The proudest day in my voting life, was the day I voted for Pres. Obama

[Peacetrain]

And it still is. That has not changed.

When I think of the things he has been able to accomplish, in a very very negative political cycle with the add on of real time response it amazes me. We can now pick a position on an initial story within seconds and tell it to the world. This in and of itself will cement whatever position we took, because that is just human nature.

This is NOT knocking the Internets.. Far from it. If we had this type of access of immediate exposure, I truly believe Adolph Hitler would never have been allowed to bring about the terror of the 3rd Reich. He would have been stopped.

But again everything has two sides, and the other side of that is the cementing of positions on half information or incorrect information.

The Tea Party people who did not realize how they were being manipulated by people like the Koch's will take their positions to the grave, even when they see the facts that dispute it.

Because there is so much more left to be done.. does not for diminish how much that vote meant to me, and still does.. and how much I appreciate the progress we have made.

It is easy to be in the parade when the sun is shining, it is tough to keep walking when the storm clouds roll in.

[villager]

1. For many of us, of course, it's been the days that followed, of which we are less "proud..."

n/t

[shraby]

2. I for one disagree with the "we are less proud of the days that

followed". I think he's done a pretty good job considering the total opposition he's had on everything he's tried to do from the republicans.
He has a pretty impressive list of accomplishments in spite of it.

[villager]

5. Well, with the sign offs on torture and corporate bailouts, for starters

...the ok'ing to increased spying, and 'roided up Executive Branch power, I would disagree with your disagreement, natch.

But I guess that's why it's a "discussion" board! ;-)

[Buzz Clik]

3. +1! Well written. You express feelings that are often overshadowed here at DU.

[Peacetrain]

8. Thank You.. I just answered that question for a young person

who was asking questions for a paper he is writing. Made me stop and think, and I thought I would share it here.

[applegrove]

44. +1

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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

[sharp_stick]

6. Maybe to you

the fact that he's African American means something.

I'm more happy with the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act, the repeal of DADT, the saving of GM, the jobs created by the stimulus bill, a major overhaul to the health care system and a few other things.

Black or not, that's a pretty decent little legacy for just over two years in office.

[Peacetrain]

9. That had nothing to do with anything.

And I resent the implications of that comment.

Edit to add.. you do not vote for a person because of gender, color, religion, culture etc. President Obama was the first and I mean very first Presidential Candidate that I have voted for that I felt a real kinship with in how he undertakes his positions. I do not relate well to people who react instead of enact.

[William769]

7. I have a slightly different take.

But I will say this I a looking forward to the next Democratic President.

[jenmito]

16. You mean a REAL Democrat like...

HILLARY? :rofl:

[William769]

37. President Obama seems to be learning well from her!

:rofl:

[jenmito]

39. Then you should be VERY happy!

:rofl:

[madamesilverspurs]

10. Thank you.

Very well said!


-

[Peacetrain]

11. Your welcome.

I love the solidarity sign. All hands on deck here in the mid west. People are taking a stand.

[Jazz Ambassador]

12. Couldn't agree more...for now

I've voted in 7 presidential elections, and 2008 was the first election in which I could pull the lever for the Democrat without holding my nose. (It was also the first time the candidate I had voted for in the primary had gone on to win the nomination.) My feelings about Obama are mixed but, even after 24 months that have included as many failures and betrayals as triumphs, I'm still prouder of my vote for him than for any of the DLC good ol' boys (Clinton, Gore) or feckless liberals (Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry) the party has thrown up (in both senses) in my adult lifetime. But if he doesn't start leading soon -- not just governing, but leading -- I'll be holding my nose again in 2016, just as I did when I cast my first vote in 1980 when that other Dem prez who couldn't lead for squat was up for re-election.

[politicasista]

21. Wow, Gore is "DLC," Kerry is "feckless" and Obama is perfect.!

:rofl:

[Jazz Ambassador]

27. Yup

1) Al Gore was one of the founding members of the DLC, and was the DLC-backed candidate for president when he ran in 1988's crowded field.

2) Kerry was for the war before he was against it, had the same elitist background (and shabby grades) as Bush, was regarded by his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle before 2004 as a lightweight, and ran one of the worst political campaigns I've ever seen. Feckless doesn't begin to cover it.

3) Saying that Obama is the best of a mixed bunch is a far cry from saying he's perfect. Reading is fundamental.

[politicasista]

31. LOL!

:rofl:

At least Gore isn't a "DLC" environmentalist and Kerry isn't a "feckless" Senator oh Oops, forgot, he ain't liberal enough for you and some. :sarcasm:

Obama is getting things done. Something is better than nothing rather than all or nothing.

[tanyev]

23. Don't know who you'll be "holding your nose" for in 2016, but it won't be President Obama.

[zalinda]

13. I am glad you think he has made progress

but, down here across the tracks, into the poor section, nothing has changed. In fact, it has gotten worse. There are more of us. More are going hungry, more are becoming homeless and more are losing what little they had in life. As Obama's economic policy trickles down to us at the bottom, our safety nets are not only being threatened, but are being decreased. We are constantly in hyper stress mode, wondering if we will make it, month by month.

I constantly go back to a conversation I overheard in 2008, where 2 women were talking in K-Mart. They were discussing how life has become more difficult, when one woman said, "Don't worry, when Obama is elected, he will help us." There was great hope in her voice. I walked away, more bitterly hateful of Obama, as I knew, nothing would change, and those women who were depending on him to help them, would not only be disappointed, but lose all hope of ever seeing 'the sun shining'. THAT hope, which Obama was promising, was the biggest and most disgusting political bait and switch, I've ever experienced in my 62 years. With people so depressed and so burdened with debt and unemployment, to offer hope, knowing that it was just a catch phrase, has to be the most craven thing I've ever seen a politician do, and I've seen a lot.

I'm not angry for myself, I knew he was a poser from the beginning. I'm angry for all those people who thought they were getting a savior, those who donated money and time, that they could ill afford, so that he would throw them a life line. Yes, they celebrated when he was elected, but they also stayed home in 2010, because in spite of everything they did and was promised, their lives have not changed for the better. Not only did the poll watchers see a decrease in voting, but for the first time in decades, they had to advertise to get someone to become a poll watcher.

Watch 'Lifting the Veil', it was enlightening in so many ways. But one of the things that they showed was Independents vote against anyone who is in office, when they are angry. It's the old 'throw the bums out' concept. If you don't think that a sane sounding Republican doesn't have a chance against Obama, then you are living in a dream world. Absolutely no one thought Bush junior had a chance against Gore or even Kerry. Oops, they were wrong. Unless something dramatically happens in the next year, I wouldn't bet the farm on Obama.

zalinda

[jaxx]

14. Me too Peacetrain.

I am proud of my vote for Barack Obama and I can't wait to do it again in 2012. For all the naysayers, he has brought change to this country and he has done it under fire from the right and the far left. Never, even Bush, have I seen both fringes try to destroy a president like they have President Obama.

I'm a liberal, always have been. I'm not new or DLC or anything but a liberal Democrat who isn't afraid to stand up for the President. To those who wish to turn the Democratic Party into a socialist/green/anti group, it won't happen. Undermining the President can sway votes to a degree, but it can't sway liberals from supporting what is good for the country....and President Obama is good in more ways that many choose to recognize.

[politicasista]

32. + 1 n/t

[frazzled]

15. I read an interesting review of a new book on Ghandi yesterday ...

And it made me realize that the criticisms Obama is receiving are no different than those that a number of great politicians and leaders have undergone, from Ghandi to King to Roosevelt -- from all sides of the political spectrum. He was not quick enough to create change, he did not accomplish everything he believed in, he compromised too much. Much the same could be said of MLK in his time, who received criticism from inside the civil rights movement that was very much the same. History will judge the overall arc of such leaders' actions, not the daily vicissitudes of the Internet.

Let me quote a bit from the review to illustrate:

The two decades Gandhi spent in South Africa are too often seen merely as prelude. Lelyveld treats them with the seriousness they deserve. “I believe implicitly that all men are born equal,” Gandhi once wrote in the midst of one of his campaigns against untouchability. “I have fought this doctrine of superiority in South Africa inch by inch.”

It actually took a long time for the Mahatma to turn that implicit belief into explicit action, Lelyveld reminds us. When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in Durban from Bombay in 1893, he was a natty 23-year-old British-trained lawyer, hired to help represent one wealthy Muslim Indian trader in a dreary civil suit against another, and primarily interested in matters of religion and diet, not politics: in an early advertisement he proclaimed himself an “Agent for the Esoteric Christian Union and the London Vegetarian Society.” But, Lelyveld writes, “South Africa . . . challenged him from the start to explain what he thought he was doing there in his brown skin.”

Initially, Gandhi was simply affronted that discriminatory laws and bigoted custom lumped educated well-to-do Indians like him with “coolies,” the impoverished mine, plantation and railroad workers who made up the bulk of the region’s immigrant Indian population. The nonviolent campaigns he waged to bring about equality between Indians and whites over the next 20 years would lead him — slowly and unsteadily, but inexorably — to advocate equality between Indian and Indian, first across caste and religious lines and then between rich and poor. (His identification with the aspirations of black people would not come until long after he had left Africa.)

As Lelyveld shows, the outcomes of Gandhi’s campaigns in South Africa were neither clear-cut nor long-lasting: after one, his own supporters beat him bloody because they thought he’d settled too quickly for a compromise with the government. But they taught him how to move the masses — not only middle-class Hindu and Muslim immigrants but the poorest of the poor as well. He had, as he himself said, found his “vocation in life.”

Soon after returning to India in 1915, Gandhi set forth what he called the “four pillars on which the structure of swaraj” — self-rule — “would ever rest”: an unshakable alliance between Hindus and Muslims; universal acceptance of the doctrine of nonviolence, as tenet, not tactic; the transformation of India’s approximately 650,000 villages by spinning and other self-sustaining handicrafts; and an end to the evil concept of untouchability. Lelyveld shrewdly examines Gandhi’s noble but doomed battles to achieve them all.

He made a host of enemies along the way — orthodox Hindus who believed him overly sympathetic to Muslims, Muslims who saw his calls for religious unity as part of a Hindu plot, Britons who thought him a charlatan, radical revolutionaries who believed him a reactionary. But no antagonist was more implacable than Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the brilliant, quick-tempered untouchable leader — still largely unknown in the West — who saw the Mahatma’s nonviolent efforts to eradicate untouchability as a sideshow at best. He even objected to the word Gandhi coined for his people — “Harijans” or “children of God” — as patronizing; he preferred “Dalits,” from the Sanskrit for “crushed,” “broken.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/book-review-great-soul-mahatma-gandhi-and-his-struggle-with-india-by-joseph-lelyveld.html?_r=1&ref=books

[Jazz Ambassador]

19. This comparison would seem more valid...

...if Obama were as clear as Gandhi, FDR, and MLK about what his overarching vision is, and how he plans on getting there. It's getting harder and harder to figure that out, and it's a problem.

[frazzled]

20. I don't think those other visions were at all clear at the time

So I think the comparison is apt. This is not to say that Obama is any MLK or Ghandi. I am certainly not making that claim. I am simply saying that progress, even among those leaders we deem the most transformational, was never clear, direct, or universally accepted, even among their own constituencies.

[jenmito]

17. Ditto! K&R.

[Chris_Texas]

18. I am proud of my corporatist President and the progress he has made...

...furthering the destruction of America's poor and middle class. No one has been a better ally of global industry, or worked harder to pillage what's left of our nation.

For me, as a guy without healthcare, a personal favorite was when Obama solved the problem by sticking a gun in my face and ordering me to buy insurance I cannot afford... or else! Prior to this 'offer I could not refuse' I had assumed that the reason I was too poor for healthcare was because I lacked money. Now I know better... the LAW doesn't force me to eat, or have a house, or even drive a car, in America those things are secondary so skip those meals fatty and buy insurance!

I am also thrilled at the way we ended the war in Iraq by simply saying that the war was over. It's the best of both worlds -- all the great benefits of war, all the spending and slaughter, money and body parts flying everywhere in an WARGASM of explodiness-- and none of the negative PR. Hopefully Obama will do the same with the war on poverty: just declare it to be finished, we won (go us!), and from this point forward the poor will now be referred to as, say, "middle class." Although now that I think about it perhaps they already did this.

Also, I am thrilled that we continue our torture programs, and have now expanded them to include Americans. Even better, forget that candy-ass Bush and his imprisonment without trial... Obama has gone the extra mile! Americans can now be executed without a trial so long as they are labeled properly. Also great is how GITMO was closed. This again is a demonstration of Obama's political prowess. GITMO is now closed to outside scrutiny. Case closed.

But perhaps my favorite Obama victory was when he surrendered control over the gulf to BP -- ordering the federal police and coast guard to arrest any of those pesky journalists who tried to find out what was going on. Good show big O!

Big O, not big oil. There's a difference. Okay, not really.

[CelticThunder]

22. Good for you. I am ashamed I fell for his campaign lies.

[tanyev]

24. Are you the dreamy one with the blond hair, or the tall bald guy?

[VoteProgressive]

25. I drank the koolaid. Believed 100% of what he said. Not next time. I will still vote for him.....

but not donate money or knock on doors like last time.

[kjackson227]

26. He can count on my vote in 2012...

I think he's doing a good job considering the circumstances.

[Beacool]

28. Well..............good for you.

That's all I'm going to say.

:eyes:

[laugle]

29. To quote

John Lennon: "the dream is over" time to wake-up!!

[Beacool]

48. The dream was precisely that, a dream.

It wasn't based on reality.

;)

[dennis4868]

30. and thank the good lord Obama....

is the president

www.whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com

[Keith Bee]

33. K&R

[Ramulux]

34. Voting for Obama is one of the most shameful moments of my life

I honestly wish I could forget about it. At least then I wouldn't feel slightly responsible for all the horrible shit he has done.

[quiller4]

45. I'm sorry you feel that way. I am stilled thrilled I had the opportunity

to vote for Obama. I campaigned for him in 2008 and plan to do the same in 2012. As far as I'm concerned he hasn't done any "horrible shit".

[Ramulux]

49. Right

So you dont have a problem with all the dead women and children who have been killed by drone attacks in Afghanistan with Obama's blessing?

The dude advocates for a failed war that has resulted in hundreds of dead civilians. I dont really see how that can be seen as anything other than "horrible shit".

[BlueMTexpat]

51. Believe me, it would have been more shameful to have voted for McCain.

That was the only feasible alternative.

Not voting would essentially have been voting for McCain.

[gracchorumspes]

35. I respect your sentiment.

However, the last part of your argument is not as convincing as the rest. Is it really responsible to keep the parade going in a lightning storm? Anyway, nice post.

[tallahasseedem]

36. I was beyond excited...

to cast my first vote for William Jefferson Clinton in 1996. Voting for the President in 2008 dwarfed that experience and I believe that casting my vote for him in 2012 will surpass it.

[Top Cat]

38. K&R... I was sooooooooo proud to vote for President Obama

Never in my lifetime did i think this was possible.

[jefferson_dem]

40. Thanks for the uplifiting post!

Fuck the haters.

[Phx_Dem]

41. Ditto. K&R!

[slay]

42. That's funny, cause I consider it one of the wost decisions I ever made

in regards to politics. They guy is a charlatan.

[TheKentuckian]

43. Must be nice to feel that way.

[Lorien]

47. Her portfolio must be doing VERY well

Those of us without a portfolio? not so much.

The fan club has kicked it into high gear lately. That must have been a longer talking points memo than usual.

[FrenchieCat]

46. Best decision ever was to support this man in 2008.....

and I'll be doing it again.

Thank goodness, I will be on the right side of history; the realistic side,
and since I can't be President (I wasn't born in the US, nor were my parents)....
I know for a fact I can't be 100% satisfied, but lordy, that was never supposed to be the point....
nor was the point to turn everything upside down....cause that is impossible....
except for if you know....we lived under a dictator like George Bush.

[Raine]

50. I was proud and happy at the time but in retrospect the worst vote

I've ever cast, I have never been so fooled and taken for a ride before. :-(

[BlueMTexpat]

52. I was proud to vote for Obama in 2008.

Given the only feasible alternative, it was the right thing to do. And I do not regret it for a moment.

Do I wish he were doing things differently? You betcha! Given the mixed and too often weak-spined bunch of Dems elected with him, however, he's done just about the best he could in the worst situations this country has known since the Great Depression and WWII.

I will proudly vote for him again in 2012, just as I was proud to vote for Carter in '76 and '80, Mondale in '84, Dukakis in '88 and Clinton in '92 and '96. I was exceptionally proud to vote for Al Gore in 2000, although I really had to hold my nose for Lieberman. I was also proud to vote for Kerry in 2004. Anyone who is not proud to have voted for any one of these fine men has certainly not understood the issues before our country at those times or even those facing our country now. Voting for the alternatives or not voting at all assisted with the significant and radical RW advances in this country, I am very sorry to say.

The proudest moment of my voting life was voting for George McGovern in 1972. It was the first Presidential election in which I was eligible to vote - for various reasons. After all, the alternative to McGovern was Tricky Dick.