And Don't Forget Me

Kaus on how did Obama lose Moe Tucker, the Velvet Underground drummer.

I'm serious. Was it really necessary to piss people like her off? Tucker's almost a perfect Obama voter. She's a single grandmom. Not rich. Famously worked at Wal-Mart (after being a rock star) and complained about it. A lifelong Democrat—until now. Was what Obama felt he had to do—save Detroit, save Wall Street, jumpstart the economy, pass health care reform—inevitably incompatible with her world view? Was a huge rebellion of people like her simply what you get when you "impose a liberal agenda" on a "center-right country," as Charles Krauthammer argues? Or did Obama gratuitiously fail to reassure her that her not unreasonable fears (e.g. "How the hell will this utopian dream land be paid for?") were unfounded?

Good points, all. One of my biggest beefs with the stimulus wasn't that it was tried, but how it was tried. It all seemed so phony from the get-go. Census workers. Really? Green jobs? Come on. FDR built the Golden Gate Bridge. Obama paid some people part time wages to go around and count households (plus, was this really additional anyway, wouldn't we have done census taking with or without the recession?).

If I were Obama, I'd point out how this was an opportunity to get labor on the cheap. A sale, essentially. Now we could build an awesome new tunnel underneath Los Angeles that runs from Santa Monica to downtown - and the cost would be 75% of what it would cost during a boom time because the labor would be cheap. It would solve the traffic problem in LA. Unclog the 10. And just as importantly - it would be symbolic. Something we can see and understand. People would see others laboring and working at building something useful. Cool idea, right? I'm sure other cities have cool ideas, too.

What we got with the Obama stimulus was a bail out of the auto companies -- leaving us thinking -- fine, it keeps jobs, but I still won't buy their cars. Whereas with the tunnel, I'd be like - fuck yeah - now I can drive on the 10 during the week without crazy ass traffic. With the census - it feels like nothing significant - with funding "Green Jobs" it just feels like politically correct nonsense and I can't see and understand who is being funded and for what purpose. Maybe if someone put a solar panel on the roof of my office and now all of sudden our energy bills dropped or something like that - but I don't see that happening. These "Green" projects don't seem ready to go. I don't feel like taxpayer money ought to go towards a bunch of hippies sitting around "thinking" about Green Energy solutions and in absence of alternative evidence, it seems like that is what funding Green solutions amounts to. If not, it is the job of the Green community to demonstrate otherwise.