General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why should I vote for Obama? [View all]Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)For the rest of us, people who actually live in the real world and have a lot on the line, we happily vote for Obama and believe he's not only a far better alternative to what the Republicans have nominated, but also the greatest thing liberalism has had on its side since FDR.
Yeah, I'm sure some of you out of touch, in your own bubble liberals will shoot back that I'm out of my mind thinkin' this. But you're absolutely, positively wrong and frankly, so deep in the woods that even debating the matter with you would be about as pointless as talking to a FOX News watching moron.
It's remarkable how selfish and whiny so many on the left are and it's down right pathetic they cling to these issues and ignore all the good Obama has done at progressing your ideology - the liberal ideology.
You know, it's an unfortunate reality that liberals live in an entirely different world than the rest of Americans (and to be fair, so do conservatives). They live in a world where they believe their ideology is pure and above reproach - that it's so sound, so popular, that we should have no problem selling it. And yet, when you step back and survey the politics of America, specifically over the past 40 years, you'll see a country that has rejected your ideology at every turn.
I've often asked this question, and I rarely get good answers, outside everything that has happened the past four years ... what victories have we seen from the left on a whole host of issues? If you're honest to yourself, you'll admit that we have to reach all the way back to the 60s, when liberalism was at its peak, to find any point where it was relevant in American politics. It certainly wasn't there in the 70s when Nixon, on the backs of the fundamentalist Christians, was doing his best to roll back every civil rights action created out of its movement a decade or so before. It wasn't in the 80s, when Reagan's presidency sole intent was to roll back the entire infrastructure of the New Deal and it really hasn't seen any advancements in the 90s and 00s - as triangulation and the Bush Era of crony capitalism and tax cuts and war dominated the spectrum.
So, for all the whining about Obama and how he's not good enough, you certainly haven't proven, as an ideology, of having enough clout, and success, to dramatically alter the country ... at least, not until 2008. Those are the hard, sobering facts about everything you believe.
Prior to Obama, whether you want to believe this or not, politicians running for president didn't openly embrace gay marriage and they certainly didn't talk about abortion as strongly, and as reassuringly, as the President has done the last four years. I promise you, if you pore over every single speech Bill Clinton gave as president in the 90s, you won't find any rhetoric, or fierce advocacy for abortion. No, I'm not suggesting Clinton was pro-life, but his rhetoric was decidedly safe and when he talked about abortion, it was almost always in the terms of them being safe, legal ... and rare.
Prior to Obama, no candidate would dare speak the 'R' word - you know, regulation. For decades prior, every president from Carter to Bush actually embraced deregulation. They deregulated everything from transportation, to media ... to Wall Street and where it'd get us? Obama is the first candidate in a generation who has made regulation acceptable again. So acceptable, in fact, that even the Republican nominee decided, in an attempt to run to the middle, he was all the sudden for regulation too!
Prior to Obama, no president had ever successfully reformed our healthcare system ... and those who tried failed and took a beating for it. It was a major reason Carter lost much of his clout early in his presidency and led to a loss of support and a divided party by 1980 ... that being a direct result of his loss to Reagan. In the 90s, Clinton's presidency almost was single-handedly done in by trying to reform healthcare ... and what did he get out of it? Not even an inch of movement in the positive direction. He spent all his political capital on doing something that eventually failed and left him with hardly any legacy-defining legislation.
Prior to Obama, no president, at least since the Kennedy-Johnson years, would dare talk of government actually helping the American people. From Nixon through Bush, the government was the bogeyman ... an era defined by Reagan and the ultra-conservative small government libertarians who infested the Republican party in the 60s, 70s and 80s. You know, the men and women who came to power during the Goldwater revolution in '64. It was, after all, President Clinton who, in his 1996 State of the Union address, told the American people that the era of Big Government was over. Oh that scary big government that's so big and out of control that it'll take away all your rights!
Yeah, Obama isn't advocating for the government like maybe FDR did in the 30s, but considering how far to the right the country crept after the 60s ended, it's no surprise. But he's made it so that government isn't a nasty word anymore. For the first time in a generation, a good number of people don't look at the government as the bad guys out to get 'em. Sure, there are a lot of 'em out there, and they'll certainly vote Mitt Romney, but in the end, when you get down to it, Obama has changed the mindset of America and government ... and all you have to do is look no further than what happened with Hurricane Sandy. When Katrina hit, the failure of the U.S. government to act kind of solidified this idea that they were too incompetent and that they couldn't do jack - that has changed. Now you've got a Republican governor praising the government for its quickness.
More Americans believe in government regulation than a decade ago. More Americans are becoming comfortable with the idea of government fixing the healthcare crisis ... when, for so long, they couldn't trust the government to do it. Beyond the manufactured tea-party assholes, a great deal of Americans got behind some of the stimulus ... after being told, for years and years, that government could not create jobs.
None of this was happening prior to Obama. So, you can shit on him, bitch about how you don't want to vote for him, but the reality is ... and you can dismiss this all you want (though it doesn't change the facts), Obama has done more for liberalism, for your ideology, than any president since, probably Roosevelt himself.
Every liberal should happily vote for him because before he came along, the ideology was rotting away. Now, for the first time since the 60s, really, the ideology has some influence. But the quickest way to do away with that influence is by voting Mitt Romney into office because you'll tell every Democrat who ever runs for office again that populism and progressive politics won't get you reelected.
If you want liberalism to survive, you better damn well pray Obama wins. Because I guarantee you, if he loses, so does your ideology.