From messiah to pariah
 

'Even Charles Manson could beat him now'

I really hope he's not going to go down in US history(/folklore) as a disastrous president, with his name synonymous with weakness, ineffectual(ness?), etc. You know, like a certain Dem from 30 years ago.

But increasingly I fear he really is going to be a one-term president - and his unpopularity might lead to someone quite unpleasant replacing him.

Maybe he just needs to learn how to be folksy.
Or maybe he'll get to have a war all of his own.

How do you think he's doing so far?

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

I think he's goneski. Especially if the US enters a period of hyper-inflation, destruction of the dollar, and 20% unemployment, as some economists are predicting to occur by the end of his first term.

And even if that isn't the case, the health care push was such an embarrassment to the democrats that even if he does squeak by the fox news annointed candidate, he'll have a fraction of the creditability and a fraction of the coalition in the legislature that he enjoyed starting his first term.

Its all very sad because he had such a base of support starting out that he could have painted the white house pink and no one would have been able to stop him. And even if someone tried, he could have just gone back to his voter base and pointed a finger at his antagonists and they would have been political toast. That was the mandate. It was not desired he turn washington into a bon fire party on the beach where everyone gets invited and he brings his guitar.

I don't imagine anyone anytime soon entering the presidency enjoying the same privilege as what he just squandered.

I won't be voting for him because of the stimulus. And its not that I don't buy into keynes, its that I see a huge difference between investment and bailout.

It really makes me wonder who was more wrong, the american voters or obama, but definitely something important got miscommunicated in terms of expectations. I personally was looking for something that resembled "change".

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

I still think it's too soon to say.

At this point in time, considering what he's had to work with to get to his ideas for bettering America, he's done the best he can.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

i sincerely doubt that obama's managed to garner a lower approval rating than bush TOOK YEARS TO SINK TO after one year, but you guys have fun.

2 years is an extraordinary amount of time.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

are we talking about bush the band? If not, then come back down from that cloud, dude.

gw bush enjoyed approval ratings in the 80's after the first year and a half, largely because of the war on terror. it took 6 long years afterwards to grind it down to the 40's and 30's.

So yeah its the exact opposite of obama.

But I agree 2 years is an extraordinary amount of time. It doesn't change the fact that the economic factors that may cause things to go further south, which would spell imminent doom to any hope for second term are probably already in place and are probably irreversible at this point.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

ways obama can win the second term.

1. he starts a weekly televised conversation with the public (not unlike roosevelt's fireside chats, only more hostile) that details his plans, what he's doing, why he's doing it, and who's stopping him.

2. He wraps up one of the wars.

3. The noodleheads on the other side actually push palin through the primaries. Frum, the national review, and other brainier conservatives revolt, buy their souls back from Satan's pawn shop and support a third option, splitting the ticket.

4. the economy rebounds (fat chance)

5. he clears his entire cabinet and starts over with people who are better at getting the job done, as opposed to place holders so that opposing sides can be happy and people can be nice and hold hands.

Bottom line he needs to start going back to the grass roots that he himself organized and patch things up, because when his legitimacy has been so thoroughly chained to the back of a texas pickup truck and dragged for thirty miles, he simply can't rely on the aura and majesty of the presidency to push him over the edge.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

In regards to your bottom line:

If ONLY he had not been handed a big pile of shit to miraculously change into bread.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

this is one of those misunderstandings that arent worth explaining. fixed the post for you <3

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

I realized I misunderstood you before, but thought the points I made were still valid, evenso.

Regardless you're right, its not worth explaining why you're wrong, when you're not arguing against me, you're basically deying what these graphs prove to be the case. xoxoxo

http://clipsandcomment.com/wp-conten...l-historic.jpg

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2...age6083164.gif

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

Your presentation only makes the possibility of the opposite effect occurring with Obama's numbers that much more exciting.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

i sincerely hope that's the case.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

FDR on the bankers:

"They are unanimous in their hatred of me. And I welcome their hatred"

A time when regulation was not un-American, and government was not the enemy.

And the most successful meme currently doing the rounds is of Obama the socialist.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

HEY, ya know even then. I mean, if he does actually create some bread from the lovely pile of shit he was handed, I'm sure he'll be accused of making a pact with the devil or something. Ya know, that's the way "they" work.

Trust me, I understand what it's like to be rightly fucked.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

yes that is exactly what america needs right now: a populist who's a fighter, not a populist who's a celebrity. and its so incredibly maddening the idiocy that goes into painting obama a socialist when he's done nothing but amplify all of the corporatist policies of Bush.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

yes the american people are impossible. they're like a spoiled beverly hills girl that gets an arranged marriage with a fat hairy man in a trailer park whose name is reality.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

AMEN! JALLELUHAHHAHA! j/k. You said that.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

reread, misunderstood OP, didnt see the all-important "at this stage"

still, doesnt mean much.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

well I agree, a 25 point drop on its own is fine, certainly not unprecedented and wouldnt' mean he's a lame duck. the worry is that there's really nothing on the horizon for which to garner some hope the trend is going to be checked.

we'll see.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

Personally, I think that today's hyper-instant reporting coupled with the super-amplification of every expectation and criticism of the President makes it very difficult to gauge reality. While I too am right there with the idea of holding every President accountable, of course including Obama, I simply think that it's far too early to make many meaningful judgements about his major policies or his first term overall. A country of over 300,000,000 people simply doesn't recover in one year from an economic collapse, two wars, the constant threat of terrorism, a revitalization of bigotry, a steady march towards the destruction of our environment, and a trend away from the very principles that the nation was founded on.

Yes, the health care reform bill is looking to be clearly flawed, but we don't know yet whether it'll be a first step towards failure, or an effective way to simply get something passed that can then be modified and improved as we go. And yes, unemployment is still a huge problem, but could any President have turned that around in a single year given the economic conditions of our country? We just have to wait and see.

Beyond that, I tend to feel that the most passionate and vocal portions of society on both sides of the aisle - the ones that we hear screaming out their opinions on a daily basis - are a minority in the country. The vast majority of people are just trying to get by in their day to day lives - not wringing their hands over whether or not Obama's a "socialist" or a "fascist", or most amazingly both a socialist and a fascist, or over every non-stop criticism and bit of praise that's thrown Obama's way every minute of every day. So the perspective we get of the country through the major news outlets, in my opinion, tends to be skewed towards this vocal minority. And not surprisingly, this minority also makes for more attention-grabbing headlines.

Of course it probably also helps that I never actually thought of Obama as a "messiah" who would be solving all our problems the day he took office. Very few of his supporters probably ever did. That was always just a lame rhetorical tool that was bandied about by his opponents. So just as I roll my eyes at the declarations of Obama being a "messiah" or "the one" for those of us who voted for him, I also tend to roll my eyes at declarations that he's now a "pariah", or that we can already write him off as a one term President. In many ways, patience and realism seems to have gone the way of the Dodo in today's society.....

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

WOW, Everybody LOOOK! Even Sean can do a total 180 from the past 8 years! HEEEY!!! Look what that numbercrunchies too!

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

I wouldn't say I've done a 180. I still hold all the same basic beliefs.

Re: From messiah to pariah
 

Pragmatism is a gem is it not? I can recognize it when I see/hear it.

During my Poli.Sci. course when we were discussing this term I asked the Professor, "Is there a word to use when politicians just tell the truth?" He replied, "No.".