I mean, seriously. Obama is a status-quo centrist. Anyone who doesn’t realize this is an idiot. That applies to the morons who think he’s a Marxist who hates America and also to the morons who can’t understand why he doesn’t push for the maximalist progressive agenda every chance he gets.
He doesn’t push the maximalist progressive agenda because he’s not a progressive. This should be easy to understand, but for some people it seems very difficult.
So let me explain one more time: Obama is not a progressive.
Now, you’re free to want a progressive president, you’re free to complain when the president does unprogressive things, you’re free to try to persuade people that the president should act progressively, you’re free to refuse to vote for a candidate who is not a progressive.
But you shouldn’t be free to continue to act shocked, shocked, that for the 50th time the president has not acted as a progressive.
HOPE! CHANGE! HOPE CHANGE! HOPECHANGE! NOT WASHINGTON AS USUAL! CHANGE! YES WE CAN! OMG WE DID! HOPE AND CHANGE IN THREE, TWO…
…
…where is it, again? Where’s the not-business-as-usual? Where’s the closed gitmo and the reduced international interventionist military action? Where’s the transparent government? Where’s the change? Where’s main street? Where’s The People mattering over The Lobbyists?
I realized it right after my usually-apathetic generation voted him in.
You’ve got to filter out the concern trolls who may be operating on their own agenda:
“I’m a dedicated liberal, and I’m concerned that Obama is not doing what he said he’d do. We should vote him out, or even better, convince all of your liberal friends to not vote at all!”
Don’t misunderstand me, guys. I might’ve gone for McCain but then he picked up Palin, went crazy and fled to the right. I voted for Obama. His rhetoric was compelling, his vision for the presidency appealed strongly to my generation, and after eight years of Shrub I thought our country could BADLY use a powerful speaker.
Also, all those awesome things he promised to do. Not just snakily hinted he would do, but blatantly, clearly, flatly said certain things would be accomplished quickly upon his election. He might not be a die-hard liberal but he certainly sold himself as one.
In hindsight I wish I’d voted for Clinton. You get Bill standing over her shoulder (which is always good) and although she IS sleazy, and lost my vote during the whole ‘omg snipars shooting at us!’ incident… at least I know she’d be twisting some balls to get the things done she thought was important.
Obama kinda talks about doing stuff…then…sorta… I dunno. He strikes me, more than a die-hard liberal, or centralist, or diplomat… as a huge pussy. Sometimes it feels like he’s going “WAH REPUBLICAN SENATE IS MEAN”, stomping into the corner and running out the clock. He squandered his two years of full partisan control of the government trying to play nice; we didn’t want somebody to play nice. The hard-right fucked up this country in all sorts of ways for almost a decade; Obama should be kicking them in the nuts and saying “sorry, our turn now” instead of extending the olive branch.
I knew well before I voted for him (both in the primary and in the general election) that Obama is not as liberal as I am. That part I can live with.
What increasingly grates on my nerves is his inability to stand stalwart and foursquare and to fight for what he told me he does believe in. That part I can’t live with.
I never really expected much from Obama. He’s a Democrat which means he’s weak, and he’s an American politician which means he’s vermin at best. I don’t expect any American politician to be a “die hard liberal”, because that would be a good thing, and American politicians are moral and intellectual cripples who wouldn’t recognize “good” or even “enlightened self interest” if they saw it.
The left is furious with Obama because he hasn’t lived up to their expectations. In contrast with the right, which is furious despite the fact that Obama hasn’t lived up to their expectations.
It’s only “shrewd” for short sighted psychopaths who don’t care if they ruin both the country and their own party. And that assumes that alienating the people who actually voted and campaigned for him last time actually works to get him re-elected.
Someone I’ve never heard of, I assume, given how being corrupt, amoral and sadistic appears to be a qualification for getting elected. I doubt that anyone who should be President would ever be let near an important political office.
Was I in an alternate universe during the 2008 campaign, when Obama told us over and over he was going to govern pretty much exactly as he has? And all those promises people are claiming he’s not kept faith with, was I the only one paying attention to the things he’s been prevented from doing by his own party?
Man, I’m tired of politically retarded armchair quarterbacks on the left complaining that Obama has failed to become God-King enforcer of some sort of unified progressive agenda. Unlike the confident braying from some that Obama’s a political naif, or the inane “analyses” from pundits like Greenwald who deny Obama’s credentials as a true Scotsman, the endless whining may actually fuck us at the polls in 2012.
By all means college age voters, go back to political apathy because Barry didn’t send you a pony. At least that’s something you’re good at.
As a rule, anybody who would enact the agenda that you seem to want could never be elected, just as anybody who would enact an ultra-conservative agenda could never be elected. He is now, and always has been, a left-leaning centrist.
Of course he made promises he didn’t keep, or perhaps couldn’t keep. That is what politicians do. You show me a politician with enough clout to get a policy that is despised by around half the country enacted without compromising on it, just one, and I’ll eat my hat. They run on optimism and govern on reality.
Ironically, the people who are most disillusioned about Obama are Democrats that have somehow bought the line by people like Rush Limbaugh that Obama is some sort of ultra-liberal socialist Communist. He was never anything like that, but by making him out to be one some of you have some weird resentment that he hasn’t acted like one. It truly boggles the mind that it should be this way.
He also had 62 % of the popular vote, 68 seats in the Senate and almost 300 in the House. And far more moderate Republicans then Obama had. Johnson wasn’t able to pass the legislation he did because of the magic of a steely gaze and set jaw, he passed his legislation because he had a lot of legislators.
One would hope that a politician who won the presidential election with the highest percentage of the popular vote in 20 years would have enough clout to enact a policy that is supported by half the country.
I’ll admit, I find it extremely amusing that the Democrats in conservative districts who were deathly afraid of supporting Democratic policies because they’d lose reelection, mostly lost reelection anyway.
I agree he’s pragmatic. I hope he’s playing to the middle while the right marginalizes itself to the point where he can be more populist in his second term, with more support from the house and senate.
We’ll see.