If Obama had actually been the Socialist he is accused of being...

[Bonobo]

Would we have lost the middle of the Democratic Party?

If he had governed from the Left, would he have been accused MORE by the rightwing nut bags of being a socialist who wanted to destroy America?

If he had said "Hell no, no more money for the Defense industry when the middle class is bleeding to death!", would we have lost the middle of the Democratic Party?

If he had said "I will not bail out the banks directly, but I will put money in the pockets of everyone in danger of being kicked out of their homes so they can pay back their mortgages", wouldn't the banks have been substantially propped up by the alone? Would it have cost us the middle of the Democratic party base?

If we DEMANDED a Democratic Party that is as strong in its commitment to its own issues as the Republican Party is, what would be the problem? Would the "middle of the party democrats" leave?

[MannyGoldstein]

1. First off, Obama *is* a Socialist

As much as anyone, he's responsible for socializing the trillions lost by wild bank speculation. Coincidentally, the bankers got the largest paychecks in the history of Wall Street.

But I catch your drift. If he'd actually been a Socialist for the 99%, we'd all be sitting pretty.

[banned from Kos]

27. TARP was Bush/Paulson in Sep/Oct 2008. Obama forced the banks to REPAY or no bank bonuses.

Which they did.

[boston bean]

2. I think they would

The democratic party is fractured, even more so than it was before, and it's going to lose votes from people who voted democratic even though they didn't pay a lot of attention to politics.

They are losing their edge and focus and are attracting many economic conservatives to the party.

The party is changing. For the better or worse.. depends on where one stands on the issues.

[RZM]

3. First that person would have had to make it through the Democratic primary process

Generally the most liberal candidates do not win the nomination. Often they don't even come close. Kucinich was probably the most liberal candidate in the last two cycles and each time he finished near the bottom.

[boston bean]

4. Obama won with a populist message. So yes you can win elections.

What happens after is either corruption or downright lying.

[RZM]

5. An intentionally vague populist message

Which isn't really much of a message at all, if you ask me. Most politicians are vague populists. Not trying to slam the guy here, but I didn't believe for a second that Obama would govern from the left wing of the Democratic party.

[boston bean]

8. And imagine if they actually were and not a lying for votes.

re-election would be no problem.

[Bonobo]

7. Damned fucking straight!

People who say otherwise need an injection of intellectual honesty.

[joshcryer]

19. That's patently false. Obama won with a unity post-partisan message.

Almost every other sentence was interspersed with him trying to unify the congresses.

A populist is not bi-partisan, a populist is hard line partisan, all the way.

[boston bean]

24. If what you say is how it is

then Obama failed, didn't he?

His ultra bi-partisan plan failed wondrously. The only bi partisan thing he got was an agreement from dems to dwindle down their own proposals so a few Republicans would agree, and most of the time that even failed.

And I do not agree that a populist message is partisan. In fact, it is what most people long for and the reason they vote for someone as president. If they think it will be good for them and the majority as a whole they will vote for that person.

Of course you get freak RW nutbags who are plain partisan, but that is always the case. We've had three years of it, and a president willing to go along with it, for whatever reason.

[joshcryer]

26. Of course it did! We warned everyone that the junior senator wasn't going to get...

...the Republicans to work with him on anything! So he wound up compromising to hell and back and it pissed off the liberal base and we failed to be who we are, activists, and get out the vote, and that made things even worse.

But we're also to blame!

We believed the post-partisan's approach would work (which it never has and never will).

And we sat on our hands when it didn't work, like petulant little children!

Would a "populist" have a cabinet that was composed half of the last guys cabinet and half of all sorts of corporate shills? Haha. No, his cabinet would be completely partisan, fully in opposition to the enemy! That's why such a concept is an oxymoron, there's no such thing as a "bi-partisan populist."

[boston bean]

28. No, I think a Republican who runs as a populist could win, so therefore it is not a partisan stance.

In fact, most running for president run as populists.

However, they do not act that way when in office..

ETA if by partisan you mean elected officials against the most of us, maybe you have a point.

[joshcryer]

29. Erm, I'm just differientiating between populist rhetoric (which everyone attempts) and ideology.

Obama can say "It just ain't right that the bankers aren't hurting but the little people are." That's populist rhetoric.

Ideologically though, it's "Well darn, I'm a junior senator without much experience, with a naive approach to everything, and I'm just going to reach my hand out and just ask everyone to work together."

If Obama was ideologically a populist he would've dissolved the Congress.

[JoePhilly]

6. Obama is not the caraciture presented by the far right ...

nor is he the caricature presented by the far left.

The one group calls him a "secret Muslim, socialist commie", the other calls him a "secret corporatist Republican".

He is neither.

But that's not the goal of these two totally opposite "Obama Bad" memes. The goal is to get voters to internalize ONE of these memes ... which one they internalize is irrelevant. Just so long as they internalize the "Obama bad" part.

Those on the right who internalize the "Obama is a socialist" meme, will get angry and be energized to vote in 2012 against him and for which every GOP nut becomes the nominee.

Those on the left who internalize the "Obama is a secret Republican" meme, will get angry, and be motivated to stay home and NOT VOTE in 2012 period.

The GOP is not just passing laws to manipulate voter turn out ... anger the GOP base, demoralize the Dem base, and just maybe, one of the GOP whack jobs can become President in 2012.

That is the political strategy at work.

[ProSense]

9. I have a T-shirt idea:

I voted for a socialist and all I got was a King.

[JoePhilly]

11. LOL!!!

[boston bean]

10. What makes you think it's some sort of a strategy for liberals or democrats?

obviously no one here is falling for the republican argument..

You cast out the liberal argument by linking it to helping republicans.

That is just not the reason why liberals or democrats want better. Most everyone here will vote for Obama.

Which will probably make Obama more likely to be who he always has been with no change or movement to the left. But it is what it is.

There is really not much of a choice, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck.

[JoePhilly]

15. Actually, its being pushed by the media at large, and then repeated in the blogosphere.

You miss my point I think ...

The MEDIA amplifies both of the 2 opposite memes.

You said "obviously no one here is falling for the republican argument" ... I absolutely agree.

The republican argument has been CRAFTED to appeal to the right wing. Its not intended to influence you or me here on DU. We look at it and see that it is RIDICULOUS.

But, the LEFT WING version, the one CRAFTED for those on the left, those who "want more, faster" ... the intent is to get you and me, and DU, and Dems to internalize that "Obama sucks", so we STAY HOME. The GOAL is to demoralize as many on the left as possible so that they STAY HOME.

The angry right wing will VOTE ... the demoralized dems will STAY HOME.

Obama beat McCain by about 6% in 2008. So if you can manipulate the turnout such that you get a 3% increase in right wing votes, and a 3% decrease in Dem turn out ... a right wing maniac has a shot at becoming President.

[boston bean]

20. I disagree that pushing a Democratic president to act like a Democrat

and do things for the people would hurt Obama. The only way it might hurt is when he goes against what most democrats believe in. He just looks bad and people begin to not trust him. But still, most will vote for him, but not enthusiastically.

[JoePhilly]

22. You are saying things that I did not say.

There is a difference between "pushing a Dem President" ... and calling him a "secret Republican" ... or "a center right Republican" ... and so on.

Claiming he has made himself "King" ... and so on.

Disagreement is one thing ... but much of the left wing hyperbole that I refer to is JUST as over the top as the right wing claims that Obama is a secret Muslim, socialist, commie.

As I've noted in other threads, those on the right and the left who push the Hyperbolic "Obama bad" memes, discard the opposite version "out of hand" ... they see their opposite meme as the crazy extreme one. And neither sees the REALITY that both are caricatures.

Some on the right are PRIMED to accept the right wing "Obama bad" memes as FACT ... same is true for some on the left. The media knows this, and so they push BOTH ... for the reasons I described earlier.

And last point ... the target of these memes aren't just the extreme members on the left and the right ... folks who LEAN to the right are more likely to accept the right wing "Obama bad" meme ... and folks who LEAN to the left will be more likely to accept the left wing "Obama Bad" meme. And so again ... you get moderate Republicans voting AGAINST Obama, and moderate Dems, staying home.

That is the larger media goal.

Obama should win in a land slide ... which can't be allowed.

[joshcryer]

16. That's exactly what happened in 2010 and if it happens in 2012 it will be hard to...

...not call it a total PSYOPS.

[JoePhilly]

17. YUP

[Selatius]

12. He could not pull an FDR if he tried because he lacked liberal coattails in the House/Senate.

FDR had the advantage of coming into power when left-wing Democrats were a force to be reckoned with inside the Democratic Party. At the same time, Democratic candidates were sweeping the Republicans out of the House and Senate.

Of course, this only happened after the economy collapsed into the Great Depression. In the 73rd Congress, Democrats held at least 58 or more seats in the US Senate at the time, when there were only 96 seats to begin with, and Democrats had over 300 seats in the US House.

If Obama had those kinds of Democrats to work with on things such as health insurance reform, he probably would've ended up signing a reform bill with an actual working Public Option in it, for instance.

[boston bean]

13. We'll never know cause he was Mr. Bipartisan for 2-3 years.

He's just off that now, quelle suprise, at election time!

Politicians didn't have a choice back then, the people were going to uprise.

We need to get back to that point again, and I hope and pray OWS gets us there.

[joshcryer]

14. Mr. Post-Partisan was who he campaigned as.

I suppose we all expected him to back off his rhetoric and be someone fundamentally different.

[boston bean]

18. Post partisan does not mean Bi Partisan

and giving into the RW.

I think to many it meant he was going to bring a new kind of politics, a populist message. We had just come off of 8 years of Bush for chrissakes. I definitely don't think people thought they were going to get more of that via compromising away democratic values to Republicans.

But you know, I sort of get what you are saying, he was a blank slate and people did paint their own tapestry.

[joshcryer]

23. "Post-partisan" means *ultra* bipartisan.

"I will continue working with both parties so that the strongest possible bill gets to my desk" has been his mantra from day one.

I was never "fired up" over his speeches. Speeches can be extremely wonderful, but interspersed in them was language, code words, for how he wasn't a populist, in reality. The populist "appearance" was what the people projected upon him, it wasn't who he was.

Look at this absurdiy though in his nomination speech:

But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush. America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

...

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough!

...

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

...

But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

...

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts.

C'mon people, this is Obama. He's been the most consistent President I've ever voted for. It's damn insane how much shit he gets when he is exactly who you voted for.

http://obamaspeeches.com/E10-Barack-Obama-The-American-Promise-Acceptance-Speech-at-the-Democratic-Convention-Mile-High-Stadium--Denver-Colorado-August-28-2008.htm

[limpyhobbler]

21. I know what you mean,it makes sense, but he's just the prez., Congress counts more.

Imagine Obama as president, working with both houses of Congress controlled by true progressives (not just any old Dem.).

That would be a alot better huh?

We could have the most liberal/progressive/socialist/whatever president imaginable, but if we still had the same Congress, how much different could things really be?

I do think though that Obama could have done more in his role as president to carry the popular energy of his 2008 campaign over into governing, and used his grass roots support as leverage against congress to get us better deals on health care and other issues. But sadly that didn't happen.

As I recall on health care the President had a pretty good deal worked out with Olympia Snowe to reach 60 votes on a bill that included a triggered public option that would have taken effect if costs were not contained enough according to the trigger. Then he turned the lead over to Harry Reid and Max Baucus, who said they supported the public option, and then one or both of them sold us all down the river and sided with the badguys in committee. The public option died in a Democrat controlled Senate in a Democrat controlled committee. Obama had a good plan worked out where Senator Snowe would have been the 60th vote for cloture, but he wasn't counting on turncoats in his own party. They sabotaged him. I'd rather see us focus more on Congress instead. I see what you're saying though. I guess it depends which issues are being looked at.

[SixthSense]

25. He doesn't give a damn about anybody in the party

Here's who he gives a damn about:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/bundlers.php?id=N00009638

if you ain't on that list you ain't shit

[Prophet 451]

30. You'd have single-payer for a start

I live under single-payer healthcare (the NHS) and while it's admittedly imperfect, it's pretty good.