It's not your fault, it's mine. No, really. I'm not just saying that. I'm a progressive, and I blew it.

::::::::

Hell hath no fury like a progressive scorned. I haven't seen jilted fans scream like this since they drafted Elvis.

Very well, let's get it out of our systems. All together now: We hate Obama!

Barack Obama is a backstabber. He's a closet Republican. He's a corporate shill. He's a coward. He's a wuss. He's a two-timing cheat.

The verdict is in, my friends. Barack Obama is a bad boyfriend.

We progressives say these things, because we're happiest when betrayed and bawling about it, but we don't mean it. Not really. It's a bluff.

If we meant it, if Obama really was just another Republican with a better tan than John Boehner, we'd already have a half dozen serious primary challengers against him. We'd have a third party polling in double digits right now, because at least ten percent of the American electorate calls itself progressive.

And we wouldn't care if we siphoned off enough votes to elect some Republican like Michele Bachmann because, what the hell--six of one, right?

But that's not happening and it isn't because the progressive movement doesn't have an authentic bill of particulars against Mr. Obama. It's because we know if we depose him, it's all on us.

My fellow progressives, it's time to put up or shut up. If we have a program to sell, we better learn how to sell it. Because right now, we're failing miserably. We've been irrelevant so long we've forgotten our own history.

Why was there a New Deal? Was it because FDR was as much a saint as BHO is a devil? Nope, not even close. We got the New Deal because the people demanded it.

And why did the ruling class yield to what the peasants demanded after 150 years of cordially ignoring them? One word: Communism. They were scared witless by a dangerous idea. And the ruling class figured they'd rather part with a few bucks than their heads.

Nothing changes in America unless the people lead. And the powers that be only understand one thing: fear.

Why did we get out of Vietnam? Because the people demanded it. It took eight years of agitation and persuasion and about a thousand riots, but in end the people were persuaded to turn against that crime. And why did the military-industrial complex yield? Fear. The country was becoming ungovernable and they figured that maybe Vietnam wasn't so important after all.

What didn't get us the New Deal or Civil Rights or out of Vietnam or anything else of crucial, life-or-death importance, was a knight in shining armor, riding to our rescue. We got those things, we got every good thing we've ever attained in America because the people demanded it.

If I hear one more whine about how bad things are and how big a disappointment Obama is I'm going to effing hurl. We're supposed to be democrats, with a small d, we're supposed to persuade, yet we pine for a single man on a white horse to save us. And we cry when our champion gets jousted out of the saddle by the forces of darkness.

I'm not arguing that Obama couldn't have done a better job playing defense. Bill Clinton did, though he never passed even a crappy health care bill and he punted on gays in the military.

What I'm saying is that it's not up to Obama. It's up to us. Read that a thousand times if you have to.

And from the paucity of good, positive, persuasive ideas coming out of the ranks of the progressives, I'd say we do.

"Obama sucks," is not a rallying cry. You want a platform that might, over time, get enough Americans on our side to make an actual difference? Instead of, you know, electing a black knight on a white horse and hoping he brings back Camelot? Try these two words on for size: Economic Justice.

We need our best thinkers to figure out how we propose to achieve that, our best writers to put it in a manifesto, our best speakers to preach it all over the land, and our most telegenic personalities run for office on that platform: Economic Justice.

Or we can keep crying crocodile tears over the terrible, treacherous betrayal we got at the hands of Backstabbing Barack Obama, because he didn't try hard enough to move the American people ever so slightly to the left.

Well, actually, he did, but they wouldn't budge. And that's on us.

Authors Bio:
San Francisco based columnist, author, gym rat and novelist. My book, "The Confessions of a Catnip Junkie" is the best memoir ever written by a cat. Available on Amazon.com, or wherever fine literature is sold with no sales tax collected.

For those seeking more detail on yours truly, the following is from my website, allangoldstein.com, where you can partake copiously, and for free.

"Allan Goldstein lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jordan, and a minimum of two cats. His op-ed newspaper column,"Caught off Base," has appeared in San Francisco's West Portal Monthly for the past decade. Satire, invective and humor are specialties.

He also blogs regularly on opednews.com and on hypocrisy.com under the pseudonym Snark Twain. Other work has appeared in Spitball, The Baseball Literary Review, The Potomac Review, and several magazines including Rock and Gem and Pilot's Preflight. He is currently at work on his third novel."