the madness of the modern GOP - their rank and file commitment to racist and sexist politicking while reaching their hands into the back pocket of every American who isn't G.E. or Viacom instead of whining about how disappointed we are in the president who actually PASSED healthcare reform and is willing to use the word "abortion" as something women have a right to.
