How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

You say that there's middle ground between being one of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' and "no difference between the two parties.   Where's the middle ground on ending Bush's Obama's tax cuts when Obama offered to make those tax cuts permanent?

Where's the middle ground on air quality standards?  Making regulations for air quality standards, but not enforcing them?

Where's the middle ground for a woman's right to choose?  Keeping Roe vs. Wade legal, but making it impossible for her to actually obtain an abortion?

Where's the middle ground on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' care and SCHIP, etc.?   Emptying out the trust funds to pay bond holders and war profiteers so that there's nothing left for those who paid into into the trust funds?

Where's the middle ground on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen and Libya and Somalia?  Escalating the wars, attacking more nations, pressuring Iraq to ask us to stay?

Where's the middle ground on closing CIA black sites and ending torture and commiting crimes against humanity?  A media blackout, imprisoning journalists who report that it's ongoing, prosecuting whistleblowers?   Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program?  Ending habeas corpus and a president indefinitely detaining anyone he believes might be thinking about committing a crime, American citizens included, and killing them with no due process, no oversight?

There is no 'middle ground' on most issues.  We're 'middled-out'.   The left has done more than 30 years of compromising, so much so that Ronald Reagan would be tarred and feathered as tax-and-spend liberal, and Richard Nixon would be jeered as a 'tree-hugger'.  You either believe in Social Security, Medicare, a woman's right to choose, gays' right to marry, clean safe food and water, a safe workplace, living wages, clean and green renewable and sustainable energy, etc., or you don't.

Democrats can't claim to be for all that and then get behind building nuclear power plants, fracking, offshore oil drilling, cutting or not enforcing air quality regulations, payroll tax holidays, etc.
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How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

I'd rather have a DEMOCRATIC president.  And a DEMOCRATIC House and Senate.  But I'm not going to get that with Obama and a DLC-controlled Democratic Party, or until Obama's 'most ardent fans' get a clue and stop selling this 'lesser of two evils' garbage.  

For more than 3 decades all that people like you have had to offer is a slow slide to the right.  No fight, no strategic maneuvering around the corporate takeover of the people's government, not even any empassioned arguments defending liberal policies that gave this nation and the world the greatest and strongest middle class the world has ever seen, not to mention sane and effective environment, education, energy, labor and health policies that worked for all.   Democrats have partnered with Republicans to undercut and eliminate all of it.  

The "whole political landscape" hasn't "moved to the right" -- Only the nomenclature has.  Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans.  When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare; Get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION.

And with regard to "Blue States" and the "luxury of voting for any damn third party", any state can go third party (or any color) at any time.  Ten million more voters went to the polls to vote for Obama and Democrats NOT because those voters wanted Republican policies and legislation.  New and returning voters showed up for Obama, NOT because they believed he would take liberal policies off the table, block the left from the discussions (much less his administration) and continue BushCheney policies.  If a black man in good old rac!st America can become president, so could a third party candidate.
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So you think that Obama entered into negotiations with Boehner in bad faith.

We can go 'round and 'round on this, but as disreputable as politicians are, both sides, that is not how negotiating on the Hill goes.

I really don't understand people like you, who make it up, pull it out of your butts, in order to maintain your faith in someone whose image is wholly created by public relations firms, propagandists. Some of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' are convinced he's a liberal, and others are certain he's a moderate. About his own political appeal, Obama has said:
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. But guess what?

"Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"


Blue Dog = (might as well be registered as a) Republican

Candidate Obama was all over the place, depending on who was talking to at any given time and what day it was in the campaign, which primaries were done with and who he didn't need to woo anymore.

What Obama is is a run-of-the-mill, self-serving politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. As in 'used car salesman' sense.

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How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

Who and what Republicans are isn't news.

What is news is that Obama's 'most ardent supporters' never seem to learn.

In the summer of 2008, when Obama flip-flopped on FISA, people like you said, "If he had kept his promise, Republicans would have accused him of being weak on security and he would lose the independent voters in the general election. You'll see, once he's in office, he'll be a reliable liberal."

Now you're making wild and unsubstantiated claims about Obama's motives and intentions again when the best predictor of Obama's future behavior is Obama's past behavior. His record. He's flip-flopped as much if not more than Romney, and has given no indication of having "learned his lesson" when it comes to 'bipartisanship'.

As a matter of fact, right before the 2010 midterms, Obama and Democrats made it clear that no matter what the outcome of the election, they would still work in a bipartisan manner, watering down legislation, making it Republican-like.

Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.

Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.

Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).

Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.

Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.

Blue Dogs took a beating (liberals lost only 3 seats) in the 2010 midterms and Obama took it as a mandate to move even farther to the right.

NObama 2012

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How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

So Obama's offer to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and cut Social Security and Medicare, that's what you think shows caring about the country?  
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How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

Back to "hoping", are you?

It's Obama's supporters who need a spine.  
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How Obama Tried To Sell Out Liberalism In 2011

The only "clowns" at this point are Obama's 'most ardent supporters', those who think they can read his mind, that he's playing 11th dimensional chess.  

All that Obama's been doing is trying to save unregulated capitalism and the lock that the 1% has on the other 99%.

With Obama's deal to preserve Bush's tax cuts for the rich (making it Obama's tax cuts for the rich), 99ers were cut off.  Of the 6 million people who were then currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, and many of them got crumbs from his deal because, in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits were cut off for many of those when they reached 99-weeks.  And only 25 states out of 53 states/territories in/of the US have 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, so that's even fewer still.

David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now! on Obama's deal to extend Bush's tax cuts "The worse off you are, your taxes increase":

"The bottom roughly 45 million families in America or households in America—and there are a little over 100 million households—they’re going to actually see their taxes go up.  Republicans got an extraordinarily good deal, that raises, I think, basic questions about the negotiating skills of the President."

The payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal sets SocialSecurity up for its end.  That's what Bush and GroverNorquist planned and why Bush believes he'll be vindicated as a great conservative in history: For ending the GreatSociety programs, by having bankrupted the nation so there's no way to pay out those benefits.  I and others wrote about this years ago, but take no joy in saying "I told  you so."

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has  a long record of negotiating lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf.  If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.

The purpose of the deal was so that Democratic political operatives could say, "Obama helped the unemployed"; most readers won't know the actual facts of how Obama sold out the American people.  Again.  Obama and Democrats have no jobs plan either.  Both parties are thinning the herd.
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