Maybe we can build a bridge here...

[walldude]

I doubt it but I'll try.

I think, and this is just my position from my perspective, but I have a funny feeling the divide among DU between Obama supporters and Obama detractors (you're not sheep and we're not haters) falls along the lines of how well you are doing.

I just came from the grocery store. As I stood at the pharmacy counter(we have no insurance) and sifted through the pills and the Insulin and the Glucose test strips, I had to figure out just which medications were "necessary", and which were "frivolous" because there was no way I could afford them all and keep us all fed this week. I decided painkillers for my wife were out of the question, she'll have to deal with aspirin. All the other meds were necessary. Hell it's just a broken leg and debilitating arthritis, she'll live. :shrug:

Now the debate on whether Obama has been doing a good job has been raging and got even worse after last nights debacle. Personally I think Obama has been doing a crappy job. Why? Well, I'm worse off than I have ever been in my life. This is not the first time I've had to choose between meds and food in the last 2 years.
This is not a "pony" I'm looking for, and I'm not looking for pity, I'd just like to spend an evening with my wife without having to watch her suffer. The callousness with which one would call this situation "a pony" on what is supposed to be a liberal blog astonishes me.

Now I am just as at fault as anyone else. It's certainly hard for me to relate to a person who has the food and meds they need and has money in the bank, and doesn't spend the better part of the week robbing Peter to pay Paul just so they can stay afloat. So I can see how it would be hard for a person who is doing well to be empathetic to what my family is going through.

I'm sure if I was doing well and had plenty of money and all my equal rights were in place I might have a different opinion of the Obama administration.
But the fact is I'm not. And there are millions like me.

I have 3 kids in public school and my sister and mother are both teachers, my Dad was a Teamster and I was a IATSE member for about 5 years. So I have a stake in this fight beyond the day to day issues. I come from a working family, we work for our money, and we do the best we can.

So you see, I'm not a "HATER" and I'm not a jerk, and I'm not blind. I'm just a hard working guy who is tired of watching his family suffer. If that to you is a pony well then we have nothing to talk about.

But.. if you can scrape up a modicum of empathy and understand that my complaints are actually justified even thought they may not seem that way to you, then we just might be able to move forward together.

Sorry for the longish rant.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I am doing about the same, welll except having to worry

if hubby will still have a job in six months. We have been playing this dance for the last two years.

SO yes I get it... no the division is not about how well people are doing. it is ideological between the conservadems, who ARE center right and have bought the DLC pap, and the Liberal part of the party, who has suffered through those policies.

Good luck building that bridge, but I cannot see it.

Oh and it goes without saying...

SOLIDARITY!

[eleny]

2. Kick and I tried to rec

[dawg]

3. I've crossed over into being an Obama detractor ...

and I'm financially comfortable (for the time being, anyway).

I'm a pragmatist, and for the longest time I defended the President because lots of the things we would like him to do are just simply not politically possible right now.

But he has sytematically surrendered the initiative, the language, and the mindset, to the conservatives. What we want will *never* be politically possible with leaders and spokesmen like Barack Obama setting the agenda. And I deeply regret feeling that way, because I had high hopes for his Presidency.

[northoftheborder]

5. "But he has sytematically surrendered the initiative, the language, and the mindset,

to the conservatives." Very well said. I agree. Perhaps it has been and will be, impossible for Obama to accomplish the things he promised and we expected, BUT, he has not even commanded the dialogue.

[William769]

4. I for one would love to see that bridge.

Most here will call me a Obama detractor.

Heres my brick for your bridge. President Obamas stance on bullying is spot on.

Who else will join me (either side)?

[orwell]

6. There are some things that I support...

...with this President and some things that make me mad.

But as we are seeing now, the alternative is far, far worse.

Before the last presidential election, I told everyone who would listen that whomever won the presidency would have a daunting challenge to win re-election. The problems at that time were so massive and structural that the task of just keeping this country out of a decade long depression would ensure that nobody would be happy. I think the record has largely borne this out.

You are not going to turn the Titanic around on a dime. You are lucky if you can just change course enough to miss the iceberg. I believe that the President has at the very least done that.

Left leaning policies historically flourish in good economic times. In bad economic times, fear drives people to become polarized, willing to accept extreme right wing policies in exchange for "safety." That is what we are seeing now.

I don't want to be callous but there are many, not just the rich, who are doing better than they were 2 years ago. The only way we are going to beat back the terrific global onslaught by the RW forces worldwide is to organize better, make more informed choices with our wallets, and network at the personal and community level to help educate our fellow citizens about the full on war against the world's middle and lower classes.

We have been collectively asleep, happy to sit in front of our screens and practice virtual political activism. What we are seeing in WI right now is real activism, the type many here laughed at the Tea Party for practicing. Guess what. 2010 proved that boots in the street beats taps on the keyboard every time.

How do we expect to beat back the oil cons when we insist on driving an SUV?

How do we expect to beat back the pharma cons when we accept $100 per pill medications when substitutes are available at 1/50 the price?

How do we expect to beat back the banking cons when we insist on the convenience of a global powerhouse like Citigroup instead of our local credit union?


How do we expect strong union manufacturing when we rush to Target and WalMart to fulfill our latest low cost, media driven consumer fantasies?

This has little to do with who is in the WH and much more to do with who we have become as a people. The deadly sign to me was when the Patriot Act was passed and my congresswoman was the only person who voted against it. Another was when we collectively allowed
the DimSon to declare and prosecute a war against a country that didn't attack us. Over and over again we have all refused to put our bodies on the line when it counted.

And now it's Obama's fault?

I stood on a street corner the night we began bombing Iraq and held up a sign decrying the coming genocide. I live in a small rural area in Northern California. I was given the finger, yelled at, and generally crapped upon. I told everyone I know that we had just crossed over the Rubicon. I lost a lot of friends that night.

I would do it again in a heartbeat.

It is not Obama. He is navigating the most treacherous climate in modern human history. We need to have his back.

There is a difference between disagreeing with a particular policy and actually working against his presidency. That is where I have issue with some of the anti-Obama crowd here. I left DU for a long time because I couldn't take the vitriol. Some of the antis haven't forgotten the bruising primary battle. Some are impatient for the structural changes that were promised. Some let a particularly important issue cloud their judgments about everything else. Some are politically naive. Some no doubt are agents provocateurs. Some just like to be anti. Some are committed life long democrats who are extremely disappointed in his presidency. Well guess what, while we work against each other, there are forces at work that would just as soon see us rolling under the wheels of a tank as spit on us. They now have the upper hand due in no small measure to their adherence to Reagan's 11th commandment. They also have a compliant corporate media and judicial system.

See the forest AND the trees. If we can stick together things will ever so slowly get better. I understand that it is very difficult to see when the walls are closing in around you but things have gotten better than they were two short years ago.

I wish you well in your struggles. I want everyone to do well, my friends, my enemies, and those whom I will never meet. We will either solve these massive challenges or history will remember us as the generation who squandered the greatest gift of all, life on this beautiful blue planet.

Good luck.

[Angry Dragon]

7. K&R