Idiot Progressives

There is a not insignificant group of progressives who are planning to vote for someone other than the President (mostly Jill Stein) in order to send him a message. They're not happy with things like drone strikes, the Administration's policy on whistleblowers, the fact that he didn't single-handedly dismantle Guantanamo and a host of other real and perceived slights, and they'd rather turn the country over to Romney than reelect the President.

These people are f--ing idiots.

Bob Cesca dissects the whole idea here:  Anti-Obama Progressives are Voting for a Romney Disaster

It’s difficult to make it through a day of political reading without stumbling onto another progressive screed in a long syllabus of screeds about how President Obama is worse than George W. Bush. I’m sure you’re familiar with the rogue’s gallery of writers and their grievances. Recently, however, these posts have added an extra layer of questionable judgment involving a plea to progressives to vote against the president in the forthcoming election.

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The rational, reasonable approach to selecting a president involves deciding which of the two candidates is nearest to our personal values, both in terms of policy and leadership qualities. From there, once elected, we have a civic responsibility to engage in smart accountability. That is, pushing and persuading our leaders to do what we believe is right. Sometimes it works, as with Obama and same-sex marriage and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and sometimes it doesn’t. But at the end of the day, we’ve still helped to elect a leader who’s at least somewhere in the same ballpark as our personal views. We don’t have to agree on everything and we can’t expect perfection or purity. Reasonable people ought to look beyond the narrow field of pet issues and view the presidency in its totality.

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Either way, his plan for political realignment requires a Romney victory and, along with it, the loss of healthcare for millions, the loss of the Supreme Court to right-wing ideologues for a generation and an almost certain invasion of Iran, which could potentially entangle China or possibly Russia — just so Stoller and his friends can somehow achieve progressive goals. Somehow. The heretofore unspoken “????” prong of the plan is for Romney to dismantle Obama’s achievements, be they center-left or not. But there’s no precedent for the success of a plan like this: a group of activists voting for an opposition party in order to precipitate a confluence of devastation that forces a total reshaping of the system. Somehow. And there’s no indication or strategy for getting from rock bottom to progressive leadership and a decimation of, presumably, the two party system.

I get that some people on the left are disappointed with their perceptions of what President Obama should be.  I get that they want more progressive change sooner rather than later.  But guaranteeing a conservative Supreme Court for the next twenty years, guaranteeing the repeal of Obamacare, guaranteeing a continued whittling away of the social safety net, guaranteeing a step backwards in civil rights for gays, women and immigrants, and guaranteeing an invasion of Iran all to make a political point is stupid, selfish and destructive.

Grow up and open your eyes to what's at stake in this election.