In under 3 minutes, this is a perfect demonstration of what we saw in the 2008 campaign. Nobody knew what they were following but they were showing others how to follow. Where are those people now? They have slithered back into obscurity, overlooking every broken promise and every lie; ignoring the continuation of Bush policies. Their leader no longer motivates them. They forgot about change from the bottom up. They say, "What, he wasn't serious about me doing something, was he?" They were all fired up and ready to go.......nowhere. A few attempt to think for themselves, like this follower How to Squander the Presidency in One Year by David Michael Green ---- And, speaking of ‘change', the one kind that Barack Obama did actually deliver this year was not that which most voters had in mind after listening to him use the word incessantly, all throughout 2008. Obama and his colleagues have now managed to bring the future of the Democratic Party into question, just a year after it won two smashing victories in a row. Personally, I'm not real bothered by that. Today's Democrats are, almost without exception, embarrassing hacks who deserved to get stomped a long time ago. What really upsets me, however, is what these fools have allowed to be done to the name of progressivism, and to the country. Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been ****ed away so rapidly, and what's more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It's astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year. ------ * He does not lead. Americans, especially in times of crisis, want their daddy-president to pick a point on the horizon and lead them to it. Often - especially in the short term - they don't even care that much which point it is. They will happily follow a president whose policies they oppose if he will but lead. * And if he will demonstrate some conviction. I have never seen a president so utterly lacking in passion. This man literally doesn't even seem to care about himself, let alone this or that policy issue. He doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on anything, a sure prescription for presidential failure. ---- * Another brilliant presidential tactic is to be such a Mr. Happy Nice Face that you acknowledge no enemies for the country, or even yourself. * While you're at it, if you're trying to run the most failed presidency ever, a really good idea is to campaign in the grandest terms possible, and then deliver squat. You know, talk about bending the arc of history. Invoke Martin Luther King's dream and his struggles and even those of the slaves. Ring the big bells of generational calling. Remind voters every thirty seconds that the country badly needs "Change!". Then get elected and turn around and continue the policies of your hated predecessor in every meaningful policy area. Only with less conviction. People will love that. * A related brilliant move is to mobilize a giant army of passionate volunteers dedicated to putting you in the White House, and then do nothing with them once you get there, other than taking them completely for granted and never calling upon them to do anything in support of your agenda. Be sure to deflate their enthusiasm in every way possible.
I don't know how these people got the idea that Obama was swept into office with enormous political advantages and a clear mission of reform, but even the sufferers of that crippling misapprehension must recognize that battling the alligators interferes with draining the swamp. If the simple, often repeated, and by now hopefully familiar observation of fact is resurrected, the fact of Obama's nature and situation: he is a center-right politician with no natural or personal power base other than an indifferently motivated racial voting bloc, a junior member of a split and disorganized Party with a large faction of solidly rightwing authoritarian senior members, subject to an ideologically compromised and corporate corrupted media that, despite being plurality dominated by foes of any actual attempt to reform the national governance, is his sole means of communication with power outside corporate Washington, and the inheritor of the immediate consequences of the most disastrous Presidency north of the Rio Grande since Jefferson Davis the absurdity of the "so much political advantage" being "thrown away" is immediately clear. Green himself seems to recognize the situation, when he describes the Dems as "hacks" etc - but the bearing of that on his ridiculous description of "smashing victories" and "political advantage" escapes him. He seems to have swallowed completely the Fox News frame of "Democrats vs Republicans" as describing some kind of left vs right or liberal vs conservative struggle or the like, and the Obama presidency as something anyone sane expected to be able to fix the broken US government in a few weeks or months. It will take a minor miracle for Obama to dig this place even partway out of this pit - that has been true from day one. This is mild disappointment, so far - not unexpected collapse.
Obama clearly gave them that idea and made them believe it. There were many, many otherwise intelligent people saying and believing that everything would change, nothing short of miraculous it seemed. Too many were ignoring facts. The Obama momentum was created by followers recruiting and supporting each other and is similar to what was demonstrated in the video. Most were following because it was the "in" thing to do. People were enchanted. Too many couldn't even answer simple questions about his policies. They were notoriously projecting their own beliefs onto him. They were just caught up in emotion. Obama never demonstrated leadership and that momentum has fizzled out. David Michael Green is a political science professor and should know better than to publish an emotional rant. He should have left the emotion out and stuck with logic, IMO. He leaves the impression he was more emotionally vested in Obama than the country or any issue. Change we can believe in would be for these people to hold Obama accountable as well as every other politician, but any criticism of Obama only elicits the classic simpleton attack as spidergoat demonstrated above.
You just want to deny that the Republicans left this country in a mess and that a charismatic Democrat is now president. Sure, people read things into him that were not there, he's less liberal than many people (for no good reason) thought, but he's also amazingly competent, well spoken, and doing good things for the country. It's not his fault that his bi-partisanship was countered with Republican obstructionism and fear-mongering.
Me thinks you lash out at someone who is not necessarily your adversary. Evidently you saw something that hit a nerve within you.
The titanic took hours to sink. It was pointed at an iceberg about 30 years ago. Many presidents have worked hard at steering it ever closer. None more so than Bush Jr who aimed it, crashed it, and then got in the first lifeboat (well, not the first, many of his backers were jumping in lifeboats as the first shutter ripped through). Then came Captain Obama. Obama seems to think we should fix the ship. So. Here we are, dumping in money to fill in this massive crater the iceberg rent open in the side. Money isn't really that great of a plug. And while it seems to have slowed the sinking, it's still sinking. IMO it will sink. Just how much money are we going to stuff into the ocean? Because I'm pretty sure you can dump lot more good money after bad and there'll be plenty more ocean pouring in. Me, I wish Obama had did things differently. FIRST, he should have let the women in children onto the first life rafts. Not the fat New York Bankers and their stick-thin Retarded New York Socialists. These are the people that made sure the Titanic stayed on course. Sailing was nice and smooth for THEM. Don't make any changes - just keep going straight. SECOND, I wish he had used that money, not to try and plug a massive hole in the side of this sinking ship (so that everyone can go back to the way things were - which actually were kind of crap, with the first class living it up on deck while the majority of people were crammed into little cabins near the boiler).... but instead have let the ship sink - simple as that (taking the Fat Pigs from Wall Street to sink along with it). Instead THEY ... get this THEY, were the FIRST onto the lifeboats. Stepping onto women and children in the process. The more room for their baggage's/bonuses but they sure as hell don't care about helping people down on Deck E. THIRD, I wish he had used the money to engineer and build a new ship. But, that's just me.
Foolishness on the part of his media enemies is Obama's fault? That was righty bs when it was invented, right after Clinton conceded. It's too soon to recycle that one - you have to give the amnesia a couple more months.
Did you really expect Obama to turn his back on the people who put lots of the money out to get him elected?
Media enemies? righty bs? :roflmao: I reached these conclusions LONG before Clinton conceded. You just don't know. And, they are based on what I experienced; saw and heard from Obama and his followers. In some ways, many of his supporters were, and are, more harmful to his agenda than his opponents.
Well, you won't win anyone over by going to the other extreme of blind worship and denial either. So, you could have countered what David Michael Green wrote instead of personally attacking posters.
I never did worship him blindly, and I'm perplexed by those people who thought he was more progressive or liberal than he ever claimed to be. He's against gay marriage and in favor of federal aid for faith-based institutions. Still, DMG seems to be a whiny bitch who has prematurely declared Obama a failure. Obama has already reversed many of the worst abuses of the Bush administration.
Torture, political firings in the justice department, warrantless wiretapping, climate change, organized labor, stem cell research, federal pot laws, gay rights... He has turned our country around on all these issues.
Oh I see. "Worst abuses" just means policies and directives. Obama has embraced and even fortified much of what was labeled "worst abuses", in some cases with only symbolic or cosmetic changes, and rhetoric which makes core Bush policy and directive more palatable to Democrats. Obama deserves a couple of points for the smoke and mirrors. On some issues, such as wiretapping, Obama is even more aggressive than Bush.
No, abuses means questionable, even illegal practices. You are not correct about warrantless wiretapping. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/180/end-warrantless-wiretaps/
Did you even read your source? Where does it say reversed as you claimed? Obama has continued the practice. As an aside, did you note the part about Obama's flipflop? And, yes, the Obama Administration did argue in favor of preventing courts from reviewing the legality of warrantless wiretapping, and claimed that federal judges can't second-guess the Executive branch. Sounds more like Cheney but it was Obama.
Legislation is pending, and he has pushed for increased oversight. I'm not sure which court case you're talking about, maybe it's the one about prosecuting telecom companies?
