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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 20, 2010 14:57:43 GMT
Here is an interesting CBS article (dated January 19, 2010) which attempts to explain Obama's rapidly declining popularity. Here is an excerpt: Mr. Obama has suffered the steepest decline in job approval of any first year president since they started keeping such data: in most surveys, he is barely at, or under fifty per cent. His health-care plan, the signature effort of his first year in office, has grown steadily less popular and its survival, as one Congressional Democrat put it, "Hangs by a thread." It may, in fact, be doomed on the precise one-year anniversary of his Inaugural, if Massachusetts voters send a Republican to the U.S. Senate today to fill the seat held for nearly half a century, by Edward Kennedy, the patron saint of liberal health care. (note: The results are now in and the Republican candidate did win that election). You can read the full article here: www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/18/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6112366.shtml
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 20, 2010 15:02:14 GMT
Wow! Even the Communist News Network (CNN) and the voters of Massachusetts are coming around. Who knew that these two Democrat loyalists had even a possibility of getting it right? www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=8pO1oJPps1IWASHINGTON — One year to the day after his euphoric inauguration, President Obama will spend today trying to rescue his legislative agenda after an election upset in Massachusetts that jeopardizes his top domestic priority, health care. Republican Scott Brown's triumph over Democrat Martha Coakley in Tuesday's special Senate race marks the third statewide loss in a row for the president's party and the one most fraught with political and policy implications. Brown gives the Republicans the 41st vote they need to block legislation in the Senate. (source USA Today article dated January 20, 2010: www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-19-Massachusetts-race_N.htm)
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Post by mouse on Jan 20, 2010 17:09:11 GMT
oh give the man a chance...a yr isnt very long on which to make an out right judgement lordy bliar was elected three times before it sunk in what a waste of space he was
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 20, 2010 17:11:30 GMT
I'm ashamed to admit that in 1997 I was stupid enough as a very young girl casting her first vote at the age of 19 to vote for Blair.
It wasn't long before I bitterly regretted my decision!
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Post by mouse on Jan 20, 2010 17:14:05 GMT
as have many other lin....as have many others luckily i can hold my head high..lol
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Post by clemiethedog on Jan 20, 2010 17:42:35 GMT
I liked Obama's record, namely opposing the Iraq war from day one, and I liked Obama's grasp of the issues and his ability to articulate them. From a practical standpoint, however, Clinton would have made the better POTUS.
I wish Clinton had won. Although I voted for Obama (didn’t care for Clinton), the idea of another 4 years of Republican leadership on the war, irrational tax cuts, and supreme court nominations (these in and of themselves prevented a vote for McCain) was untenable. However, I never dreamed Obama would fail to enact bank reform(!), sell out healthcare to big Pharma, renege on almost all environmental pledges, and be so consumed by being a centrist that he has utterly failed to lead the Dems to effective governance.
Honestly, although I virtually disagreed with Everything Bush stood for, I have to admire his resolute F-you attitude in doing what he thought needed to be done. In retrospect, the dem agenda would have been much better served by Clinton winning...she would've treated the job of passing legislation like the battle it is, rather than adopting an attitude like all the bickering is beneath her.
The Democrats are certainly failing the public, but they are hostages to a system that defines the politics of the day. If the best way to get elected is to have more money than the other guy, because the voting public largely doesn't examine issues, and only votes based on 1) who's name they hear most often and 2) petty attack ads which are often filled with charges lacking context or based wholly on lies or exaggeration, then you'll go to where the money is. That money is, more and more often, in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population and/or the corporations that they own.
These politicians are symptoms, not the cause. The cause is a system that defines voting power by money. Even major media sources track the horse race (i.e. how much money has X candidate raised and how that reflects on their ability to win.) These media sources don't examine the issues. They track money, because that's the system.
Until we have an electoral process that is defined by issues, rather than dollars, you will never, ever get what is best for the public-at-large, no matter what you or said elected representatives believe in.
If Obama was the messiah that so many half-assed progressives believed him to be, he would have attempted to exploit the few loopholes in our moneyed system and made more progress on those issues that people claimed were his mantra (more so than even he did or does.) But he's not. He's one of them; perfectly comfortable with said moneyed system. You don't hang around money like he has for the past 30 years and end up not believing what they believe. There's a reason that Geithner is his SoT.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 23, 2010 0:28:29 GMT
January 22, 2010. The stock market tanked again today. It's gone straight down since Obama made his speech about banks. Obama is about as popular on Wall Street as the Swine Flu. The only question remaining is whether America will be able to survive until we can vote him out. I didn't think it possible that we would ever elect a bigger loser than Bill Clinton but I'm having to reconsider.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2010 6:31:51 GMT
Isn't it typical for the popularity of a country's leader to wane after about a year? Didn't it happen with Bush?
In any event, voters at what we call by-elections often use the opportunity to make a point. They know the outcome won't affect the political colour of the whole, so results are often skewed.
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Post by mouse on Jan 23, 2010 10:05:47 GMT
i doubt any man could live up to the expectation that some had of obama skin colour and hype are not good indications of a mans worth
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Post by randomvioce on Jan 23, 2010 11:00:08 GMT
They know the outcome won't affect the political colour of the whole, so results are often skewed. That is not true in this case, Skylark. The Republican's gained seat means they can block Obamas health reforms. They knew exactlty what they were doing when the voted for Brown. They were voting against Obama's health plans. I feel sorry for the poor in America, but to be honest, it rather sums of the mentality of your average backward American and the American political landscape. I wouldn't mind too much, but we are being infected by the same backward political idealogy as they have. Boris Johnston being a prime example of the type of halfwits that get elected running a typical American campaign. Slick and empty slogans, slick and empty people elected.
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Post by randomvioce on Jan 23, 2010 11:09:43 GMT
January 22, 2010. The stock market tanked again today. It's gone straight down since Obama made his speech about banks. Obama is about as popular on Wall Street as the Swine Flu. Why is that a problem? If the market react badly it means that they see easy profits floating away. We have people in this Country who think that 'the markets' are the be all and end all of everything. Pandering to them has left us with a huge deficit, millions of job destroyed and our manufacturing base gone.
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Post by riotgrrl on Jan 23, 2010 11:19:30 GMT
January 22, 2010. The stock market tanked again today. It's gone straight down since Obama made his speech about banks. Obama is about as popular on Wall Street as the Swine Flu. The only question remaining is whether America will be able to survive until we can vote him out. I didn't think it possible that we would ever elect a bigger loser than Bill Clinton but I'm having to reconsider. Why is political success measured by the success of stock exchanges? Of course we all want to be wealthy or at least comfortable, but to judge a politician by the behaviour of risk monkeys who have already nearly brought us all to the brink of disaster (only to be SAVED by politicians) makes little sense. On another thread people are saying how much they like local markets, where local traders sell fresh produce. Yet the 'markets' (i.e. the stock exchanges et als) are the playthings of the big corporations, the very people who stifle small, independent traders.
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 23, 2010 11:32:53 GMT
Like Tony Blair?
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 23, 2010 11:34:01 GMT
There's a poem by Matthew Mead that has a couple of relevant lines which I like:
'Good for us - Bad for General Motors!'
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Post by randomvioce on Jan 23, 2010 11:40:07 GMT
Partly, but T Blair had vastly more substance that Boris. There are dozens of Tories who I have a problem with idealogy wise but they would all make better mayors than Johnston.
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 23, 2010 11:41:59 GMT
Oh, I'm not defending Boris Johnson. I didn't vote for him in the Mayoral elections and I had two choices!
I put Brian Paddick as my first choice!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2010 13:54:44 GMT
i doubt any man could live up to the expectation that some had of obama skin colour and hype are not good indications of a mans worth A cleric at Obama's inauguration made a speech that didn't get wide publicity saying that America always expected too much from their presidents, and none more so than Obama. Something like that anyway. "Hype" - or should I say the art of making a good speech - does seem to be what wins votes at all elections these days.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 23, 2010 18:51:21 GMT
January 22, 2010. The stock market tanked again today. It's gone straight down since Obama made his speech about banks. Obama is about as popular on Wall Street as the Swine Flu. Why is that a problem? If the market react badly it means that they see easy profits floating away. We have people in this Country who think that 'the markets' are the be all and end all of everything. Pandering to them has left us with a huge deficit, millions of job destroyed and our manufacturing base gone. Whether owning a stock portfolio directly or indirectly via pension funds, 401K, IRA, etc. lots of people have their savings in the stock market. When the market does well they feel successful and they spend money especially on big-ticket purchases like houses, cars, boats, vacations, etc. When their retirement funds take huge drops in value, as happened on Friday, they close their check books and defer spending. Liberals demonize corporations and financiers as evil and selfish. Though that may be true in a few cases that's not generally the case. Corporations produce most of the goods and services that give us our comfortable life styles. They also generate most of our jobs. Smaller companies are their suppliers and customers. Without corporations we'd be back in the dark ages. I do think we'd all be better off without labor unions but we sure do need corporations. The stock market is where corporations go to raise equity funds. They use those to build factories and office buildings, buy machinery, and fund growth. The stock market is just as important to our economy as banking. When the government does something to spook the market it impacts investors, corporations, and all those who depend on them.
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Post by riotgrrl on Jan 23, 2010 20:09:28 GMT
My problem, Bushadmirer, is that I find your terms confusing.
Liberals, in the traditional political sense, believe in free trade very much indeed.
But you Americans use 'liberals' in a way that is strange to those of us used to European political analysis.
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