Do I feel betrayed by this President? Yes. [View all]

[cali]

If as so many of his defenders suggest, no budget he sends to this Congress has a chance of being passed, why not stand up for liberal democratic values? It's not as if he's running again. It's not as if his doing so would alienate large segments of the voting public. Social Security is something that there's actually a public consensus on . So too is Medicare.

Yes, he's better than any current republican would be, but he had a huge opportunity to stand up for liberal values and he's blown it. He's also created a hell of situation for dems running in 2014 for the House and Senate.

President Obama could have used his bully pulpit to rally the public around issues of poverty, inequality and corporate malfeasance. He's had no problem throwing trillions at bailouts.

I don't know why he's abandoned core democratic values. I don't know that I even care why. It's enough that he has.

The last time poverty rates in the country were this high, was under LBJ- and he launched the war on poverty. This president has been mute on it.

Not that gun control and expanded pre-school aren't good ideas, but imagine if the President focused as strongly on poverty and inequity as he has on gun control.

It's not just fiscal policy that Obama has disappointed on. Civil liberties, national security, etc.

This article is a couple of years old but even more pertinent now:

The Liberal Critique of Obama: Judging the President by His Own Standards

This ignores the source of the allegedly unreasonable liberal standards: Barack Obama. As I've argued at length, Obama defenders just ignore his broken promises on civil liberties, executive power, and national security. But set that aside, for there is something else that he promised his supporters in order to triumph over Hillary Clinton and John McCain, then totally ignored.

Take a look at some representative Obama quotes from Campaign 2008:

"If we do not change our politics -- if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works -- then the problems we've been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come."

"But let me be clear -- this isn't just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it's about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans."

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/the-liberal-critique-of-obama-judging-the-president-by-his-own-standards/249050/

If you want to call this bashing, fine.