Psychologist to Obama:Independent Voters want moral clarity

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So by "moral clarity," does he mean the America is awesome, and anyone who doesn't do our bidding is evil? That's not the kind of "moral clarity" I'm looking for from my president.

On CNN, I saw repeated this nonsensical claim that people, in particular independents, want "bipartisanship". The only kernel of truth there is that they want Congress to work. As things are being blocked this is said to be because of partisanship, but it's certainly not because of Obama's partisanship, because he shows none. Also, what they want is a president who has a clear idea about what to do and to go through with it and defend his positions. He refuses to do this. This issue of moral clarity becomes even clearer during a time of crisis. This is one reason why Bush did well after September 11, because he had this idea about how to do things and was going to do it his way - no matter how misguided it was. Obama wants instead to compromise with people who hate him. If there's a crisis, solutions are not obtained through horse trading, it requires a clear plan. If a patient is dying, you don't negotiate your way to a treatment - you do whatever you can to save the patient.

As I said, it's Rahm Emanuel in particular who was the big giveaway in terms of the kind of administration Obama was to lead. Emanuel thinks his core voters are "ret*ds", thinks that his party doesn't have a base, cares only about big money, coddles the Blue Dogs and Lieberman and slaps down the progressives. He bungled everything else he touched, and yet he somehow has been promoted as a genius. Karl Rove, he isn't.

I can't say I'm surprised. Obama's coming out speech in 2004 portended this kind of thing.

"Moral clarity" means to say "This is the problem, and this is my approach to solving it, and I believe in my approach, it is right from a moral perspective, from a practical perspective. What I plan is the right thing to do." There's no defensiveness about the approach, or concessions given that it's wrong on some level. There's this playing on the opponent's field often with Democrats. Take Clinton's "The era of Big Government is over". That's conceding that the right wing obsessions are justified and that's an admission of defeat.

'cause we hate when someone admits that things are sometimes less simple than "if this, then that"...

I have a very simple example. Take the issue of the stimulus. Now, most economists would agree that the recession causes an output gap and to prevent further deterioration that gap must be filled. If Obama had the courage of his convictions, he would have said that based on the numbers, the stimulus must be X and no less than X and insisted on it, said that spending money to cover the output gap is essential in this emergency. Instead, he did not vigourously defend it, he seemed spooked by the fact that this seems to contradict the neoliberal consensus that has been forced down our throats for the last couple of decades that appeasing speculators is the way to economic prosperity and those speculators get very angry when governments spend money. He gave space and consideration to troglodytes who think that starving the economy solves recessions, and the bill was watered down, and after it was sufficiently watered down, the Republicans voted all against it! It's like you have to shock someone's heart back to work and someone argues with you that he doesn't believe in it, let's reduce the electricity by half. The patient dies and then he blames the idea of applying electricity. He'd be right about one thing - about who is to blame for the patient's death.

His defensiveness about the correct action to take and the certainty projected by the bloodletting and leeches crowd and by the nothing but tax cuts crowd was such that bystanders would be inclined to conclude that stimulus is wrong and those other things are right.

The stimulus was about half or a third of what it should have been, according to economists. Half of it was inefficient tax cuts (inefficient form of stimulus compared with direct spending). Moreover, Obama gave lots of money away to the banks the same week as the stimulus thus promoting confusion about the two. Far more money has been just given away to Goldman Sachs and other banks than was in the stimulus. Chinese economist Henry Liu said that if they'd taken the money for the banks and put it in jobs programmes and a government-directed stimulus that they could be in a position to get rid of most unemployment.

They don't seem to have courage of their convictions, whilst the neoliberals are shamelessly claiming to be right despite the ruins they're leaving behind.

The other day I found out about this dangerous notion called the "crowding out effect". It's the base of the conservative claim that the stimulus is counterproductive. They claim that if the government spends more money, they put up more bonds and this "crowds out" the market for private bonds for private projects. The problem with this claim is that when money is spent, more money is injected into the economy, more money is available for bonds of all kind. If spending is cut, then there's less money for these things. This "crowding out effect" ideology is also manifest in the claim that Obama has made by the way that higher deficits lead to higher interest rates as there's more competition in bond markets due to "crowding out". This also is nonsense. The actual proof shows that more deficit leads to lower interest rates!

I really wish that somehow the neoclassical/neoliberal ideology can be treated the way communism has been treated as "not working"... it seems that no matter how many catastrophes it causes, it won't die. It's a vampire sucking blood.