This is not a prediction-thread, we already have half a dozen of those running in the Elections forum. This is an argument-thread. Who will be better for America as POTUS in the 2013-2017 term, Obama (Dem) or Romney (Pub)? Pick your man/party/side and state your case. (If you want to argue for an independent or a third-party nominee, please do it elsewhere, we’re having a serious discussion here, and this is not an election like 1992 or 2000 where any independent bid will be a game-changer.)
Obama ought to win. (Is anyone who knows me on the SDMB surprised I’d say that?) He has had major acomplishments in his first term, against furious opposition. The Republicans crashed the economy once while in the White House, threatened to crash it again with the debt ceiling idiocy, and have essentially promised to repeat at least one of those bone-headed actions. Among many other bone-headed actions. Romney could be a saint and the R next to his name would keep me from voting for him. And he’s no saint. Obama is not perfect, and has fallen short in many ways, but he is megaparsecs better than the alternative.
There isn’t even an argument to be had. America must never again have a Republican in the presidency.
President Obama should win another term.
It depends. If Republicans take the Senate and keep the House, I would prefer Obama presidency. If Republicans do not manage to get control of the Senate, then I would prefer Romney as president.
Obama, while he has not been ideal in some ways, he has accomplished a lot and we are on the right track with him.
I voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and will do so this autumn.
Therefore, it should be apparent that I think Mr. Obama should win the election.
Good, good, but that’s only a statement – please add an argument. This forum ain’t IMHO, it’s a GD spinoff.
Please add an actual argument for the value of division of partisan control between the branches.
Gridlock. I consider it a positive for the country. Nothing and no one is safe while the Congress is in session and can actually pass laws.
Now please add an argument for that; I hope you do not think it is self-evident.
Rongney should have an easier time defeating Obama. With the right-wing spin machine in overdrive since 2008, pubbies united against Obama on everything, republican obstructionism and intent on making things worse so they can pin bad news on him - they have been moderately successful at demonizing the president.
Fortunately, there is a large reservoir of people who remember the 8 years of republican ineptitude and failed policies that got us into much of this mess. We just need to keep pointing to republican failure and to Obama’s successes (limted as they are by the political climate), and hopefully enuf people will continue to vote for progress.
Obama should win.
Obama. Even if he does nothing in his second term, he’s still preferable to Romney letting the conservatives back in to make things worse.
Worst case scenario: Romney gets elected and puts a fifth hard-core conservative on the Supreme Court. Might as well not bother holding elections for the next twenty years because the conservatives will just run the country from the court.
Obama. He has shown that he is* at worst* competent and diplomatic enough to do right by the office. He might be slow, but he’s going in the right direction and will get there eventually. I view replacing him, no matter the candidate, as a substantial risk for only at best a very minor reward.
The US spent 9 1/2 years falling down the stairs a step at a time. (I’m including the last year and a half of the Clinton administration in that figure.) As a non-American it doesn’t matter to me if the candidate is the speediest, flashiest, smoothest talker, biggest believer or that he never experiences setbacks. The only thing that matters is that he keeps climbing and doesn’t get turned around.
Obama (I’m a Democrat).
My three top reasons:
- PPACA (oh, fine, Obamacare) is already having positive effects, and it needs to proceed to full implementation. That might not happen under Romney.
- SCOTUS. Another hard right Justice would be a disaster for civil rights (especially voting rights), environmental regulation, regulation in general, and probably half a dozen other things I can’t think of at the moment.
- Foreign policy and defense. I’m not sure whether Romney is just pandering, but his foreign policy and defense statements so far smack of someone who has lived through the last 25 years without reading a newspaper. Russia is our biggest threat? We need to have the world’s most powerful military? As if we don’t already spend as much as the rest of the world combined? I’m deeply disturbed by Obama’s judge-jury-and-executioner shtick with al Qaeda suspects and UAVs, but he does seem to have raised our standing in the world through mostly sane diplomatic efforts (plus the wisdom to pick HRC as Sec of State). I don’t want our foreign policy handed back over to the neocons (John Bolton at State? shudder)
Plus, I’m still feeling like Romney’s reported behavior as a teenager, coupled with his apparent incapacity to seem as if he learned any lessons from it, indicates a lack of human empathy that is a little too far to the sociopathic end of the spectrum than I am quite comfortable with. (I assume all politicians are somewhat sociopathic, just because they can lie/dissemble so shamelessly.)
Obama.
Romney will be a rubber stamp presidency for a Congress increasingly controlled by its most extreme factions. Boehner has been one of the weakest Speakers in my memory for actually controlling the House and I wouldn’t trust him to stop the flow of insanity so at least with Obama I know it’ll have a check.
Admittedly, this will depend on the Senate make-up but I wouldn’t vote for Romney and just hope the Senate doesn’t flip.
A country will have a government. If a country does not have a government, one will emerge. And the one that emerges will probably be far worse than the one we have right now. We could end up with the country being run by the Mafia, or by brutal, petty warlords, or by a plutocracy of big businesses. By crippling the government we have, you’re asking for one of these other systems to take its place.
Obama. He’s the incumbent and he hasn’t done anything specifically horrible and the economy hasn’t tanked much further during his term.
Terr stated his reasons. You may not agree with his reasons but this isn’t the place to debate them. Start another thread if you want to do that.
Brainglutton, I commend you to trying to get people to make arguments, but you need to realize that your chances of success are pretty low. Hardly anyone around here knows how to construct an actual argument.
Obama. I didn’t vote for him before, but I’m pretty disgusted with the state of the republican party lately.
I believe that smaller gov’t is better for the people, but I disagree with the concept of small gov’t that the republicans hold. It seems that they believe personal lives should be regulated and not businesses, and I am the opposite.
Plus all that nonsense during the primary about abolish the EPA really bothered me. This is what they really truly want, and I don’t think corporations can be trusted to do anything that doesn’t immediately improve their bottom line.
And lately, all the contraception furor really ticks me off. The republicans at both state and federal levels have decided that if an employer’s religious sensibilities are offended, they can decide not to include insurance coverage a perfectly legitimate BC prescription. I disagree with that, and see it as allowing my employer to dictate terms to me that are not of my religion. Again, they side with corporations over people.