Reply #84: One of your statements is incorrect. Obama did NOT campaign as a progressive in 2008.

[Honeycombe8]

Maybe you and some others wanted to see it that way. But he campaigned as a CENTRIST, a MODERATE, someone who would COMPROMISE, work across the aisle, etc., etc. He supported the Afghan War. He mentioned the public option, I think, but it was NOT in his plan he put on his website, as I recall. The public option was not a big deal for him.

A lot of things that he has done, the ideology that he has shown, since becoming President...these were very much in keeping with the Obama that ran for the nomination and then the Presidency in 2008.

I think that because he was against the Iraq War, and that he wanted health care reform, that some people thought he was progressive. The Republicans sure hit that home, repeatedly, referring to him as an arugala-eating far left liberal. But he never was. Remember how he revered Ronald Reagan, in some of his comments, and how that angered Bill Clinton?

I voted for him. I voted for the centrist and moderate that he was. Of course, he went overboard...he's become something else, really. Or maybe it's me who has become something else. I no longer think we should stay in Afghanistan. I no longer think (and haven't for a long while) that we should compromise with the Republicans, because of what they've done in the last three years.

I wonder if some people are now trying to say he campaigned as a progressive, because they're ashamed they voted for a left-of-center Democrat, and that he actually IS what he said he was. Kucinich was a candidate who was a progressive. Hillary Clinton was a centrist/moderate. Obama was a centrist/moderate. If he'd been a progressive, he never would've been elected. Maybe some thought he was just pretending to be cooperative with the opposition. He wasn't.

My first inkling of bad news was when he picked his staff and cabinet: sooooo many Clintonites, and then Rahm Emmanuel, who was and is a close friend of his. Then he kept trying to appoint Republicans, some of whom spit in his face...and he kept going back for more. That was a bad sign. Little did I know HOW bad.

(edited to make clear I have nothing against people who were in Clinton's cabinet...just that Obama had campaigned on change, and hiring so many of the same ol' same ol' didn't signal change; it was a surprise to many that he appointed so many, not just a few. I don't think he appointed or hired one true lefter/progressive, not even one.)