I have seen a few times on this board that some people seem to think Obama is behaving significantly differently than his predecessors, or he at least thinks significantly differently. As an outsider, British, he doesn’t seem particularly radical to me, and all the things he’s done so far seem relatively sensible. Perhaps the only radical thing I can thing of being the healthcare changes, and that was nowhere near as radical as many people wanted.
So is Obama all that different? Is he as left-leaning as he’s sometimes portrayed? He strikes me as a pragmatic man who has inherited a tough situation, and has been trying hard to work with everyone to find a solution, sometimes ending up with solutions that no-one likes because of compromise. I don’t feel any waves of evil from his administration, and while I understand that the Republicans would like different things I don’t understand the demonization of Obama at all.
No,. He’s a moderate (by American standards) right winger, not left wing at all. Not so long ago he’d have fit in with the Republicans, if he’d been white.
He’s black, and a Democrat. Those are both by themselves enough for them to demonize him. They frothed at the mouth over Clinton too.
Thanks for the reply Der Trihs. I think you yourself are considered one of the more radical guys on this message board, yet I often find myself agreeing with you. I wonder if it’s something to do with those outside of America being a little less religious / right-wing on average, or maybe it’s just me
It makes me feel old to realize that the 20-something posters on this board were just children during the 90’s.
I remember the mid 90’s very well. Obama feels like Clinton part II except the economy is scarier now. But it’s the same crap, just substitute Obama for Clinton. They hated Clinton. I promise you.
It’s interesting the definition if right vs left in the US seems very different to that in Europe. I would agree with Der Trihs on this one, the Democrats and Republicans are both to the right in my opinion. I’m not sure what other parties there are in the US but I assume there’s an actual liberal one somewhere?
Not on a prominent national level. It’s a two party system here.
There’s the conservative Democratic Party and the radical rightwing Republican Party, and a Green Party which has some representation within individual states, but no significant Federal impact.
There are liberal caucuses within the Democratic Party, though. These fail to move the government significantly left, however, as the political effect is to assure lack of unity within the Democratic Party. In large areas of the country, Democratic candidates get elected by offering similar positions to the Republicans, except without the frothing at the mouth.
It’s a shame it’s only a two party system, as there appears to be no pull to the left at all at the moment, only an slow pull to the right.
It seems to me that the Democrat split is a big part of the problem with US politics at the moment, even the majority of Democrats seem to be more right-wing than perhaps Democrats should be. I wonder how much trouble that is causing Obama, in that even if he were to try to be a bit more liberal he knows he wouldn’t get the support of his right-leaning colleagues.
No need to speculate…we have an example (several, actually). The best one would be the health-care debate and the subsequent law. Obama’s worst enemies weren’t the Republicans on that…they were enough of a minority at the time that their votes were just so much noise. His enemies in the health-care issue were Democratic Senators: Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman (not officially a Democrat, but caucusing with them). If all the Dems and those caucusing with them in the Senate had voted en bloc, we’d have at least a public option right now, if not single-payer.
ETA: Note, also, that at least two of those Dem Senators have connections to the health-care and insurance industry, either personally or through family members (Bayh’s wife is a health-care lobbyist, Nelson’s biggest campaign contributor is the insurance industry, the insurance industry OWNS Connecticut).
Left and right in politics is relative. If we’re measuring things wrt Europe, then Obama is on the right. If we’re measuring wrt US politics, he’s maybe just left of center. If we’re measuring things wrt the entire world… that makes my head hurt.
At any rate, Americans really don’t care where Europeans put their political sign posts. So if you tell most Americans that Obama is on the right, they are going to look at you like you’re nuts.
That’s true to a point, but calling him a Liberal does seem a bit much even in the sphere of US politics. I guess one of the things I was asking is, do people really think he’s so ultra-liberal, and if they do what evidence do they have?
Obama is closer to the center than either extreme.
He is also no different than other presidents in the sense that he is different from other presidents, as they all have been different from each other. The people on this board who think Obama is different from other presidents in some different kind of way (if there are such people) have no idea what they are talking about, and making some kind of absurd observation anyway.
Yes, they do think it. A very few people might have some reasonable arguments for it, but the vast majority of Americans who think Obama is ultra-liberal either assume it because he is a Democrat or because they heard it from somewhere (Fox News, friends/family, etc).
I always find this argument inane. let’s say you have 60 Democrats and 40 Republicans voting on a bill. Foe sake of the argument, we’ll assume the bill is in the public interest.
The bill is filibustered by the Republicans so you need 60 votes, but in the end all 40 Republicans oppose the bill and 59 of the 60 Democrats support it. So whose fault is it that it didn’t pass? The Democrats who voted 59 to 1 to do something in the public interest or the Republicans who opposed it 40 to 0?
Obama is black, and that brings out the latent racism in all of us, and absolutely frightens the active racists out there. Half of the crap that is piled on him now would not be there if he were white.
Well, he has gotten a lot done in his first term. But no…he’s not all that different than most politicians, though he does seem to be refreshingly devoid of major scandals, especially in his personal life.
He’s a US president…which means that regardless of his personal political views he HAS to government from more or less the US center. Otherwise he’d never get elected, or if he did get elected he’d never get anything actually done. I think that Obama, personally, is a moderate liberal, with more of his positions to the left of the US center than to the right, but as in all things life is full of complexities. WRT social issues I see him as a liberal (so am I on those issues). WRT economics issues I think he has a pretty standard though moderate liberal mindset. WRT foreign policy I think he’s definitely a moderate, with not much liberal attached…he certainly doesn’t seem to shy away from the use of military force if he judges it necessary.
He strikes me the same way…which might be his downfall. Basically, if I like him (and I do) then that’s practically a death sentence from folks like Der Trihs…as well as from real right wing conservatives. The thing that neither of the extremes seem to understand is that in our system you HAVE to compromise…which means that in most cases you aren’t going to get everything you want, or even most of the stuff you want. Neither is the other side. Why? Because most Americans are actually somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, leaning one way on some issues and the other way on others. And that is going to mean that neither liberals nor conservatives are going to get their way on everything, since they won’t have the votes to just run roughshod over the opposition and do everything they want…at least, they won’t have that happy situation for very long before the other side gets the votes to change everything or water it down.
I don’t feel waves of evil from this administration either, but then I didn’t feel them when Bush was in office either. The back and forth demonization has always been part and parcel of American politics, however…just look back at some of the historical records of even stuff said about the Founding Fathers. Our system breeds rancor, and lately it’s been getting out of hand, as each side ratchets up the level of heat.
