Wrong assumption and wrong conclusion.
Excuse me for not reading pages 2 & 3, but I was just checking in to get the current total of how many Obama/Biden voters wish they had voted for McCain/Palin. Evil One, you have a tally running right? I’ll take my answer off the air. You’re a great American! Thanks!
I see. So when I post a comment by someone like James Carville to show leftie discontent with Obama, you for some mysterious reason disagree that he’s a leftie and then ascribe to me dishonesty as a result?
Again, I don’t think I’m the one being dishonest here, chum(p).
Nah, it was an honest mistake. I actually have almost 10,000 posts which contain no dishonesty. 
Maybe SOME don’t want Carville telling us what to think or be happy / unhappy about? Maybe some people even think Carville is full of shit?
Just a thought.
Some of us just think Carville looks like el chupacabra and wish he’d stay off our television sets.
Well, the OP asked if anyone was feeling remorse over Obama’s performance in office. Carville was one of several lefties mentioned in an article I’d read who seemed to seemed to share some of the same impressions of Obama that many of us on the right have been seeing for some time. There didn’t seem to be many lefties here who either felt remorse or who were willing to admit it, so I posted quotes from the article in order to show that there are indeed people even on the left who are growing disenchanted with him. I don’t see how Carville’s, Spike Lee’s or Whoopie Goldberg’s comments translate into their telling people how to think.
Yeah, I wished that for the entire eight years of Clinton’s administration.
But their “disenchantment” or “discontent” isn’t anything like yours. They’re not in fact sharing the “same impressions” of Obama that you feel you’re seeing. You dislike Obama because you feel he’s too liberal, whereas they’re disappointed in him because they feel he’s not liberal enough.
If Obama actually started to implement policies that didn’t substantially disappoint a lot of hardcore lefties, you’d be shitting your pants from breakfast to bedtime. Trust me, you and the anti-Obama left, or ex-Obamaniac left, have absolutely no common ground here.
I, on the other hand, being a moderate-leftish liberal but not a hardcore lefty, and always having had a pretty moderate estimate of the extent of Obama’s liberalism, am seeing in him pretty much the President I expected to get, although not necessarily the President I most wanted. Dude’s done a reasonable job so far of playing one of the shittiest hands dealt to a US Chief Executive in a long time, in the face of a lot of unprincipled and ill-informed opposition, so realistically speaking that was about the best we could hope for.
Indeed. To be clear on some of the things I would be happy with Obama for implementing:
- Giving a 5-year ultimatum to the rest of the world: “In five years, our foreign military presence will be limited to participation in UN peacekeeping missions and to counterattacks on nations that invade our borders. We will spend the peace dividend on domestic programs. Get yourselves ready.”
- Requiring that education bureaucrats, like teachers, adopt research-based practices (and therefore don’t mandate unproven programs like charter schools, tying pay to test scores, etc., unless and until research bears out their efficacy in pilot programs)
- Drastically raise minimum wage.
- Immediately stop filing any friend of the court briefs that hinder gay rights.
- Immediately stop prosecuting marijuana possession in any amount–in one fell swoop ending the murderous violence in Mexico.
- Advocate strenuously for single-payer health care.
These are just some of the things I’d like to see. Obviously some of them would require a cooperative Congress.
I knew I wasn’t going to get them with Obama; I’m still much happier with him than I’ve been with any other president in my lifetime, and honestly I don’t expect ever to be this happy with a president again. Not that I’m happy with him. But good goddamn, he could be so much worse.
That about sums it up for me.
A few days before the election I mentioned to a friend that I was uncomfortable with the idea of simply voting for the candidate who was the lesser of two evils, his position was that it was my civic duty to do so.
I didn’t really love the idea of any of the candidates being my president, but I thought Obama would probably turn out to be mostly harmless.
So far I’ve been correct.
It really wouldn’t matter if his views were any more lefty, he couldn’t get them done. His programs are actually pretty modest in comparison to the shitpile we have to deal with, but even as they are, the tighty righty wing dings are screaming their heads off and setting their shit on fire.
But its pretty much always this way, being progressive. You have to fight tooth and nail to get not much, then you nail that down and swear you’re never, ever going to ask for anything more, and then you start making plans to ask for something more.
And here, in a nutshell, you have the conservative political strategy. Drive the country into a complete and utter shithole, then blame it all on whatever poor sap is dumb enough to clean up your mess.
And don’t you dare even think about complaining about blaming the current situation on the past administration, otherwise I will point out that the Bush presidency took the country directly from prosperity, peace, and surplus into the depths of war and financial calamity. If you blame the current situation on Obama, then Bush owns every single event of 2000-2008.
But it is. They, and I, are beginning to view Obama as an empty suit - impotent, in over his head, and relying on his image of calm and unflappability to carry him through.
Take the oil spill for example. I mean, frankly, he’s shown more ire and behaved more aggressively in attacking Rush Limbaugh and Fox News than he has BP and the environmental impact resulting from the oil spill. He pretty much stood by and let Congress do all the heavy lifting on the spending bill and the health bill, and now he’s standing by and letting BP do all the heavy lifting on the oil spill while doing little himself but making half-hearted references to the “outrage” he feels as a result of it. I’m sorry, but as the supposed most powerful man in the world, I would expect more than impotent lamentations of rage when it comes to dealing with a disaster like this.
True dat, bra’. Dude looks like that critter from Alien, him.
Oh, nonsense. None of the people you quoted believe he’s an empty suit, or believe that he’s impotent. That’s ridiculous talk, and if you believe it, you’re ridiculous. He’s so far been an extremely effective politician in the face of an absolutely obdurate opposition.
Take it indeed. What specific actions would you like to see from the WH?
Heh heh
Maybe I’m just a contrary bastard, but watch the folks you mentioned sometimes. They seem to actually get angry at people who don’t think or act like they they they should.
At any rate, I don’t depend on any “celebrity” to lay out “my” liberal agenda.
Indeed. Very few presidents have had to face such extreme, resolute antagonism right of the gate.
So what exactly do you expect him to do? I don’t understand the ire at Obama over this any more than I did the upset over Bush’s handling of Katrina. It’s not like they’re going to suit up and save the day action-hero style.
As for the OP, I don’t have buyers remorse because I didn’t vote for Obama. I knew on election day that we were in for a long four years no matter who won, because neither man was really qualified for the job. Either way, I’d be in the same position: waiting things out until the next election and hoping that the new president didn’t fuck things up too badly until then.
At what point does Obama become accountable for what’s going on? I would have thought that 18 months would be enough.
The arsonist and fireman analogy is cute, but it doesn’t prove anything. It’s the wrong analogy. How about this analogy? You have a president of a large company. Some things go well and some problems happen on his watch. A new president takes over. Can he run the company into the ground and blame the previous president?
In any event unemployment is way up.
The stock market is down, especially if you consider the Pelosi/Reid takeover in 2007, which is probably as important as who has the WH.
Debt is ridiculously high.
Guantanamo is still open.
The WH openly flaunts the law by offering to bribe politicians with jobs.
The AG thinks that Miranda warnings aren’t important any more.
BP donates tons of money to one politician in particular and is then able to run a dangerous operation off our coast under the feckless eyes of this administration.
Do any of things matter to Obama voters?
If not, is it possible that there is a view of Obama as perfect and that view is just immune to new information?
Um, yeah, because showing ire and aggression is such a constructive way to deal with the impacts of an environmental disaster. Obama oughta be out there gettin’ all angry-black-man on they ass! That’d straighten that oil spill out, fuck yeah!
In all seriousness, you may have a point in observing that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are just as impervious to hostile criticism as oil spills are, but I still don’t see that as a logical argument in favor of angrily bitching at an oil spill.
Wait, now you’re upset because Obama’s too mad about the oil spill? Just a moment ago you were complaining that he wasn’t mad enough. Make up your mind, would you please?
As for “impotent”, exactly what is the President, or any head of state, supposed to be able to do about the oil spill directly? Exactly what “powerful” strategies are you recommending for dealing with 30 million gallons of oil floating through the Gulf of Mexico? Nuke it from orbit? Are you fantasizing that President McCain would have climbed into his old flight suit (to the accompaniment of stirring orchestral music), borrowed an Air Force attack bomber, and masterfully sealed the leak with some well-placed depth charges? Hate to disappoint you, but he wouldn’t have.
As for Obama being “in over his head”? Well, to some extent, sure—there isn’t a politician in the world who wouldn’t be in over his head sometimes in dealing with the massive cesspool that the previous administration made out of our economy and our domestic and foreign policy.
Still, as I said, Obama’s coping with it about as well as we could reasonably have hoped for from any realistically electable politician. Even his most irrational opponents don’t seem to be able to find anything much worse to say about him than that he seems too calm and in control. Considering the situation and the available options, we’ve been damn lucky.