Not happy with the debt deal? Should've thought about that last November.

Obama is responding as reasonably as possible to what the majority who voted in 2010 said they wanted, especially moderate Indies who absolutely control the outcomes of national elections and threw back in with the GOP out of economic frustration, a desire to check and balance the Democrats, and because of their serious concern about the national debt. The far left may not like it, but the #2 item on the list of Americans in poll after poll is dealing with the national debt. Obama warned time and time again not to give the Pukes the keys back. But instead of engaging, WAY too many D's/Progressives chose not to donate, not to volunteer, and not to vote, instead staying home whining about how the past two years wasn't progressive enough (even though there was the most progressive legislation, mountains of it, since LBJ). So they got some of the keys back, and now it is what it is. Obama still has to actually govern and get some things done.
ANYONE who has ever served on a board, served in government, or worked on a project with others knows that in the real world we have to work with who we have to work with. So people here are constantly decrying Obama and Dems for compromising. Well, where were you in November? Did you volunteer? Did you donate? Did you vote? If you did, good. If not (and too many MILLIONS didn't), then don't whine. (I did donate, volunteer, and vote, as I have in MANY campaigns, and I can tell you that in my state MOST D's/Progressives refused to donate and help campaign. It was reprehensible. So now they are bitching that the GOP took over the state. Oh well. Make a different choice next time.) You can't get anything done in the Senate without 60 votes, and the House is now owned by the GOP. Still, Obama is the President of the ENTIRE nation and has to compromise (per our history as wouldn't even be a nation without compromise) to get something done. It is what it is. Not happy? Then engage again in 2012 and throw out the GOP.

I voted a straight Dem ticket as usual. My blue dog is still in Congress. Won by about 600 votes.

Good luck throwing out the GOP. Citizens United, anyone?

between prez elections.

even when we go to the polls EVERY election, hold our nose, and vote for the so-called D.

I have in every campaign since 1972 when I supported McGovern.

I was a chump in 2008 for donating and campaigning but I learned that donating my money and time directly to the poor (who need the help) would be a better way to spend my money and time.

You can blame me all you want (and I will respectfully disagree with you) but will I donate my money to politicians? Never again.

and well said.

When were you appointed as the thought police?

My vote belongs to me, how I cast it is MY decision. I may have very valid reasons for not voting for a candidate, even one with a D behind their name.

I may vote straight Democrat or choose to skip an office or two, but that is MY choice based upon a variety of reasons many of which will be supplied to me by the candidate themselves as they campaign for the job. An alleged Democrat that does not support the basic tenants of the Democratic Party (such as protecting Social Security) will not receive my vote. If a Republican is elected, at least I know they are going to screw me.

Which is what I fucking did. I did my DUTY.

They'll either sit out 2012 or vote 3rd-party.

Numbers win the election. If people find reasons not to increase that number against the opposition, they get what they get.

How helpful was Ed Schultz telling people to sit out the 2010 midterms and send Obama a message? WHO gets shafted as a result of that defiance?

I don't think there's any reasoning with anyone right now. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and turn out in 2012.

And allow Republicans to win more seats in both the House and Senate. AND possibly lose the WH?

willfully ignorant about vote math, you can't really talk sense over a message board.

If it's not clear to them what's at stake by 2012, there's not really anything much to say.

A lot of people complaining that Obama hasn't been achieving enough barely lifted a finger to help in the last election. Voting a straight ticket is good, but most of us can do more.

area yet during the 2010 mid-terms that didn't have a low voter turnout, we even had a low turnout in oklahoma. what I really want to know is how did sen. harry reid win by 7 points when all of the polls had him down by 2.

we voted the senate democrats into the majority they hold.

We voted democrats into a position where they held the presidency, and larger majorities in both houses, and thhey extended the fucking Bush tax cuts.

Do elections have consequences for us, or just for the teabaggers?

Oh yeah, Democrats had nothing of the aort. :sarcasm:

As for extending the Bush tax cuts, I guess some people are so obsessed with screwing the wealthy out of some pocket change that they would rather the long-term unemployed go homeless and hungry instead of understanding and applauding the compassion behind President Obama's and Senate Democrats' compromise, which also saved the middle-class tax cuts I and millions of other Americans appreciate very much?

Fuck that.

swept aside. I distinctly remember the presidents repeated opposition to extending the cuts for the wealthiest Americans and keeping it for the middle-class. Republicans called it only job-killing tax hikes while some Dems call it only tax breaks for the wealthy. I'm with the president on this one.

Guilt Trip Game much?

Nor do they have any right to complain about what President Obama is doing in the face of a Teabagger-controlled Congress.

But, I am a citizen of the United States and I vote for the candidates who come the closest to reflecting my view points. The track record of the current POTUS indicates that he does not, hence I will not vote for him again.


It is MY vote, not yours to decide. You can try the little guilt trip game all you want, yet at the polls it is MY decision.

And I have every right to complain, no matter who is in office or whatever decisions they make or do not make. You don't get to decide.

don't know what the chemical process was there, but it's quite a sight to see.

i voted Democratic as I always do.

Not the hero though right?

NOT voting is never an option, unless you really want to let republicans tear down the things the hate, which is pretty much everything that helps those in need, while doing all they can to help the rich and big corporations privatize this country!

I am not happy with everything that the president does, or what the democrats in congress do, but one thing I won't do is "NOT" vote come election time. If I don't like a current democrat, and there is a better option during the primaries, I will vote for the better candidate, but no matter what happens when it comes to voting for a democrat I may not think is a great choice, they get my vote over a republican that I know for sure, especially after the 2010 elections, will do their best to destroy what I believe in, and make what happened in Wisconsin, Main, Florida, and other states republicans not control, happen in my state, or the whole country!

I can say affirmatively that you just posed a psychotic argument.

psychological background", care to explain to we lesser folk why that post poses a "psychotic argument"?

If you want to pretend that Obama and the Democratic leadership hasn't screwed up (and screwed us over) multiple times, you are welcome to your illusions.

It must be nice to still have them.

:kick:

:kick:

Do you have any pre-election polls that showed that the deficit was their main concern? If that is #2, then what is #1 and did we deal with that? Because at the time I seem to remember that it was jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs, and the economy, and then some more jobs that everyone was talking about. The GOP and Obama and the Dems included.

Yet once the Republicans got their talking points out after the election and said "jump!" Obama asked "How high?!?!". It had nothing to do with what a majority of people said they wanted. The majority of people want a robust economy and low unemployment. But rather than pointing out that anything that would need to be done in order to do that involved Government spending, he simply bought into the Republican narrative and then doubled down in any way he could.

I voted and donated and worked in 2010. But even if I didn't this still sucks and anyone who is a citizen and anyone who is a Democrat has a right to say so and to point out just how much this goes against core Democratic principles.

And last I checked Democrats held a 2/3 majority of the federal government. Is it too much to ask that they act like that every once in a while?

50 State Strategy. Tim Kaine was a HORRIBLE chairman.

This place was full of people saying they were staying home

This ugly debt ceiling debacle..prove the point that elections do have consequences.:think:

Voters prioritizing the debt (and that is quite a stretch, really. While there may be polls in which debt issues come in second; the percentage of voters ranking the debt as their top priority tended to be in the low to mid-single digits, with fifty+ percent ranking the economy/jobs as their top priority. It makes absolutely no sense that this issue has been given the inordinate amount of attention by the DC crowd that has been given.) may be true, but it does not follow that the solutions to dealing with it should be made up of 75% Republican policies.

Even with a once-in-a-generation electoral climate unusually favorable to them, the Republicans couldn't even take back the Senate. They hold only the House of Representatives, with the Democrats controlling the Senate and the presidency- so, why in the world are we focusing on the issues the Republicans want to focus on and promoting dealing with them in ways that the Republicans want?

Elections DO have consequences, but only when republicans win them.

in November 2008.

NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that includes Pres Obama.

last Nov. I have voted in every election since I was 18. Have never voted for a Repuke on the federal or state level (I have locally).

I have worked on campaigns before, although I haven't donated to a candidate since Dean in 2004. I decided (since 2004) that I will no longer donate to candidates. My money, my choice.


What are you asking me to think about again? :shrug:

He had leverage over the Repubs in the Fall of 2010 with the extension of Bush Tax Cuts. Raising the debt ceiling should have been a part of the deal when he extended the tax cuts.

Why do Obama and Conservative Dems seem to support the Repubs position that spending cuts and deficit reduction is the most pressing issue facing the economy. Why isn't Obama making the case that draconian cuts will kill recovery, why isn't he making the case for a short term stimulus spending to save and create jobs? Unless Obama really do believe in the repub rhetoric.

And just because the opposition party has taken control of one of the chambers of congress doesn't mean you're now powerless and should throw in the towel. If Bush was still pres. and his party controlled the senate and Pelosi and the dems controlled the house, do you think Pelosi et al would be controlling the narrative right now. Do you think Bush would be offering up Tax increases to the dems right now?

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:D

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Classic enabler language. Husband beats the shit out of his wife, and as she's sitting in a pool of her own blood, running from her broken nose, he states -- *Don't like it? You shouldn't have married me."

Unfucking believable BS on a Democratic board. :eyes:

Assuming the primary talk doesn't materialize into a viable challenge and President Obama is the Dem nominee, then I definitely blame those who continue to hold that view at that juncture.

Screw 'em for helping the GOP take the WH.

Screw 'em for helping tilt a 5-4 GOP SCOTUS even further right.

They are met with scoffs and chants of "85%! 85%!" So which is it?

At any rate, who ultimately cares who says what to whom on an anonymous board? When we can reach through the inter tubes and control people's minds, THEN it'll get fun!

Vote however the heck you want. The vote arithmetic is what it is, no matter how people try to spin it.

Just like the majority of FR probably voted straight Rep.

It's independents who switch their votes around the most, and they generally don't pay as much attention as we do. Some of them don't even know who the SoS is.

Chatted with a Yale grad the other night who didn't know that H. Clinton was SoS. Then I used the word "diplomacy" and he looked at me like I had five heads.

Yale should ask for the degree back.

... to the principled critics on the Left... when they were warning us all, well ahead of time, that the mood among the voters had soured to the point of toxicity.

And yet no one, no one, has any data proving that the "left" that is so constantly blamed, derided, and dismissed here cost the Democrats the election. All the data I've seen suggests that those who didn't show up were those energized by Obama in 08, that is to say, more like yourself and less like the people you're complaining about.

Many of those seats could have been held with higher Dem turnout and more effort campaigning and persuading more Indies to stay away from the R's. In Grayson's district, Puke turnout was over 60%. D's were just 42%. And were they not happy with Grayson, the ultra progressive????
If he couldn't excite his base, no one could. So let's not do this bullshit about how Dems were not progressive enough.

and the fired up right wingers who came out to the polls. If all the progressive voters from 2008 had come out to vote, I don't think it would have turned the election.


Take a look at this analysis of why Feingold lost for example:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9482451


In retrospect, the problem was that the President underestimated the depth of the recession and did not try a populist anti-corporate approach from the beginning of his administration when many people would have bought in. That might have made all the difference. Also, he probably should not have tried for HCR, but stayed focused on the economy and pinning the blame on the laissez faire policies of the GOP and Bernanke. He definitely needed a bigger more targeted stimulus (perhaps more to small business) and more creativity in addressing the economic problems.

"Hey, remember those Republicans who drove the economy off the cliff-- That wasn't so bad after all, let's try this again!"

and the Dem leaders failures in standing to the principles and policies they were elected to stand by, no matter what, and not capitulate time and time again to the point that a hefty slice of people lost interest in trusting anything to really change. I voted, as did probably most people on DU, but I can see why people didn't - the president bailed on the public option when there was growing support for it amongst the Senate. It's not our fault when failures happen in DC, don't throw that shit on us! When you have the president himself saying "we could make the tough "choices" on entitlement reform" when announcing this deal, well, that says it all. Dems are gonna being to distrust that their values are being represented. It falls on the president that it came to this, as so many said in the liberal media and elected Dems, he should have been much more active in the process much further back, and thus he allowed the debt increase to turn into a budget debate! Horrible.

most of us on DU are doing. It's only the corporate talking heads on TV that are praising it. And your capitalized words at the end show your callousness in not being understanding of what harm is being done to the country because of this putrid mess that looks an awful lot like Boehner's own plan. Congrats!

Since then I have found that some of these candidates were not deserving of my support.

Obama's caving to the Republicans on extending the tax cuts and no public option depressed voter turn out in 2010.

You can all it compromise, I will call it something else. Unrecommended.

KnR :kick:

Bad logic.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

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And I sure as hell didn't vote for this bullshit. Quit blaming me. Maybe Obama should have done more to energize the base. Stop blaming them if they stayed home. Obama should have given them something to vote FOR.

Bake

Bake

and a full slate of Democratic statewide office holders. It may be because those were true Democrats.

The moderate democrats who stayed home and the Independents who voted for obame but voted republican In 2010 helped Republicans
take the House In 2010 and helped get us In this situation.The budget problems and the dedt ceiling nightmare wouldn't be happening
If not for Republican House.Keep all that In Mind when saying not voting or voting third party.

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Exactly correct.