Because most people don’t know what a centrist actually looks like, and they were told again and again that he was the most liberal senator in the history of liberals.
I voted for Obama because he campaigned as a man who would put practicality ahead of idealogy, pursue progressive causes when possible, but not be stubborn and refuse to change his mind on unworkable policies.
Has he delivered everything i’d like to have seen? No. Has he done most of what he promised to? Yes. Did he accomplish more than I expected him to in the face of lockstep opposition? And then some.
Am I going to vote for Romney, a man whose policies are antithetical to everything I believe in, just because Obama renewed the Patriot Act and won’t legalize weed? No. Am I going to vote for a third-party candidate who has no chance of winning just because they agree slightly more with my agenda than he does? No.
I voted for Obama in 2008 and I don’t regret it. I voted for him again this week and I won’t regret that either.
The same thing was done in 2004 with Kerry and Edwards, they were portrayed as the 1st and 3rd most liberal senators. The group that designates who is liberal is, from what I remember, a conservative front group that got to pick which bills got someone labeled a liberal. I’m assuming they just picked whatever bills the candidate they want to label liberal voted for, and call them liberal. I don’t get the slander, w/o liberals fighting for them we wouldn’t have as much of women’s rights, minority rights, medicare, social security, child labor laws, minimum wages, environmental laws, humanitarianism as part of foreign policy, universal education, etc. Liberals (and conservatives) have no sense of history when it comes to liberalism, liberalism is just used as a slur w/o any real understanding of the history or meaning of the word. Generally speaking in US history, liberals have fought for egalitarianism while conservatives have fought for hierarchies and liberals have a proud tradition. It wasn’t far right wingers going into the south to register voters in the 60s, or promoting women’s suffrage.
Obama is a new england republican from the early 1990s. He is not a liberal by any means, but the GOP would deride the policies of Reagan and Goldwater (if you just gave them the policies w/o the name of the politician) as liberals nowadays.
My daughter told me she had read, in the context of an article about the Obama campaign, a different perspective.
The thinking was that there were a lot of moneyed business people who supported Romney because they tend to have the same kind of worldview as Romney. But that’s generally not the case for wealthy Obama supporters. These, then, are disproportionately after access and power.
[The article was non-partisan, and was not making a point pro or anti Obama. As she described it, the point the article was making was that Obama’s aloof nature created challenges for his campaign’s fundraising efforts, because it was harder to get millionaires to gave him big money without providing hobnobbing opportunities than it was for the Romney campaign.]
Maybe Obama’s millionaires actually like their candidate while Romney’s are holding their noses. 
I’m sure some do. But in aggregate, the suggestion seems to make some sense.
Not really. If they were just after access they’d simply donate to the guy who isn’t aloof or reluctant to hobnob.
No. Access only counts if your guy wins.
Access to Romney is not going to mean anything if Obama wins, and if a rich guy with business interests that rely on government connections or are subject to pending laws or regulations thinks Obama will win, then that’s the guy he needs access to.
[ETA: it’s not as a simple as that, because by contributing to Romney or Obama you get access to the Republican or Democratic intermidiaries who hooked you up, who will be around in any event. Still, it’s not the same as access to the prez, which is a big selling point for the Really Big Guns.]
VIdeo shows some guy asking questions about Obama’s most centrist maybe right leaning policies…yes, Obama has some unfortunate right leaning policies in my opinion. But progressive positions and policies with respect to healthcare, women’s right, LGBT rights etc. are why I am voting for hjim
If you’re a lefty, don’t vote for Obama because he’s not as left as all that. Vote for a Republican because… um… we promise to stop talking about rape once we can outlaw abortion entirely.
Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
Because it’s the lesser of two evils.
Do I need to point out that all one has to do is interview a lot of people and then cherry-pick the ones whose answers support your point of view? As evidence of how Obama’s supporters feel in general, the video is worthless.
Certainly it would be no problem to pull together a list of a dozen or so things Obama has done that libruls like me would find objectionable because Romney would do the same, or worse.
And sure, you could run that list by a lot of libruls, gauge their reaction to the things on the list, and then tell them they must really hate Obama.
But that would basically be a false witness, because Obama has done a lot of damned good things from a liberal POV, and such a list would no doubt skip past them.
Also, practically everything a President Romney would do would be horrible for America.
Is this really any different than Obama charactizing McCain as another Bush II because 92% of his votes matched up with some metric that represented W.?
Hamster King is right. Obama is too conservative to me, but that doesn’t mean I would throw the baby out with the bathwater and vote for the Party that gave us Citizens United. If for no other reasons, lefties will show up at the polls to ensure we get more moderate SCOTUS appointees. Citizen’s United was a a wake up call.
You’re right. He *totally *should have said that McCain is 92% of another Bush 2.
Would you say I’m correct in characterizing this as pedantry?
Liberal in what sense? Classical liberal, social liberal, neo-liberal?
There are plenty of pro-choice Republicans in the West and Northeast including those supported by conservative activists like Scott Brown. And lots of Republicans are arguing for withdrawing from Afghanistan as soon as possible-the Tea Party’s largely abandoned the idea of nation-building and prefers quasi-isolationism except regarding Iran.
The GOP does not believe this anymore than the Democrats think the country should be run by the Communist Manifesto.
I agree that Obama and Romney would do many of the same things but:
Just because Romney and Obama would both keep Gitmo open doesn’t mean that they have the same instincts on foreign policy.
Obama isn’t going to nominate the same sort of people that Romney would nominate.
Romney isn’t likely to cut medicare and social security but not because he doesn’t want to. But he will be able to cut taxes for the rich and put that on the national credit card.
The last time I told myself “WTF is the difference” we elected a guy that seemed nice enough until he used reconciliation to cut taxes and then invaded Iraq. There is a stark difference between the right wing Democratic party and the
Oh no, the Romney campaign got to Damuri Ajashi.
Nope. I’m just saying that it is a time-honored tradition to manufacture some way to compare your opponant to an unliked person or platform. The Dems do it and the Pubs do it so what’s the big deal?