How to blow a huge landslide election mandate...

[RedCloud]

1. Have some rat from the opposite side swear you in. Forget about all those of the faith who do not believe that war is holy or thou shalt kill or are not homophobes. Just stick with the one most likely to piss off your base.

2. Never stick in your opponents face about the will of the people or how your mandate was much larger than that of the previous person. And you didn't have to cheat to get it. But don't expect them to not brag about the much smaller national turnout in 2010 and pretend it is even more enormous.

3. Draw up a cabinet to please your opponents like they never do when they are in power. Who cares if folks from your base could be qualified and need the pomp and circumstances of those high profile jobs? Just let it go. Ancient history, we're moving forward.

4. Allow all atrocities of the previous administration to go unpunished. FDR did not punish those business tycoons that wanted to overthrow him and install a fascist dictatorship during WWII. See, that's how THEY play ball. And FDR did not execute them! Imagine if he had. Why Prescott Bush would have been one of them and no Bushes in the White House. Or how Clinton did not go after the arms for hostages and charge Reagan and Bush with conspiring with the enemy. See how the Gingrich Congress respected him for that huge favor?

But then America is essentially a gullible land. An empire to be sure. But we must say "nation", and pretend Iraq is ours because when we are there we are "fighting for our country", WTH? Would you fight for an oil empire if it were called that? How about "cheap made in China dump land"?

Does Pastor Rick support that torture? Should any person seriously committed to the cloth support torture? Should we let our kids not learn a lesson that we must behave as good guys in order to stay as good guys?

5. Allow them to blab about how they want America to fail. Don't call them traitors lest their base uprise against them.

6. Let them pretend you were born in another country. Do not decry this madness lest the media rally intelligence versus nonsense. Just let it grow. What harm could it cause? And at the same time your once pseudo noble opponent is helping fuel that crowd of crazies. Yes the same one who was born in freaking Panama. Some may say "but it's US territory". Did the framers have that in mind or would they want someone from an area that is actually represented by all branches of government to be the President, not some make shift enclave?

7. Don't tell us ever that in Europe even conservatives support single payer health care, lest we start to analyze what is wrong with our conservatives and heaven forbid, start our own national talking points.

8. And when the Koch pollution moguls start a political movement and bus crazies across state lines with the intent to foment riots at Democrat only town hall meetings, do not call the FBI and start a new Chicago 8, then 7 trial (Crossing state lines with intent to riot was a federal charge back then considered a felony). That went so well for the antiwar movement, didn't it? But then laws should not apply to those "small" business billionaire brothers, should they?

9. And by all means let them call you a Nazi. See, if those family value people had family values they would look through Bush's family to check those family values and find that friend of Hitler, Prescott Bush, and his Jewish slave labor steel mill at Auschwitz, of all places. Then would come the most embarrassing question: If the media are so darn liberal how come we were not told this 24-7? So therefore they must paint you as the Nazi to soften the potentially devastating blow of that other disclosure.

10. So you can start to label them that party of the privileged few versus the party of the great many. They might hate that. You see, when they spout hatred, they fuel their base. Make them explain their unholy relationship with their base and they could go extinct. IOW go on the offensive! Stop being a master debater.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. a substantive list

unlike another one making its way through here.

[AndrewP]

2. +10000

[Segami]

5. +10001 n/t

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

[asdjrocky]

4. Zero guts.

I swear, I've come down to two choices, our President is gutless and clueless or it's all planned and by design. I don't know which choice is worse.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Bullshit, Rocky.

You know which one is worse.

And you know which one is true.

Suffice it to be said that Barack Obama is not a clueless person.

[asdjrocky]

11. LOL. Yeah, perhaps it's time to take off the rose colored glasses.

You are absolutely right my friend. Someone once told me our President was a Constitutional Scholar.

[elocs]

16. Meaning, "it's all planned and by design". How sad. It might be easier to take if he was clueless.

[Lorien]

21. +1.

:-(

[Speck Tater]

6. K&R. nt

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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

[T Wolf]

8. You've done a good job listing the particulars - or at least, some of them.

The wars and financial capitulation to Wall Street & the Banksters and abandonment of heath CARE reform are just three of the "big issues" that he has done his worst on.

BUT, perhaps the most glaring "offense" was showing himself to not have the courage of (the) convictions (we thought he had). In every negotiation, he began at a point far less than what should have been reached for, and then retreated as far toward the right as he could get away with.

It has been said and is true to a great extent - people recognize, understand, and respect trying to achieve goals. We do know what this administration was up against in the traitors across the aisle and on our own side. We do understand the process of passing laws. We did not expect miracles (or ponies). We did expect effort and a progressive direction. What we do not have endless patience for is giving up on the goal (IF that was ever really the goal) before you even try for that seems to show that his direction is not toward our goals.

That Obama, after meeting with the pukes, came out and the first words out of his mouth were that he regretted being too partisan in his first two years spoke volumes. He now intends to fix that by cooperating even more with them?!?

[Arkana]

10. Let's see.

1. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court swears in the President, regardless of party affiliation. You don't like it? Tough.

2. Yes, good idea--let's be belligerent assholes like the other guys! After all, we complained about that so much when they were in power that the only logical course of action is to reciprocate!

3. This is not even remotely true.

4. Obama had a choice when he entered office: either start a massive probe of the previous administration, thus sacrificing any chance he had at governing and actually making things better (and probably not catching any of the slimy fuckers in the first place), or govern. He chose to govern. That's what a President does.

5. "Allow them to blab"? It's called the First Amendment. They have a right to be stupid.

6. "Let them pretend"? See previous answer. He's given them his birth certificate and they've decided it's a fake. Nothing will please them or shut them up, so the only solution is to ignore it.

7. United States != Europe, unfortunately.

8. Yes, let's use the FBI to investigate our political enemies! There's no WAY this could go wrong!

9. FIRST. FUCKING. AMENDMENT.

10. Needlessly antagonizing them is usually for your subordinates and the talking heads on your side of the political spectrum (that is, when they're not getting their rocks off calling Obama a corpofascist sellout bankster). It's the President's job to remain calm in the face of complete chaos.

[jobendorfer]

13. The President can be sworn in by any Judge

In the aftermath of the Kennedy assasination, white house aides scrambled around Dallas to find any judge they could to swear in Johnson. The oath was administered by a female county judge, whose name I can't recall, on air force one, a couple of hours after Kennedy died.

It's "traditional" for the Chief Justice to swear in Presidents, but it is by no means *required*.

J.

[Arkana]

14. And it would have been a completely unnecessary distraction

for Obama to insist on a different judge at his inauguration. Obviously, exceptions are made if the swearing-in is done on the fly (see: Coolidge, LBJ), but at inauguration the Chief Justice has sworn in every President who's had a formal inauguration. He had no reason to believe Roberts had any malicious intent, and I honestly don't think he did when he bungled the oath. There are a million reasons to think Roberts is a subhuman piece of trash, but bungling the oath at inauguration was an unfortunate mistake and nothing more.

[JamesA1102]

25. Great list

You refuted the OP well.

In regard to number 2, remember when the President reportedly said to Eric Cantor in a meeting about the stimulus, "I won"; how the whole MSM (including the supposedly liberal Huffington Post) was in an uproar at how arrogant he was being.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Rectangle]

15. 11. Tell them (the RW Teabaggers) You've been wrong this whole time, and they

have been right.
Then, bow down and cooperate fully with whatever they command you to do,
(i.e tax cuts for billionaires, cutting unemployment, gutting S.S. & medicare.)
Then, tell the very people who stood up for you, and got you elected that they are
"Greedy and whiney" (via Alan simpson/Rahm Emmanuel)

[bvar22]

17. A Popular Mandate unused...

...is a Mandate Wasted.
Obama had An Army at his disposal.
His Army rotted in the field....unused.
.
.
.
I cry for what could have been.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[chimpymustgo]

20. And he's massacring his ARMY.

[JamesA1102]

26. No the army went home on Jan. 21st

and then stayed home complaining while the tea party took over and defined the debate.

[bvar22]

27. No.

The "Leadership" left the field.
An army without leadership isn't an army.
Had Obama called us to STAND WITH HIM, Millions would have answered the call, myself included.
Armies do NOT direct themselves.

To understand what a Popular Mandate WITH a LEADER can do,
see:Ukraine, Orange Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution
The "LEADER" stood WITH the movement.

Instead, we got:
"Chill Out. I got this."
"Sit Down and Shut Up...Its ONLY been (fill in the blank)______ months years".


"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

[JamesA1102]

29. I didn't see anyone counter-protesting the tea party

You're response proves what I've been saying. The left went home and wanted the President to do all the work.

[AnArmyVeteran]

18. Great OP, Obama's not clueless, he is a coward.

If he's not clueless, he is a coward.

I know he's intelligent. But he has absolutely zero spine. He hasn't fought one time for the American people, not once. He's ran, he's hid, he's compromised, he's caved and he sold out. But he has not been an advocate for the people who put him in office. He betrayed million of people and those people, including myself, will NOT vote for him or support him ever again. I made a huge mistake by trusting him. But he lied to me and millions of others.

I would rather have seen McCain and Palin in office and have congress controlled by republicans. At least then the country would collapse even to worse depths and perhaps even the dimwitted right wingers would begin to wake up and realize they were being had by the republican party.

Obama is no longer my president...

I will not waste another second believing he will do anything of substance for the American people. I have no idea what his agenda is but it's certainly not one to work for the common man. He's sold out. The only question is when did he sell out, years ago, or while he's been president.

[Kablooie]

19. What would Hillary have done? I'm really beginning to wonder.

[Lorien]

22. It doesn't matter. All that matters is if we can turn things around

but to do that we need to turn Obama around, and I don't know if that's possible. Worth a try, though.

[Kablooie]

24. Of course, it doesn't matter and there's no way to reasonably speculate.

Still, I wonder.

[AnArmyVeteran]

23. I wish I could rec your post more than once!

[JackRiddler]

28. Bail out the banks whom everyone hates for creating the economic disaster.

Appoint the advisers who started the disaster as your economic chiefs.

Keep the wars going. Expand to new theaters. Use 9/11 as your excuse.

Allow ADM, Monsanto and Walmart to write food and trade policy. Take them along to India.

In the end, don't close Gitmo. Assert authority to kill US citizens on sight if they're on the bad list.

Pressure other nations to avoid prosecuting criminals of the prior government.

Etc., etc.

[Little Star]

30. Good Op RedCloud. k&r

[somone]

31. Great list