Primary Obama Immediately

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The man is a good hand with a teleprompter.

I suppose we cannot fault him for not having the social skills to get people and pols on the same page with him. But then I did not run for president. Who nominated him without uunderstanding what he is? Was there a Republican mole?

Or is it these days ALL about "He can win and then we will figure out what to do"?

"There is not a Red America, there is not a Blue America, there's the United States of America"... and the endless talk of "bipartisanship"... Bill Maher had it right about Obama when he said that had he been Martin Luther King giving his "I Have a Dream" speech he'd have said, "Those sheriffs with the German shepherds and the fire hoses, they have a very good point!"

Obama ran as a more progressive candidate than he is because it was the only way to knock of Hillary who had the DLC and party establishment support. He did it with financial sector filthy lucre. Also, more progressive people wanted to show their disapproval of the war in Iraq and Obama didn't actually have a YEA vote for this war on his record. In the end, he's a DLC Blue Dog through and through and many of his voters understand that fact, that only Plutocracy-Approved product gets through - the media, the punditry and the money-disbursing agents see to that.

Obama's "sweeping new agenda", the "change" was to "end partisanship" and have everyone link arms singing "kumbaya" - unfortunately, that depends on the Republicans going along with it, and so it was an easy matter to sabotage it. Obama wants a more "adult" tone? The Republicans can thwart that easily by behaving more like children and they win there. It's insanity to think that this could get anywhere. Obama values the process over the results. It's about making the Republicans feel like they're part of it and their values are being considered, even if the result is disastrous. This is the kind of thing that happened under Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

Republicans have convinced quite a few people that Obama was some kind of radical only because of the national emergency - his "socialist" measures to prevent collapse were not as radical as those carried out by that notorious Communist Augusto Pinochet when his neoliberal laboratory came crashing down in the early 1980s. Obama didn't nationalise anything for fun, he did it because there was no alternative and he always saw to it that the government had as little power as possible despite paying up, except for when it came to rewriting union contracts to disadvantage workers.

Obama's plans now seem to be to privatise Social Security, cut Medicare further, privatise public housing and ensure more homelessness, destroy the teachers' unions and implement more top down control by right wing ideologues over education...

No offense Orwell but you seem to take one poll and hold up it as some sort of untouchable fact even when every other poll says otherwise. You did the same thing with healthcare when over the whole course of the debate every poll besides maybe 3 showed the country overwhelmingly against the democrats plan. Polls are almost completely subjective. It depends on how its phrased. who it asks, etc. The fact that Obama had to compromise while having an overwhelming majority should tell you all you need to know about the will of the people. Most Americans recognize it's not a revenue problem in Washington, it's a spending problem. Giving more alcohol to drunk is only going to make things worst.

OK then, find me all these other polls where everyone is in favor of giving more money to the rich. "Every other poll," huh? It took approximately 15 seconds and a tab open to Google to find several others that show opposition to continuing Bush's irresponsible tax policies.


I don't recall ever doing that. I do recall there being a shedload of polls showing overwhelming support for the public option, which was not a part of the Democrats' plan.


There is a science to polling, a right and wrong way of doing things. Well-established polling companies can generally be trusted to have done it the right way.


You're full of it. It doesn't tell us anything about the will of the people; it tells us that Obama is either unable or unwilling to fight the Republicans on these issues, probably because he worships "bipartisanship" too much to actually go out and smash his opponents the way Reagan and Bush did.


You're uncritically bleating Republican talking points now? I'm surprised. Recently on this forum you've been acting like a fairly reasonable person. If "most Americans recognize" that completely BS right-wing myth, then most Americans are morons.

The idea that our budget problems come only from over-spending a myth and a lie. I have already proven that. Tell me what spending cuts would possibly balance our budget without raising taxes.

On the poll issue, as I said, it completely depends how the question is framed and who they're sampling. You can get a poll to say anything depending on those factors. That's why you see polls that show support for the public option/Bush tax cuts/whatever and other ones that show the complete opposite. I don't really take much credence to issue polling one way or another. Polls are interested to see snapshots of where candidates(which isn't an exact science either)are in races but that's about it.

However the one thing that was overwhelmingly rejected pretty much unanimously in polls was the farce of the healthcare reform bill that we got. If you asked me the question if I supported a public option or the democrat's bill, I'd pick the public option too. At least that wouldn't be lining the pockets of these insurance companies. It was so funny to here Obama talking about how the insurance companies were fighting against his bill when they ended up the main beneficiaries of it.

I don't think Obama compromised for the hell of compromising on that tax deal either. That was about as good of a deal as he could of made, he didn't have the votes otherwise. I suppose he could of played hardball and let tax cuts expire and go up on everyone but he knew that would essentially kill any chance of reelection. Obama was really desperate to get some legislative accomplishments in this lameduck session since it will be pretty much his last chance.(probably even if wins reelection too since he will likely still be faced with a republican congress and probably senate too in 2012)

I don't deny that the vast majority of the electorate probably isn't very "bright" but it's pretty easy for most to understand spending money you don't have is bad. Now I'm not under any illusion that you can cut taxes and up spending like Bush did. The government spends roughly a trillion and a half more take it takes in revenue. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire would be meaningless in the grand scheme of things, I doubt it would even cover the yearly interest on our debt let alone the warfare/welfare state. It's not possible to raise taxes high enough to pay off our yearly deficit, there needs to be massive cuts to government bureaucracy, entitlements, and the military. I don't trust the folks in charge to ever cut spending significantly, giving them more tax revenue would probably only mean that they would spend more.

Properly conducted polls can tell you what people believe about specific issues as well. Otherwise when you talk about the "will of the American people" (as you did in your previous post) you're just pulling stuff out of your ass.


Not "unanimously." And that was at least in part because people had no idea what was in the bill; there was too much misinformation flying around about death panels and government takeovers. I recall at least one poll that went down the provisions of the bill and found broad support for most of them.


That wasn't the poll question though. It was simply support for or opposition to a public option, not one specific plan vs another.


He could have crushed the Republicans under a torrent of bad PR. It really would have been easy, and Republican leaders were already on record saying that if push came to shove and Obama called their bluff, they would give in.


Oh yes, let's count Obama's glorious legislative "victories" of the lame duck session.
1) Tax cut bill, where he passed a Republican agenda and the only thing he got in return for giving in and passing tax cuts were more tax cuts beyond what even Bush was able to push through. If McCain were Presdident the tax cut bill would have been less right-wing.
2) The New START Treaty, a renewal of a bill negotiated and signed in by a Republican President and supported by literally every sane person on the face of the planet.
3) Repeal of DADT, which was simply an inevitability from the social change in America today. And if the Democrats in the legislature hadn't managed to repeal DADT, it would have been struck down by the courts anyways. A judge had already overturned DADT, and only temporarily held back on demanding enforcement of the decision to allow the legislature and military to implement the repeal on their own terms.

So Obama has a far-right Republican achievement, a relatively apolitical move to continue acting semi-sane in one aspect of foreign policy, and being present to take credit for inevitable social change. I am not impressed.


Meaningless? It's a couple of trillion dollars you're talking about there. You are right that there need to be big spending cuts, but if those aren't also accompanied by revenue increases we will still have a problem. Thus, it is not "only a spending problem" and you are delusional if you believe otherwise.

And you are numerically wrong when you say it is not possible to raise taxes high enough to cover the yearly deficit. Government spending is less than GDP, so it is in principle possible to raise taxes high enough to cover current spending. It would be a terrible idea, but it is technically possible.

The poll for the extension of the Bush tax cuts? That's easy. When people are asked to choose between the Deal and to not have the Deal and have the taxes rise, 67% choose the Deal. They choose it because they are told that There is No Alternative. Either give the Plutocracy their pound of flesh or else they'll be stuck with a tax rise during a time when the standard of living is under assault and this would hasten the process. Now, if the plan pushed through the House by the Democrats is offered that is overwhelmingly the favoured option. Number two is to let them expire, number three is to give the Plutocracy their pound of flesh.

I think the will of the American people can be more accurately gauged the ballot box than polls. Part of the reason(not all of it) the dems got beatdown so badly this November was because of the rejection of "Obamacare". There was a reason that the democrats didn't deal with the Bush tax cuts before the midterms this year and didn't have the votes to do anything else. Most of those people, on both sides, are more opportunists than principled ideologues and will sway whichever way would help their reelection chances so obviously a good portion of democrats must of thought it was risky enough to have them raising taxes on their record regardless who.

Yea, I don't find Obama's legislative accomplishments too impressive either but that's what he's gunna run on 2012. Can you feel the excitement?

Calling a few trillion dollars meaningless is overstating it a bit I guess but a couple trillion(if that)over 10 years(it's only extended for only the next 2 years) doesn't make a significant dent at the debt at all really. Letting the Bush tax cuts completely expire wouldn't even pay off the interest we pay on our quickly increasing14 trillion dollar national debt national debt every year.(around 400 billion a year right now) You simply can not raise revenues enough to pay off this debt while still having a functional economy. Government is pretty much a blackhole when it comes to money, I don't trust them to not just spend more with more revenue. The money would be better off staying in the hands of the people than going to foreign banks and other overseas adventurism. There needs to be a constitutional balanced budget agreement.

I disagree. People may vote one way or the other for a wide variety of reasons (actually supporting one candidate's policies, blind party loyalty, desire to express disappointment with the other party for any number of reasons, personal dislike or distrust of one specific candidate and so voting against them, etc ad nauseam) and these reasons are quite often based on false or incomplete information. Specific polls can be more focused and discern what people believe on actual issues.


Yes, there was. That reason was called "obstructionism." It was a political strategy on the part of the Republican Party to discredit the Obama administration by claiming that they could not govern effectively.


It's a huge amount of money, and it is at the very least a start. There is no benefit to not having that money at least mitigating our deficit. Once you adopt the mentality where you're saying "we're already in the hole, who cares about another half a trillion here and there?" you have destroyed any chance of restoring fiscal sanity. So I continue to reject your claim that the recent tax cut is irrelevant.

Had we continued with Clinton-era fiscal and economic policy, we would have been on track to completely pay off the entire national debt by last year.

I wasn't here for the healthcare debate when it was a bill, but that really doesn't surprise me.

@ Orwell

About there not being a message in the November 2010 voting patterns. Excuse me but the Republicans did so well it made 1994 look like a good year for Democrats. If you think there wasn't a message voters were sending, you are quite frankly in denial.

It's not about the presidency Master Pedant. A Bernie Sanders or Dennis K presidency would be able to do about as much as Obama has done. You need Senators and Congressmen who will vote for social democratic policies and an informed, intelligent and campaigning electorate who can hold their feet to the fire and make sure they do.

No, they would need an uninformed electorate because an informed electorate would reject the pure insanity the liberals rammed through. We saw the beginnings of the backlash in November, we'll see it continue in 2012.

And wouldn't they be voting on these polls with the same misinformed opinions?

The GOP could not effectively obstruct anything during the last congress. The democrats have a supermajority in both houses, if there was something they couldn't pass it was because the public backlash was so bad that it fractured dem support. Despite the whining, the Bush tax cuts weren't very controversial. If Obama wanted to just extend the tax cuts for people making under 250k a year(which isn't that rich), I don't think he would of had much trouble pushing it thru earlier in the last congress. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent was one of the main things John McCain ran on so it's not like this issue just snuck up on everybody. Obama had spent all of his political capital by this point and people were afraid of losing their jobs.

A "couple" trillion(over 10 years!) is a pretty liberal estimate and that's assuming you support letting the tax cut expire for everyone including those who make under 250k a year. If not, then I doubt it would even amount to much more than 1 trillion, maybe less. By 2020, our national debt will likely be over 20 trillion dollars 1.25 trillion dollar yearly deficit (CBO estimate, so it will likely be even higher) so the 100 billion that not extending the Bush tax cuts for those making over 250k(or over 1,000,000 like Chuck Schumer suggested) really doesn't help much at all.

If there was a constitutional balanced budget agreement and massive cuts in military, bureaucracy, and entitlements then maybe I wouldn't feel that a tax hike would be so irrelevant to solving this crisis but unfortunately I don't see that happening with these gutless cowards we running this country. If they just keep on spending more and more and more while just stealing more and more of the people's money, there will be a complete collapse. I think the people can better spend their money than than the government ever can.

And wouldn't they be voting on these polls with the same misinformed opinions?

The GOP could not effectively obstruct anything during the last congress. The democrats have a supermajority in both houses, if there was something they couldn't pass it was because the public backlash was so bad that it fractured dem support. Despite the whining, the Bush tax cuts weren't very controversial. If Obama wanted to just extend the tax cuts for people making under 250k a year(which isn't that rich), I don't think he would of had much trouble pushing it thru earlier in the last congress. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent was one of the main things John McCain ran on so it's not like this issue just snuck up on everybody. Obama had spent all of his political capital by this point and people were afraid of losing their jobs.

A "couple" trillion(over 10 years!) is a pretty liberal estimate and that's assuming you support letting the tax cut expire for everyone including those who make under 250k a year. If not, then I doubt it would even amount to much more than 1 trillion, maybe less. By 2020, our national debt will likely be over 20 trillion dollars 1.25 trillion dollar yearly deficit (CBO estimate, so it will likely be even higher) so the 100 billion that not extending the Bush tax cuts for those making over 250k(or over 1,000,000 like Chuck Schumer suggested) really doesn't help much at all.

If there was a constitutional balanced budget agreement and massive cuts in military, bureaucracy, and entitlements then maybe I wouldn't feel that a tax hike would be so irrelevant to solving this crisis but unfortunately I don't see that happening with these gutless cowards we have running this country. If they just keep on spending more and more and more while just stealing more and more of the people's money, there will be a complete collapse. I think the people can better spend their money than than the government ever can.

@ Jacoby

Well it wouldn't surprise me if they next call you stupid, heartless, evil, a troll, etc. Because you happen to disagree with the left-wing talking points.

You are hallucinating again. I didn't say that elections have nothing to do with the will of the people. I merely pointed out that they are an incredibly imprecise way to gauge what the people want. Take 2008- crushing Democratic victories all across the board. Does this mean America had suddenly gone way to the left and everyone wanted liberal policies? And now that Republicans made big gains in 2010 that means everyone has veered back way to the right? No, such an interpretation is asinine and absurd. A lot of people voted Democrat in 2008 because they were pissed off about how the country was doing under Republican leadership. A lot of people voted for Obama in '08 not because they liked the guy or supported his policies, but simply because they didn't like the job Bush had done and didn't want his party to remain in power. Same for a lot of the people voting Republican in '10. Some of them actually are Tea Party folks. Some of them are hard-core libertarians on economic policy and don't want to see any sort of regulation or taxation. Some of them are anti-gay social conservatives. Some just don't like Obama for whatever personal reasons. Some want to send a message that the Democrats aren't living up to their campaign promises, or aren't acting effectively enough on furthering an economic recovery. Some are just voting to "throw the bums out" regardless of who the bums are. Without more specific polling, there is no way to distinguish between all of these different motivations and any talk of "the will of the people" backing some specific agenda is pure fabrication.