The Blind Spot in the Stephanie Miller Sexy Liberal Show

This past Saturday, my wife and I attended the Stephanie Miller Sexy Liberal Show, held in the Popejoy Theater at the University of New Mexico. Part of the show's purpose is to bolster the re-election prospects of President Barack Obama. Two of the main arguments for the Obama re-election are: 1) he has done some good things despite enormous political opposition; and 2) more progressive Democrats must be elected to Congress to help him do what he really wants to do.

President Barack Obama is not a liberal or a progressive: a more accurate labeling of him might be a pragmatic technocrat. The things that he has done in his first term which might be labeled liberal or progressive are largely the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the economic stimulus package, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the two Supreme Court appointees. He did withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq but that was on the schedule set up by George W. Bush. The negative or non-progressive side of the ledger is much longer. He has embraced a bloated Pentagon, supports an expensive buildup of nuclear weapons capability; has failed to trim the sprawling intelligence empire; has adopted most of the retrograde civil liberties policies of the Bush administration; has extended the Bush tax cuts; has failed to propose a progressive tax system of his own; and has substantially increased the troop levels in Afghanistan without a declared ending date to the war.

A much better alternative to the Affordable Care Act would have been single-payer but he refused to even put it on the table, much as he sabotaged a robust public option. Even the economic stimulus package was flawed by having too large a component of tax cuts and not having a follow-up to extend its stimulative effect.

As for electing progressive Democrats lower on the ticket, it is hard to elect progressives when the head of the party has not articulated even a sliver of a progressive agenda, beyond proposing a surcharge on millionaires that will generate only $47 billion in revenue over ten years. On a personal note, I  have received six fundraising letters signed by either Michelle or Barack Obama, and none of them propose a single policy program for the future.

It is right and proper to heap ridicule on the Republican presidential contenders but it is so sad and tragic that the alternative to them is so tragically flawed.