Wow ! Just wow! There are a vocal minority of people on Daily Kos whom we will never persuade to be full throated and unequivocal in their support for the reelection of the President. It is a mistake to try. It is a mistake to accept their criteria as legitimate in evaluating President Obama as compared with all of those people who could actually win a general election and accomplish anything with a divided Congress and a 60 vote majority senate . Or their evaluation of the President in comparison , not with respect to their own times, but in an absolute sense with all of the Presidents who have preceded this one.
Did FDR push for and pass civil rights legislation or is he vulnerable to criticism there? Was FDR better on civil rights than President Obama? Did LBJ oppose unnecessary wars like President Obama ? The President opposed the Iraq war when it was relatively popular and like the overwhelming majority of Americans I have no problem with the Afghanistan war commencement. Most Americans do not oppose all wars, contrary to my pacifist friends . LBJ did not show any support for gay equality as this President did by pushing for the repeal of DADT and by deciding ultimately to not defend DOMA. Where were these presidents on abortion rights ? Will one person once affirm that Presidents Lincoln and Washington fought climate change ? In an absolute sense, it is indefensible to argue that any past president, as a whole, was more progressive than this one. The simple fact is that neither Senator Sanders nor Representative Kucinich could win a general election. And what could they do in a comparable situation?
I am done trying to persuade people who live in a progressive fantasy land to please, please support our President by wrongly agreeing with them that this President is barely worth voting for . He is more progressive than anybody who can win in 2012, could have won in 2008, or did win in the past.
Our economy was shedding 750,000 jobs a month at the end of the bush presidency, we have had 23 straight months of job growth , and are adding more than 200,000 jobs a month. The economy is more likely than not to continue he this trend through November. He caught and killed Osama Bin Laden. For more than a generation, democrats have said that they wanted as close to universal coverage as we could get. This President actually got that done with subsidies to the poor. This President rescued us from the worst economy since the great depression. This President got the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Act passed. This president created an agency to protect consumers and got the Dodd Frank bill passed to regulate Wall Street. This President got better fuel standards in place. Under his administration the EPA watches carbon dioxide emissions. This President ended the Iraq War and will end the Afghanistan war by the middle of 2013. This President got DADT repealed. This President got two great Supreme Court justices confirmed to the court.
Either President Obama will win reelection or Mitt Romney will become President. All real progressives know that of those two , there is a real difference and President Obama is more progressive. This President has been truly great, not merely decent and I am not going to apologize for enthusiastically supporting his reelection!
2:44 PM PT: I am still waiting for a substantive argument that over all, in absolute terms, not measured by their own times, other Presidents were more progressive than this one. I am still waiting for someone to make the case that there is no significant difference between Mitt Romney and President Obama. I am still waiting for someone to make the case that a more progressive person can win the presidency in 2012. So far, crickets: no answers. If you can't answer those three challenges above, then you concede my argument is correct. Nonanswers are admissions that the thesis of this diary stands unrefuted. Answer the 3 challenges!