obama 2012 (?????)

[Strangelet]

I tried finding the earlier thread that talked about our predictions for how obama will do next election. I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts now, if we were to return to the question.

will you vote for obama (hypothetically even) ?
do you think he will win?
do you think he deserves to win?

my answers are

no
no
and no.

[the mongoose]

Absolutely not.
Hope not.
No.

[bryantm3]

ooh... i didn't know there were any right wingers here. or is your disappointment in obama unrelated to politics but rather as to his effectiveness?

[Strangelet]

ooh... i didn't know there were any right wingers here. or is your disappointment in obama unrelated to politics but rather as to his effectiveness?

As far as mongoose, he doesn't even think Obama is a natural born citizen. As for me, I'm no right winger, I just think Obama is a failed presidency (so far). This is what I said the last time this issue was raised and it didn't seem like anyone agreed with me, so I'm wondering if anything has changed.

[kagenaki koe]

depends on who he's running against. if Dubya can win two terms anything is possible.

[stimpee]

Depends if he's better than the alternative. Hard to make a big impact when youre spending your time cleaning up after the last administration.

[King of Snake]

Is guantanamo closed yet?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

I wouldn't vote for him again, honestly all I see now is the same ol' cycle of Dems blaming Republicans for everything that sucks. Halfway through the presidency and all we get is a healthcare bill to 'patch' a system that doesn't really work in the first place.

I like Obama as a person, I like what he represents, but honestly I can't say America is better off with him as president. His speeches are great but has anything really improved???

Not to say we'd be better with McCain. Howard Dean was actually always my dream president. Oh well...

On a related note, does anyone else think terms should be 6 years but with no possibility of re-election? It's a little disconcerning that the last 7-8 months of every first term is spent primarily attempting to get re-elected...

[Andrea]

it´s not an easy work to be a politician
you know... like trying to discern the coastline from different heights :)

but is there any politician who have ever made a good job enough in history?
it seems as if everybody is making the best of a bad all the time

[//\/\/]

On a related note, does anyone else think terms should be 6 years but with no possibility of re-election? It's a little disconcerning that the last 7-8 months of every first term is spent primarily attempting to get re-elected...

it's a tricky one, isn't it? even if a second term is granted - it's only really 2 years before everybody's looking to the next guy and thereby denying the president any meaningful power. usuallly why 2-term presidents save it until year 6 before they 'tackle the palestinian issue' - it's just 'meaningless busy-time' as lisa simpson would put it...

[stimpee]

I think people are asking too much here. Give the guy some time. It may not look on the surface as if he has done anything, but steadying the ship has to be the highest priority. The mess that the country is in does not call for radical new bills to shape america. It calls for financial management to stop the slide. I dont think people truly understand just how close the US economy came to collapsing completely under Bush.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Yes but I think it's a mistake to say that Bush was responsible for everything. I am sure the economy would have collapsed under Kerry or Gore or whoever else you'd put in.

[Strangelet]

Yes but I think it's a mistake to say that Bush was responsible for everything. I am sure the economy would have collapsed under Kerry or Gore or whoever else you'd put in.

yes and no. would sub prime and toxic derivative mortgages have burst? Yes. Would the federal government be forced to push itself into insolvency and lower global credit rating with a weaker dollar with stimulus spending? No. Not with the surplus budget Bush enjoyed.

Of course conservatives don't like to make a correlation between the economy and military spending deficits. They act like the money for Iraq and Afghanistan came straight from Jesus.

[bryantm3]

i like the guy, but he doesn't have any balls. he doesn't have the ability like many past democrats have had to get congress by the nuts and do some wheeling and dealing. he just kind of has an idea, then lets congress destroy it and add garbage to it, then he signs it. the problem isn't obama's ideals, it's that congress is screwing everything up and he doesn't have the ability to challenge them on anything.

[stimpee]

The subprime thing would have happened without Bush. But the cash reserves that the USA had before Bush blew it all in Iraq would have been more than enough to sort it out.

[cured]

yes and no. would sub prime and toxic derivative mortgages have burst? Yes. Would the federal government be forced to push itself into insolvency and lower global credit rating with a weaker dollar with stimulus spending? No. Not with the surplus budget Bush enjoyed.

Of course conservatives don't like to make a correlation between the economy and military spending deficits. They act like the money for Iraq and Afghanistan came straight from Jesus.

Spot on, there. I argue with a staunch conservative over on a private board with friends and I have pointed out numerous times there that the Tea Party and their ilk cannot have a serious discussion about fiscal policy unless they are also willing to examine the effect defense spending has on the budget.

When Obama had his healthcare debate-tour-thing some months back, there was only one Republican who had a grasp of reality and he pounced on Obama pretty hard (Obama had demolished the GOP in their own forum leading up to that). Paul Ryan, R-Wis, had some very sobering things to say back then about healthcare. He also had some things to say about the fiscal crisis going forward, suggesting there would have to be cuts all over the place. The GOP decided they should champion Ryan's intelligence and fiscal conservative principles but none of them, apart from maybe Ron Paul, were in any way about to endorse his proposals for making benefit cuts as a nice portion of that came from social security.

I think Obama has been really good on the foreign policy front, in some ways, and too much like his predecessor in others. But I think his presidency as a whole will be decided on only two factors: the state of unemployment and the economy come voting time. His biggest test is coming in next year's budget cycle, when discretionary spending is supposedly going to be frozen.

Much of 2012 also has to do with who ends up running for the GOP. I don't think Sarah Palin is dumb enough to do it. The GOP machine must have people telling her she can do much more help being the peanut gallery, lobbing potshots from the safety of Fox News and not on a campaign trail. So who will it be? As far as I can tell, the GOP is in worse credit shape than the government is, having added bankrupt fiscal ideas to a socially radical agenda. If they are dumb enough to nominate someone who appeals to the fringe right AND if there is sustainable growth in the economy AND if "real" unemployment drops to under 10%, Obama wins in a landslide.

[Troy McClure]

My disagreements with President Obama are that the major landmark bills that have passed aren't progressive enough.

I don't think there is a serious alternative to campaign against President Obama. Ms. Palin would never run because she makes too much money, and I think that's what drives her. Mitt Romney can't stick to a narrative for more than two weeks, and I think he would run a bad campaign.

I do think many of the economic disasters under President Bush would have occurred eventually. That repealing of the Glass-Steagal Act was a effing disaster when Clinton was president. But the multi-trillion tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, plus dishonesty about the cost of wars made a bad situation worse.

And the GOP mantra is to deregulate even further. That is idiotic.

From 'Center on Budget and Policy Priorities'
Where the budget debt actually comes from
http://tinyurl.com/ygazdtr

http://tinyurl.com/242h7mm


I think if someone other than Harry Reid was Senate majority leader, the Senate would be more productive.

--Jason

[stimpee]

Informative article and shows exactly what a mess the country is in. Obama could do more but I wonder how much his hands are tied by this financial mess. I cant see how a GOP govt could do any better. The country needs someone sensible to run it, not a brainless right wing populist making tax cuts for the rich.

[//\/\/]

Of course conservatives don't like to make a correlation between the economy and military spending deficits. They act like the money for Iraq and Afghanistan came straight from Jesus.

i think all sides have their heads up their collective arses as far as that is concerned. talk about an elephant in the room...

probably lots of former communist leaders laughing and sniggering at the irony of it all... ''look, yuri - they've only gone and done the same as we did!"

[Andrea]

guys who don't have any balls...It´s all right with me :D

I mean less testosterone in certain countries would bring peace in many ways

apropos military spending, wars, ... and so on

[cacophony]

will you vote for obama (hypothetically even) ?
do you think he will win?
do you think he deserves to win?

how can these questions be answered only 2 years into his 4 year term? a better question is if he were up for reelection NOW, would you vote for him blahblahblah.

i think he'd win. "deserve" to win is too loaded to answer, and seeing as there are no republican candidates who have appealed to me recently i'd probably vote for him again.

which is not to imply i was over the moon thrilled with my options during the last election. my vote was mostly based on my approval of joe biden. and following the election i've been mostly disappointed with obama's unwillingness to repeal or revise important civil rights violations and information restrictions enacted during the bush admin. he's prioritized things like don't ask don't tell, and while i feel that's an important issue it's not half or even a quarter as important as most of the pressing issues of today. so i feel like he's taking these easy wins on the smaller issues and refusing to deal with the big issues that affect our fundamental freedoms. which means the vast majority of his policymaking has been maintaining the status quo.

still, in an election it's a matter of who the alternate choice is. i haven't seen anyone i'd prefer at this point. which is unfortunate.

i just wish obama was more obamaish and less bushish.

[cacophony]

Is guantanamo closed yet?

THANK YOU.

[Strangelet]

npr/political junkie did a poll for 2012 expected candidacy. this is the results. 6 months ago I would have said he had a chance to win over the centrists. That's probably not going to happen now with his idiot son running around.

http://media.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/mar/bracket2012/bracket_public_rnd5.jpg

[Strangelet]

how can these questions be answered only 2 years into his 4 year term? a better question is if he were up for reelection NOW, would you vote for him blahblahblah.


OK, that's kind of what I meant anyway, but with a small caveat. Executive decisions are such that their vectors are set in motion early, and the effects play out long into the future, like for example invading Iraq, or permitting deep water off shore oil drilling. So its pretty clear that unless the next two years are devoted to redoing everything he's done these past two years, then I think its safe to say that we know what the Obama presidency is going to be.


i think he'd win. "deserve" to win is too loaded to answer, and seeing as there are no republican candidates who have appealed to me recently i'd probably vote for him again.


"deserve" might be loaded but it must be the most important question. Who deserves the presidency is why a lot of people, like myself, voted for Obama in the first place. I found it against my conscience to reward any politician who went with political expediency and supported the invasion in Iraq.

[Sean]

It's always hard to anticipate how the American people will vote, but personally, I think that Obama has been more effective than some here seem to give him credit for. First and foremost, economists generally agree that his administration's handling of the economic crisis they were immediately thrust into likely staved off a far, far worse scenario than we now have. Yet many people still focus almost exclusively on the shortcomings, or that we haven't fully recovered yet as if it was all an abysmal failure. In one article that outlines what the objectively verifiable results have been (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html), they provide a pretty clear analogy:

"The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing."

And while the health care bill that's passed certainly has it's obvious flaws, we still have yet to see a single "death panel" come to fruition, we're not suddenly a communist country as a result, and armageddon did not happen. As a result, public approval of the bill has been on a steady rise, while opposition has been on a steady decline (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/health-care_reform_getting_mor.html).

Of course there's been far more going on than just these two issues, but I have to get back to work. My point is, whether or not Obama is successful in 2012 will likely depend on whether or not we continue seeing steady, albeit slow, improvements in the economy, etc, and how well he and his campaign team are able to clearly communicate the objective successes they had in his first term in contrast with the relentless rhetoric we constantly hear claiming otherwise.

As a final note, I would agree that finally getting Guantanamo closed would certainly be a good, helpful thing.

[cacophony]

closing guantanamo (and not just replacing it with another guantanamo on another patch of foreign soil) would be the one thing that would make me guarantee my vote for obama come 2012.

[cured]

closing guantanamo (and not just replacing it with another guantanamo on another patch of foreign soil) would be the one thing that would make me guarantee my vote for obama come 2012.

So you're saying you'd like terrorists to run free in the US and live off our welfare while we use taxpayer money to pay for their trials?

/gop

:)

[Troy McClure]

So you're saying you'd like terrorists to run free in the US and live off our welfare while we use taxpayer money to pay for their trials?

/gop

:)

Lately, you could replace that 'terrorists' with homeless veterans, unemployed, and the poor and 'trials' with livelihood, food, shelter, medicine, and you get the GOP campaign slogan of this year.

/just saying.

[Strangelet]

I tend to agree with the lot of you. I too would lock my vote for Obama if Uncle Sam's Prison Camp and Fish Bait Shop were closed. That in itself, even though its one of many ethical bleeding sores in need of dressing, would show due diligence, good faith to his voting base.

And that's really one of Obama's biggest shortcomings. He leaves a vaccuum of trust that he should realize comes around when you sign an executive order to close Guantanamo the second day you're in office only to back pedal two years following because of "pressure from congress." Well the american congress has a low twenties approval rating so what the fuck. Are you POTUS or are you student body president?

SAN DIMAS HIGHSCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!!

I also agree that the economy will be just as much of a factor as the republicans resisting the urge to support a wing nut.

However I disagree that the economy/bailout was handled at all well by the Obama treasury. Part of this is my own ideology: I adhere more to the austrian school, the conservative perspective that bail outs done on debt is like a credit card company giving a shopaholic a little higher credit rating. Eventually they will still starve, its just going to take longer. The fact that even Krugman says we have all the signs of entering into a "third depression" (when was the second? and did it even end yet?) should be concerning. if this is true, Obama is fucked.

edited to include sources

http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/6841-krugman-calls-the-3rd-great-depression.html

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Guantanamos-lesson-for-the-Obama-administration-97315279.html