The Progressive Case Against Obama

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The bold makes YOU sound like Rush Limbaugh/ typical GOPer. :beli:

You don't think Obama has to scratch the backs of his wealthy/business interest supporters?

They willfully neglected evidence about the stability of some of these companies. I'm all for the stimulus and investment in energy companies, but it needs to be smart and have government oversight. Not just dumping money into companies with shady numbers.

Obama has bent over backwards to his Hollywood supports too in his backing of ACTA:
Obama Reiterates Support For ACTA, As More People Point Out How Far ACTA Is From The Purpose Of Copyright | Techdirt
 

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You don't think Obama has to scratch the backs of his wealthy/business interest supporters?

They willfully neglected evidence about the stability of some of these companies. I'm all for the stimulus and investment in energy companies, but it needs to be smart and have government oversight. Not just dumping money into companies with shady numbers.

Obama has bent over backwards to his Hollywood supports too in his backing of ACTA:
Obama Reiterates Support For ACTA, As More People Point Out How Far ACTA Is From The Purpose Of Copyright | Techdirt

:snoop: just cop the book man...Solyndra and other failures are just a tiny fraction of a bigger success story.


Scratching the back of supporters?...u do know he's a politician right? :huh:
 

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:snoop: just cop the book man...Solyndra and other failures are just a tiny fraction of a bigger success story.


Scratching the back of supporters?...u do know he's a politician right? :huh:

Yes, I do. One of those group of supporters were heavily invested in some of those green energy companies. I am not saying that the program was a failure, I am saying that some shady shyt has happened.

I was for the stimulus (for the most part) and the Obama's green energy policy as a whole. It doesn't change the fact that some bad investments were made to companies that had Obama supporters as chairs. Same with Hollywood and ACTA.
 

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I'll buy + read it, if you tell me what he set out to do that he accomplished.

I mean how can one assess how effective an incumbent is without looking at their track record? Why should one need a book to lay out how successful an incumbent was at accomplishing the things they laid out in their 1st campaign? If you are an Obama supporter why can't you make a case for how effective he was in furthering his campaign agendas? You, Bar None and Vic have done a lot of dancing instead of explaining. What's the deal?
 

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You don't think Obama has to scratch the backs of his wealthy/business interest supporters?

They willfully neglected evidence about the stability of some of these companies. I'm all for the stimulus and investment in energy companies, but it needs to be smart and have government oversight. Not just dumping money into companies with shady numbers.

Obama has bent over backwards to his Hollywood supports too in his backing of ACTA:
Obama Reiterates Support For ACTA, As More People Point Out How Far ACTA Is From The Purpose Of Copyright | Techdirt

You guys seem to be in here just nitpicking issues. Someone makes a point and you go "by bu what about this" point is Obama was never super liberal, and he has stayed true to his original vision. Some priorities have changed, some things have worked, some things havn't, but overall if you supported Obama in 08, you have no reason not to support him now.

People were naive to think Obama would come in and change the world in 08, now those same people are using that same naiveté to support third party candidates who have even less a chance to make a change.
 

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I do mostly agree. I always have. But I prefer a problem-solver's approach to someone saying "well they're not all that different so who cares?" That's not entirely true always, but even more so, that's not a solution. We're not that far apart. But you said one thing that I don't entirely agree with. "We expect the same people that broke the system to fix it." That's true in the area of campaign finance, but it's not true in the area of issues like civil rights.

It's obvious that the existing power structure was anti-civil rights. But there was enough public information and voter outcry to force their hand. Even then, women were put in the CRA as a means to sabotage it, Republicans thought that there was no way that men would pass a bill giving women equal rights. But at that point the momentum was too strong, and it passed anyway, including the part for sex. They'll fix it if they have the reason to fix it. The problem is transparency and voter attention. Which is why I believe that voting should be mandatory like in Australia and that TUH is correct in that Civics courses and Local Government courses should be mandatory.

All we can do is hope that as the populace becomes more and more educated that we'll slowly see the informed voter that we need.

I agree education is ultimately the key, however; i remain pessimistic in that key ever being turned.

People just aren't pissed off enough yet and the culture of ME, ME, ME has made it so that it most likely never will be. When you step back from "the game" for a minute and take an objective look at the way shyt is set up you gotta give credit for the people who built this power system. I admire it the way I admire a spider's web, deadly, designed to catch victims, but beautiful in its craftsmanship.

I agree voting should be manditory as should civics classes but you still run into the problem of people simply not giving a fuk and i think 1-5 civics classes are simply not enough to combat the overall dumbass-edness of our society.

I stand by my comment that you disagree with though. Even social are only fixed when the outcry is big enough from the people. The point being that until the people really start forcing hands nothing get's done, even your example of womans rights came at the hand of THE PEOPLE.

I'm a firm believer that there are SOME good people in our government, the majority though are all self serving. People who are self serving tend not to rock the boat to let other people in when they're doing really well, it makes no sense.
 

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I'll buy + read it, if you tell me what he set out to do that he accomplished.

I mean how can one assess how effective an incumbent is without looking at their track record? Why should one need a book to lay out how successful an incumbent was at accomplishing the things they laid out in their 1st campaign? If you are an Obama supporter why can't you make a case for how effective he was in furthering his campaign agendas? You, Bar None and Vic have done a lot of dancing instead of explaining. What's the deal?

Nobody is dancing around shyt, I just don't feel like typing the same paragraphs 10 million times. I didn't bother typing a long ass treatise on the accomplishments and pros and cons of Obama's presidency because it would derail the thread and it has been discussed ad nauseum here. Maybe you missed the other 4664224986677534577 times we've talked about it here. But here's an example of my arguments for why Obama deserves a second term.
http://www.the-coli.com/higher-lear...-abstaining-voting-election.html#.UI_-I6O3PFo

The question is really a red herring anyway because what we're arguing is the choice of voting for Obama or voting for a 3rd party. My case for why a liberal should vote for him is based upon solid reasoning. Your case for voting for a 3rd party is based on nothing but an expression of an emotional temper tantrum and specious conjecture about how crossing your fingers and hoping that the act of voting for some unspecified candidate who isn't a D or an R will have some sort of butterfly effect that will improve peoples lives through some vague means. Talk about dancing. You're :mj:

The question is not what letter grade Obama earns as a President. The question is a cost-benefit analysis of voting for him vs. someone else.

And I will reply to the longer post you made earlier when I get a chance.
 

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I'll buy + read it, if you tell me what he set out to do that he accomplished.

I mean how can one assess how effective an incumbent is without looking at their track record? Why should one need a book to lay out how successful an incumbent was at accomplishing the things they laid out in their 1st campaign? If you are an Obama supporter why can't you make a case for how effective he was in furthering his campaign agendas? You, Bar None and Vic have done a lot of dancing instead of explaining. What's the deal?

Actually this is easy to do...and since i'm bored fuk it:

Obama's main agenda can be broken down into 4 areas (he laid this out in the campaign and a speech called "new foundation"): education, health care, energy, tax/new economy:

Education: By bi-partisan agreement he has set off the most expansive education reforms in decades with his "Race to the Top" initiative. Of course it remains to be seen how this pans out over the next decade but he has won bi-partisan praise for his K-12 education policies and furthered his agenda.

He has also made college more affordable by increasing pell grants and with tax credits... and made one of the largest investments in HBCUs. Not to mention reforming the student loan program. All in all he has made significant progress with his educational initiatives.


Health Care: Do I really have to write on this? :laugh:...just the other day they announced they were doing a semi-public option and already there are reports of the good impact the law is making without even being fully implemented yet. Suffice to say, a significant progressive goal moved forward.


Energy: You already acknowledge that, nuff said.


Tax/new economy: One of his main goals was to transform the economy from a financial based one to a high tech, manufacturing, export based economy...and strides have been made. He invested in heavily in new industries like Health IT, clean tech/advanced manufacturing...and those industries are expected to grow over the next few years. Exports have nearly doubled too because of his initiatives...this potentially will have a major impact on the growth of a lot of small/mid size businesses in the future.

On the tax front its a hit and miss with arguably more misses...but he has somewhat achieved a fairly progressive tax structure with the stimulus and health law.


These are off the top of my head so there are much more that I didn't cover, hell I haven't even touched foreign policy or wall street reform and things like the consumer protection agency which is already making an impact. Obama more than any president in recent time has quietly achieved much of what he wanted and said in his campaign... thats why I told u to read that book because it really breaks down just how much he did (mostly stimulus related tho).

The only thing now is to wait and see how his policies pan out over the next few years.
 

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It's funny that in this entire thread not one single person has been able to make a positive case for how progressive leaning voters voting for a 3rd party in this election would accomplish shyt other than potentially giving the election to Romney. It's all a bunch of emotional shyt about "voting your conscience." The same people who always champion logic in arguments resort to pure emotion on this topic. That post Nasciemento made was articulate and worded well, but it sounds like some shyt that would get my blood pumping when I was a 20 year old 1st time voter who voted for Nader in FL. A lot of good that did. It's sad that after 8 years of Bush people still haven't learned the lesson from that. A lot people are to young to remember it I guess.

LOL@Vic and I saying the same thing but people getting mad at me for saying it. :bryan:
 

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Education- Race to the top, fair enough that its too soon to tell. But by taking on student loans for higher education, Obama has worsened the underlying enabler of skyrocketing tuition costs. Correct me if I'm wrong but there are no limits to how big of loans kids can take, nor is there a limit on how much of a year to year tuition increase the govt will cover. So Obama has basically written a blank check to colleges for which the bill will be sent to students....

Healthcare- they literally just announced the workaround public option. From what I have read they have not announced how they plan to pay for it though. And much of what I still don't like about Obamacare (penalties for non coverage for employers AND employees for example) is still in it, and very similar to provisions in Romneycare

Energy- yes he made good on green energy, but he's fukking up on regular energy, which we need to get stronger on to ease the transition and to bolster ourselves strategically. Solar, wind, geothermal, we should look for how to make the most of those... but we are decades away from those being primary energy sources. Why block the Keystone pipeline in the meantime???

Tax + economy- Taxes, hes fukking up on, period. 4 years of trillion dollar deficits, a shrinking tax base, more and more preferential deductions, the perpetuation of the idea that we will be able to fix it all through tax hikes on the 1%. His solution is TOO progressive. The numbers show it.

On the economy, mixed bag. Lot of stuff isn't his fault and he has kept stuff moving. He did get dinged on the stimulus, but in return he stretched it out over his whole presidency. A $1.5T stimulus was too small. What about a $6T stimulus? Plus like people pointed out, growth under Obama has been DISGUSTINGLY top heavy. So for all the talk of his work helping the middle class, numerically we are worse off WRT inflation compared to where we were before the crash... and we are WAY worse off than the rich. What is he going to change about his strategy to make the distribution of growth more equitable?

Not to mention, even though it wasn't part of his plan, what about foreign policy? What about civil liberties? What about immigration? He had objectives for each of these issues.... did he meet them?
 

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I basically have 5 questions

From a liberal/progressive POV, what has Obama achieved and what has he been unable to make gains on?

From the POV of his 2008 campaign, what has Obama achieved and what has he been unable to make gains on?

What are the available courses of action for representation for people who are disillusioned with the two big parties?

Can one be an informed voter and make a choice other than Obama?

And finally what are the problems we need to fix, and what are the most realistic ways to fix them?
 

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Listen, you are going to be a future lawyer who doesn't put the law first. It's plain and simple. You fall into a portion, a major portion, of the electorate that falls into the Bread and Circuses mentality. It doesn't matter what laws the government and the President breaks, as long as you have a job and healthcare everything is ok. As long as it's someone else's rights being violated, who cares right? I don't like the President having the ability to assassinate anyone he deems as a vocal threat. You might be okay with that because the President is a Democrat or you "trust" him, but that isn't the case with some of us.

I've been posting here for a couple of years, and have been lurking for more than that. The things that were said on this forum back then could easily be replaced with what Obama has done, not just on the Civil Liberties front either.

Your guy is going to win, and you can live another 4 years under cognitive dissonance. Maybe when a Republican is elected in 2016, and he continues Obama's policies, you can revert back to rightfully criticizing them as illegal.

Pay attention ladies and gentlemen, this is a guy throwing the towel when someone has made him look like a ridiculous for the past 2 months. Don't ever mention my career again just because I'm not as immature as you. I guess you think it's impossible for me to work with professors who are writing amicus briefs to the courts about the NDAA while still recognizing that Obama is better for the country than Romney overall. I'm convinced that you only deal with people who only can see things in two shades like yourself. Maybe that's why you've been caught up in this lying, misrepresenting and stuttering game against me. You literally don't understand how to argue with someone who doesn't fit into your narrow view of the world. Someone who knows how and when to fight certain battles.


He keeps referring to "my guy" when there's nothing to support it. It helps him feel better. He keeps saying "I" trust him when I was explaining other people's rationales and not my own. This is a grade A example of a self-righteous...let me not say. Notice how people from other countries posting in here are ridiculing your ridiculous stance. There is no cognitive dissonance on my part. It's what your suffering from. But that's not even how this started, it's from your egotistical, unrealistic and short-sighted insinuation that anyone who swallows the pill and votes for Obama is the problem and foolish.

YET, and I say this again...YET...your best response to me shytting on what you're putting at stake is, "But isn't it always at stake?" :why: :russ:

"Isn't it always at stake?" :stopitslime: No, and I just told you why. But will you answer that? No. Because you have too much pride to realize that there are literally, LITERALLY no facts to support that stance. There is no way that they are not under greater risk now than at any point in the past 15 years.

Nice usage of examples of straw men though. :russ:
 
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