Matt Taibbi is my old alma-mater, of course he was gone a long time before I got there.

I'm not really surprised by his views, the place was more on the Nader side than Gore, and was hot bed for the anti-Clinton left during the late 90s.

I think Taibbi is a very effective spokesman in an era where being factually accurate is not the first or the second or even the third most important thing in political debate.  Heck, even on a bad day he's still closer to the truth than the people we're fighting against.  But he's still basically a glorified DKos diarist.

I am so darn sick of the Taibibi/Jerome/Bartcop/Kucinich klatch, I could just wretch.

Get on board the reform train, or join the Nader/Kucinich/Paul detritus.

In other words: Take a flying leap at a rolling donut, dudes, cause you're never going to get on board...

No shock here that Jerome "loves" Obama's biggest critic from the left.

The problem with Charles Lemos' argument is as I have said before: branding.

Whatever the "facts" were is not what Obama was selling as his public image. Now, it is true, those of us who paid close attention got that there was no dimes worth a difference between he and Clinton, BUT, that's not an argument for claiming that this is the brand he road into office on. I remember saying as much last year when people were saying he was different from Clinton. I remember writing a diary in which I specifically argued that looking at the economic policy there was no difference other than slight tweaks between the two.

I remember someone else writing the problem was that people were buying into the Obama brand. That when he talked to progressives, those progressives simply did not want to hear it. That they believed what they wanted to believe of label. And, therein, is a lesson.

This is a "What's the Matter With Kansas" thesis- people voted for one thing because they were told to look else where by both the campaign and by their own projections  they bought into the effective branding campaign that President Obama ran on.

I mean- "You are the change you want.""Yes we can" All of that was branding because it was taking liberal idealism and turning it on its head. The substance of what he was saying was anything but change. It was anything "yes you can." It was Clintonism under a very good marketing campaign.

So, while Charles is right- he also misses a larger point.

The greater lesson is that we all can buy into branding. We are all influenced by it. I look at myself- I am cynical. Really cynical. I found myself wanting to buy his speeches when it gave them. This is the lesson that progressives can learn- how to use branding to build an emotional truth with voters. Not just policies or issues- but emotional truth.This emotional truth need not even be true or real versus the reality underneath.

I remember saying that regarding medicare for all. If the progressives had wanted to win, their opening move should have been "we want medicare for all because we believe in America" or something like that.

Every time I hear these stories about Obama- that's the lesson for me that I think progressives should take away. Rather tahn being bitter- figure out how to use what he did to your advantage.

What wasted effort in a back and forth of unsubstantiated facts.

You are seeing what you want to see, not what is there. Taibbi is no different than Glenn Beck. Both are ideological flame-throwing polemicists. Two sides of the same coin.

I read the Taibbi piece and was aghast. Riddled with factual errors. Blames Rubin for every sin under the sun. Not saying that Rubin hasn't made mistakes but Taibbi is way off base.

"Rubin was the driving force behind the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act." No, it was Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan. Moreover the assault on Glass-Steagall began in the 1970s. Hard to be a driving force for 20+ years.

"Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments." No, it was Charles Prince, Citi's CEO until 2007. Citi's investments in CDOs peaked in 2006. If anything Rubin curtailed betting on CDOs.

"Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubin's son." Wrong Rubin. Jamie Rubin is the former US State Dept spokesman. He is the son  of Harvey Rubin, the publisher and is married to Christiane Amanpour, the Iranian-born reporter.

"the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed specifically to legalize the Citigroup megamerger)" Geez, where to begin on that one. Citibank and Travelers merged in April 1998, Glass-Steagall (what was left of it) was repealed in November 1999. Taibbi is throwing out bombs and you believe them because you want to believe them not because there is actually a fire there. Glass Steagall covered the merger of investment banks and commercial banks. It was the the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 that kept commercial banks from underwriting insurance, not Glass-Steagall.

What rendered Glass-Steagall effectively obsolete was a ruling in December 1996 by the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan's directive that permitted bank holding companies to own investment bank affiliates with up to 25 percent of their business in securities underwriting up 10 percent. It is this expansion of a loophole created by the Fed's 1987 reinterpretation of Section 20 of Glass-Steagall that began the wave of mega-mergers.

"Even Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has been out of government for only 30 months of his adult life, managed to collect $18 million during his private-sector stint with a Wall Street firm called Wasserstein-Perella." Taibbi omits to tell you that Rahm Emanuel got hit by lighting twice. The reason Emanuel made all those millions, apart that his connections to the Clinton White House landed him the job, is that Wasserstein-Perella got bought out twice during Emanuel's tenure. In short, Emanuel was very lucky. But Taibbi leads you to believe that the gains were ill-gotten.

Taibbi has an axe to grind against Rubin, perhaps justly so but that does not excuse a) shoddy journalism nor b) making up facts to fit a narrative. He's no different than Glenn Beck.

The irony of Bob Rubin: He's an unapologetic arch-capitalist demagogue whose very career is proof that a free-market meritocracy is a myth. Much like Alan Greenspan, a staggeringly incompetent economic forecaster who was worshipped by four decades of politicians because he once dated Barbara Walters, Rubin has been held in awe by the American political elite for nearly 20 years despite having fucked up virtually every project he ever got his hands on. He went from running Goldman Sachs (1990-1992) to the Clinton White House (1993-1999) to Citigroup (1999-2009), leaving behind a trail of historic gaffes that somehow boosted his stature every step of the way.

Rubin is a lot of things but a demagogue is not one of them. Not sure what Rubin did at Goldman to "fuck" it up. By all accounts, it was very successful tenure for Goldman and its employees bearing in mind that at that time GS was a privately held partnership. As Treasury Secretary, he balanced budgets and his policies led to full employment. One can and should take issue with a lax financial regulatory environment but that is the fault of more than just Bob Rubin. Finally Rubin didn't become Citi CEO until 2007. Rubin had an influential role at Citi since being brought on board by Sandy Weill in 1999 but to say that Rubin controlled Citi is a stretch. And that's just it, Taibbi stretches his facts to fit a pre-determined narrative.

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Honestly, that's biggest piece of drivel that I have read in a long time. Did he bother to check Obama's bundlers? It was stunning in 2007 how much money was pouring into the Obama campaign coffers from Lehman and Morgan Stanley. Ironically, the Citi and GS money backed Clinton. The trail of errors is beyond belief.

Obama built a coalition of African-Americans, the 29 and under crowd and white liberals who earned more than $75,000 to win the nomination. He was hardly the most left-leaning Democrat running. I'd argue that Obama was the most centrist with the possible exception of Bill Richardson and the most in bed with Wall Street after Clinton and Dodd. There was a reason he carried the demographic that earned more $250,000. What inspired his supporters was a well-tuned marketing campaign built around his anti-Iraq war stance. He differentiated himself on the score and his supporters chose not to see his record like the fact he voted for the Bush Cheney Energy policies or that Obama on national security was one of the most conservative Democratic Senators.

If you wanted a genuine outsider, your man was Gravel or Kucinich.

As director of the NEC, meanwhile, Obama installed economic czar Larry Summers, who had served as Rubin's protégé at Treasury. Just below Summers is Jason Furman, who worked for Rubin in the Clinton White House and was one of the first directors of Rubin's Hamilton Project. The appointment of Furman -- a persistent advocate of free-trade agreements like NAFTA and the author of droolingly pro-globalization reports with titles like "Walmart: A Progressive Success Story" -- provided one of the first clues that Obama had only been posturing when he promised crowds of struggling Midwesterners during the campaign that he would renegotiate NAFTA, which facilitated the flight of blue-collar jobs to other countries.

Shocking! Unless you live in the real world where it was clear that Barack Obama was a centrist whose record belied his rhetoric. I've actually read "Walmart: A Progressive Success Story" because I covered the company. It was written in 2005 for Podesta's Center for American Progress not for Brookings' Hamilton Project as Taibbi implies.

It is not, I think, much of a shock to realize that bank and state in the US are wed together in an unholy union to the detriment of the country. It's a problem that should be clear to anyone who is paying attention.

I have no interest in substituting insanity of the right for that of the left. Insanity is insanity. I have no interest in substituting populism of the right for that of the left. Populism is insanity, left or right.

I'm not much for populism of any kind. This just detracts from the national conversation. If Taibbi is going to be very influential on our side, then I for one will tune out. I have little love of mobs. I was in Buenos Aires when the peso crashed, it wasn't pretty. The urgency of reform should be self-evident to the elites that run the country because the anger that both Taibbi and Beck encapsulate in their body of work is real even if their facts are stretched to fit a pre-determined narrative.

Restore Glass-Steagall and educating the public on the too close for comfort relationship between bank and state should be the task at hand. But throwing bombs serves no one. It may be amusing to read a rant but to assign it a level of importance is to denigrate the national discourse. Those who play with populist fire get burned eventually. Today's GOP is a case in point.

I am still not quite sure why I feel compelled to defend Bob Rubin or the Obama Administration when in fact they both irk me on this score.

Taibbi's not wrong but the whole conspiracy angle really really irks me. Pre-determined narratives are, I think, intellectually vacant.

I suspect that I may be the odd man out on this debate. I think my views in my post on the Separation of Bank and State speak for themselves.

I understand people enjoy a good rant and perhaps it serves the purpose of letting off steam. The anger is real. There is no question about that. This I hope is evident to the Administration.

Restoring Glass-Steagall should be a top priority. Geithner is against that idea. All the more reason, he needs to go.

Fernholz's point was:

but politically it's bad for progressives because conspiracy theories stand in the way of good policy analysis and good activism, replacing them with apathy and fear.

If you think the tea-baggers are good for the Republican party, then maybe you can make a case for Taibbi being good for progressives. I think Fernholz, and Charles above, are correct. You have to diagnose the actual cause to successfully change things, wishful thinking and pleasing narratives end up serving the interests of the status quo. Taibbi may motivate people, but he will motivate people to burn the witch (in this case Bob Rubin) rather than address the political power of Wall Street.

What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.

It's your fault, there Matt. Nothing some self-flagellation can't correct.

There was no bait and switch. And the problem extends much deeper than the President. I'd argue that most of Washington has been captured by the easy money of haute finance. It's not some vast conspiracy theory. It just is. Pretty much historical fact at this point. This is a road we have been traveling since the Carter Administration when the first reins of regulation were loosened. And the problem is that the economy has become dependent on  financialization (securitization) to drive economic growth. Instead of investing in productive capacity, we create money out of thin air. But money created out of thin air can also vanish into thin air when the underlying assets to support those derivative instruments falter. The model is the problem.

But I am not a polemicist because what would that solve?  

I am asking with the utmost respect, but I am wondering if this is not one giant straw man argument from the anti-Obama left?

"I took a lot of shit from others in the progressive blogosphere during the '08 for not drinking Obama's hopeaid,..."

People during the election (apparently) believed a fantasy about Obama.
I never believed that fantasy about Obama.
The fantasy now clashes with reality, as was inevitable.
Therefore, I am right.

You (and Matt Taippi) aren't prescient. You're just betting on reality.

I'm somehow supposed to be surprised that the reality of governing a nation, protecting its citizens from foreign threats and its economy from collapse clashes with a progressive fairy tale?

Jerome's link to Digby is really worth the read.

it emotionally "makes sense."

Yes, I understand that it does. The mood of the country is foul indeed. Reality no longer matters, only perception does. Hence the appeal of a Sarah Palin and therein lies the danger. We cannot eschew reason and pepper our arguments with half-truths because ultimately we are sacrificing the coherence of logic for the speciousness of emotion.

And say what you will about Jerome's motives but this is spot on:

A massively unfair burden of debt to the middle-class taxpayer; an extremely benevolent bonus to mega financial corporations; and a severely damaging hit to the Democratic Party's brand as being a party of the people and not the elite.

It is our party that will take the hit.

It's just amazing to me that those people who CLAIM to have paying attention during the election season are now SHOCKED that obama is a centrist democrat.

Frankly, I'm astounded.

I read Charles' rebuttal, and all the other fact checks.  But I am still shocked.

I have never been an Obama fan (as my wife constantly reminds all our guests), but I have tried to be fair to the President in the criticism I dish out.  In that vein, I had written a somewhat complimentary diary on the politics of his economic policies.  Seems like I was speaking mostly in ignorance.

I think I will refrain from making any comments on any political matters for the foreseeable future (i.e., the rest of this week)

Except your "nothing else" argument is incorrect. You add that into a situation in which people are discussing how they are angry over very specific problems in our society.

I did see that link; I only saw an additional $6.8T or so, corresponding to the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie).

Still, it is quite a number.  At 20T, it would 2X US GDP, and 33% of the world's GDP.  Another way of looking at it is that the housing valuations increased from $36T in 2002 to $72T in 2007.  

And yes, a wee bit of inflation would be good news.

Posted my comment below by mistake link

Well, Charles, I don't want to get into a game with you, but you can certainly define an us and them in each of the movements I mentioned.  However, I think I finally get your point.   You define populism as a movement of the people against their oppressors/the overprivileged.  You're afraid of class-based populist movements.  I wish you would have just stated that from the beginning instead of tapdancing around it.  I think it's immoral to try to deny the people their right to anger at inequities in society because you fear for your own hide.  It's the classic case of trying to deny the rights of the masses as one of the elites.  In my view, one of the inherent downsides of being overprivileged is that a lot of people bear resentment towards you for your privilege.  That is their right.  Being overprivileged carries many advantages; this is one of its disadvantages.  Plain and simple.  

As I said, I think it's immoral for you to want to take away one of the few tools the average citizen has (numbers) in order to protect yourself.

Charles, you keep changing the terms of the debate.  Now, you are saying anger is okay, but not if it foments rebellion and mobs.  Okay, fine.  But, how in the hell does an article in RS rise to this level?  You accuse Taibbi of "populism" (and insanity) and dismiss it/him because populism "distracts from the national discourse." Wow.  I am really shocked.  You turn progressivism on its head.  Taibbi is insane because he points out the relationships between Obama's economic team and the financial industry collapse.  He should be avoided for that.  Yet, all he has done is expose those relationships.

And to make the old claim that he doesn't show there are shades of gray here is really a complaint that he didn't put the spin on the story that you would have liked.  I bet that in your story there would be lots of caveats- these people were at the center of the crisis, but there were many others.  (I hope you wouldn't include the old "no one expected this to happen" lie.)

I'm sorry, Charles, but it sounds to me that you are simply more interested in protecting the wall streeters who created this mess than ensuring equity for the rest of us.  And the vehemence with which you attack Taibbi demonstrates how strongly you hold those views.  At the start of this discussion, I asked you what tools the people have if they should not appeal to emotion at all.  You said facts, as if Taibbi and populists don't have any concern for facts.  That is a canard.  I would posit that you are really interested in taking from the people the one power they have- their numbers.  That scares you because you identify with the elites.  That's your prerogative, of course, but I don't think it's very progressive.  There is a class war in this country and you want to eviscerate the power of the people under the guise of some higher calling.  At least now we understand each other.    

It seems to me that you feel more protective of the  think you simply don't like having the SOBs who brought our economy to its knees to be publicly exposed.  To my mind, that's not very progressive.  Oh, to identify some of the ringleaders is somehow unfair/insane.  That really makes my head spin.  I cannot disagree more strongly with you on this issue.  

Well, you accused Taibbi of doing just that in your initial post.  You brand him a Beck-like demagogue!  It is clear to me now that you simply want to protect the wrongdoers from themselves.  I take a very different view.  I believe that those who are responsible for creating this horrible mess deserve at least to be called out and publicly identified.