We Need More Democrats Like Jeff Jarvis

Trey Smith

What are you thinking, Mr President?

Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded?

And I voted for you. I'll confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual.

Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.

I do care about security. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center and I believe 9/11 was allowed to occur through a failure of intelligence. I thank TSA agents for searching me: applause for security theater. I defend government's necessary secrets. By the way, I also defend Obamacare. I should be an easy ally, but your exercise of power appalls me. When I wrote about your credibility deficit recently, I was shocked that among the commenters at that great international voice of liberalism, the Guardian, next to no one defended you. Even on our side of the political divide, I am far from alone in urgently wondering what you are doing.

As a journalist, I am frightened by your vengeful attacks on whistleblowers – Manning, Assange, Snowden, and the rest – and the impact in turn on journalism and its tasks of keeping a watchful eye on you and helping to assure an informed citizenry.

As a citizen, I am disgusted by the systematic evasion of oversight you have supported through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts; by the use of ports as lawless zones where your agents can harass anyone; by your failure on your promise to close Guantánamo, and this list could go on.

As an American often abroad, I am embarrassed by the damage you have caused to our reputation and to others' trust in us. I find myself apologizing for what you are doing to citizens of other nations, dismissing the idea that they have rights to privacy because they are "foreign".
~ from As a Democrat, I Am Disgusted With President Obama by Jeff Jarvis ~

It is not enough for civil libertarians and folks like me (I didn't vote for Obama either time) to criticize the president. If there is ANY hope of him listening -- and, realistically, that hope is slim -- it must come from members of the Democratic Party. It must come from those who voted for him.

We need more Democrats like Jeff Jarvis. We need more Democrats, particularly those who serve in Congress, to tell the president that he is destroying the Democratic Party from the inside out. Today's Democratic Party is to the right of Richard Nixon's Republican Party! Under Obama's leadership, it may soon be to the right of Ronald Reagan's Republican Party!

How much further right can you rank-and-file Democrats stand to go? Will we soon come to the day when the Democratic Party will be to the right of Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann of 2012?