No nosepeg or nothing then? I’d love to centrist

I’m amazed at how this particular bit of propaganda manages to pander to people who bought the spin around the healthcare reforms which, by and large, just played into the hands of health insurers – liberal credit, tick – with pandering to the neo-cons with the Obama assassination. Tick.

I’m disappointed.

I’m not disappointed by presiden Obama either…

But that’s because I never expected anything of him in the first place.

I always knew the man was nothing but overblown PR.

Anyone who’s disappointed by Barack Obama probably deserves to be, really. He campaigned explicitly on the twin platforms of “Not being as much of a contemptable, venal arsehole as George W. Bush” and “Continuing to bomb the shit out of whatever the Hell he felt like bombing”.

On that score, I’d say he’s been a resounding success. Anyone who thought that a Democratic Party president would so much as lift a finger to address the economic enfuckage of half the planet or refrain from using his office’s Grand High Military Commander of The Universe powers, was insane.

Obama killed bin Laden? Well, blow me down, I’d thought he was slumped inside the White House, watching updates on a TV screen. The fact that he goes on to claim we should look at “cold, hard realities” makes this even more hilarious.

An eloquent and touching monologue.

While I largely agree with the sentiments expressed – and I agree that there is currently no-one running I would rather see as President – he hits on something profoundly important.

Obama has squandered enormous popularity and influence in his effort to reach out to Republicans, who have always made it abundantly clear they have absolutely no interest in working with him.

Two years, and countless capitulations.
Why did it take you so long, Mr President, to realise that was a gratuitous waste of time and effort? When every right minded individual the world over saw it instantly?

You not only allowed insane Republican demands to pass barely challenged, you continued the suppressing of Civil Liberties so prominent under W.

The only positive in this is that some people, like Al Franken and the EFF, took steps to fill the void you created by inaction.

Again, in a choice between any currently running Republican and Obama, there’s only one sane choice.

and the people can only hope, desperately, that this time Their President will work for Them.

It’s rather telling about politics in general, that when it comes to the American presidency, the options range from crap to shite.

Obama has squandered enormous popularity and influence in his effort to reach out to Republicans, who have always made it abundantly clear they have absolutely no interest in working with him.

I’m not sure this is true. His popularity is low because the economy has failed to recover.

Of course, Republicans have been obstructionist beyond belief, and I do enjoy the sight of people thinking he can pass laws through the use of magic ponies rather than asking whether the congressional or senate majorities were there.

That said, he has failed badly in telling people why he couldn’t pass these laws, and because most people don’t understand the American legislative system (including most Americans) – they blame him. The debt ceiling debate was a classic example.

Its worth noting how views of the US in the Arab world took an upturn as Bush left and Obama came in, then came crashing down to War on Terror levels pretty soon after. People in the Middle East were prepared to give him a chance, and he disappointed them badly http://aai.3cdn.net/5d2b8344e3b3b7ef19_xkm6ba4r9.pdf

As the pollster says:

It is noteworthy that the two issues on which the Administration has invested considerable energy—”the Palestinian issue” and “engagement with the Muslim world”—receive the lowest approval ratings – less than 9% across the board.

Sunny – I think people can have a perfectly decent, even detailed understanding of how US politics works and still recognise (a) that Obama hasn’t delivered on the hopes that many liberals had of him, and (b) that a lot of that – notwithstanding the undoubted obstacles – is his own fault/responsibility. Paul Krugman, for example, can’t be accused of ignorance in his critique of Obama, and he is decidedly unimpressed.

If Americans have a reason to vote Obama next year, its that the GOP has degenerated to surreal levels of dementia, even by its own standards, and the prospect of that candidate winning is a genuinely frightening one.

Krugman isn’t a politician, and while I conceptually agree with what he says – he never really resolved the question of how those policies he wanted would be pushed through Congress.

Ezra Klein addresses this:

It is easy to tell the story of what the White House did wrong in its response to the financial crisis: it underestimated it. It had good reason to underestimate it, of course. Almost everyone was underestimating it. In the fourth quarter of 2008, when Obama’s economic team was meeting in Chicago to map out their policies, the Bureau of Economic Accounts thought the economy was contracting at a rate of 3.8 percent per year. It wouldn’t be until this year that we learned the economy was really contracting at a rate of 9 percent. And it wasn’t just the BEA. The Federal Reserve has been continuously overoptimistic. So have the leading private forecasting firms, like Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Analytics. And so have Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

Read from there in this article:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/obamas-flunking-economy-real-cause/?pagination=false

If the economy had done better then Obama would be soaring in the polls and Republicans in retreat. But it didn’t work out like that. He went in for the healthcare bill early and didn’t expect that level of opposition.

Its easy to sit from the sidelines and demand more, without actually articulating what that path would have been. Yes – Obama could have hectored Congress more on the health bill. But Clinton did plenty of that and still failed.

I reckon Obama’s a better president than a republican but that’s about all you can say for him. I’d be actively ashamed to campaign for a man who has continued to support drone strikes which kill innocent civilians, illegal rendition and torture and who broke his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.

It’s remarkable how Obama who, in many ways, has a record as inexcusable as Blair’s continues to be actively supported by people like Sunny who would be condemning him if he were any other politician in the world.

President’s aren’t all powerful, of course. But nor are they innocent bystanders. At least, unless they choose to be. Obama chose to let the right make all the running in the public debate over healthcare reform, in accordance with his usual conceit of staying aloof from situations before descending from on high to resolve them. If he’d joined battle from day one, on the back of a historic election win, with soaring approval ratings and both houses of congress, he could have helped galvanise popular opinion behind, say, a single-payer system, and then dared wavering congressmen and women to go against the people’s choice.

Remember that, at least before Fox and friends got their hands on that debate, public support for real reform was significant. He fell short on that one as much due to his style of governing as anything else. You can’t win battles you don’t fight. Ridiculous that one of the most successful political campaigners in recent years should go missing in the fight for his signature first term policy.

On the economy, people like Krugman, Stiglitz et al were quite clear that if your stimulus is inadequate you’ll end up where we are now. That’s no surprise. And again, he wasted those crucial early months of his Presidency where he could’ve acted in decisive fashion before his well-beaten enemies has time to regroup.

The pattern continues on foreign policy, where with Israel in particular he’s been so craven as to be almost pitiable. You’d be forgiven for not knowing between him and Netanyahu which is the client state and which is the superpower. The contrast with Bush Snr, for example, who took no shit from Yitzhak Shamir, is striking.

As others have said, you can’t really be disappointed because the guy isn’t a radical anyway, so what should we expect? He’s an instinctively cautious, centrist conservative, which is fine if the status quo is in a healthy state. Sadly though, it isn’t, which makes hiim the wrong man for the historical moment, albeit nowhere near as wrong as his opponents.

He is awful. The fact is, the corporate-owned democrat leadership, Obama included, don’t want the same things as those who vote them in, and are happy to be beaten on such things. Hence why they always are. (Same with New Labour).

Its time that anyone with a desire to halt the terminal decline of western civilisation at the hands of institutionalised sociopathic barbarism finally admitted to themselves that the Labour and Democrat Parties and the chance they represented for mild, gradual change within the system are gone forever. The hollow shadows in their place will never again be a vehicle for resistance to depredation or a force for democratic progress. The sooner we start thinking about how to form a real credible alternative to the gradual return of full oligarchal control under de facto neoliberal dictatorship the better. At the moment we have two choices – a swift slide to oblivion under an obvious foe or a slightly slower demise at the hands of charlatans, or usually a nice flipflop between the two. Either way we’re going down.

It’s not going to be easy but Labour and the Democrats are both lost causes, it’s time to start thinking of the next step. Soon. Note, such a view doesn’t make one ‘far-left’ or even merely a ‘lefty’, just someone concerned about the future of this country and indeed humanity.

If only there was a candidate that was against all these insane wars, massive military spending, and crooked banksters, who wanted to restore the Bill of Rights and get rid of all the fascistic Homeland Security, and the war on drugs etc… Oh wait! There is:

That man is Ron Paul.

He is also mad in other ways though.

@Trooper Thompson #14:

If only there was a candidate…who wanted to restore the Bill of Rights…etc… Oh wait! There is:

That man is Ron Paul.

Well, up to a point – but he isn’t keen on the 14th.

I’m not mad with all the haters who just can’t see the forest for the Trees. As a Proud Boomer—I will continue to stand with the President Obama. He has the integrity and the energy that’s needed to do the job. Can’t say that for every other president.