Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

GG is arguing against a phantom progressive who pretended to be upset by Gitmo but is now supporting it. Where are these people? This poll doesn't show them, it shows a much broader portrait of Democrats and the public at large. Passionate Liberaltarians are a small part of that larger whole, and hardly any of them were frontin' on Gitmo.

uh have you read his links, dude?

and he's been writing about the silence of liberals who weren't so quiet when Bush was in the Oval Office for three years now. There's a search engine.

yeah, um read the poll a little more closely dude

xp

DUDE

Does GG really think people now "support" Gitmo and think it's hunky dory when they used to "pretend" it was awful? It's more complicated than that and a broad poll of the Democratic electorate does not show this kind of rampant hypocrisy. People are ok with Obama not closing it because they realized how complicated closing it would be, because they weren't that passionate about it in the first place etc.

Does anyone know someone who actually was pretending to be upset about Gitmo but now thinks it's ok? It's an absurd straw man.

he has a better case on drone strikes, but that's a hypothetical.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postabcpoll_020412.html

This is the breakdown of the poll data as linked by Greenwald. As far as I can tell, the relevant data is here:

13. Changing topics, thinking about the following decisions of the Obama administration, please tell me whether you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove.
2/4/12 - Summary Table
                                           --- Approve ----   -- Disapprove --   No
                                           NET  Str.  Smwt.   NET  Smwt.  Str.   op.
a. Keeping open the prison at Guantanamo                             
   Bay for terrorist suspects              70    42    28     24    12     13     5
b. The drawdown of U.S. troops from                      
   Afghanistan                             78    56    23     19    10      9     2
c. The use of unmanned, “drone” aircraft               
   against terrorist suspects overseas     83    59    23     11     7      4     6

42% of all respondents strongly approve and 28% somewhat approve. I don't see any demographic breakdown in the data about left/Democratic voters anywhere; Greenwald seems to be taking the quoted excerpt of the article on faith without any link to corroborating evidence. (I have no reason to doubt those figures but I'm not going to base a screed on a quote with no numbers behind it.)

What I do take away from the data presented is that of these three positions, people disapprove of Guantanamo the most but not at levels that would cost Obama the election, which strikes me as accurate.

I am not happy about Gitmo but I have a certain understanding that a POTUS cannot just ride roughshod over the 'establishment' w/o losing a lot of political capital, esp a Democrat in a period of paranoid hysteria. I would have preferred a more agressive look-in on Wall Street practices, too, but again, not easy when you have the second largest financial slowdown in US history and ppl are clamoring to get the economy restarted a lot more loudly than they are for justice. Call me jaded, if you wish, but a lot of this hard stuff will be easier during a second term. I'd prefer he be bold about ditching Afghanistan, frankly, so we can quit the 'war on terror' and return to treating terrorists as psychotic murderers subject to our justice system instead of boosting them into an army or whatever the fcuk Cheney decided they were.

a lot of this hard stuff will be easier during a second term.

this is the opposite of jaded imho

I'd prefer he be bold about ditching Afghanistan, frankly, so we can quit the 'war on terror' and return to treating terrorists as psychotic murderers subject to our justice system instead of boosting them into an army or whatever the fcuk Cheney decided they were.

but... current Obama policy is to treat them as psychotic murderers completely outside ANY justice system!

Most second terms are a wash though. There is little reason to hope any president will Do The Hard Stuff then.

i can't think of any president who pursued more progressive policies in his second term than his first -- most of FDR's second term was spent dealing with fallout from the court-packing fiasco.

Most second terms are a wash though.

Despite Issa's best efforts, I've yet to see the kind of corruption that usually messes w/a second term. It might be there and it might distract him, but at least he'd be somewhat freer to talk about these subjects publicly.

yeah it never happens. most you can hope for is some foreign policy successes. anything requiring congressional cooperation basically won't happen.

He can discuss them but he's a lame duck and the Congress knows it.

and Gitmo isn't getting closed without congress's help - they're the ones who fucked up all previous efforts to close it in the first place

xp

big fan of the filing of reproductive rights alongside other airhead fauxgressive concerns like HRC parties and obama al green youtubes. truly artisanal work.

let's not discuss the Human Rights Campaign on this thread -- I might get poisonous.

Maybe Matt can visit the OWS thread and enlighten them on their complete disconnect from the American political system.

as somebody who spent plenty of time at zuccotti park, my biggest thought always was 'there aren't too many people here, all things considered'

i'm not holding my breath waiting for a "better and more progressive!!" Obama his second term, either. we'll be lucky to get Clinton's second term (minus Monicagate).

just wanted to pipe in to say that i think glenn greenwald is up there with my least favorite human beings in the world but he's probably right about obama supporters changing their mind about gitmo before + after election. i think it's sad, but telling about the American (and maybe World) public. that said, his broader implicit point (i assume from numerous other articles i've read by him, i haven't read this particular one) that this makes liberals just like conservatives is incorrect. there is still a much larger critical-of-Obama left than there was a critical-of-Bush right, including mr greenwald himself. the problem is that he enjoys pretending like he's one voice shouting into the darkness when actually there's a bunch of ppl who agree with him, who write similar things (i'm sure if he wasn't on vacation, sullivan would be quoting this article approvingly). it's nowhere near the majority of the democratic party, but it's growing.

there is still a much larger critical-of-Obama left than there was a critical-of-Bush right, including mr greenwald himself.

Agreed, and the White House knows it or knew it (e.g. Rahm Emmanuel shaking fingers at "fucking retarded" liberals). Unimaginable when Bush and Ronnie stuck their fingers in the press' asshole.

i don't think there is a lot of statistical evidence for that group of people

don't get me wrong, I would be cool w/ those people existing. the world would be a better place if those people existed. it's just...they mostly don't

a lot of this hard stuff will be easier during a second term

*bangs head repeatedly against the wall*

I love how building an evidentiary case of things we know to be true from everyday life is frequently required in this courtroom on this board.

he's probably right about obama supporters changing their mind about gitmo before + after election.

ie YES

24% of Americans disapprove somewhat, or strongly, about keeping open the prison at Guantanamo Bay for terrorist suspects. xp

the people you talk to on a daily basis are not a very representative sample set of americans, morbs

oh thank God

On an average weekday I don't talk to any people beyond transactions and professional matters...

regardless they're people who live in or near NYC which means they are politically a couple miles away from the American center. Rudy and Bloomberg are left-wing dems in half the states in the country.

I wish this were its own country too so we did not have to have a political system where we compromised w/ the crazy people that live elsewhere but ultimately that is how things work

and yet, morbz, you also complain about getting the stink-eye whenever you badmouth Obama to your liberal/progressive/whatevah acquaintances ...

I think the "vast" difference between NYers and the mainland cavedwellers is exaggerated in political matters. Most of the people we are discussing (voting Dem until they die, every time) had the same Pavlovian response to the Dream Warrior.

people here vote straight-ticket dem because the real election happens before the general election and is a contest people who are more left-wing than generic american dem. when everyone's the same party, party doesn't matter and means basically nothing.

context among people*

contest err

I was talkin bout the means-nothin-presidency

well if someone super-left wing was running for president as a dem, nyc would vote for them. the problem is the rest of the country.

hell you could prob run in nyc as a dem. it just really doesn't mean anything, it's a organizational tool, there's no philosophy here to hate. the things you need to hate are:
a. everyone in america
b. the constitution

what would be legally required to close guantanamo as a detention center? i have the sense that the bush administration created it largely by fiat? what is congress's authority over it now?

(i am not making excuses for bho, just curious)

well if someone super-left wing was running for president as a dem, nyc would vote for them. the problem is the rest of the country.

don't buy this at all.

1.) obama basically ran on a "super left-wing" platform and still won by a decent margin. (no, he wasn't kucinich, but if promising to pass universal health care, end the war in iraq, and close gitmo aren't "super left-wing" policies, i don't know what is.)
2.) "super left-wing" is basically in the eye of the beholder. the fact that the political establishment has agreed, say, that closing gitmo is an extremist "left-wing" policy doesn't mean that this instantly becomes the prevailing view of most americans.
3.) it's really problematic to use polls to make sweeping statements about what "most americans" believe because ppl's answers are largely dependent on the way poll questions are worded. i.e., ppl are more likely to respond favorably when asked if the government should 'do more to help poor people' than they are if asked if the government should 'spend more on welfare programs.'

I wish this were its own country too so we did not have to have a political system where we compromised w/ the crazy people that live elsewhere but ultimately that is how things work

you guys elected Bloomberg, I'm not sure you're really as well-positioned to throw stones as you think dude

bloomberg's pretty left-wing, like further than the dems on a lot of stuff w/ the exception a few 'admittedly kinda important' issues. and still woulda lost two of the three elections if staten island didn't exist.

exception of

man iatee your bizarro clubhouse version of the world has gone from offensive to fascinating for me. it's always "those bad people from this place I hate" who're the problem, whether the issue's local, national, or global. v. silly + unuseful lens thru which to view the world imo

what do you think of the dems aero

how do you like that obama dude

staten island is a bastion of liberalism?!?

you and me, we're against the same things, I hate the cause you hate the effect

eis, staten island is a bastion of suburban conservativism that's just big enough to allow left-wing gop pols to swing some nyc elections