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Old 06-20-2011, 10:50 AM
Sean
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: US
Posts: 1,437
Re: Important Message About Sarah Palin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strangelet View Post
And I don't have a lot of hope on this but I do think progressives have abandoned Obama, and enough centrists who are more issue centered have observed that the only difference between the bush years and the obama years is that now its the established democrats that are making excuses for their president instead of the established republicans.. Which means Obama might have a real centrist problem this election, in addition to a rear guard attack from the progressives.

To be quite frank, I would take MoveOn.org a hell of a lot more seriously if they took Obama to task for doing the same things Bush did.
For me, I wonder how much of this sentiment is accurate, and how much is the result of anti-Obama rhetoric. I don't personally buy into the claims of Obama and Bush being the same. Yes, Obama is clearly more of a centerist and pragmatist than leftists and progressives would have liked, but to compare, say, Libya to either Iraq or Afghanistan (and don't get me wrong - I didn't want us to get involved in Libya), or the approaches to taxes, or the whole health care issue, or Don't Ask Don't Tell, etc. reveals pretty significant differences.

I just heard a piece on NPR about gay activists being frustrated that yes, there have been positive developments for them under Obama, but not as much as they want, so they're upset with him. I'm far more sick of people expecting that they should be getting everything they want instead of accepting that this is a nation of vastly differing views and beliefs, and that the compromise this necessitates means progress will always be slow. When one group is getting everything they want, then other groups are invariably getting nothing that they want. That's selfish and untenable to me.
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