I don't know what I'm supposed to say about Obama anymore....

[nomaco-10]

I can't defend a lot of his policies, and at this point, I can't even argue his vision of change in america anymore, especially to the right when he has done nothing but kowtow and cater to them every step of the way. Surely, he's figured out by now that the right will never accept him or his policies on any level ever.

So, I have adapted a new philosophy. I'll always be involved in elections and their outcomes, but I don't know if I can ever be as heavily invested in the outcome as I did the last election cycle.

I'll be forever grateful that we were at last "legally" able to rid ourselves of gw bush, and will be forever grateful that the senile, ptsd'd former pow and the batshit crazy, power hungry palin didn't get into office. I am thoroughly convinced that they would have finished this country off. So, I can have at least that consolation.

Bring on the next great democratic hope, I'm just as hungry for real change as I ever was.

I'd support a Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer ticket in a heartbeat.

[xiamiam]

1. good attitude...me too..i love them both..nt

[adnelson60087]

2. I'd be all for Howard Dean.

If you can name a smarter and harder fighter that's really viable, I'd like to hear it. Obama was neither a fighter nor a visionary. He just said the pretty words and sowed the seeds for his benefit. I supported him for awhile, until I read most of his positions back in 2007.

[nomaco-10]

3. I worked tirelessly for him in 04 and thought he was the .....

best thing to come down the political pike in decades. But, he was not only ruined by the heavily funded rw monopoly at the time, but even his own party conspired to take him down. It's a matter of record that kerry, lieberman and gephardt hired a right wing smear group to take him down in Iowa, so much for party unity.

[janx]

4. What position in particular turned you off?

:shrug: I'm curious.

[adnelson60087]

19. It wasn't just one position

but it was Obama's entire "feel". One one hand, we had firebreathers like John Edwards talking about fighting the special interests and corporations. But Obama was talking about "working together" with Republicans and the corporate interests, and true to his word, that is exactly what he's done. He didn't endorse true Universal gov't provided healthcare like Edwards or Hillary or Kucinich did. He advocated going into Afghanistan even while talking about getting out of Iraq. He ENDORSED Bush's No Child Left Behind by saying its problem was simply funding, while Edwards, Hillary, and even Alex Richardson knew it had to be scrapped. He ENDORSED and has kept the Office of Faith Based Initiatives which any constitutional scholar would say is not legal.

As a man, I like Obama. As a candidate, I felt we progressives and liberals bought into his image and not his substance, where people ascribed what the wanted to see, not what he was saying. Now, we've probably lost the opportunity of a generation that Bush's failed disaster of a presidency created. A chance for real single payer healthcare, a real chance to address our trade issues and jobs, a real dialogue on education with PROFESSIONAL educators, not a failed basketball player who never taught a day in his life.

Bottom line: Obama was the worst choice for a golden opportunity simply because he was just another middle-of-the-road democrat who was also an appeaser to the corporate and conservative world. He said all the right things, but unfortunately didn't seem to grasp the depths of America's needs.

[izquierdista]

5. President Al Franken

I just wanted to write that.

[Union Yes]

8. +1

[Union Yes]

9. At this point I'd support almost any Dem that primaries against Obama.

knr

[jtrockville]

12. Is there precedent for that? Has a 1st term prez ever been "primaried"?

[Union Yes]

18. Teddy Kennedy vs Jimmy Carter in 1980

[SIMPLYB1980]

25. What did that get you?

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

29. A riot?

[TexasObserver]

6. Recommend

[Purveyor]

7. What you said and thank you for sharing it. K&R eom

[kayakjohnny]

10. Nice post.

Thanks.

[howard112211]

11. I feel similar. I was excited about him. Now I'm just confused.

Much of him has been a disappointment.

[gimama]

13. You sum it up for me, too

And I'd love Russ Feingold as our Pres.!

[bluethruandthru]

14. Me neither.

I really, truly believed that he would be a much stronger leader. Big disappointment so far. I'm still hoping he'll get better.

[janx]

15. kick

[nomaco-10]

16. Here's the thing that really galls me more than anything....

he's spent most of the last year trying to convince rush limbaugh, sean hannity and fux news that he is one of them too.

An ego I didn't know existed within him, made him think that he could actually unite the fux news lemmings with US, and we'd all be fine with it.

Are you kidding me?

[timeforpeace]

17. He became who he always was. We just didn't know who he was.

[branders seine]

20. What if "finishing off" is what this country needs to spark real change?

I hate that view, but what is left?

[Hippo_Tron]

21. The thing is that real change generally doesn't come from electoral politics

It comes from social movements that force the people in power to make changes. Electoral politics is largely about picking somebody who is competent and capable of leading and that's all I was really expecting from Obama. In the change realm I do think it is a good thing that his campaign got young people more interested in politics than they have been. But I don't expect to see the benefits from that immediately.

[Oak2004]

23. *That* is the genuinely useful lesson I think/hope will be learned here

There is no leader who will come from above and solve our problems. The leaders who will make change happen are *us*, you and me and everyone reading this who is not a political hack, and as we generate pressure, we'll see politicians swing to our side. It is never the other way around.

Pressure means that the really important elections are the primaries, and that means actively seeking out/supporting progressive primary ooponents -- or even volunteering yourself to be that opponent (even in --perhaps especially in-- situations where the establishment candidate is "certain" to win). By the general, there's not much left to decide. And the only way the party will ever listen to us -- any party, by the way: do you think the Greens, if they ever got their act together and actually gained control of Congress and the White House, wouldn't start selling their souls to the highest bidder *if we allowed them to*? -- is if our support is conditional. If you can't quite tell the policy differences between the D and the R, then there's no reason to automatically send in your donations, knock on doors, or even vote for that D.

Finally I hope a lesson learned here is to stop treating Washington like Hollywood. The folks in power know how to create stardom for their chosen few. They know how to put them in the right places, get them the right interviews, feed them the right bills to sponsor, and their publicists know how to project the right image. When it comes to Hollywood, unless you're in the business, it doesn't matter if the well crafted star of the moment isn't really the most talented available actor. It's all make-believe. But when you see a politician who seems larger than life, who seems to be in all the right places, talking to all the right people, is on the covers of all the right magazines, who seems genuinely likeable, STOP. Don't buy it. Almost certainly, the polished political stars stand for everything you don't really want. And unlike Hollywood, this is not make-believe. This is life and death.

What we need is to rebuild the Obama campaign network, but this time, to campaign for *us*.

[Hippo_Tron]

24. I agree except I don't mean to minimize the importance of elections

Elections are extremely important in terms of keeping incompetent and crazy people out of office. No Al Gore was not a super progressive candidate by any means in 2000. But this country would be in much better shape if he had been President for 8 years over fucktard cowboy. Yes if you're a genuine leftist and generally anti-capitalism then Ralph Nader's sentiment that there's no difference between Gore and Bush certainly makes a whole lot of sense in terms of ideology. But that doesn't make it true. There was a major difference between Al Gore and George Bush in that one was qualified to be President and the other wasn't qualified to be dog catcher.

Politics isn't all always about change and bold new ideas. Sometimes it's about simply making sure the country doesn't completely go to shit. And I think that the leaders of all of the left wing parties in 1933 Weimar Germany would back me up on that one.

[Oak2004]

33. Actually even the "genuine leftists" would agree with you there

The CPUSA after all endorsed Obama.

It's possible to discern a difference between the chimperator and Al Gore. Between Heath Schuler and whatever R shows up? Not so much. Between Evan Bayh and whatever mistake the Republican Party runs? Probably, yes: the R might be marginally more liberal.

[autorank]

22. Say "the president" or "the White House" k*r

I think that politics needs to be depersonalized entirely.

Obama is a find person and that has NOTHING to do with his policies at this point.

Separate the man from the policies and that's a huge step.

[flyarm]

26. Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill

Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/11/harry-reid-slips-lifetime-limit-into-senate-bill/

Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill
By: Jane Hamsher Friday December 11, 2009 8:34 am

When President Obama gave his speech on health care on September 10, he promised that there would be no limit on lifetime benefits under the health care bill:

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.

Harry Reid didn’t agree evidently. Reid, who is solely responsible for crafting the bill that he introduced in the Senate, decided that there should be a limit on lifetime benefits. So when people get sick and have huge bills for things like biologic drugs that cost $50,000 or $100,000 a year, whose bills could become “unreasonable” because Congress is granting drug manufacturers “indefinite monopolies” (per Henry Waxman) that prevent generics from coming to market to compete with them, Harry Reid thinks they should eventually be cut off:

A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

[LWolf]

27. I'd support that ticket, too.

I'd love a Kucinich/Boxer ticket.

Or a Sanders ticket.

I'd be happy with any left-of-center ticket.

[LWolf]

28. I say the same thing I always have.

He's a center-right politician and does not represent me on issues. I don't want him in the WH.

[Blue_In_AK]

31. This is one of those times

when I wish my pre-election intuitions had been mistaken. I had my doubts, as well, whether a President Obama could or would tackle real reforms, but so many people here were so enthusiastic, I thought maybe I was being overly cynical.

[LWolf]

32. I think after 8 years of GWB,

the prospect of being rid of him was such a rush, and the idea that a DEMOCRAT would support or continue any of his policies seemed so ludicrous, that it was really easy for people to get caught up in the euphoria of our hopes for change.

It may be that I was already a cynic when it comes to partisan politics that made it so clear to me.

[Blue_In_AK]

30. I love your fantasy presidential ticket,

Feingold/Boxer, Boxer/Feingold, either way would be a dream come true.