Many of us are mad at Obama for appeasing and yielding too much to the

Rebups. But is it possible that he is deliberately doing this in order to
show the American people that the Repubs., especially the Neocons and Tea
Partyers, are beyond all reason and common sense -- and hence, too dangerous
to be given the power of high office?

He probably saw this long before any of us did.

Those dumb asses ought to lose a lot of votes come Nov. 2012.

The American people decided that in 2004 and 2008. We were convinced. We don't need any rope a dopers pointing that out.

in 2008, but certainly not in 2004, or Dubya wouldn't have won his second term.
And even in 2008, many were convinced but barely, or they wouldn't have gone
back to the Repubs. in 2010.

Or perhaps there are also many of us who vote, or don't vote, out of the same
childish spite, which is so characteristic of the Tea Partyers?

Okay, so now let me have it. :)

Kerry. Gives up while Ohio is determining who won the state? Remember?

Oh! Here it is!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x720395

And it was not childish spite that depressed the turnout in 2010. It was the large numbers of 1st time voters who saw their votes thrown away by this administration, who saw no reason to go there again. It was not a 'fuck you', but a 'meh - same boss' that cost us the House.

If Obama had actually worked for the aganda he laid out in his campaign, those people would have had a reason to turn out.

n/t

Tea Partyers might be stupid enough to not even know when they
are lying. Anyway, both of them probably feel very much at home
and that they truly belong in a party where lying is an officially
condoned and accepted policy. The late Irving Kristol and
other Neocon founders have openly encouraged the idea that the
masses should be lied to whenever it's beneficial for the party
to do so.

This is probably a big attraction for pathological liars.

n/t.

We had an enormous, overwhelming victory in 2008; the public already knew well enough to throw the Republicans out of office. At that point, given a tremendous mandate, President Obama should have said the following in an address right away:

From 2000 to 2006, the Republicans and conservatism held all three branches of government, and we had a six-year social experiment in one-party rule under Republican domestic and foreign policy principles. These principles have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of our soldiers, the exporting of millions of jobs, and the shifting of hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth to the top 1% of the country. How many of you are better off than you were in 2000? How many of you have lost your jobs, or your homes, or worst of all, your loved ones? Faced with the demonstrated failure of Republican and conservative ideas, we will chart an entirely new course.

Then he should have called all the conservaDems into his office, and told them that they could get behind him or face the full weight of the Presidency and the National Democratic Party in opposition to their next campaign, and if they didn't like it, Howard Dean would be happy to hit each and every one of their districts nonstop until the next election, so get the hell in line. Then, charge the appropriate members of the Bush administration with war crimes, repeal the Patriot Act, reinstitute Clinton-level tax rates and defense spending, remove the 65 and over requirement for Medicare, and have the Joint Chiefs of Staff draw up a 6-month troop withdrawal plan with additional plans for closing bases in Europe.

probably about 1000 times. Clearly his focus was then and still is on bridging the political divide in this country. He may not succeed but I dont think he is going to give up.

Obama, I can only guess.

Everything else people just kid themselves over.

Of course once Obama got into office he thought it was his job to legitimize that dying party by acting like there was something there worth negotiating with.

And there is the default to consider. If Obama can't send out SS checks on Aug. 3, is that better than having cuts?

The voters made a big mistake giving the House to the republicans, but they have to deal with it now.

Sorry about that, but I am sick of the broad brush. In addition, I am sick of the implication that the losing losers who lost had noting to do with their own losing, that it was that pesky democracy thing that lost it for them. Lots of Democrats won last year. Winners we call them. Entire swaths fo the nation yet again rejected the Republicans, and gave victory to Democrats. The losers who lost should be compared to the winners who won, and then the stupid voters of those losing places should pattern after the winners. It is the candidate's job to win. If they lose, they are to blame for that. They said they could win, but they couldn't. They should have let someone else run, the pitiful losers.

It's a choice of the voters, not some type of who is better contest. Voters pick politicians who they think reflect their views (though they may be wrong about that). Making it just about who had the better campaign is wrong. Government of the people means something. You're making it not a government of the people, but at who is better at manipulating other people.

Any place that has electronic touch screen voting machines is highly suspect for election fraud. Why do you think that after decades of exit polling agreeing with the actual count, that suddenly there was a problem when electronic voting was introduced.

"Those dumb asses ought to lose a lot of votes come Nov. 2012." This needs to be the number one goal of progressives and Democrats in 2012. Not primarying Obama. He can only be as liberal as Congress lets him, and right now it's filled with a bunch of radical Republicans.

I think this whole thing is going to come down to just a clean vote on the debt ceiling, whether that was part of Obama's 3-D chess/poker game or out of necessity, I don't know. That'll be a good thing because we know programs like SS and Medicare will be OK from Republican attacks for now, and of course we'll avoid economic catastrophe, but at the same time it may affect our credit rating (S&P wants $4 trillion in savings).

We'll see what happens.

What kind of bullshit is that? He is as liberal as he is (which don't seem to be much). Do YOU change your political views when you walk into a room full of teabaggers? Congress by be controlled by the right, but that doesn't have to keep him from promoting his own agenda. It was ASSUMED his agenda was what he talked about on the campaign.

I'm coming to believe he actually has very few core values, he is a weather vane, and those programs are fucked. He is not going to fight for them. He will cut, concede, adapt and THEN claim he protected them.

No he is dancing to their tune and we are going to be the losers - for all I know. He danced and let them have extension to the B*sh tax cuts - remember!

there are also a lot of other things to take into consideration.

Had he extended the tax cuts with the proviso that the debt cap be raised, we wouldn't be having this crisis now. His penchant for giving away everything without demanding anything of substance in return is destroying this country. Had I known he was a Hamiltonian Democrat, he'd have never gotten my vote.

Thank you for confirming that those of us here who are unemployed are of absolutely no substance to you. Our lives apparently don't matter one whit. The principle of not extending those tax cuts means so much more.

As I said in another thread, I guess we long term unemployed should simply listen to Ebeneezer Scrooge, and "die, and decrease the surplus population", because we are not anything of substance.

I have personally helped support 4 families who are un- or under employed. BTW, did you share the benefits you received with any of the 99ers? If so, bless you. If not......

to pay my own bills, I certainly would share them, as I did with a friend who is a 99er, and his SO, who is receiving SSDI, before I lost my own job. I regularly have donated clothing and food and money when needed and I am part of the volunteer BOD of my local community health center, and have been for 19 years, so please don't accuse me of being selfish as well as unimportant.

a WPA style infrastructure works program with the resultant revenue, you might have a JOB today instead of unemployment.

The extension didn't do anything for the unemployed who needed it the most - the 99ers - those who have been unemployed so long that potential employers don't even look at their job applications anymore. But what the hell, let the die, and decrease the surplus population.

should just be added to that group? 99 weeks has been the maximum for a long time. But, yeah - Lets just put a few million more on the streets because, after all, it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing! Sure, that makes a lot of sense. That would have done a lot for the economy! I've already received 53 weeks. I will soon enough be one of the "99ers", but at the MA maximum of just 86 weeks. But, oh well! I should have been happy to give it all up after 6 months!

And as far as the WPA style program...Bull! I MIGHT have has a job! Well, there ya go! MIGHT should be good enough. After all - It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing!

You were their hostage, and you accept the safe thing over the right thing, and now look where that got us.

If Obama HAD stood up to them, they would have extended the unemployment anyway. Boehner as much as said so a full week before the deal was made. He knows full well that there are as many Republicans unemployed as there are Democrats.

He bluffed Obama, and Obama folded. Either, Obama sucks at poker, or he's not really playing for our side.

where Boehner "as much as said" that the UI would have been extended, please. The had actually voted the other way just a short time before this agreement was made, and I, personally, saw nothing to make me believe they would change their minds. You may believe that putting several million more people - including children on the street would have been the "right thing" to do, but I'm willing to bet the majority of the country will disagree with you. And I'm quite sure that would include a majority of the country's economists.

You and I will never agree on these matters. I accept that. I'm just glad the president is able to see the forest for the trees.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/09/boehner-flexible-on-extending.html

He was willing to compromise, but Obama beat him to it, making HIS compromise unnecessary.

Why?

that says Boehner ever mentioned extending the UI benfits. The whole of the Boehner mentions is to the middle class tax cuts and the small business definitions with regards to that. I do not see the words "Boehner" and "Unemployment benfits" put together. Please point that out to me. I must have missed it.

but that doesn't mean it is not there.

The whole argument of the trade off of unemployment extension for extension of the tax cuts was predicated on the idea that Boehner was adamant about not compromising on the tax cuts. However, as this shows, he was NOT so adamant about it, and he knew as well as anybody that if he killed the extension of unemployment it would devastate the republicans in the next election. The UI extension was a given - he was bluffing.

Our side had all the cards. There was NO reason to extend the cuts for the wealthy; there was NO reason to not extend the UI for the 99ers.

But Obama, even AFTER this came out on September 10, refused to decouple the top tax cuts from the middle-class tax cuts. He threw away the 99ers. The increase in revenue from ending the top tax cuts could have easily funded extending ALL UI benefits.

Or do you really think the unemployed Republicans would be cheering Boehner for not extending their benefits?

Obama had Boehner over a barrel, then turned around and gave him the keys to the store.

read a way to put down President Obama into almost anything at all. There is, of course, an obvious separation of church and state int he constitution. That is not at all available in the article you posted.

Republicans refused to extend UI benefits BEFORE the 2010 election, so why would they worry about it a month after they won? Apparently the Republican voters didn't have a problem with it.

Obama is either amazingly ineffectual at making a counter-case to the GOP spin....Or he agrees with more of it than he should, so he is happy to support much of their agenda (other then the ultra crazy parts) because he thinks that right-learning policies are the "Moderate center.".

IMO those are the only two options.

Still playing eleventy dimensional chess, I see. That's soooo 2009.

If that's what he was seeing, then he shouldn't be given credit for seeing it sooner, he should be given credit for seeing the whole thing wrong.

FYI, as soon as he got into office, that's the mistake I believed he was making. Showing the GOP as unreasonable is not a good strategy. Thet's what their supporters WANT. The more inflexible they appear, the more it helps them with their diminishing fundraising and grassroots efforts.

They gained seats in 2010, after being nearly dead as a party when Obama got into office.

and Medicaid -- the Tea baggers in particlar. Those fools are doing their best
to lose the House Rep. positions that they had won in 2010. I wouldn't be
surprised if the Dems. should win back the House and and increase the number
of Dem senators in 2012 -- and left-leaning ones to boot. With their support
it would be easier for Obama to turn more left. There are too many blue dog
Dems in congress right now. They make it more difficult for Obama to change,

I am seeing a repeat of 06 and 08.

In 06, the GOP sunk themselves. They got booted because of how awful they were, not because of anything we did. Soon as that stuff blew over, they were back in power.

The Repubs appear to be shooting themselves in the foot again. Fine. But I sure would like to see something that's good for us, rather than mainly things that are bad for them.

...they will have a lot to explain to their constituents. They will lose!!!

I see this!! My only question is... Can we amend the the damage congress had done to social security with a new Democrat Congress that would fix it?

Question: Can the public make a "recall" vote now to amend Congress damage to social security security. After all, many of them have lied to us that social security would not be on the table. This could be put on the ballot either now or during the 2012 election.

p.s. This was kind of hard for me to explain.....I hope you folks can understand it.

They're going to give him a crappy eleventh hour deal and dare him to veto it. He'd have been better off to hold the line to begin with.

he's blurring the differences.