The foreclosure crisis

Barack Obama sounded a strong populist note in his Kansas speech, but he can't change his own history: His HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) was helped very few people keep their homes. Congressman Dennis Cardoza of California -- soon to retire, alas -- has been aggressively pushing another plan: Renegotiate all mortgages on "underwater" houses and extend payments to 40 years. This morning, he told Cenk Uyger of the Young Turks that this program would be the equivalent of an $85 billion tax cut. (I'll post that interview if it becomes available; the one above, also valuable, is from the end of October.)

The Obama administration has not exactly laughed in Cardoza's face, but they did everything short of that.

Cardoza tries to meet with members of the Obama Administration regularly to talk about what can be done with the housing crisis, but he says his efforts have largely fallen on deaf ears. In early October, he met with Edward DeMarco, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and DeMarco conceded that he had never met with a person who had been foreclosed upon, Cardoza says. “These people don’t live in the real world,” Cardoza says. “They don’t see the pain in people’s faces. It’s just an absolute outrage.”

Some of my readers will sneer at Cardoza, who calls himself a Blue Dog. But the Central Valley of California is a rather conservative place, and he is likely to be replaced by a Republican.

By the way: I am continually stunned by the way Republicans spin the growing discontent with Obama as a populist rejection of "liberalism" or even "socialism." Look, for example, at this absurd piece of right-wing histrionics:

Cardoza made multiple pleas for Obama to tour the Central Valley with him so he could see the devastation created by failed liberal government policies.

No. Cardoza made clear, when talking to Cenk, that he wanted Obama to see the devastation caused by failed pro-Wall Street policies. In fact, Cardoza used language that would have made any OWS protester proud when he condemned Tim Geithner as a creature wholly controlled by the big banks.

This speaks to a larger issue. Every time someone castigates this administration for its failures, the rightists try to spin that critique to their own benefit. The right even tried to hijack the OWS movement in its initial stages. It's a thin line we trod: On one hand, we must damn Obama; on the other, we must damn those who damn Obama.

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.