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Obama: Beyond Savior or Trickster
Among the tendencies, the first is more widespread and more dangerous. All kinds of atrocious policies -- from Lyndon Johnson's war on Vietnam to Jimmy Carter's midterm swerve rightward to Bill Clinton's neoliberal measures such as NAFTA, "welfare reform" and Wall Street deregulation -- were calamities facilitated by acquiescence or mild dissent from many left-leaning Democrats.
Some historical analogies are acutely relevant, and the LBJ/Vietnam Obama/Afghanistan comparison is one of them. During the first couple of years after Johnson's inauguration in January 1965, with few exceptions, liberal members of Congress and leaders of liberal-oriented groups routinely voiced support for the war escalation; others mumbled their misgivings as the president ordered more troops and firepower to Vietnam. Today, similar mumbling about Afghanistan attests to the repetition compulsion disorder of the U.S. warfare state.
Whatever can be said for avoidance of ruffling feathers in the new administration is greatly outweighed by the dire long-term effects. We can't build a vibrant progressive movement -- or strengthen a base capable of moving the country in progressive directions for the long haul -- by winking and nodding at Democratic policies that would have drawn our sharp criticism if they were being implemented by a Republican administration.
Another destructive dynamic: A corporatized Democratic administration helps Republicans put on populist costumes and pose as opponents of corporate elites. For instance, when Democratic officials and progressive allies act as though the massive federal giveaways to banks are no cause for outrage, demobilization of the party's progressive base is predictable.
With the November midterm elections now 18 months away, the specter of the post-NAFTA 1994 election that gave control of Congress to Republicans is an ominous poltergeist that's already haunting Capitol Hill. Rather than serving, yet again, as enablers for a Democratic administration to pursue a corporate-friendly course, progressives should be pushing hard in the opposite direction.
Among the Democratic base, the widespread eagerness to put Obama on a very high pedestal is emblematic of a depoliticized culture. Fixating on his impressive personal qualities is a way of turning the overall political picture into a fuzzy background.
Oft-cited, yet still worth recalling, is the spot in his book "The Audacity of Hope" where Obama wrote: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." At least as importantly, Obama is a master of speaking and acting in ways that gravitate to the center of political gravity.
We should be hard at work at the grassroots to move that center of political gravity in progressive directions, which requires speaking truth about power -- a far different endeavor than reflexively defending or vilifying Obama.
It should be axiomatic -- for commentators who refuse to be partisan hacks, for activists with progressive commitments, for anyone determined to elude Orwellian doublethink -- that presidential actions and policies should be assessed and supported or opposed on their merits.
Rejecting Obama iconography and demonology is necessary for a healthy progressive movement. We won't get far by trying to leapfrog the actual political conditions of the country. Our task is to change them.
Obama's corporate and military policies are reflections of anti-democratic imbalances of power that are part of the political economy. We shouldn't let him off the hook any more than we should refuse to acknowledge his positive actions, such as progressive aspects of his proposed budget.
The possibilities for progressive solutions will be bound up in propelling change from the grassroots -- the methodical, often-tedious and essential tasks of talking and listening and organizing in communities across the country. When President Obama takes a progressive step, it has been made possible by progressive activism. When President Obama takes an anti-progressive step, it has been facilitated by progressives muting their criticism. The antidote to political poisons is to intelligently raise our voices.
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79 Comments so far
Show AllNote: The Clinton administration did not support repeal of Glass-Stegall.
In fact, the Clinton White House fought Gramm's bill as hard as it could, but powerful Congressional Dems wanted to kill Glass-Steagall. The White House fought them as well as Gramm on this issue. Clinton signed the bill because it had a veto-proof majority. The battle was over.
As blogger Joe Cannon notes, "Clinton fought to get the best deal that he could, but gale-force political winds were against him."
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2008/09/hard-times-blame-clinton.html
This little-known fact confutes the common meme--implied in the OP--that there is no significant difference between the parties and that they both essentially work for the bankers. If this were true, Clinton would have supported Glass-Steagall.
No excuse.
Clinton should have let them try to override his veto and his name could not ever have been put to the issue. In fact, he should have screamed much more loudly about it from the bully pulpit, juxtaposing the likely horrible consequences of a financial system without Glass-Steagall against the previous 66 years of a relatively sound one with it. The battle was over because Clinton triangulated and capitulated for political expediency, since the '00 elections were fast approaching.
I'm tired of the revisionists letting these self-absorbed thugs off the hook.
Agreed. This kind of error can be made for good motives when one's cutting deals. If that's what happened, this was bad judgment.
If not, worse.
Best post I've read in quite awhile, Mr. Dave. Wish I could match your eloquence. You got it right. And, Obama is shaping up to be Clinton II.
Proof you are wrong: Rubin and Summers help write the legislation to repeal Glass-Steagall.
Look it up.
As he did in the primary season, N. Soloman works as a loyal opposition mouthpiece. The man makes sense - if one resigns to live inside the box of the one party state, siding with the Dem wing. I suppose he's too old and/or too entrenched with his liberal career sum to imagine a collective conduct appropriate for the 21st century. Soloman would be amusing, his post 60's retro-think, were we not in the grips of this period's severe, savage national and global challenges to our survival, the survival of humanity, the planet. Mr. Soloman, your wing, the Dems, surrendered to the one party state corptocracy in the 50's, with Harry "the Bomb" Truman.Yours is no more than artificial life support for a dead man, the Democratic party.
The progressive response to the current period of betrayals and corruptions? Shut down the country. Pull the Plug. Workers,Students,all groups under various names can commit local, regional and general strikes, boycotts of the IRS, occupations of physical sites like closed factories, plants and schools. REVOLUTION! MILITANT NON VIOLENCE. We have the brain trust among us to formulate humain, sustainable policies. The one party state is suiciding the natrion.
But I saw Bill Clinton on TV defending signing off on Glass-Stegall, about a month ago.
On Solomon's warnings, I'd like us to hold our fire until two major policy initiatives unfold. One is universal health insurance, the other is Mideast peace. A whole lot is riding on those fraught issues. If Obama comes through on them, he will need our unstinting support. Lets wait a little while longer. Today's economic context is almost entirely unprecedented.
Agreed in most part. However, it is never good to wait too long before giving one's honest opinion. Silence is how people are enabled to keep doing what THEY think is right, only because they are not getting the feedback they really need.
I'm not one to jump on Obama for every perceived slight, but he needs our input and has said so.
Universal health insurance and Mideast peace are extremely important, but so are 23 other things. There is never a right time to give one's opinion other than now.
I think we can forget about Mid-East peace. Obama is completely in AIPAC's pocket, along with his chosen Chief of Staff. Any "peace" will be dictated by the execrable Netanyahu and the blatantly racist Lieberman (the Israeli one, that is).
I suspect we can also forget about healthcare unless it involves a huge giveaway to the insurance companies, which will itself price it out of the means of most people.
Rainborowe
"universal health insurance"
I'm glad you used this term instead of universal health CARE. What we're going to get from O-blah-blah is the same thing we have in Massachusetts - Mandatory Health Insurance and disappearing actual health CARE. The only winners in the O-blah-blah plan will be the big insurance companies, just like in MA.
As to Mideast peace - forget about it. O-blah-blah will hold the line with Israel which means no peace ever.
'Don't get fooled again' - Pete Townsend
Did I dream this up or did Obama extort Hamas by saying he would not give Gaza the proposed 900 million in post holocaust aid unless Hamas agreed to recognize israel the country which refuses to declare it's bounderies?
If he did in fact attempt this extortion wipe the stardust out of your eyes and hammer Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Son of Irgun.
Health Care; there is no single payer on the table, why wait to hammer Obama on that also?
I bet you that Israel will attack Iran before summer. Then it will be too fucking late to criticize Mr. Wonderful Obaaaaaahhma.
I hope you are young and healthy enough to get drafted into the military. Then you can take a bullet defending the House Negro.
Let me look back over the history of time as best I can & see if there are any politicians I trust? And so there I was walking onto a used car lot. The question became, let me see how much I trust these people?
Well, they're dressed nice, have a nice office, and a big friendly smile. They shook my hand firmly so these used car salespeople be nice people I can trust?
Nice people like those at Executives at Firestone who knowingly sold defective tires that killed & maimed people all over planet earth! You know those nice people with their nice clothes, & their nice offices, and big friendly smiles. Why people like that would never knowingly sell defective tires that would kill & main people?
Strange, but according to your Nation's laws that could be close to 1st degree murder?
But it isn't my job to judge your Nation or the human race.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive
"Today, similar mumbling about Afghanistan attests to the repetition compulsion disorder of the U.S. warfare state."
It's NOT a disorder as such. Quite simply, it's the Military Industrial Complex
whose motivation is greed.Maybe greed is a disease, but I see it more as a learned behavior....more....more....more.
MIC=greed
greed is not a victimless crime
"Rather than serving, yet again, as enablers for a Democratic administration to pursue a corporate-friendly course, progressives should be pushing hard in the opposite direction."
So, what does the term "progressive" mean? And, does this mean that progressives as a whole have swung rightward following Bill Clinton and others who did the same?
Frames. The word "Democrat" should no longer be equated with "progressive" (though, that term is very vague). Some Democrats may be progressive, but as a voting bloc, Democrats are NOT progressive - they are pro-corporate.
The other part of this article is that many see Obama as not doing anything right. As if they could do any better. This is a tough job in a tough world, and while pushing for our own agenda we should stop once in a while and acknowledge that Obama is doing good things too. As my father used to remind me: It could be worse.
Here here!
I like your post.
And to paraphrase your father...We all know that it WAS worse!
I see no reason to support Obama, or any politician, in a knee jerk fashion.
One of the greatest political coup's the repugs have pulled off though is to create a party that as a base which does exactly that. It has taken a very long time to even crack that foundation and it can re-form at any time.
"Rather than serving, yet again, as enablers for a Democratic administration to pursue a corporate-friendly course, progressives should be pushing hard in the opposite direction."
Oh come on. I am so sick of these lectures of how we have to pressure Obama to do the obviously right thing on a score of issues. Who has the time and luxury to hound him on everything--how could it be that he doesn't know? Certainly, nearly all of appointees reflect a different agenda.
What do you suggest we do? Attend demonstrations that might as well never happen for all the coverage they get. And when they are successful, publications like, you know, The Nation, engage in red-baiting campaigns against the organizers--or corporate liberal Dparty partisans like Olbermann scoff at the G20 protestors. Then there are the Intellectuals who hold activists like Code Pink or the old Act-Up antics as silly and frivolous--though they are on the frontlines everyday. What should we do, write our congressman? Sign a petition? C'mon.
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
Castro is correct when he refers to Obama as "superficial".
yes...unlike George Bush or Sarah Palin....
Obama has pursued the agenda that he set out in detail on his campaign web site. did you bother to ever read it? Many people claiming he was 'superficial' and 'had no plan' obviously never did. He has deviated from it only under great pressure and only when unanticipated circumstances arose.
He is a politician. I would not expect him to behave otherwise. So far, as a politician he certainly is a cut above what we have been used to.
You can give up if you want. Indeed, if everyone does then we have certainly seen a taste of what government we will get....exactly the one we deserve.
Of course, but there has been some revisionist history going on.
There was the possibility (now pretence, I suppose) that there would actually be a modicum of change other than okaying a few more stem cell lines.
Who knew he would be a disaster?
But lets be real here--on the one hand any real criticism or attempts to hold Obama accountible are dismissed by either those who claim he isn't any different than he ever claimed (than what would be the point of expecting anything otherwise?) or by those wanting to defend Obama against legitimate criticism (in that case how is pressuring possible if he is given hold-out cover still hoping against hope?).
So don't give me your shit about giving up when you have already embraced a fatalist view.
"Sign a petition?"
Yes! And right after I signed a few online petitions Obama reversed himself on prosecuting those who ordered torture. I think he should prosecute those who did it, too, though.
There is also a petition (which I have also signed) to impeach Jay Bybee, a federal judge, who was one of the fabricators of the "legality" of torture.
It only takes a minute but we do have to hold his feet to the fire.
Rainborowe
It is, to put it mildly. quite puzzling why Norman Solomon and others somehow believe that Obama will listen to the plea of progressives. Obama did not listen to those Americans who told him during the presidential campaign that they wanted him to stop funding the illegal and immoral occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He did not listen when progressives told him that they wanted a single payer health care system in this country. He did not listen when he was told that the Bush administration should be prosecuted for torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that they have committed against the Iraqi and Afghan people. He did not listen when Kucinich and other progressives told him that Bush and Cheney should be impeached for what they have done against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It should never be forgotten that Obama told a CNN correspondent last summer that the United States has no need to apologize for what its foreign policy has wrought to the citizens of third world countries. By keeping troops in Iraq and sending even more troops into Afghanistan and by ordering drone missiles into Pakistan, people like Solomon should realize that Obama is just another warmongering president who believes that only he has the wisdom to know what is the correct path to follow. As Lance Selfa accurately points out in his most relevant book The Democrats: A Critical History, the Democrats are just as desirous to make war and to bow to the desires of corporate power at the expense of the working class and the poor as the Republicans, if not more so. This would certainly include the [alleged] agent of change, Barack Hussein Obama.
It also should never be forgotten that, unlike something like 80% of the cowards throughout the USA, Obama was publically speaking out against the Iraq war in 2002.
I remember that year vividly. I lost friends because I had the gall to tell them the truth.
I think the lesson we learn here is that Obama is not a savior or a messiah or even that much different from you or I. He is a lawyer and a politician.
He may have spoke out some, a little, in 2002 but he never met a war bill he didn't vote in favor of. And in 2009, he's all for it.
"He is a lawyer and a politician" And how does one tell when a lawyer and a politician it lying? His mouth is moving.
'Don't get fooled again' - Pete Townsend
Hold on there physicscitizen ...
True, Obama spoke against the war in Iraq but then voted to fund it. For the most part, hypocrisy is the Obama way.
Physicscitizens
I do not believe that your are being completely honest about Obama. While he may have spoken out against the Iraq War he also continued to fund that misadventure as well as the occupation in Afghanistan, speaking of which, the [alleged] antiwar president still, like LBJ, escalates.
"It is, to put it mildly. quite puzzling why Norman Solomon and others somehow believe that Obama will listen to the plea of progressives. Obama did not listen to those Americans who told him during the presidential campaign that they wanted him to stop funding the illegal and immoral occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He did not listen when progressives told him that they wanted a single payer health care system in this country. He did not listen when he was told that the Bush administration should be prosecuted for torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that they have committed against the Iraqi and Afghan people. He did not listen when Kucinich and other progressives told him that Bush and Cheney should be impeached for what they have done against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Perhaps, serving as our tabla rasa, Barack Obama reasons that until more than a minority of us speak and act, he alone cannot change a thing. He has said that what happens is up to the American people.
We do need to start being able to TRUST our fellow Americans to see the light and join in a national demand for popular rights and policy investigations. We really don't have anything else, but we don't need anything else.
It is NOT up to the American people! The gulf between what the American people want and what the government does is wider than ever. The people want out of Iraq, the people want single payer, the people do NOT want all their wealth to benefit us all thrown at corrupt, greedy Wall st gamblers.
That consciousness is the beginning of putting the pressure on for anything, on anyone, anywhere.
Yes!! The people have spoken!!
We have to harness-- organize -- that desire for change.
Help more people get what they want.
Unless I'm mistaken, that's the job of progressives, isn't it?
We have the skills.
We need to organize people to get up and away from their keyboards.
To take action:
- letters and phone calls to Congressional reps & Senators
- letters to local officals (State gov't representatives, City, County)
- letters (OK, emails, too) to the editors of what remains of our daily papers
- seek meetings with these officials and City leaders (lobby them!)
- attend your local City Council meetings- usually they allow opportunities for people (citizens) to speak. So, SAY WHAT YOU THINK!!
- get others who agree with you to do these same things (write, lobby, call)
- take the officials, corporations & gov't to court if these actions don't work
- create your OWN legislation (laws)
It's called grassroots/community organizing. And guess what? It works.
Not 100%, but imagine if we NEVER did it?
YES, it takes time, but here we are taking so much time to write (and rant) on blogs like CD.
Maybe our time would be better spent doing more of the above things?
ACTION, not thumb-twiddling.
Penelope:
Letters take a very long time to get to a member of Congress because of the safety procedures instituted after the anthrax attacks; in fact it's doubtful they ever get there. Emails are much better and faster. And for those who can't afford to call long distance, emails again are the best alternative.
Contrary to your assertion, one's keyboard is probably the best way to influence one's representative. That's also where one finds online petitions.
Rainborowe
First, can we dispense with the constant badgering about online thumb-twiddling--it has proven itself to be a valuble organizing tool--and somewhat has filled the role of alternative press--at least the Right was patting itself on the back recently for its online tea party organizing. When big numbers were on the street at the unset of the Iraq invasion, many liberal publications, like the Nation, attacked ANSWER for anti-semitism (a campaign spearheaded by Michael Lerner) and engaged in red-baiting--which served to weaken organizational strenth. The suthor of this article writes, or at least used to write for the Nation. Don't you find a bit or irony in that?
"The people want out of Iraq, the people want single payer, the people do NOT want all their wealth to benefit us all thrown at corrupt, greedy Wall st gamblers."
The point I was making is it doesn't matter what the people want--so what good will pressure do? People out of work do not have the luxury of being a full time activist on every front just to have a crumb or two fall from the table.
What I see happening sooner or later is the Republican Party moving toward far right and becoming a fringe party (it is happening right now), Democrats becoming a new Republican Party and fully and openly adopting their center-right ideology, and the emergence of the left with a third party.
If Obama's presidency turns out to be a failure - by which I mean more war, no real reforms (health-care, energy, environment, banking, etc.) - it will probably happen sooner rather than later. Availability of information on the internet and less and less reliance on mass media, especially by young people, combined with economic hardships, are bound to shake things up a bit.
Of course, it could be just wishful thinking on my part.
Bea April,
Something for you to consider ... in the United States, since the end of WWII, both dominant political parties simply represent variations of Liberalism. For the most part, old guard Liberal-socialists (Roosevelt / Truman Democrats) are now the Liberal-Progressives and the one-time Liberal-Conservatives are today's Liberal-Corporatists (the Fascist-lite Neo-cons). If you don't believe me, closely examine the policies-in-action of the two major political parties during the last 60 years. With a few exceptions, it's Liberalism!
At present, Ron Paul's Libertarians and the hangers-on at The John Birch Society come the closest to being a truly conservative political movement. Ironically, many of Ron Paul's ideas fall very near those of Liberal-Progressives. The real difference between Liberal-Progressives and Libertarians is Libertarians demand accountability and responsibility in fiscal taxing and spending, something anathema to Liberals of all stripes.
Have a great day!
Bea, the scenario you describe may be "wishful thinking," but as I think you feel, it's not at all unlikely, given the direction that things are going with both our "major" parties. When that happens, and well before it happens, we progressives had best be ready to find or create a party that will channel into our support the legions of the disillusioned who will be looking for a way to have the view of the majority of Americans reflected in the behavior of their leaders. See my response elsewhere on this comment thread to the post by Jim Glover and please consider using the mechanism suggested there for people like you and me to
"get together" to make this preparation a reality. I'm not too worried about either "supporting" or "opposing" Obama, I think he's a lost cause to progressiveness of nearly all of the Democratic party, so we really have a choice of either "dropping out" of progressive activism or finding an alternative way of practicing it.
Solomon: "When President Obama takes a progressive step, it has been made possible by progressive activism. When President Obama takes an anti-progressive step, it has been facilitated by progressives muting their criticism."
Simple as that is it, Mr. Solomon? Every "step" Obama takes, right or wrong, was "facilitated" or "made possible" by progressives, either because they criticized or they muted their criticism. Wow, what a generous definition of our power, seems we're the mouse that does or doesn't roar, and the world spins or stands still in response. I know you intended it as a motivator of progressive criticism of Obama, but doesn't the motivation need to be balanced by recognition that a great deal depends on other forces than our own actions or inactions? Otherwise, you get the "sick and tired" expressions of Obama critics (like that of Vern in a post above) that every thing "wrong" with his decisions (and by the way, you didn't mention a single specific thing that he had done "right") is our responsibility. That way lies a heavy burden of guilt that suggests the guilt-mongering of the stereotypical "Jewish mother," not really a recipe for the most healthy upbringing of self-reliant and self-confident children.
I would prefer to come at the "preaching" to progressives more in the mold of existentialist philosophy as exemplified in Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus." The stone which kept rolling down the mountain didn't roll because of Sisyphus' "muted criticism" of it, but because the gods had condemned him to keep rolling it up the mountain as a reflection of his human effort to pursue the "impossible dream," which is worthy of doing precisely because it IS impossible. No amount of progressive stone-rolling is going to produce your postulated results in "moving" Obama left-ward. But, in the existentialist view, we as humans are not allowed any excuse-making about not trying the impossible because we are "condemned to freedom"; and our "I can't do that" complaints are just instances of "bad faith" efforts to relief ourselves of the effort.
Maybe it's just me, but I can get more mileage in my own motivation by a resigned recognition that I am not going to succeed in putting the progressive stone permanently on top of the mountain, than I can from your simplistic formula that tells me I am "responsible" when my efforts don't succeed. Manys the time I've had a student tell me that he/she can't complete this academic task (like writing a term paper) because "it's impossible" and I've told him/her: yeah it's impossible, now do it. And the result is usually an acceptable if not perfect result.
By the same token, I have not and will not, like "Obama delegate" Solomon and many other Progressives for Obama, say I won't support a third party candidate because he/she can't win. I supported McKinney in the last election and have no reason to criticize myself or her other supporters because she didn't win. I sleep really well of nights knowing I don't have to "apologize" for my candidate or say that she will only do the "right" thing if I don't mute my "criticism" of her. But I'll stop before I start reciting more lines from Man of La Mancha.
GOOD POST JERRY,
I like what you told your student "Yeah its impossible so just do it!".
But don't blame yourself too hard for failure either because you can't expect to win them all.
Yes the best thing about voting for someone who you know can't win is you don't have to feel guilty when they screw up and you get lots of good sleep.
But maybe if the 3rd parties, Independents and sick and tired Dems and Repubs formed a new coalition for Truth Justice and Peace, we may have a chance even if it is impossible.
Thanks Jim, glad to meet you again if only for the moment in cyber-space.
On your second sentence, I think you kind of misread my post: I'm not blaming myself for any "failures," I'm blaming if anything the "fate" that dooms us more or less to failure, and I can live pretty comfortably in my "despair." That's what a healthy dose of existentialism can do for you!
On your last sentence I'd like to cross arms with you in pledging my life and sacred honor to promoting precisely the Alliance of the Pissed Off that you articulate there. I'm having a little luck rounding up for direct e-mail exchange a coterie of like-minded people in Florida (for maybe some direct get-togethers) and for people everywhere who'd like to communicate off the www and haved dropped my e-mail address on a couple of CD posting threads asking people to contact me as a "first move" toward getting such a direct exchange going. Feel free (and others feel free as well) to use it (though I think have your e-address already): jerrydrose11@yahoo.com. That 11 is an eleven and you have to type that address into the To: box on your mail compose. As Joan Rivers says, let's talk!
♪ And the world will be better for this:
Jerry Rose, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To prove Solomon is subpar! ♪
______________________________________
Your eloquent and trenchant comment speaks for me-- except that I voted for Nader. McKinney didn't get on the ballot in PA.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Thanks, Obedient Servant, but Don Quixote I ain't and Rodgers and Hammerstein you ain't, and it will never hit broadway. But that's OK, I can take it!
Sioux Rose
Jerry: Excellent post. I particularly resonate with the 3rd paragraph citing the reference to Sisyphus. I do believe nature is taking a hand in giving us progressives some assistance. Clearly the paradigm of global corporate capitalism without conscience is meeting its own antitheses, partially in the form of limited resources and climate change. And let us not forget how it's falsified its own tender by rendering the dollar a fake abstraction of wealth, one now quite clearly reflective of a now bygone era.
Right, Sioux, you can get downright Marxist here, capitalism sowing the seeds of its own destruction, etc. If "history" is on your side, you feel a bit less forlorn, do you not?
Though you are right on about the war, your support of Mr. Obama owes us an apology.
Just say it plainly: "I was wrong to support Mr. Obama for president."
Are you so full of yourself that you can't admit your malfeasance to the public?
I voted for Obama but I am not wrong.
I was worried about an extreme right wing takeover... That is not wrong.
But like Jerry says you can sleep easy because whoever you voted for didn't have a chance in the real world of Hard Ball politics.
Does that make you right? That is right for you and everyone has there own reasons for the vote they make.
Show me a presidential candidate who can unite the country for truth justice and peace and I will vote for the lesser of 3 evils.
"I voted for Obama but I am not wrong.
I was worried about an extreme right wing takeover..."
Lol!
Jim,
Your opinion counts on election day; OK.
But, Mr. Obama is a trickster. Example: The European Air Bus was just awarded a 40 billion dollar contract to build the new air refueling jet for the United States Air Force. In the context of all the economic dislocation in the auto industry, you have been tricked into voting for a shill of the financial industry, who doesn't give a damn about American jobs.
BTW, the contract to build is only 40 billion, but the continued support over the life of those aircraft will be worth another 80 billion.
If Mr. Obama cared about America he would have vetoed the Air Bus contract and given it to Boeing, to be built here in the US, not China.
You took Mr. Obama at face value. You believed Mr. McCain would have been worst, OK. But, it would be nice if you would now admit that you got snookered, cheated, and lied to; and that you acted in a foolish manner. (Yes, I believe too that Mr. McCain would have been "worse"), but it does not look that way now.
McKinney, or Nader, or Kucinich all would have been better Presidents. And you probably voted for the same old parties for Congress, too.
I cannot see how your arrogant, unrepentant attitude will help our nation have "change we can believe in?"
A little humility in the face of such abject failure would be appreciated by those of us who saw these shills for what they are.
You see, this was the strategy: Elect the Democrat no matter what to make sure McCain doesn't win, then we can think about supporting a third party later...how much time do you think we have before the whole house of cards (credit cards included) crumbles?
Supporting a third party later?
How about a 3rd party that is a real contender now? What is a real contender? You need at least 50 million votes to have a chance before the whole house of cards crumbles... and when it does, the revolution takes off.
There are well more than 50 million greens, independents, socialists, communists, and "progressive" democrats that hold their nose and vote "lesser evil" or would rather be on the winning team than vote their concsience... Even their strategy fails election after election, these "idealists" can't face the reality that they were stealing a vote from Nader or McKinney with every vote wasted on a "blue dog" democrat...
It appeases their conscience enough after fulfilling their civic duty one day out of every four years, then the suburban soccer mom's and coffee shop liberals return to the golden slumber of willful ignorance of the millions of Americans who are working to build a healthier society and localized economies based on cooperation and respect... The least they could do is have the courage to support the "realists" running for office...
A yoga teacher doesn't expect an 80 year old beginning yoga student to compete with a 20 year old rubbery adept. I don't expect Bushie to compete politically with Obama. Obama is, for a politician at least, an A student. When President Obama doesn't live up to his own abilities, I am sorry. When he does, I'm happy.
Well, yes, he is a politician.
you have to be more than sorry because Norman correctly points out Obama is a master of speaking towards the center of political gravity. We MUST bring the center of poliotical gravity to the left. We MUST march on the streets and protest protest protest.