Forget Clapping. How about Just Not Taking a Dump on Obama?

Daily Kos publisher and founder Markos Moulitsas has a post up on his blog about the 10 point gap GOP  has opened up in the Congressional generic ballot.  In it, he cannot resist the temptation to take his latest dump on President Obama and the Democrats:
It's a slow motion car wreck in the works, and the best the White House and its allies can do is complain that we didn't clap loudly enough.
Clap, Markos? Really? Seriously, forget about clapping.  How about not taking a dump on the Democratic President and the Democratic Congress as frequently as you can with no reason at all? Can you and your allies do that?

This isn't about clapping - although applause is more than warranted at the successes and triumphs this President and this Democratic Congress have been able to achieve even in the face of unified, vitriolic and violent right wing enmity ranging from challenging the President's citizenship to cutting off gas lines at the homes of families of Democratic members of Congress.

That's just in 20 months.  But hey.  Forget about clapping for a minute.  Think of all the ways big names on the so-called "progressive" blogosphere and media have crapped on this administration and this Democratic majority.  Not only do you jump at every chance to blame any adverse poll numbers on the White House, as you in the article referenced here, others have done worse.

Just recently, we saw a fly-by hit piece by David Dayen of FDL about how Speaker Pelosi had "committed" the House to a vote on the President's fiscal commission's recommendations, completely and thoroughly debunked by citizen k in a diary on Daily Kos, who pointed out it was a "Sense of the House" resolution, by nature non-binding.  What response came from Markos and even Congress Matters?  Nothing.  Not a peep about the fly-by faux-journalism of FDL and David Dayen.  Had the White House or any top Democrat made such a mistake, you could bet Daily Kos front pagers as well as other top bloggers would be right on top of it taking a fresh dump.

Over at PCCC, apparently the "bold" progressives are "bold" enough to make accusations contrary to facts on record about Tim Geitner opposing Elizabeth Warren to head the newly created consumer financial oversight board.  They don't do their homework, rile up the paranoia, and the rest of the big name left bloggers sit idly by.

A couple of weeks ago, two badly written hit pieces (one of them attacking the USAID for helping develop the technology infrastructure of the civil war ravaged Sri Lanka and the other idiotically claiming that Obama is confrontational with the progressives) on the Obama administration by David Sirota went unchallenged by the big name bloggers.  I ended up writing response pieces for both.  Once again, the other big names on the left blogosphere remained eerily silent, constituting what I believe to be cynical consent.

The examples abound.  We had popular big-name hired bloggers were calling for health reform to be killed if a weak-kneed public option couldn't be part of it, including threats to primary progressive Democrats if they voted for heath reform.  We had an FDL-Fox News alliance to drive a dagger through the heart of health reform, one that thankfully was repelled.

Credit card reform?  Hardly mentioned.  Wall Street reform?  Never good enough.  DADT repeal?  Not fast enough, ergo, sellout.  You pick the issue.  There's no satisfying the ideologues in the leftier-than-thou crowd.

It's not just the blogs either.  The likes of Ed Schultz and Cenk Uygur have been hosting shows on cable news excoriating the President for, I kid you not, not standing up for working people when it's this President and this Democratic Congress that have stood alone on the side of working people.

Ed Schultz went from suggesting that the health reform bill be killed to eventually supporting it to now suggesting that liberals stay home this November if the Democrats are not able to expand unemployment benefits for people who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks -- even though it is Democrats that are making an effort to do so.  Dylan Ratigan has had to be set straight by Ezra Klein on the cost of health insurance for most people once the exchanges are open.  And of course, he doesn't know the difference between a presidential commission and a Congressional panel.

At every turn, President Obama has been villainized by the professional big-name left ideologues, called a sellout at best and a Bush-lite corporatist at worst.  The issues or the merits of the issues almost don't matter.  More often than not, it's witch hunt - or at least, a hunt for an excuse -- any excuse -- to fit the President into the narrative of an inept, unprincipled person.  At every turn, an attempt to paint the Democratic majority demonic for the legislative compromises they have had to make in the face of uniform right wing noise machine and legislative opposition.  At every turn, the propensity to stand opposed.

In other words, at every opportunity, the big names on the leftier-than-thou blogs have perfected the art of taking a dump of the administration and Congress -- one might even say to the point of getting it down to a science.

Another thing.  Being a "Democratic blog, a partisan blog" explicitly dedicated to electing involves a certain degree of loyalty, and an actual commitment to Democrats, especially in the time when Democrats are under attack by a right wing media machine, rather than joining that drumbeat.  Let's face facts: this is not the time to play the blame game - each one of us can do a lot to ensure that Democrats remain in power in Congress.  But if you are interested in the blame game, know that a good share of the blame on Democratic losses without a doubt will belong to the frequent dumps taken on the administration and the Democratic Congress as a whole by the big-name ideological left's members.

Like what you read? Chip in, keep us going.

Watch Barbara Boxer Wipe the Floor with Fiorina Tonight!

Debunking The "Individual Mandate is Unprecedented" Myth