I am hearing a lot of chatter about how the President should face a primary challenge in the 2012 election?
Okay, who do you got?
I keep reading about how someone needs to challenge President Obama because he has not lived up to expectations. Whether they are your expectations or his I am not sure.
So, tell me? Who?
Kucinich? Tried and failed.
Nader? Tried and failed.
Dean? Tried and imploded.
Hilary? She is not going to do it.
Sanders? Seriously? Here is the one time the Republicans can say "sociaist" and actually be right. Besides, he is as old as Chris Christie is obese.
Please, tell me, seriously, who could challenge the President and beat him? Who could not only challenge and beat the President, but then win the general election?
Seriously? Who?
There are things that bug me about this President, but there are also things that this President has done that I feel have helped this country, a lot.
The fact that he has avoided a full-blown global depression is not bad. Everyone here should go back and read what the Republicans were going to do for the economy if they retained power in the White House and the Congress.
Actually, I can give you a short summation right here.
(Silence)
Remember, they were saying "Let the markets decide." Yeah, the Hoover approach. We just sit back and see what happens. That really worked well in 1929, didn't it?
There is a litany of accomplishments that I could list in support of the President, but there are a number of other bloggers here who have done quite a good job of this already. Unfortunately, there are quite a few "progressives" who don't seem to think these measure up.
I recently responded to someone who held this point of view. I said that I thought that a person writing something about the President implied that he had accomplished nothing. The first response was basically, "You don't know what you are talking about." Before I could respond to that, someone else agreed with me and listed a litany of complaints about the President following the meme of no accomplishments.
when one looks at that Politifact list is that it encompasses a huge number of issues which, quite literally, do not matter to the average voter.
the number of entries on that list that are more or less meaningless.... but still get counted as 'wins.'
Yes they have accomplished a few mediocre things but many of those so-called accomplishments have been weak tea considering what the majority of America has asked for repeatedly.
Insults wouldn't be necessary if the list could stand on its own.
Amazing.
Jonathan Alter has a good article about this kind of rhetoric and it is worth reading. He takes a point-by-point argument for every criticism of this president and then asks, "Please give me hard proof that he has been a bad president." I have to agree with him on a lot of points. Also, because the comments that he received to his article are strewn with pathetic rants.
Some gems include:
Obama would have been a fabulous president.. in Nigeria.
" How can economic players plan their decisions if politicans shuffle the deck every week"?
Alberto Mingardi of the Bruno Leoni Institue commenting on Italian politicans which also could easily apply to American politicans.
Um...huh?
Not but a basic education might help you understand why your easily led into thinking you are.
Um...WHAT?
One rant goes on about the "beer summit". Others go on about how he hasn't done enough. Not doing enough doesn't make you bad. This president has faced more problems (frankly, disasters) than almost any president in history. Not doing enough, in my book, means that there is work left to be done. He can't do it if he is tossed out.
To be fair, some of the individual points made are valid criticisms, but it still does not address the overall statement: Please prove this president is a bad president. Name me one president who has a perfect record. Please.
I looked back at the 80's and President Reagan's poll numbers. At one point, he was at 34%, much lower than the current president at any time during this first term. After he cut taxes and then cut spending, the country plunged into a recession. Yet, no one from his own party challenged him. No one at all. Not even a hint or whiff of a challenge. Not even John Anderson, a third-party challenger to Carter and Reagan in 1980, reared his head to run again.
You know what his party did? They rallied around him and he did more of what they wanted him to do. Now, I think what he did was a load of bull puckey, but he did it nonetheless.
We should consider doing the same. Why? Because we haven't tried it yet. The thing that disturbs me the most about the comments made against the president is the complete lack of loyalty towards him. He has done things that liberals agreed with, yet it seems that there is a not-so-small number of people who just plain hate him because they didn't get everything that they wanted. You know what? It's not all about you.
If you want the president to be loyal to you, then how about showing some loyalty to him? We didn't in November 2010 and look what that got us. The rallying cry from "progressives" seems to be, "It's not good enough!" Please tell me why would anyone support a group that rants and raves like this? "Progressives" seem to produce screeds in this vein on an hourly basis?
Look, I didn't like the dropping of the EPA regulations. However, he did set into stone hiking MPG regulations for cars and has given billions to clean energy firms. (By the way, did you know that solar cell creation creates tons of toxic waste?) This also might be something that he needs to get out of the way because he wants to take away talking points from Eric Cantor (you know, the guy who wants to hold off disaster funding until he knows he can get something in return). Besides, they get reviewed again in 2013. Guess what happens to them if we put Republicans back in power.
I didn't like the default crisis, but I also didn't want us to go into another recession. The President simply had no choice. (Please refer to Alter's article) You rescue the hostages first. (By the way, the hostage taking isn't over. We're just in the next stage.)
There are people who are very appreciative that the President saved their jobs, especially in the banking or automotive sector. The Republicans wanted to let both of those sectors fail, with the automotive industry in this country completely disappearing. I guess they were fine with doubling the unemployment rate.
The creator of this site has implored the president to repeal DADT. Well, he has. And he is not going to defend the Defense of Marriage Act to boot. Yet, his latest blog post basically said, "Nothing the President is doing is working."
No, it was working. The stimulus ran out in June along with the quantitative easing policy that the Fed enacted. What happened after that was a series of catastrophes and global financial issues (and a near default) that shredded confidence in the financial sector for the entire world. You can't blame the president for all of that. Hell, I am not sure you can blame the president for any of that.
Yet that seems to be the case with every criticism. Progressives seem to think that the president is a dictator and can magically sway people to move in YOUR direction. This is not a realistic vision of the world.
I am not saying that the criticism should stop. What I am saying that this "all is lost" meme needs to go. We are suffering through one of the worst economics crises this country has ever faced. It took Roosevelt over 10 years (including a world war) to get us out of it. This president has been in office for just over 2 1/2 years. I am not ready to bail on him. He's done enough good to gain my trust.