I had to watch Barack Obama restate the same position over and over. You see, he said that he would remove all U.S. troops from Iraq in sixteen months from the day he assumed the title of President of the United States.
He also said he would consult with the generals commanding these troops on their feelings regarding a pullout of this magnitude. This sounds to me like someone told Senator Obama that sixteen months is a stretch, maybe even undoable. What to do? There are three options available to Senator Obama:
1)Pull out all of the troops in sixteen months as promised, regardless of the consequences, including loss of life.
2) Listen to the generals you appointed and see what they have to say and let your decision be balanced with their input.
3) Pull a mask off of your face, revealing yourself to be John McCain and start chanting "a hundred more years, a hundred more years!"
If you are a liberal and are thinking of voting for someone other than Obama, than you are pouting a lot. You are pouting because Hillary didn't get nominated, or Dodd, or Gravel, or you still think Nader should run, and you think all rock music stopped when Ian Hunter slipped off of the charts. You must stop this now.
Remember, these people for whom you invest so much really don't care that much about you (or for you for all I know). I remember walking up Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown in the seventies and watching groups of rich white kids gathered around Eugene McCarthy like freezing fingers around a campfire, celebrating the heat as much as the glow. He repaid the liberal affection by voting for Reagan in 1980. Thanks, Gene, what a guy!
We have had eight years of a president who fired people who didn't agree with him. Now, we have the potential for a man who will listen to those who know more than he does on a variety of issues, and he gets slammed.
If you're going to be that rigid, stop the masquerade and work for James Dobson. He too, is very inflexible.
His position reversal regarding FISA is inexcusable. It seems not important to him that we have equal justice in this country, that the status quo which is the multi tiered system of justice where the rich and powerful are not held to account for crimes that everyone else would go to jail for is ok.
He wants to continue Bush's "Faith Based Initiatives" which are nothing more than a way to create a huge flow of taxpayer dollars to religious (Christian) groups, a direct conflict with the establishment clause of the Constitution. It is an unconscionable policy that must be reversed.
I was starting to believe that just maybe he was the person we needed to get behind to begin the process of reversing the dishonoring of our country and the raping of our economy that the Republicans have orchestrated and that the Blue Dog and DLC type Democrats have cowardly supported. His recent actions have blown all of that away like so much smoke in the wind.
Change he says? Yes we can he chants? That's not what I'm seeing.
I am angry that I wasted my time and my money on someone who moves to the right ... I do not believe the nation has time for baby steps ... we need drastic action ... and so --- although Nadar won't get my vote (he has become a joke and I hold him partially responsible for what happened now since he promised he would not run in Florida and guess what he ran in Florida in 2000) ... I may not vote ... and that too is a statement. A move to the center is a move that this country cannot augur.
There is no faster way to push someone to voting for a minor party candidate than telling them they have to vote for the lesser of evils instead.
You'd be more effective explaining the progressive change we can hope for under a "centrist" Obama.
Period.
But the showstopper for me is the faith based initiative.
Nader '08. Because the Dems can't help themselves from being slaves to corporate America.
-Wexler
That really isn't the point of a third party vote, is it? The point is to use the power of a third party threat to have some impact on the platform of that party most affected. This is what is at the root of the Democratic Party's Nader demonization talking point about his having lost the election for Gore in 2000. Crude, but effective on their part insofar as Nader's numbers went down the next election. However, while attempting to make him an outcast, they have pointedly failed to address his message.
Edwards (Nader's surrogate this election) was polling at seventeen percent without media coverage and is no longer in the game. Kucinich and Dodd had quite a following as well; there is a constituency for a Progressive platform that Obama risks by his rightward shift. Nader's and McKinney's numbers will come up this election as a result because we have seen how effective waiting until a politician is elected to voice ones views has worked over the past two years, have we not?
Obama is not moving to the center but has been a pretty darn centrist candidate on alot of issues from the get go, not on all, but many. Specifically, the FISA bill - he hasn't changed position, he has struck a deal to not get the bill vetoed. If the President wouldn't veto the absence of immunity he would vote for no immunity.
As to Iraq, his position hasn't changed at all.
These are the two issues he is accused of moving to the center on. This is false and manipulative rhetoric, mainly media driven.
HOWEVER, the Iraq position IS a flip flop. And it was a key policy during the nomination process... so stop trying to rationalize it.
-Wexler
"One month after the 'Moratorium', on 15 November, 1969, the 'Mobilization' peace demonstration in Washington DC had a crowd estimated at from 250,000 to 500,000. This event remains the largest single anti-war protest in US history...Those in attendance included three United States Senators, Eugene McCarthy, George S McGovern, and Charles E Goodell, a Republican. Also present were Correta Scott King, comedian/activist Dick Gregory... BBC
the well-known fact that clean gene mccarthy was a culturally conservative catholic professor was precisely what gave his opposition to johnson and the war such salience. i mean if the modern democrats are pro-war- just say so. no need to slag gene mccarthy. that he was a conservative on most matters is exactly what made his anti-war activism stand out.
If the winning Democrats fail to restore the constitution and the bill of rights. If they fail to reign in the imperial military adventures. If they fail to shut down K Street and return the government to the people. If they fail to end the terrible class war waged against American workers since Ronald Regan. Then they will find themselves under constant and withering attack from the left. Get used to it.
in a more obama-centric sense, once the left has been swept away in the electoral landslide. then the real nut-cutting begins. what people will do to each other within the obama camp will make their purge of the left look like school games.
That's why a movement has started to pressure pledged Obama delegates to switch their votes at the convention:
http://www.PledgedNotBound.com
Enough is enough. Don't tell me one thing to get my vote and then, once procured, tell me something else.
Do you not understand? That is what politicians do. Even worse, they tell you one thing to get your vote, then, once procured, DO something else.
Yes, Mr. Obama is a politician who gives great speeches. What he will say or do after being elected is a horse of a different color.
I was told by a very wise person to "Listen to the music, but watch the dance."
I was also told "Every woman is different, every wife is the same."
Both parallel the words and actions of politicians. They will tell you what you want to hear, but do what they please afterward, when you have no power and they have it all.
Obama is not perfect, but he will get all or most of the troops out of Iraq, conduct active diplomacy, get a health care reform bill passed, get the regulatory agencies working, shut down Guantanomo, and appoint decent judges and Justices. If this is not enough for you, or if you think McCain would do the same things, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying.
He will stop the my way or the highway brand of politics that keeps things from working, and that means that there will be compromises. Frankly, I would find a government that works refreshing.
Got anything original?
Which irriates both the fundy Left and the fundy Right. Witness this thread. As George Lakoff insists, the election is about character, not policy. And it should be. I trust Obama -- not to agree with me but to do the best he can.
This message shall now be followed by pages of rants by 'liberals' who've become so myopic and closed-minded that they've forgotten that they became liberals because they once loathed closed-mindedness and myopia.
Oh, and of course by right-wingnuts pretending to be outraged liberals in order to increase the echo-chamber around the McCain campaign's accusations of flip-floppery by Obama.
*sigh*
The media is so intent on making a story that isn't there in order to keep the drama of the presidential campain alive. Luckily for Obama he has time to still frame the campaign that he wants to run without the media doing it for him.
We no longer have a 'news media' as we once knew it.
We now have infotainment, with a few brave souls still trying to do actual journalism.
Obamabots in denial...time to do your 12 Steps.
Good to know that those who run for office don't really care about those they purpose to represent. It is not as if that were exactly news given the leader/advocate civics lesson that Pelosi outlined for our benefit last year; I think that their actions pretty much made the lesson unnecessary anyway. But thanks for the insight.
I read Barack's policy prescriptions closely before the Primaries. I did not listen to his rhetoric. His form of "compromise" on insurance/coal/nuclear/banking and communications companies strikes me as being closely akin to what the establishment would want anyway. His retreat on Constitutional issues is just icing. You are absolutely right! Let's get the same group that gave us the Bush Administration for eight more of the same (new and with added compassion!), then all Barack will have to do is choose the book he will read for the next two terms.