Well, you did say that one of your hoped-for goals is to “hurt Obama.” Why do you think “hurting” him would limit itself to primary season?
Never said any such thing. My goal is to get the progressives a place at the table in Congress, I have no interest in hurting Obama. You may be thinking about this quote:
See, there’s a DIFFERENCE between potential damage and actual damage, just as there is a difference between a threat and an act. A primary battle has the potential to damage Obama, but that does not mean it WILL. My words have the potential to bring understanding to others, but that does not mean they WILL. And as I have stated several times, the current Democratic leadership has repeatedly demonstrated that all it takes is the potential, the THREAT, to get them in a compliant mood.
And Democrat does not equal progressive.
As the GOP has moved more right, the Democrats have gotten more moderate. In part because they’ve taken in a lot of people who think that the extreme conservatives are CRAZY - either in fact (i.e. people switching affiliation) or in practice (I was a Republican 20 years ago and have been independent since, but I almost always vote Democrat - on the other hand, put a extreme liberal against an extreme conservative, and I’m not sure where my vote would fall - I don’t believe in a more than two party system for the government we’ve got - collation governments belong in parliamentary systems).
You can’t win an election without the independents. And the independents are independent because they are frequently moderate.
Well, it’s not uncommon for people to wake up on New Year’s Day with a pretty gnarly hangover…
See, there’s a DIFFERENCE between potential damage and actual damage, just as there is a difference between a threat and an act. A primary battle has the potential to damage Obama, but that does not mean it WILL.
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This is just foolish. Okay, it’s a POTENTIAL to damage, but if that potential is realized the damage is ACTUAL.
Let’s save our actually (and potentially actually :rolleyes:) damaging activities for our friends with the (R) beside their names.
As a progressive Indie who voted for Obama and intends to again, I have no interest in another candidate. He’s done a DAMN good job, all things considered, and he SURE beats the hell out of the only present alternatives. :rolleyes:
I sometimes want to bitch-slap these whiney little “progressives” who don’t seem to realize just how MUCH this man has accomplished and just how MUCH we stand to lose if we fail to re-elect him. :mad: Their youthful idealism is, imo, misguided and counterproductive.
Throwing a tantrum because we didn’t get everything we wanted right away and allowing the Right to re-take the country (like we allowed them to take the House and positions nationwide in the mid-terms) is childish and INSANE. :smack:
I suspect that Obama will be a much more aggressive President in a second term, but even if not, he will hold the line against the the wholesale roll-back of what progress has been made. I, for one, am not willing to go back to the same failed policies of the GOP (much less say the even more extreme ones of the Tea Party) for 4 more years.
Roughly 3 million private sector jobs added, almost 2 straight years of private sector job growth, TARP money paid back, an end to the endless wars, bin Laden, Ghadaffi and several other terrorist king-pins apprehended, out of power, and/or dead, landmark reforms to our financial and health insurance sectors…This progressive is happy with our President’s record. Even if I HAD the right to vote in primaries in my state, I wouldn’t opt for anyone else.
See, Obama is not a progressive. He’s a mainstream moderate. You thought that because he has a (D) after his name that he should be a progressive? What gave you that idea?
If you want a progressive president, you need dozens of popular progressive governors and senators and representatives. Have you got any of those? No? Well then, get busy electing a few dozen. Once you’ve got that out of the way, then you can start talking about how the time has come for a progressive president.
Obama, even if he was progressive, which he isn’t, wouldn’t waste his time trying to wrangle a progessive agenda through congress. Oh, if congress passed popular progessive legislation he’d be happy to sign it. But that isn’t going to happen with the current congress, or 2012’s congress, or 2014’s congress, or 2016’s congress.
You want a progressive agenda, but you sure as fuck aren’t going to see a progressive agenda out of Obama NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. Get it? A progressive primary challenger isn’t going to make Obama more progressive, the most likely outcome is that he’d totally ignore the challenger. The next most likely outcome is that Obama would use the primary challenge to demonstrate his moderation. The thing that ain’t going to happen is Obama getting into a slap-fight with this primary challenger over who can promise to be the most progressive.
Because your challenger, even if he hadn’t missed all the filing deadlines a few months ago, would be a total nobody. Why would Obama spend even a minute talking about him? He’d be ignored, because there are no Democrats, other than yourself and half a dozen of your ilk, who aren’t going to support him. The supposed dissatisfaction of progressives with Obama is fictional. It didn’t happen. Progressives support Obama by huge margins. And they’re going to turn out in November to vote for him, because they aren’t idiots.
I keep hearing that, but I’ve never met or spoken to one who had any warmer feelings than “well, I hate him but he’s better than the Republicans, since they’re nuts”.
Well, I’ve never met or spoken to one who had any colder feelings than, “Well, he’s not even trying to be progressive, but at least he’s not a republican.” I’ve never heard anyone saying they hate him. So now our two anecdotes cancel each other out. I say they all love him even though they know he’s not a progressive, you say they all hate him.
This is your basic crunchy-granola-sandal-wearing-pot-smoking-Portland/Seattle style progressive I’m talking about here. Maybe you know other types from your Anarchist collective. :rolleyes:
Then you haven’t been paying attention; even as early as his inviting that homophobic preacher to speak at his inauguration there was plenty of hate for him right here on the SDMB, much less elsewhere.
For those of you who are saying Obama has done a great job, blah blah blah, think to yourselves…
What do you think Boehner and McConnell think about Obama? Do you think they see him as a strong president? Or do you think that they thank their lucky stars every day that he beat Clinton and is one of the most easily steam-rolled presidents in history.
I put myself in their shoes and I can’t help but imagine that they must be entirely giddy with happiness knowing that Obama is president. I honestly believe that Boehner probably hates the tea-party caucus in the house MORE than he dislikes Obama. They stand up to him way, WAY more effectively than Obama does.
So, seriously. Obama has been an abject failure of a president. He will go down in history as being the first African American president, and then for not much else. The saddest part about Obama is that he should be intelligent enough to realize how much of a failure he has been, and step aside for Clinton or someone else to run, as LBJ did when he realized how unpopular he was (even though LBJ was a fucking fantastic president in all the ways that really count). He’s obviously not doing this, so the only justification for running again is that he feels he’s going to do better in his 2nd term and not be completely insignificant and ineffective.
All that said, I’m still going to vote for him, but with only 1/1000000th of the zeal that I did in 2008, and if he loses to Romney or whoever, I’m not going to shed a tear.
What Lemur866 said – though as far as the progressives massively backing him, there are divisions among them (or at least, as we read, millionfold drops in zeal, but then maybe that means they were too overenthused last time around). But yes, most progressives are realistic enough to know that challenging Obama from the left means he just moves right, further into that big empty void in the center (while the Republican field are in a rush to prove who’s the hardest-core conservative).
Then you clearly spend way too much time talking only to white people.
Politics is not a game for the nervous. Playing it safe is a good way to lose. You have to carefully assess the risks of what you are doing and make your move. I think there is VERY little effect that a progressive challenge could affect the national election. At the end of the day, it’s gonna be Obama vs. one of the inhabitants of the clown car that is the Republican field. If we can get the Dem leadership thinking that they are losing a significant portion of their base … and I think they are … then maybe they’ll be a little more forthcoming with actual initiatives that progressives will like. After all, if they want to know what happens when your base gets grumpy, they need only look at the Republicans.
You got a lot of damn nerve saying that people who have the balls to call the President on his neglect of the progressive values HE CAMPAIGNED FOR PRESIDENT ON “whiny.” Really, that’s just sad. Save your bitch slaps for the progressives who don’t have the nerve to stand up for their own values.
You’re right. It is. Glad I never advocated it!
He fooled you once, now you are setting him up to fool you again. Shame on you.
3 million private sector jobs but we still have 9 percent unemployment? How’s that work?
And end to the endless wars? We’ll see. I agree that Obama is not a gutbucket insane clown like most Republicans, but really, that’s not much of an achievement. I will vote for Obama against any Republican candidate in the race, but y’know, it would be nice if he weren’t entirely owned by Wall Street. The central issue of our time is recovering our government from the wealthy, and he’s no help at all in that regard.
He’s not a moderate. He’s an 80s Republican. Why do you think he keeps recycling their ideas and presenting them as Democratic ideas?
It’s always a good time for a progressive President. And it’s always a good time to be building a slate of Congressional candidates and governors. But we don’t have to do the one to do the other. Could be a certain amount of synchronicity in doing them all at the same time.
Predicting the future is one way to win an argument, but it’s not cutting any ice with me. If the Dems found themselves facing an angry progressive bloc they’d fold like a house of cards. They don’t really have any ideas, you know.
I do not believe you, therefore I do not get it. Obama would ignore a progressive challenger at his peril. He would of COURSE use the challenger to demonstrate his moderation, it might even help ensure his eventual election: “Hey! I’m not a REAL progressive like THAT GUY!” Good idea, scare the conservatives like the conservatives have scared so many progressives, apparently. I AGREE that a progressive challenger stands no chance of WINNING but he could sure as hell serve notice that the natives are getting restless, and that progressives need to be at the table when the deals are cut, and paid heed to.
Once again, sez you.
Sure, progressives support Obama against REPUBLICANS. We aren’t idiots! But Al Franken and Bernie Sanders, for example, are much more appealing to progressives than Obama.
He has been one of the best Republican presidents EVAH!
But if he loses to Gingrich I’m going to cry like a little girl!
No, Obama won’t move a jot or tittle further to the right. Hell he’s already practically to the right of Romney and Huntsman. There is NO advantage to him in moving further to the right, beyond a certain point voters will NEVER vote for him, and Obama is arguably beyond that point. He is already thoroughly bought out by Wall Street, he’s willing to sign SOPA, he’s willing to allow the Army to oppress Americans on American soil and to allow indefinite detention without trial, hell, what does he have to do to convince you that he’s not only not a conservative, he’s not even a fucking MODERATE any more?
Yip, that’s why the primary goal of the Republican party is to get rid of Obama. That’s why nearly all of them push this idea that Obama is some socialist or uber liberal. It’s got to be because they are happy to have such a President.
And let’s not repeat the false meme that Obama hasn’t accomplished anything. Do I even need to bring up the site at this point?
Also, I had no idea people define progressives as the far left. I just consider them left.
Dude…how many times do you have to hear progressives are a non-factor in national politics? They are jokes. Buffoons. Laughing stocks. Utterly without impact or significance. You can stay home, you can support Obama, or you can throw the election to the GoP. There is no realistic 4th option. None. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. The Big Goose Egg.
Mounting a primary challenge to Obama is the single dumbest political idea that has been advanced on this board in recent memory. No one with any degree of political sophistication would ever endorse such a ridiculous plan. It won’t happen. It’s can’t happen now, due to the missed filing deadlines. It should not happen. The idea has no merit whatsoever.