Mr. President, Go Big Or Go Home

Last month, our country had zero job growth. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 9.1%, millions of people find themselves without a job, millions more are underemployed, either working for subpar wages or working part time when they want to be working full time. All summer long, intransigent TEA Partiers and Republicans held the debt ceiling crisis hostage, which led to a downgrade of our nation's credit rating and a steep plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average that signaled a possible onset of double dip recession. The solution to the debt ceiling crisis was more steep budget cuts with no additional revenues being added and the so-called "Super Committee" that is being appointed is being tasked with coming up with even steeper cuts and STILL no new revenues. History has proven that you cannot cut your way to prosperity. Hoover tried it, Roosevelt tried it, and both times, it plunged the economy back into Depression. And yet our President will do NOTHING to stop the hemorraging of jobs because he keeps insisting on capitulating to Republicans threats and demands every time they threaten to hold their breath until they turn blue. President Obama is scheduled to give a speech on Thursday outlining his job creation package but it doesn't matter what it is, the GOP will block it in order to make him look bad. So far, President Obama has insisted on playing small ball and has been cautiously nibbling around the edges a la Jimmy Carter instead of enacting bold policies and fighting for what he believes in. Well, the time for half measures is over. There's an election season in full swing and history has proven that elections are won or lost a year out from the actual Election Day. At the moment, women, labor and independent voters have wholesale abandoned Obama and if he fails to win them back this month, the election is all but over. If, by month's end, Obama is still trying to be a Republican Lite and favor corporate interests over ordinary people, if he continues to side against the Environmental Protection Agency's desire to tighten environmental regulations (which actually creates jobs instead of killing them), if he can't come up with a bold job creation proposal and then fight like hell to win over Congress's approval of it, if he just keeps capitulating to every one of their demands (and even doing that they aren't going to automatically side with him anyway, no matter how much he gives them), then by month's end, Texas Governor Rick Perry will have won the election because right now he is surging way ahead of Obama in the polls and the progressive base is so angry at Obama that they are abandoning him wholesale. I think what we ought to do is to run a strong progressive candidate AGAINST Obama to make him fight for his principles. I'm willing to write in Senator Bernie Sanders for President if necessary. At least he's got backbone and won't back down to Republican threats. Unlike Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who no one took seriously anyway, Sanders at least has some gravitas that will make people stand up and listen to him. So I am thinking that maybe Progressives need to draft him to run for President, if for no other reason than to push Obama back to being what he said he would be when he ran last time. It wouldn't hurt to try, for what it is worth.