Midterms

Ridiculous man, fighting the forces of extremism? Is this ****ing X-MEN? Dude, if you only knew how bad I wanted the first black president of the U.S. to be an awesome ****ing president. I was rooting for him, maybe this experiment will work, you know, I mean he went to Harvard, there is no way this guy can be that bad? I swear on my life I wanted it to work, but the guy is a communist and I knew this while I was rooting for him. Do you understand that the guy is a communist?

 

That is straight up ridiculous (I'm not sure which assertion is more ridiculous, but let's stick to "communist" for now.) I want to say you know that, but you don't. The dude is more centrist than Clinton, and his policies are closer to Ford than Carter. He is actually a whole lotta (Bob) Dole.

So, if he's a communist, what in God's name do you label Clinton and Carter? Grand poobah communists? Or is Glenn Beck going to feed you a new -ist? How about Clinton was an anarchist and Carter was a straight up nihilist?

Words have meaning. Policies have meaning. Just because a group of you want to keep moving the goalposts, past all data and reason, back to the time of manifest destiny (or Lord knows where you think you're headed), that doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow.

 

Say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism but at least it's an ethos.

It pains me to no end when people throw out terms like Nazi, fascist and communist when talking about American politics. Just so, so ignorant; have a little perspective.

 

Clearly you don't understand it. You have shown that you have no clue what a communist actually is.

 

Soros money is a mere pittance compared to all the corporate and conservative money. It is an effective play to to equate
Soros one of the only halfway liberal billionaires with the much greater conservative money combined with hundreds of millions of GOP talking points per year by Murdoch when he isn't outright conttibuting. My guess is Fox/MurdochLimbaugh like to remind folks of Soros.

If you are concerned about Soros why not limit all corporate and individual money from elections?

 

I find it so interesting that the guy from Reason Magazine an oldmain line libertarian mag is so concerned with Buchanan and O'Donnel and the liberal media. He seems to be openly rooting for the conservatives. I wonder why when libertarians are so different than conservtives?

 

I finally got back into town and remembered this thread. You are wrong to ignore Obama's abysmal midterm election performance. It is better to recognize your failures and learn from them, not hide or run away from reality. Here's someone who agrees with me, writing a column that came out a day afer my original post. This Nobel Prize winner is often quoted by liberals, progressives, and Democrats. Enjoy:



November 14, 2010

The World as He Finds It

By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Wednesday David Axelrod, President Obama’s top political adviser, appeared to signal that the White House was ready to cave on tax cuts — to give in to Republican demands that tax cuts be extended for the wealthy as well as the middle class. “We have to deal with the world as we find it,” he declared.

The White House then tried to walk back what Mr. Axelrod had said. But it was a telling remark, in more ways than one.

The obvious point is the contrast between the administration’s current whipped-dog demeanor and Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric as a candidate. How did we get from “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” to here?

But the bitter irony goes deeper than that: the main reason Mr. Obama finds himself in this situation is that two years ago he was not, in fact, prepared to deal with the world as he was going to find it. And it seems as if he still isn’t.

In retrospect, the roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions.

This promise of transcendence may have been good general election politics, although even that is questionable: people forget how close the presidential race was at the beginning of September 2008, how worried Democrats were until Sarah Palin and Lehman Brothers pushed them over the hump. But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

Right at the beginning of his administration, what Mr. Obama needed to do, above all, was fight for an economic plan commensurate with the scale of the crisis. Instead, he negotiated with himself before he ever got around to negotiating with Congress, proposing a plan that was clearly, grossly inadequate — then allowed that plan to be scaled back even further without protest. And the failure to act forcefully on the economy, more than anything else, accounts for the midterm “shellacking.”

Even given the economy’s troubles, however, the administration’s efforts to limit the political damage were amazingly weak. There were no catchy slogans, no clear statements of principle; the administration’s political messaging was not so much ineffective as invisible. How many voters even noticed the ever-changing campaign themes — does anyone remember the “Summer of Recovery” — that were rolled out as catastrophe loomed?

And things haven’t improved since the election. Consider Mr. Obama’s recent remarks on two fronts.

At the predictably unproductive G-20 summit meeting in South Korea, the president faced demands from China and Germany that the Federal Reserve stop its policy of “quantitative easing” — which is, given Republican obstructionism, one of the few tools available to promote U.S. economic recovery. What Mr. Obama should have said is that nations’ running huge trade surpluses — and in China’s case, doing so thanks to currency manipulation on a scale unprecedented in world history — have no business telling the United States that it can’t act to help its own economy.

But what he actually said was “From everything I can see, this decision was not one designed to have an impact on the currency, on the dollar.” Fighting words!

And then there’s the tax-cut issue. Mr. Obama could and should be hammering Republicans for trying to hold the middle class hostage to secure tax cuts for the wealthy. He could be pointing out that making the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent is a huge budget issue — over the next 75 years it would cost as much as the entire Social Security shortfall. Instead, however, he is once again negotiating with himself, long before he actually gets to the table with the G.O.P.

Here’s the thing: Mr. Obama still has immense power, if he chooses to use it. At home, he has the veto pen, control of the Senate and the bully pulpit. He still has substantial executive authority to act on things like mortgage relief — there are billions of dollars not yet spent, not to mention the enormous leverage the government has via its ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Abroad, he still leads the world’s greatest economic power — and one area where he surely would get bipartisan support would be taking a tougher stand on China and other international bad actors.

But none of this will matter unless the president can find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand. And the signs aren’t good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Terrific. So if a Democrat criticizes the performance of a Democratic President, he's "bought in the GOP narrative?" Thanks. Maybe, just maybe, the President deserves a bit of criticism.

 

fixed.

 

this is particularly silly, obama used this strategy to win, that's the first step, I don't know if krugman knows that

 

if you're quoting paul krugman on why democrats lost, you're proving my point.

 

This is spot on.

 

And it is a point I still dont "get." The Democratic Party just suffered a disaster at the polls, two years after a transcendent victory. Why? Simply because of the economy? Really? That's it? "The economy, stupid?" You don't find that a tad simplistic? You don't think the President, as admired as he is by so many Democrats, including me, deserves some blame for that disaster? Maybe a great deal of blame? And how about Congress? After this debacle, does the Democratic House leadership still belong to Nancy Pelosi? Isn't that an act of insanity? Do you really "reward" the leadership of the House after an historic defeat with a pat on the back, a "tough luck, Ms. Pelosi, we'll get them next time?" While I personally think Reid should be shipped out of the leadership, as well, at least the Senate held on to a Democratic majority. I think he should go, like yesterday, but one could make some argument based on continuity, an argument that doesn't apply, in my opinion, to Reid or Pelosi. Fresh Democratic leadership in both houses is desperately needed. Will we get it?

Of course not. Is the President pushing for a change, publically or privately? I don't believe he is. I think he is too cautious. Where is the bold leader I helped elect? On hiatus? And for how long? Something tells me that that particular Barack Obama will show up for his own campaign for reelection. Why the same man didn't show up during and before the midterms is a mystery to me. Where did the man who captured the Presidency in a landslide go? If you spot that fellow, be sure to point him out, OK? Thanks in advance.

Have we learned nothing?

 

yes that's it really

he's not bold? he just got the biggest piece of legislature passed in the last 50 years. but yeah, it wasn't bold

 

Despite being a member of the opposition, I feel your pain regarding being let down by your candidate (Bush the Younger was supposed to have been a moderate, fiscal conservative).

However, as I have pointed out in other threads, Obama had no experience as an administrator or congressional politician before being elected to the highest office in the land -- he was much too young politically. To compound his problem he immediately brought in a series of idealogues, many of whom had even less administrative savvy and experience.

He had no clue as to what to do when the political dike sprang a leak. Like the little Dutch boy, when he plugged the leak with a finger, another leak popped up somewhere else. And somewhere else. He never learned the art of political acupuncture where he could cure a problem without causing another.

More than anything else, IMO his inexperience caused him to be timid to the point he handed over power to Pelosi and Reid while he basked in Presidential glory. He will be a formidable campaigner in two years because that is all he knows how to do. IMO he is a master campaigner but he can't govern. Just my two cents worth.

 

Yes, they all deserve blame for the losses. Pelosi & Reid should go. But that's also the reality of getting things done. The GOP is good at staying in power because they don't rock the boat. The Dems consistently lose power because they have a different philosophy: the purpose of power is to enact legislation, not to simply gain more of it. Any time you do that, you're going to get attacked and you're going to get beaten up, especially in today's media culture.

Look at 1992 as an example. Clinton came into office and Dems had majorities. They used them - to do the assault weapons ban and then the disastrous attempt at health care. As a result, they got their asses kicked - despite a good economy. Clinton then went into moderate compromise mode - didn't rock the boat, work with the GOP on all sorts of issues, and manage to get re-elected.

Obama followed the same mold. Come into office with Dem majorities. Use it - accomplish a bunch of big things. Get your ass kicked (in a major recession). For all the talk about him compromising over the last two years, it was mostly rhetoric. At the end of the day, all the compromise on health care was within the Dem Party. Obama learned from the Clinton experience there. Now, he's actually going into moderate compromise mode, as Clinton did. Barring a continued economic mess, Obama will get re-elected in 2012 as well. Presidents have a very small window to accomplish BIG things, and Obama used his to maximum effect. The rest of his term will be likely be smaller stuff along with things that both parties can work on together.

For other comparisons, look at Bush in 2002. He came in, lowered taxes, spent a bunch of money, gave away goodies to everyone and everything. He has no lasting positive legacy because he didn't try to accomplish anything difficult. As a result, they held power - but conservatives were just as pissed.

At the end of the day, the Dem strategy was a disaster from a purely political perspective. But if the goal was to actually do stuff, it was a phenomenal success. That's the core difference between Dems and the GOP - Dems govern like adults while the GOP governs like little kids.

 

Except he did have congressional experience. And that experience taught him a vital lesson - that Congresspeople and Senators need to feel (a) important and (b) in control. He let them do that and got two of the biggest legislative accomplishments of the last 40 years passed. Clinton, for all his savvy, didn't understand that and as a result, failed in that same goal. Bush, despite all his executive experience, never even tried.

Beyond his actual accomplishment, at this point in his Presidency, despite the most severe recession since the Great Depression, he's more popular than either Clinton or Reagan - each party's standard-bearer of great leaders.

 

Your spin would make Bill O'Reilly dizzy. :grin:

 

So you think having more major accomplishments than any President in 40 years means he's unsuccessful? What, exactly, do you think is the purpose of getting elected? To be popular, or to accomplish things?

You seem to have written the narrative on Obama from day 1 and just stuck through it no matter, completely ignoring the fact that you've been completely wrong on your claims. Remember saying that there was no way health care would pass because he didn't know what he was doing? Now you conveniently ignore how wrong you were and just continue to stick with your conclusion.