Obama CAN'T move any further right and still win in 2012

The only chance this administration has of fighting the right-wing money machine is to regenerate the grassroots enthusiasm of 2008-the enthusiasm that was, seemingly, intentionally thrown away in 2009 and 2010.

The only way to regenerate this is for the administration to say "we were WRONG to treat activists the way Rahm pushed us to do...we apologize to all of those whose concerns and dreams we dismissed. Yes, there will be compromises and half-measures, but we will start to fight again, as we stopped doing in 2009 and 2010, for a genuinely transformation of society".

This will require a campaign that goes back to big ideas, a strategy allows the Obama movement to be reborn and to have its own control of its actions and agenda, and an admission that it was wrong to embrace the Scoop Jackson bullshit on foreign policy.

And it will require our leaders to finally do what they've refused to do since 1966-actually DEFEND liberal and progressive values and make a case both for their relevance and for the idea that activists have just as valid a role to play in this country's politics as do CEO's and D.C. insiders.

If the administration does that, it will be worth re-electing. If it keeps sliding further and further right, it can't be. There's no good reason why we should have to settle for saving the country from "President Bachmann" or "President Palin" or "President Paul". Lesser-evil politics have never worked for this party, and, since there is no center anymore, centrist politics can never work again.

It's not rocket science. It's just about fighting with the heart AND the head.

Talking about and doing it are two different things. If I hear another flowery speech and see no action I will barf.

Part of it also needs to be an agreement that, this time, the activist base will not be disowned the moment the results are in.

There needs to be a clear admission that switching from transformational to transactional politics was a failure and was the main cause of the disaster in 2010.

not an easy sell.

An incumbent president will always have relatively high approval ratings among members of his own party in polls. That's not the real story, and quoting such ratings doesn't make any points at all.

people vote with their heart not their head.

After the party disowned me as "fucking retarded", I now regard myself as a left leaning independent. There have been polls that show that Obama is losing the left leaning independents. And he has already lost the right leaning ones. What is left? He can't get elected with Democrats alone. Hell, that's been his position all along.

can beat him?

You have none.

which is quite telling, because he *is* beaten in polls by a generic Republican right now. He also just killed Osama Bin Laden and lowered gas prices.

If, a year and four months from now, the economy is still tanking and people who have been out of work long-term are desperate for change - any change - I have no difficulty at all believing that a specific Republican could beat him.

Anything below 90% approval means doom?

:rofl:

And why do you feature a quote from Britney Spears about GWB?

Who you gonna vote for? THAT candidate? while pointing to Romney or Bachman or whoever.

And pathetically that will be true.

It will get people like me who will vote no matter what and always be stupid enough to vote for the Democratic candidate. But people like me are also not going to donate any money, or donate any time, or canvas, or register voters, or drive voters to the polls like I have in almost every other presidential election over the past 25 years.

So yeah, he may be able to squeak by with just the Stockholm Syndrome voters like myself, but it's going to be far too close without all the other energy and momentum behind him.

Most of us here at DU, I would guess, will hold our noses and support Obama's reelection in 2012.

Those who are in danger of abandoning him are the independents and middle of the road voters who sensed that something was seriously fucked up in 2008 and voted for serious changes in the way the country operated.

I doubt if these people have seen what they would consider to be serious changes.

Things are still pretty fucked up and it doesn't appear that a lot of action has been or will be taken.

And the president has allowed the battle to be fought on the republican's home field. All he can talk about is deficits and he seems to have forgotten all about jobs.

Obama will not reach the independents again if he falls for the media propaganda about deficits and billionaires tax cuts and fails to address unemployment and infrastructure investment.

But if he loses his bid for reelection (which I doubt) he has nobody but himself to blame. People have been telling him for three years.

if only Obama had got out in front and kept pushing for it, touring the country continually if need be to drum up grassroots support and keep faith with those who worked for him.

There simply wasn't any huge bloc of people who ONLY voted for the Obama/Biden ticket in the hope that he'd check the dreams at the door once he was sworn in. The country wanted transformation and wanted to keep hearing the case for it. When he took the advice of those who told him to stop making the case, he let the right steal control and neither the admin nor the country has recovered from that mistake.

moment.

all progressive ideals abandoned since 1966

(what the huh?)

then what?

The WH will not stand unoccupied in 2013.

It's about the generation of new activists who thought they'd matter in 2008 and were then discarded in 2009 and 2010. Nothing was gained by discarding them and switching from transformatioal to transactional politics. Transactional politics doesn't lead to progressive gains.

The WH will not stand unoccupied.

How is the president doing among the people who are not reliable votes. You know, the youth vote that doesn't come out reliably but had a hand in his victory. The ones who have grown up with Google search over a broadband connection, and no real understanding of patience?

There are other groups that I could see swinging to make a difference. The over 50's, for instance. If he signs off on the Republican plan to kill SS, medicare, and medicaid (or even just leaves it open to interpretation as to whether he has weakened these programs) then I could see him losing ground with our more mature voters. The reverse holds true as well. If he makes a point of, without equivocation, strongly and simply refusing to go along with it, I think he could gain enough ground there to make legends among Democratic politicians.

But the question at hand is the people who didn't vote before, but who got caught up in the excitement, the promise of Obama. Change. Are those people still with us here, the diehards who feel a civic duty to vote every time, even in the little local elections with nothing overly important on them and who would sooner eat from a gas station toilet than vote for a Republican?

Your observations are exactly what I think.

The President has lost those who were inspired during his candidacy. He appears to have moved far from our concerns and issues. I'm sad about it.

The ethnics and young may just not show up to vote.

There are many middleaged people who were enthusiastic Obama supporters who feel the President dissociated from our concerns.

Huh?

worked because the country wasn't so polarized then. Now, the only way to oppose the extreme rightward pull is to counterbalance with a lean to the left. I do not think it is unreasonable for Obama to lean a little more to the left, despite his centrist philosophy. No one is asking for Obama to become a far leftists but at the very least mend fences with the far left activists, and show some determination with all the "wild fires" taking place in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc as Republicans make their last, big push in radically changing these states in the Union.

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

think the Republicans wanted McCain to win?

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

But if I understand the remarks of many of his loyal backers correctly, as long as Obama is at all left of his opponent then he should be supported. So by this theory, Obama could move even further to the right and we should still vote for him. I disagree with this on many levels.