what are barack obama's flaws?

I mean wow

shut up Tracer you're boring Shakey Mo

Didnt most people that voted for Obama think he was gonna bring the universal health care? Wasn't that a huge selling point in 2008? Before the Fox News misinfo shitstorm of summer 2009?

sometimes i think the dems are completely tone deaf and clueless and the repubs are sociopaths. only sometimes, strangely.

srsly tho you guys have boy-who-cried-wolf the "you're asking him to work magic!" line so bad at this point - anybody's disappointed with the president about anything ever, the go-to line is "you have unrealistic expectations of the president." so I put it to you Tracer! what can one reasonably ask of a president? what can he do? what ought one expect of a president - what are the things one's support can reasonably be thought to depend on?

The main thing I expect the President to do is not say or do things that will get us blown up. Anything he/she does beyond that that I agree with is pretty much icing on the "don't get me killed" cake.

so how did W work out by that standard? (for the last 7-1/3 years)

lol Dan every president save one has a perfect track record then & we can pretty much just vote for whoever as long as we don't elect Bush again

I can get down w/that actually

Going into subway now J0hn but I'm gonna come up with something real good

(actually along with "don't get me blown up" is "don't get my job taken away", which aside from political philosophy goes a long way towards explaining why I like Clinton and dislike Bush II)

srsly tho you guys have boy-who-cried-wolf the "you're asking him to work magic!" line so bad at this point - anybody's disappointed with the president about anything ever, the go-to line is "you have unrealistic expectations of the president." so I put it to you Tracer! what can one reasonably ask of a president? what can he do? what ought one expect of a president - what are the things one's support can reasonably be thought to depend on?

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Friday, January 29, 2010 1:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think a lot of people on this board have demonstrated a fair amount of disappointment in the prez since the brown election for his unwillingness to make a strong stand on the senate bill. i know ive been disappointed.

i'm not sure obama can get as much done as he would like because congress is filled with mouth-breathers and folks who are careerists and not idealists. i do think that obama is better than he has appeared (while he probably has some careerist in him as well, like most politicians, i tend to believe he's way left rather than middling around in the neutral zone like he has been) but he's keeping an eye on not handing everything back to the republicans this year and in '12, because i think that what he might like to say or do would be rather easy ammunition for morans.

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

Tending to believe Obama is way left will end up with you crying bitter tears of disappointment, btw.

i think obama's cautious, "let's all be pals" nature doesn't serve him well in the face of folks who know that being a straight up asshole will only get them more props from their base.

(Unless by "way left" you mean "mainstream Democrat", in which case yes I agree with you.)

i don't believe that his way-left nature will ever reveal itself in this presidency btw, i just think that's what he would like to do. but then again, i'm sure the same could have been said of clinton, perhaps? lol i guess by "way left" i mean "not a war mongering dbag at heart."

but he's a politician and he has to play the game which means he'll end up being a war-mongering dbag like everyone else.

(also I think I've said this before but I am about 90% in favor of dumping everyone currently in Congress, both in the House and the Senate, and starting over; the 10% dealbreaker is the terrifying thought of 645 Sarah Palins being put there instead)

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

^^^THIS

i was watching the address the other night and i saw so many familiar faces on both sides of the aisle i wanted to never see again and, barring that, punch repeatedly

J0hn/Morbz - loads of us have issues with things Obama's done and make no bones about calling them out. I'm just tired of this argument, we have it all the time, it goes nowhere.

his way-left nature

*bangs head on desk repeatedly*

max, he shouldn't have turned the whole damn legis-writing process, or the APPEARANCE of it if you prefer, to Congress.

Tending to believe Obama is to the left of W on some issues will end in bitter tears of disappointment.

max, he shouldn't have turned the whole damn legis-writing process, or the APPEARANCE of it if you prefer, to Congress.

dude CONGRESS MAKES LEGISLATION NOT THE PRESIDENT go back to civics class

or by all means tell me what ammo Obama could've used against Lieberman/Baucus/Nelson et al to make them vote for a public option. would love to hear about it. in fact, call up Rahm Emanuel and let him know, I'm sure he'd love to hear it too.

plz see 2001-2008

xp

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

Feels like what really killed the public option was the disinfo campaign at the end of last summer. While yes the senate bought it, they felt they had to cos there was no opposition equally as strong or effective. The con-people had their shit together but the pro-people didn't. That, coupled with O starting by working with the insurance companies that got us into this mess, plus the no-CSPAN gaffe, you can all blame pretty directly on him.

I don't know jackshit about what he could've used, Shakey. That's the time for Rahm to pull out the Corleone shit, he's the Evil Genius.

Rahm's from the House - you'll note the House passed a public option. Because Pelosi knows how to marshal her troops and doesn't have stupid obstructionist elitist Senate rules to contend with.

of the 6+ "blue dog" senators needed to get on board with the hcr bill, i genuinely dont know what siding with obama can offer them politically. if obama is unpopular in nebraska, why would ben nelson want to seem like an ally?

don't misunderstand me morbs, i don't think he's really done anything but give lip service to that nature, but i think if he wasn't a politician and didn't have the qualities that tend to make politicians (esp. ones on the left) afraid of truly stepping up to the plate, i think we'd see him in a much better light. i base this on little evidence, admittedly, and mostly on what i've read here and there about him.

and certainly not on his campaigning for Joe Lieberman in 2006

¯\(°_o)/¯

Can we at least agree that the spectacle of the president bowing before the likes of Mike Pence as I type is pretty disgusting?

i think a lot of people on this board have demonstrated a fair amount of disappointment in the prez since the brown election for his unwillingness to make a strong stand on the senate bill. i know ive been disappointed.

Alfred, asking anything else of the president would be like asking him to shoot lasers from his eyes

btw I demand that he shoot lasers from his eyes right now

I didn't write that!

(didn't mean to c/p max's comment there, that was for a diff. post, <3 max)

Can we at least agree that the spectacle of the president bowing before the likes of Mike Pence as I type is pretty disgusting?

― Blue Fucks Like Ben Nelson (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 29, 2010 1:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh disgusting or not i think its a pretty savvy political move for him

this doesn't sound like "bowing" to me:

"In a remarkable exchange, Obama took Republicans to task for portraying health care reform as a “Bolshevik plot” — even though, he said, many parts of the bill were consistent with Republican principles.

“What happens is that you guys don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me,” Obama said. "The fact of the matter is, many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable with your own base, with your own party because what you've been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.' ''

Obama acknowledged that “some stray cats and dogs” had gotten into the health care bill but that his administration was working to eliminate them.

Health care was just one of the points of engagement in the highly unusual session, which may not have changed many minds on either side of the partisan divide but made for riveting political theater.

Republicans, for example, pushed the president to embrace “across the board” tax cuts and a line-item veto.

Obama pushed back, accusing them of putting party before principle and voting against his 2009 stimulus plan but then attending “ribbon cuttings” for stimulus projects in their own districts.

If Republicans believe in both across-the-board tax cuts and a balanced budget, Obama said he’d like to see their math."

oh come, that's totally obsequious, especially the part where he tells them that they've painted themselves into a corner with their constituents by making up shit about what's in the health care reform bill; what disgusting boot-licking

eh disgusting or not i think its a pretty savvy political move for him

I bet the Republicans will be won over this show of bipartisanship!

I had no idea stray cats and dogs were covered by any version

How smart is it to put yourself on the line for a guaranteed losing proposition?That depends on how it loses and why.

If, for example, you are guaranteed to lose because the Republicans and a few conservative Dems will fillibuster your bill to death, while a solid majority of Americans very much want to see it enacted, then you can win by losing. You win because you show which side you are on, and your side has the support of the people, who will appreciate your leadership and become disaffected from the obstructionists.

If you are guaranteed to lose because it is flat-out something that few people want or care about, and you spend a lot of political capital trying to ram it through (see Bush and Social Security privatization), then it is pretty dumb to go there.

Sometimes you have to demonstrate that you have clear ideas of where the country should go and why. Then the country can make up its mind if it wants to go there with you. Even when the voters disagree with you, a bit of that kind of clarity and leadership won't necessarily hurt you, so long as it reassures people that you know what you stand for and are willing to fight for it.

If Republicans believe in both across-the-board tax cuts and a balanced budget, Obama said he’d like to see their math

love this line tbh

It was so disgusting when Dubya met with House Dems in 2002 when they obstructed his 9-11 policies.

Generally speaking, people in power are objectionable. This means that the person you like (or can tolerate) is going to have to speak to a whole bunch of people you can't stand in order to get anything done. The only way to change this is to change the people in power, but in our current system it seems that only assholes run for office.

If Emmanuel was really the Machiavelli of legend, he'd run clips this November of Obama in every endangered Congressional district meeting with the House Repubs.

I think that was a pretty ballsy thing Obama did, addressing the GOP caucus like that - amazed any Dem would take him to task for it.

Addendum: Sometimes it is acceptable leadership to say, I personally think this is the right thing, but because the majority of the country clearly disagrees with me, I won't use my office to force it on them. I will only make it clear that I think the majority are wrong about this and here is why.