Matt Damon goes after Obama, again

I'll treat this as a news item first, with comments below.

The news — actor Matt Damon was recently quoted in an Elle magazine profile as being still highly critical of Obama. Here's the relevant section (my emphasis and paragraphing):

While most Hollywood power-Dems continue to back their commander in chief—albeit with somewhat subdued ardor—Damon, one of Obama’s earliest and loudest public supporters, told Piers Morgan last year that the president “misinterpreted his mandate” by rolling over to banks and extending Bush-era tax cuts. ...

“I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, ‘Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician,’ ” Damon says ... “You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.”

Damon gestures in the direction ... of the sign-wielding [Occupy Vancouver] picketers who are beginning to gather steam. “If the Democrats think that they didn’t have a mandate—people are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they are so pissed off,” he says. “Imagine if they had a leader.”

Yes. Imagine if they had a leader. Where could we find one?

Comments — So now we're at the presidential layer of the "what to do?" discussion. (The 15,000 foot layer is talk like this; the organizing layer is discussed here.)

The choices in 2012 are simple, and they deserve their own post for full exploration. You can:

■ Support Obama
■ Support a primary challenge to Obama
■ Support a 3rd party candidate
■ Support the Republican
■ Stay home

We'll go through the logic of each choice later. But for now, I strongly believe the bottom three options should be treated identically, since they have the same operational effect. Third-party candidates lose, and because they lose, they don't "send a message." Only power sends a message. Bush II lost the popular vote in 2000 and ran the country like a king.

Ask yourself: If Republicans take power, is there any doubt they will continue the Bush Project — permanent Republican rule — in other words, do to us what's being done to Hungary?

I'll have a follow-up on this reasoning shortly. Suffice it to say, for me the choices are only three — Obama, a different Dem, or the Republican.

Let's leave it there until later; as the Democratic cave becomes wider and deeper, the question — what do do? — totally fails to go away. I promise to return to it.

(So, how does a discussion of primary challenges find itself in a post about Matt Damon? Happy accident.)

GP