President Obama is (you classify him).....

[steve2470]

Some ratings provided or provide your own, please.

[Newsjock]

1. ... trying too hard to be liked by everybody

That's not the job of a president; it's the job of a ... well ... we can't say that here.

[Jack Sprat]

11. self deleted

[Old Codger]

17. He is

A people pleaser, trying to please everyone at the same time and therefor pleasing no one... (and apparently a slow learner)

[craigmatic]

2. He's middle of the road which is why he gets critcized from both left and right.

[Canuckistanian]

10. And what is "middle of the road" these days?

The GOP platform of 1994? That particular "goalpost" of "centrism" has been shifting ever rightward since Reagan's time.

Pretty soon, Bush's policies will be considered "middle of the road"

[Harry Monroe]

18. Stand in the middle of the road, and you get run over

[craigmatic]

25. You're right but on the bright side it can't go on like this forever eventually the repubs will have

a 1968 style crack up moment.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. A centrists, like most American Presidents. n/t

[Toucano]

4. Weak as water.

It doesn't matter what his ideology is.

He's not been especially effective.

[Bullet1987]

5. A corporatist

[Scurrilous]

6. No Howard Dean.

:scared:

[Radical Activist]

23. True. He's more liberal.

[yourout]

7. Whimpy.

[name not needed]

8. your typical spineless "don't rock the boat" Democrat.

[NorthCarolina]

9. Who the heck selected "Liberal/Progressive"??

:rofl:

Shouldn't you have included the sarcasm tag after that choice in the poll?

[MannyGoldstein]

12. He's being the best Barack he can be

And we need to be more supportive. It's very hard work.

[leftstreet]

13. The CEO of the Hedge Fund Democrats

:hide:

[Jack Sprat]

14. Puppet of the plutocracy. Corporatist.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[steve2470]

22. joking ? nt

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BzaDem]

29. He is (even though he doesn't realize it). n/t

[Radical Activist]

37. No, he isn't.

This guy will believe anything. He even bought and started spreading a cockamamie story about me being some guy named Chad who isn't even a real person.

[Harry Monroe]

16. A spineless sellout

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Center to center right like most modern presidents

The last center left was LBJ, and some of us dared say that in 2008.

[AsahinaKimi]

20. Has lost his Superpowers....

[Joe Fields]

21. Spineless.

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. Centre-right.

If the political spectrum were represented by half of a clock face, he'd be at about 1 o'clock. (The Republicans are still mostly at 3 o'clock, though. And the Democratic Party as a whole seems to range from about 12 to 2.)

[Morning Dew]

26. He was "the most liberal Senator in Congress", or so we were told...

by the 'pukes. He took the title from John Kerry.

Anyway, I don't think he's particularly Liberal or Progressive or even Centrist.

I have to put my down for the President as Conservative.

[DefenseLawyer]

27. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace n/t

[krabigirl]

30. A centrist, who leans neoconservative.

[HughBeaumont]

31. Someone who I cannot hate. I hate the goddamned GAME and the keepers.

The ugly, hairy, wrinkly, grey-haired, old-balls nudity of the plutocracy is now destroying eyes all over the country. Some (read: Republican voters) are just too dog-dick stupid to see it.

There's no camp for me. I refuse to accept that Obama is the total shame-free, careless gatekeeper asshole motherfucker Bush II was. Admittedly, if he caves on the tax cuts for the rich, that's it. You're going to see a mass exodus from this site and this party. Yet, if he told it like it was . . . that "Yes, Virginia, this IS a plutocracy and we have to make loads of concessions on you, the little guy, to keep this charade going" . . . you'd like to think he'd get more support, but more than likely Americans would put in three more decades worth of presidents that make Reagan and Bewsh seem downright Kucinich-like.

I also think this country's voting base is phenomenally stupid and uneducated; from their "throw da bums out" method of voting to their jackoff dreamworld of lower & lower taxes, better everything, balanced budgets, ass-kickin' some Ay-rabs and a corporate daddy to tell them everything's gonna be all right . . . all at the same time. And I think that's why we keep getting plutocratic non-progressive presidents - a combination of barking up the wrong tree and living in a bullshit fantasyland.

It's absolutely amazing to me that the rich and corporations have become the new Heroes of this nation while unions and people who want more rights and a better life for all people are now this country's enemy.

Fucking someone else to get ahead and shitting on the little guy isn't anything to strive for - that's called being a fucking asshole. And right now, the fucking assholes of this nation run every damned thing - the government, the churches, the corporations, the military, entertainment, news, media, resources, etc.

I'm pissed off at THOSE fuckers and I want them to start paying some goddamned PIPERS.

[LawnLover]

32. A pragmatist. nt.

[dkf]

41. Yup.

Also non-ideological

[Radical Activist]

33. In order to believe Obama is a conservative...

You have to believe that conservatives want more government regulation over bankers, including a consumer financial protection agency headed by Elizabeth Warren.
You have to believe conservatives want more regulation over mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and most other industries.
You have to believe conservatives want cap-and-trade, EPA regulation of CO2, a green job stimulus bill, and to reduce oil consumption.
You have to believe conservatives want civil unions and repeal of DADT.
You have to believe that conservatives wanted the Health Care Bill that Republicans all voted against.

In other words, you have to believe a long list of insanely ridiculous assumptions.

[saras]

34. Not at all

You just have to believe that conservatives want a rubber-stamp regulatory agency to get rid of the bankers that other bankers don't like, and you sacrifice a couple of centrists by placing them in the middle of the wolfpack and not covering their backs.

Likewise most of that 'more regulation' stuff. Liberals want criminal trials, with long jail sentences. Conservatives want the industries to have regulatory agencies controlled by the industries. Wacko right-wing extremists want no regulation.

And yes, conservatives want cap-and-trade. It means that money, not health or ecological concerns, gets to make the decisions. Likewise conservatives want us to deal with global warming, just not in a way that impacts their right to make a profit off of it. Right-wing nutjobs want denial science just like they want creation science.

The health care bill is pretty much exactly the one that conservatives wanted. How else but fake liberalism could they have gotten a law compelling the less well-to-do to pay exorbitant amounts of money for crappy for-profit health care they often voluntarily forego for alternatives, even if they can afford it.

When you're spiraling down the toilet to the right, every way out looks like it's to the left of where you are. And if you look to the right and down, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Insanely ridiculous, or just somewhat different than your own personal beliefs?

Personally I believe that belief is a profoundly dangerous activity, wholly inimicable to electoral politics and best reserved for one's personal, private relationship with creation.

[Radical Activist]

35. So you believe bills that nearly every Republican voted against

are things that conservatives secretly want. Yeah...that makes perfect sense. :crazy:

[Edweird]

36. The individual mandate has always been far right policy.

The only reason there was any resistance is because it was being advocated by a "Dem". It has a long history going back to at least Nixon and was advocated by Newt Gingrich as recently as June 2008. So the short answer is "yes" they will vote against policy they actually endorse if it is introduced by Obama.
Which, by the way, destroys any hope Obama may have of trying to hang his RW policies on the r's. They are opposing him on everything.

[Radical Activist]

38. You missed the rest of the list.

I know people are obsessed over losing the public option fight in the Senate, but there's a long list of progressive legislation that Republicans and corporate lobbyists fought against tooth and nail. So were even the lobbyists part of a big act? Just pretending for show? :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

[Edweird]

39. "progressive"... yeah, right. He's been pro-corporate all the way - and that isn't 'progressive'.

Of course, there's no way at this point that you aren't aware of that. Even Howard Dean is pointing out how Obama has lost the left - which is saying a lot considering how much of a 'team player' Dean is. Whatever. It's 3am here and I need to go to bed.

[Radical Activist]

40. Passing regulations that corpoations oppose is pro-corporate.

What else is backward in Bizarro world?

[inna]

42. excellent post! you should post more often!

:hi:

(I almost "welcomed you to DU" at first, but then I realized that you've actually been on DU for years...)


But seriously, great post. Hope to see you around more often. :)

[steve2470]

43. I think he's a centrist who was perceived to be a liberal during the campaign

As one poster stated, both the non-partisan left and non-partisan right are unhappy with him. A center-right position on health care would have been to do nothing, I think. Preserve the status quo and denounce any efforts to change it as "communist", socialist, statist, etc. I think there's a good argument to be made that he's not a progressive, but I really don't think he's a conservative either. He's trying to make changes that the non-partisan right is NOT happy with and that we on the left are not satisfied with.

My "quick and dirty understanding" of the terms, please feel free to correct me:

Progressivism (left)= True power to the people, level playing field, equal justice for all, social needs are the business of government, minimal national defense

Centrism = very mild form of progressivism that "true progressives" are unhappy with and impatient with

Conservatism (center-right) = no changes to the status quo at all, complete individual responsibility for social problems

Regressive conservatism (far right) = roll government back to 1789 status except for the current military status, interpret Constitution as Justice Scalia does, all social problems are the failings of individuals and not the concern of the government at all.