You think 2012 was big? Romney got the lead on Obama as late as October and Obama ended up winning only 51% of the vote! His margin was only slightly higher than Bush over Kerry, which you called close enough to validate liberal Dopers’ predictions!
Complete nonsense. Stop listening to Hannity.
No it’s not. His signature achievement is meeting or exceeding most of its goals so far. He didn’t blunder into any entanglements that resulted in great loss of life, and unentangled us from some that did. He presided over the end of a recession and a long recovery, albeit a mediocre one so far.
Absolutely. It was a big Obama win. Very big electoral victory, and a solid popular-vote victory.
No he didn’t. Despite some of the awful polling from Rasmussen and Gallup, Romney was never leading. Look at Nate Silver’s prediction history at the time.
His popular margin was almost twice that of Bush over Kerry. His electoral margin was much, much larger.
Stop ignoring extensive poll data. Are you arguing that they are skewed? Or are you still sticking to your story that this is a temporary condition?
Oh, I see the problem. You have a different bar than the average person. Gee, he didn’t get us into a disastrous war, and he passed a law that you liked that is “succeeding” the way most social programs do in liberal eyes: by getting people signed up and spending a lot of money.
By that definition, you’ll be one of those deadenders like we saw in the last year of the Bush administration, when he was sitting at 25% but a few kept insisting he was a doing a great job.
Can you suggest what we should be doing with regard to foreign policy right now? Give me the issue, and what your suggestion is. For instance what do you suggest we do in the Ukraine? Send in troops? Start a war with Russia? What do you suggest we do in Iraq right now, re-invade? Bomb them? Don’t just complain about something, suggest a solution. Otherwise you aren’t to be taken seriously, you are the old man yelling at clouds. Adults try to solve problems, not just point them out and yell ‘INCOMPETENCE’. What are your actual goddamn ideas, aside from Democrats=Bad and Obama=Failure? If you have no idea what we could do that would improve things in these foreign policy situations, then what exactly is your complaint?
I have no idea what you were saying in 2004 – you didn’t join our fun loving community until later.
Yes, we *could *now have President John “Bomb, bomb Iran” McCain and his insistence on military conquest of anybody who pisses him off. And Vice-President Palin to back him up. That’s what **adaher **wants, in his loyally Brickerianly-absolutist party affiliation that defines what he allows himself to be told to think.
Not the best argument for you to make, is it?
Check those polls yourself about the popularity of ACA. Oh, wait, you don’t know how despite all the times you’ve been led through it. And no, Obama has not started a disastrous and immoral war, that’s a matter of fact, not opinion.
He won 51% of the vote. Bush won 50.7%. Give me a break. He did do far better in the electoral college, but again, while I support the electoral college, it tells you nothing about popularity. Obama, like Bush, won by eking out the victories he needed in battleground states, he just eked out more of them by small margins than Bush did. Bush and Obama’s popularity and vote totals were nearly identical, as were their campaign strategies(The dude from Massachusetts is a rich flip flopper!)
We argued about it extensively. Silver did have Romney ahead in the popular vote at the time, but still rated Obama’s chances of winning as better because Obama was doing better in state polls, plus Romney’s bounce was temporary.
Which means little when we’re talking about such tiny margins to begin with. 3.9 vs. 2.4. He won 26 states out of 50. Again, he won by eking out tiny victories exactly where he needed to. He did not crush Romney, except in the technical aspect of playing the game better than Romney did. You cannot count on every candidate being so skillful, and Hillary Clinton if anything showed that she was less than skillful in that regard. Obama beat her only technically as well. Clinton beat him in the popular vote.
Hmm, where were we hearing that before? Oh yeah, Bush partisans were using that argument against Democrats.
Foreign policy does not lend itself to “He should do this instead of that” arguments. There’s no way to predict what an alternative would do. What we do know is that not only are the President’s ideas not working, but it’s not even clear he’s really all that engaged, which is the real problem. It’s become a running theme in his Presidency.
Ridiculously low bar. Why is his handling of health care rated so poorly by the public in the polls I cited?
And only two Presidents in recent memory started disastrous wars. Both are failed PResidents. Oh wait, some of you think LBJ is the bee’s knees because Medicare. Wow, ACA is a pretty powerful chit then. Obama gets one free disastrous war before most liberals think he failed.
Except they were wrong. There was a strong, consistent position among Democrats and the then-existing sane-Republican faction. Before the invasion: “Don’t do it”. After it: “Get out”. We all know now what you should have known then, that that view was the right one.
Hell yes it does. That’s what discussions of it are about.
Only true for the willfully ignorant. I know of an example of the kind, too.
In what alternate universe?
This is total crap. Democrats had good ideas, like don’t invade Iraq. We suggested that a lot actually, remember? Turns out that would have worked out better after all, so you are completely wrong here, no surprise.
Ok so you have nothing to suggest that the US could be doing differently, but you just know that we’re doing everything wrong. Got it. And this entire post is just more Hannity-esque bullshit, totally void of any facts.
What do you think you bring to the table here Adaher? Do you think your efforts raise the level of discourse, or lower it?
Your statement was not a factual statement – it was all opinion. And it was Hannity-esque opinion.
Silly, bullshit analysis.
Obama is not doing a great job. He is far from the president I want him to be.
Nevertheless, he is a way, way better President than Bush, and way, way better than McCain or Romney would have been.
You fail, again, at trying to analyze my opinion of Obama, much less his actual accomplishments.
Nope, you still don’t get it, do you?
Sure is.
You can rest easy knowing that I confidently predicted that Bush would win by a hair in OH, with a small popular-vote lead.
The afterwards is primarily where we challenged Democrats to come up with a solution and “Get out” wasn’t it among the sane faction of the Democratic Party. At least not quickly, before Iraq was stabilized enough for the Iraqi military to handle things.
On the before, yeah, the Democrats were right, those that opposed the war, but that’s not the end of the discussion. Do you continue the containment policy that killed 1 million Iraq children in its first 12 years a more humane alternative to war?
Foreign policy is driven by events and you can’t prove counterfactuals. I can say that on Iraq, the President should commit airpower as the Iraqi government has requested, but I can’t prove a better result from that.
YOu don’t read much, do you?
I can tell you what the US should be doing differently, and you’ll say, "That would make things worse!’ And I’d say “uh uh, it’d make it better.” If you feel that enriches the discussion, then we can go there if you want. I’ve got time.
As for three posters’ constant references to Sean Hannity, I’ve cited extensive poll data on the President’s deep unpopularity. The public agrees more with me about him failing to do his job than with the three of you.
Wow, you are good.
No, a slight majority (depending on the day) disapproves of his performance. Hell, at times, I’ve disapproved of his performance. That’s not even close to the same thing as believing he is “failing to do his job”, or is a “failed president”.
That stuff is just Hannity-esque nonsense.