Like many Kossacks, I voted for Obama with a rush of enthusiasm and excitement, coming off 8 years of Bush hell. I took Obama's campaign rhetoric seriously. Two years later the string of disappointments that has ensued still boggles my mind. I could list them, but you all know what they are.
Over the past two and a half years there were two biggies for me. First was Obama's refusal to even investigate the Bush torture policies despite ample evidence that this was our government's policy. He took an oath of office that obligates him to uphold the law and we are signatories to the Geneva conventions - both REQUIRE that he investigate this well known problem. He has refused. This is a huge stain on our nation and he should be ashamed for turning away from this.
Second is his refusal to prosecute the executives of the banks and mortgage companies that openly and obviously defrauded the American people during the Bush housing bubble. How can anyone have any trust in the financial markets if systematic fraud in such high places is condoned by our president? The evidence is there, but nothing is done.
This is a president who wants bipartisanship so badly that he is OK with not enforcing the law - war crimes? wholesale financial fraud? Yes, he says these were bad things, but he says we must "turn the page" and "not dwell on the past". Strip away the sound-bite-rhetoric and this is just blanket amnesty for some pretty horrific stuff. A cowardly cop out. A big one.
Well here we are again, only six months after trashing his campaign pledge and re-upping the Bush millionaire tax cuts, we are watching Obama give away the store in the debt ceiling negotiation. We see him once again making conciliatory and concessionary statements which surprise and aleinate congressional democrats, negotiating against himself, cowardly floating trial balloons, enlarging the negotiation by putting entitlements on the table and thinking it's a shrewd move.
Obama has proven himself to be an exceptionally feckless, weak, and indecisive President who just wants everyone to get along. He thinks and acts like a moderate republican. He has forsaken every Democratic principal he ran on in favor of being a kind of post-partisan referee or something. And the republicans are just eating him for lunch over and over - he is their perfect foil. It is very very sad and demoralizing.
Progressives have long been tortured at the voting booth by the Hobson's choice of the "lesser of two evils" - voting for someone like Obama because he's a better choice than the bozos the republicans nominate. And in a limited, narrow sense, this may still be true. Even if Obama makes the stupid one sided deal we're hearing about - trading Social Security COLA's and Medicare cuts for a slightly smaller corporate tax deduction for corporate jets and the like - even if he goes forward with that in the teeth of screaming democrats and progressives, it's perhaps still better to vote for him than endure a president Bachmann. And rest assured that he and his election team are banking on just that calculus - that his disenfranchised base will hold their noses and vote for him, almost no matter what.
Until a good chunk of Democrats and Independents decide they're not going to be so "pragmatic" once in the voting booth and actually withhold their vote, we will all continue to suffer this weakness, corruption, and frustration.
Well, despite my anger at this president and his duplicity, I consider myself a deliberative rational person, especially on big matters. But there is a tipping point, and this voter may be about there.