There were a couple big ones, racism wasn’t among them.
The reason I didn’t vote for him in the primary in NJ on SuperTuesday in 2008 was because I didn’t think he was ready to be president and wasn’t familiar enough with the mechanisms of government to be effective. It was pre-ordained that the Republicans were going to be a defiant, ruthless opposition party. I felt that Hillary Clinton would have a better grasp of how to get around the Republicans to get things done. Plus, I didn’t feel that Obama had been in Washington long enough to develop a working coalition of allies and congressional members. His coalition was going to be “gifted” to him from his campaign donors. It couldn’t be any other way given his lack of experience and time in Washington. Annnnnnd, it looks like I was right.
I’m not gloating. No, really I’m not because what has happened since 2008, including to me personally, has been so serious that this is no time to gloat.
But leave it to Obama to get his shit together when it finally makes very little difference. According to Reuters:
President Barack Obama told his Cabinet on Tuesday to look for areas where he might be able to govern by executive action given gridlock in Congress that is hampering his agenda.
In a White House meeting, Obama brought together the top officials in his government a day after conceding that a deadlocked Congress will prompt him to act on his own authority where he can on an immigration overhaul.
Obama said he wants to work with Congress where possible, “but if Congress is unable to do it,” then he said his Cabinet officials and agency heads should look for areas where executive actions can “show some real progress.”
“The people who sent us here, they just don’t feel as if anybody is fighting for them or working them. We’re not always going to be able to get things through Congress … but we sure as heck can make sure that the folks back home know that we are pushing their agenda and that we’re working hard on their behalf,” Obama said.
This has me worried. He’s looking to move the ball forward on immigration reform and while I applaud a solution that will resolve the status of immigrants who are here via irregular methods, I’m not so crazy about giving even more temporary visas to tech and R&D companies when there are hundreds of thousands of American STEM workers still unemployed.
Let’s just say that I am not confident that this sudden urgency to resolve the immigration crisis is about illegal landscapers. I’ve been right so far.
Still, I guess it’s a good thing that Obama has realized that he does have the power after all to get things done even if it is 6 years too late. Just think what be might have done about the mortgage crisis, unemployment, healthcare reform…
Filed under: General | Tagged: executive orders, immigration, mortgage crisis, Obama, Reuters, STEM workers, unemployment |
The Confluence 
A fair criticism.
Yves Smith and her guest posters and commenters offer a rather different analysis of Obama’s performance on the mortgage crisis, unemployment, the health care plan, etc. Their analysis amounts to this: Obama and/or his people arranged exactly the outcomes on these areas which they deliberately sought to achieve on purpose with malice and upper-class allegiance aforethought. I concur in NaCap’s analysis. They also extend their analysis to his careful and deliberate engineering of immunity and impunity for FIRE sector criminals and the enshrinement of Too Big To Fail/ Too Big To Jail.as governments anti-legal and anti-regulatory policy.
So how can I not regret my vote for him in 2008? I wanted to keep
McCain/Palin out of office, largely because McCain/Palin (McCain especially) wanted to widen the war to Iran. And in the very narrowest sense, Obama has avoided widening the war to Iran so far.
In 2012 I thought of voting for Romney to make my vote most effectively anti-Obama, but I ended up voting for Anderson ( the other White Mormon) instead. Romney’s silly neoconservative blathering about Russia being our most dangerous geopolitical foe made Romney a no-vote for me. Every intelligent person knows that China is our most dangerous geopolitical foe going forward. And Romney has personal bussiness investments in China, so he would have had
a conflict of interest as President. And Obama offers all the Upper Class Allegiance that Romney would have offered, so what’s the difference really? (That’s for all disappointed Romney voters).
I agree with NaCap’s analysis in the sense that there are definitely people directing Obama to stall, obfuscate and generate poor policy. BUT I am referring to my primar vote and at that time, I didn’t see how badly his candidacy had been compromised. That came after supertuesday. Nevertheless, he IS president and if he had truly wanted to be the great liberal hope playing 11 dimensional chess president he was sold as, he could have used his executive authority before now. I just wasn’t confident in his ability to do so or his ability to act independently of the people who backed him. He had no other coalitions and no executive experience.
I too voted for Anderson in 2012. My protest vote in 2008 still bothers me. I will never forgive the Democrats for for Inc my hand.
Yeah, you and the Pumas have much, much to gloat about RD about your prescience in 2008. How about this Conflucian classic?
“And because he has failed in so many ways to appeal to the electorate at large, he will fail the ultimate contest. He will be a failed presidential candidate. We do not wish to be associated with failure while there is still time and an opportunity to avoid it.”
I’d say that was pretty accurate. He was headed for defeat before the financial crisis of 2008. The crash is what saved him.
But in general, he has been a failure. Good well-intentioned and in some cases desperate Americans voted for him because they believed a Democrat would be a buffer between them and the ruthless plutocrats. And he has let those people down. We have lost ground and some economists predict this is a permanent loss. We will never recover fully from the mistakes of the past 6 years.
I think he will go down in history as one of the worst presidents we have ever had. That’s failure.
Now, go away.
Wow, so economic misfortune never favored the challenger out of power party candidate except every election where such a candidate has prevailed in my lifetime (b.1951) and come to think about it any before that I am aware of. I see you don’t mention O’usurpers far from cinch reelection-or Sarah Palin, a big favorite of yous.
By favorite, I assume you mean to say that we did not approve of the dehumanization of her and misogynistic extension of attacks on her that the Democratic party had left over from its campaign against Hillary Clinton. I’m rather proud of the fact that so many women rose to her defense when she was viciously attacked. But I did not support her political views. I thought she was far more talented as a politician than some on the left thought she was. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had to go after her so hard and Obama wouldn’t have run against her.
You notice that I approved your comment. That’s because we don’t think she is politically important anymore and find her views on the use of guns to be dangerous and abhorrent. If you have nothing to add to the current conversation, you will be moderated or spammed permanently.
No one ever steals an election (primary) to do good! One can never say it often enough,,,,,
Hear, hear!
And, may I add, never vote for a media favorite.
One of the primary reasons I did not vote for Obummer was that a preponderance of the Corporate Propaganda Media (CPM hereafter) favored him.
However, at the time, I assumed that the CPM were serving the Reptilian Party, as had been usual. I thought they merely wanted to saddle the Dinocrats with a weak candidate, so the Reptilians could retain control of the White House. I figured that once the nominations were over, the CPM would quit praising Obummer and start sliming him, in favor of their old BBQ buddy McCrank.
Instead, a preponderance of the CPM started sliming McCrank and Moose Lady, and kept praising Obummer. (Faux Noise kept its Reptilian loyalty–but then if even they had been assimilated into the Oborg Collective, the fix would have become too obvious.)
This could only mean that a preponderance of the Malefactors Of Great Wealth (MOGW hereafter), who own the CPM (as they own just about all else in the USA, if not the world), actually wanted Obummer, so I knew he had to be a bad choice for us peasants.
I reckon a preponderance of the MOGW realized that the Chimperial Cheney Assministration had screwed not the pooch, but the whole kennel of pooches, in positions Dr. Ruth never heard of, to the point where they could not put yet another Reptilian in the White House without rigging the elections beyond the limits of plausible deniability, with unpredictable results. Hence, they found a Dinocrat they could buy, and fixed the nomination for him from Day One. By 2012, he had served them so well that they decided to keep him for a second term. Bizzarely enough, the wingnuts look at Obummer, this obvious lackey of Wall Street banksters, and see Robert Mugabe Part Deux.
And the “progressives” see Albert Schweitzer.
Go figure.
Alas, my lonely comment sits and weeps in moderation. . . . .
I sort of agree and sort of disagree. Was BO experienced enough for this job – oh, hell no. I just honestly do not believe he CARES if he gets a cooperative Congress or not. He is a complete narcissist who wants the adulation, cannot handle the criticism, and is simply too lazy/not interested/too busy standing before the fawning crowds to even TRY to work with anyone. The cheese stands alone.
And he really doesn’t have the power…no one body does – but, try telling Ceasar that.
And please…the average person really does not have immigration or climate change on their immediate radar…more like, oh god…the tuition is due, the mortgage is due, I need to eat today. Now that he’s made a complete mess of our border to the south, I guess we will all have to start caring or every state will be overrun with “immigrant” – man, I use that term loosely – children who need, well EVERYTHING!
He’s simply a clusterfuck disaster that just keeps on giving….
You are looking at the problem backwards. Obama was hired to do a job by a certain group of people who expected that they would be able to control him. They picked him precisely because, as smart as he is, he didn’t have the wherewithal to act independently. He took the offer because he is a Harvard buddy and a schmoozer.
Without trying to invoke Godwin’s law, I have to point out that this is exactly the same strategy that business interests employed when the got Mussolini and especially Hitler elected. Of course, in Hitler’s case, the strategy backfired somewhat because he already had a following and a movement. The powers that be didn’t make that mistake with Obama. He didn’t really have a movement and he was leader of nothing in particular. That made him a perfect vehicle. He didn’t have a constituency he had to please. Oh, sure, the Obots thought he was one of them but he never was. And that suits the Suits just fine.
You are giving Obama waaaaaaayyyyy too much agency.
Godwin’s Law has been overrated and over-referred to. People try playing the Godwin’s Law card to suppress discussions of obvious functional analogies or even homologies between naziform persons past and present.
Beyond the theft of the 2008 nomination, I can’t stand Obama’s presidency because he came into the White House with the opportunity of an LBJ or, even, an FDR to make real, lasting and beneficial changes.
He never even tried.
I agree with Riverdaughter, he’s no evil mastermind, the MOGW made sure they installed a feckless poseur and here we are.
Off topic–if the Brits had won the Revolutionary War (some NSFW language).
Funny.
A Hoedown?
GREAT POST RD;
That’s exactly why I did not vote for him and more. Had he been less narcissist and more mature, he could have waited 8 years to get some experience and wisdom. But nooooo, he was the Messiah!
Yes, he jumped the turnstile and Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher and countless others cheered him on.