I voted for FDR and got Clinton, instead. I am not a happy camper.

Sorry, but I just needed to get that off my chest in a kind of "better to laugh than to cry" way.

TGIF. Think I'll have a Newcastle.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

think where we would be if clinton was in charge instead the last nine years.

It was true in 1992, and it was true in 2008.

But I did have hope ...

:dem:

-Laelth

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Many of the policies now being pushed by the Administration are the exact same as those McCain advocated in the 2008 campaign. Of course, Bush I was pushing for NAFTA in the 1992 campaign and then Bill Clinton actually passed the law as President, so there are more striking similarities here.

:dem:

-Laelth

well, I see the talking point has gone from Obama=bush to Obama=McCain, hmmmm, I guess the Obama=bush crap isn't selling so the new "product" line includes McCain.

Clinton was brilliant, Clinton moved this country further left from where it was than probably any president on record. We could have elected Clinton for life and we'd be a better nation. The fact that we didn't go very far to the left is the result of how far to the right we were when he took office. Reagan was as reactionary and right wing as this nation has ever been, and Clinton reversed that trend.

What we got is exactly who ran. A smart politician with no strong ideology and no experience. He's better than Bush or Reagan by a thousand miles. He's done some good just by not being BushCo. I still hope he accomplishes more. But he never looked like FDR. This is the guy who praised Reagan during the campaign, and several times claimed he was modeling his campaign after Reagan's. I know that doesn't mean he liked Reagan's ideology, but face it, no one who praises Reagan in any way has any idea who FDR even was.

Cheers.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

Sorry, that's an obligatory response. :)

:cheers:

All I can say is that after the right wing bigoted monster Reagan, Clinton did everything right. He reversed Reaganomics, wages went up, small businesses grew as corporations shrunk... a liberal and a progressive's dream, compared to where we were before. I don't know where the revisionism comes from, but it's sad to see. Democrats always eat their heroes.

Clinton gave us two, excellent Supreme Court Justices and Americorps. He also paid good attention to our standing in the world and tried to make the U.S. into a good global citizen, using our power with much wisdom and restraint. After that, I have little respect (and much loathing) for nearly everything he did while in office.

But I was really expressing my frustration with Obama and the CorporaDemocratic Party. Cheers!

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

Even the atrocious policies like DOMA and DADT were successful short circuits of what the right was going to pass otherwise. The fact that he did it when Congress was run by Gingrich makes it even more astounding. Without Clinton this nation would have been so far to the right in social and economic and foreing policies that W would have been the liberal candidate.

'nuff said.

:dem:

-Laelth

It was better funded in the 70s than in the 80s or 90s, and the Republican Congress refused to improve it.

When Clinton passed TANF, it was an improvement over the existing AFDC. As in many of the cases where clueless attack Clinton, the alternative to TANF wasn't a fully functioning AFDC, but nothing.

When Gingrich took over Congress, his stated goal was to roll the government back to pre FDR levels. He had the votes, and almost had enough to override Clinton's vetoes. In that climate, Clinton passed programs like TANF and DOMA to block their total gutting of government. We came one showdown away from Gingrich winning. If the current Obama (I still hold hope that a future Obama will improve) had been president, we'd have lost it all.

That was leadership. Clinton moved this nation further left despite having a right wing reactionary Congress to deal with. I'd take that any day.

I do not believe that Gingrich could have destroyed AFDC, nor do I believe that TANF was an improvement over the existing AFDC, but I do admire your loyalty.

Cheers. :toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

choice of Obama just shows your dearth of maturity and knowledge.

I suppose all I am saying is that I am feeling the same kind of disappointment with Obama that I felt with Clinton. Lots of us on the left are and were very disappointed by the Clinton Presidency.

If that's throwing rocks, well then ...



:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

You are the one with the mature view.

Clinton was the first Dem pres that shit on traditional Dem values and governed from the right.

But you're completely wrong.

Let it all out. You'll feel better.

Thanks for the chuckle.

:dem:

-Laelth

Obama still has time to become a great president but its not happening yet.

If I am pleasantly surprised, great, but my hope bank is empty.

:dem:

-Laelth

:thumbsdown:

:dem:

-Laelth

Then you'll rarely be disappointed.

And I did vote for the one who I thought would suck less.

But I also had hope ...

I was a fool.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

As it is, you were an idealist, and now you're a disappointed idealist. Which happens.

:hi:

But it didn't have to be this way, you know. The United States could really use a liberal party. As it is, and as a poster reminded me elsewhere in this thread, FDR is dead, and so is his Democratic Party. That party no longer exists.

I believed Obama could resurrect the Democratic Party of FDR. I believed that he wanted to. Now, I don't believe that he would resurrect that party even if he had the opportunity.

As I said, that's too bad.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

you have nobody to blame but yourself.

especially of late.

:hi:

There was this guy named Barack Obama who ran, though. He won. I voted for him.

I suppose I should thank the President for teaching me this harsh lesson. FDR is, indeed, dead, and his party is too. That's too bad, really. The United States could use a liberal party.

:dem:

-Laelth

We have a right-wing and a nut-bag party. Who the hell speaks for the liberals??
Well, there will always be the beloved Dennis Kucinich...who will also likely never win a national election.

... but we have no party. And that's a major problem.

:dem:

-Laelth

And the prognosis is not good.

:shrug:

But his SPIRIT & VALUES live on in me.
I WILL continue to fight for those values, wherever it takes me!


FDR was a leader of the "Democratic Party", which bears little resemblance to the political party using that name today.
I joined the "Democratic Party of FDR" 42 years ago, and will continue to fight for those values and principles. I will give up the Brand Name before I will give up those values.

LESS than 35% of the American People support Mandates w/o a Public Option.

Even though she's not exactly what we need right about now.

I just don't plan on not expressing criticism as mine is far from blind.

Enjoy the Newcastle. I hope it's fresher than the one I bought one the other day that tasted like it came over on the Mayflower :P

Thanks. I am enjoying it.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

Take it as an object lesson: politically, it's better to live in reality than flounder in dreams. Those who voted with their eyes open have far less to cringe over than those who voted their imagination.

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

very disappointed in Lincoln--as many liberals and progressives were at the time.

Hell, I suspect that if many of the people who love FDR now had lived in the 40s they would have been very disappointed in FDR. Japanese internment? No federal lynching law?

Those people, and even Bill Clinton, have the advantage of nostalgia.

The party of FDR is dead, and liberals are unwelcome in the White House. It's sad, but true.

I should have never dared to hope.

:dem:

-Laelth

Certainly the right-wing would like everyone who supports our President to give up hope, and they've made a cottage industry out of ridiculing the term.

But I think you misunderstand.

Hope is about the future, not the past. You and many others have clung to a mythological image of a man long dead that only meshes with reality in the most superficial of ways.

FDR was a great President. Had his terms ended at one, he would have been mediocre at best, and with all the opposition and ridicule he faced during that term, the second was never anything close to a guarantee.

Thankfully for all of us, his fair weather friends were outnumbered by those who chose to hope in spite of all the negativity.

That choice is yours as well.

If you want the support of the left, you had better start acting more like FDR than Clinton.

Otherwise, a lot of people (not including me--I vote as a patriotic duty) will opt out of the 2010 elections and you'll see a repeat of 1994.

That choice is yours, not mine.

:dem:

-Laelth

Lincoln.

Considering how many liberals and progressives were so disappointed in Lincoln and FDR at the time of their administrations, I would be very surprised if everyone who now sports an FDR or Lincoln avatar would have been cheering them if they had been a 1854 or 1934 constituent.

But I no longer dare to hope.

:dem:

-Laelth

There were no mysteries. There have been no surprises.

The guy was a bad choice back in the day. It's not like he changed.

:dem:

-Laelth

And King Arthur. (Apparently you CAN vote for kings.)

It is your problem that you wanted to write in FDR and instead wrote in Clinton!

But it's not just "my problem," as you suggest. The American people will suffer as a result. It's not just me.

:dem:

-Laelth

:toast:

:dem:

-Laelth

I was an Edwards supporter originally. I knew that Obama was getting more donations from big companies than any other candidate. But once his online fund-raising campaign kicked into gear, I became more relaxed. Most of Obama's money, in the end, came from 2 million individual donors making small contributions. Once he showed that this fund-raising model could work, I hoped he would abandon those early corporate donors on the grounds that he didn't need them any more.

Guess I was wrong about that. It seems he intends to honor those promises he made to get that initial corporate cash.

That's too bad (for the American people).

:dem:

-Laelth

What's truly interesting about history is that we tend to see the results and give short shift to the beginnings or the "why" we got those results. Nobody voted for the FDR you're talking about...he ran very much as a centrist and pretty much had been one his entire career. It was a lot less FDR leading us to the left than it was FDR being forced to go there. Economic misery that left millions of young men out of work and a very strong anarchist/socialist movement were a tinderbox. As the dustbowl disaster drug on, actual famine fears threatened to boil over into full revolution.

FDR's first real liberal move was to start a program that "just happened" to get hundreds of thousands of young, unemployed, angry men out of their towns and cities and isolate them in military-like camps throughout the country, while placating them with $1/day in wages. The CCC was a huge success and key to virtually everything FDR was able to get done afterward.

FDR only became FDR because the people forced him to. He was a great politician and that means he was able to find ways to not only save his (and our country's) hides, but make it look almost as if it was his plan all along.

Today, we might send a nasty blog posting, but seriously the country is no way close to forcing the government to do anything.

What will it take, I wonder, for us to demand an FDR? I shudder to think. All the same, I don't feel comfortable excusing elected Democrats for acting like Republicans merely because we haven't demanded that they act like Democrats. I am not that generous.

:dem:

-Laelth

I knew he wouldn't be FDR. I knew he was no radical. But I thought his community activist background hinted at somebody who'd be a little more radical than he has shown.

On the other hand, a lot of that was me reasoning that a bigger victory than Reagan had over Carter meant he had a mandate to swing the country just as radically as Reagan had done. But it quickly became clear that the conservative majority in the Senate doesn't care.

Given that I would say Obama is handling things perfectly. A hard pull to the Left by him would just mean gridlock as the Senate is NOT going to listen to the voters.

I am seriously disappointed by the way things have worked out.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I am disappointed that it was deleted.

:shrug:

:dem:

-Laelth

Oh my God, I am absolutely flabbergasted! What do they claim I did? I do not understand this at all.

But I don't know, and I trust, as always, that the moderators are doing what they feel is best.

:dem:

-Laelth

I don't believe that Obama ever tried to make himself out to be FDR (or LBJ). I imagine that we all wanted to get the Repubs out of the WH so badly that we were hoping that by electing Obama POTUS we'd be getting another FDR (or FDR-like) Presidency (even though FDR didn't quite start out as the revolutionary leader that he later became). I suspected that Obama was more of a moderate/centrist/pragmatist like Clinton (read "Audacity of Hope") and so far that seems to be more or less what we've got- which IMHO is still light years better than anything we got under Buscho.
I never expected Obama to come in and rip out capitalism by its roots and let the banks and auto companies die on the vine, immediately withdraw all of our troops from every country and shut down our military, and ram all of our pet initiatives through Congress. I also suspect that we'd be pretty much having some of the same discussions and disappointments had Hillary, who is even more moderate/conservative/hawkish on some issues, won instead (which I would've still supported). We'd all, of course, be utterly suicidal had McCain/Palin (or Palin/McCain) somehow eked out a win. The point is that I think that some people expected Obama to be somebody different than he really was- which isn't bad but a bit unfair.

That is the issue I am raising.

Thanks for the response.

:dem:

-Laelth