Progressives do not hate this President.

In fact, they were his strongest supporters in the last election. However, there are some that take criticism of this President as hatred of him. If you cannot take criticism, you do not deserve praise.

This morning, we hear there is a new Medicare plan by Joe Lieberman and another Republican to revamp Medicare. They wish to raise the age to 67 in order to receive the benefits. You don't have to be a genius to see that this would put an even bigger burden on the Medicare program, which is already in need of more revenue and participation, not less.

If the President does not condemn this proposal or if he hints that he will support it, then he will be criticized, and rightfully so. That does not mean all progressives hate him. It means that they are trying to get him to return to his senses. We don't need another Republican in the office. We need a Democrat, a progressive Democrat, that will protect and strengthen the advances we have made in the last 75 years. If you cannot do that, then you will be criticized.

Many progressives have seen too much giveaways to the radical Republicans already. They do not trust this President and rightfully so. Somebody has to watch his every move. Rep Waxman says that the Repubs met with the President privately and are telling him that the President will fold. That is not the type of news we want to hear coming from this White House. That is a sad state of affairs but it is the reality. To turn a blind eye is reckless and irresponsible. Once the deal is made, it is too late to change.

Nobody here hates this President. They simply do not trust his judgement by working with the Republicans and his willingness to give up hard-fought progress. Some progressives cannot and will not accept that type of governance. Either he will become a Democrat or he will be a one-term President.

(edited to change to "many" and "some" progressives so it doesn't appear all-inclusive)

not hide behind speaking for a large group. It's an icky thing to do.

I will take it to heart. If you are a progressive, what do you disagree with, may I ask?

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Thanks.

I aint perfect, but you telling kentuck what to do and how to say it, is the epitome of arrogance.

Take a look in the mirror. We all have to sometimes.

And, disgust is not hate. I don't think you know the difference.

n/t

:kick:

n/t.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

own mind.

to believe and to write as if lots of people will agree with you - not really a sign of arrogance.

I see a lot of "Obama supporters just think that all criticism is hatred"

but then a few days later a rant with the theme "Obama is a POE" (piece of excrement) will get 100+ recs.


Let me just admit to hatred. I do hate getting stabbed in the back and I hate being lied to and I hate seeing Obama push for, or embrace, policies that are bad for this country.

Then again, I am usually a centrist on this board.

and it doesn't. 100+ recs is a very substantial show of support.

Past registrations, sure.

Looks like a couple of thousand most actives and maybe 10,000 readers.

Anyway, it also looks like less than 1 percent of threads get 100 recs.

Your point?

"Obama is a piece of excrement" would be allowed to stand, much less get 100 recs. But I didn't want to call the poster a liar because I think that s/he was using hyperbole rather than lying, so I pointed out that even if the statement were literally true, it wouldn't mean much. 100 idiots on the internet. This is news?

In any case, I remain confident that any OP stating that President Obama is a piece of excrement would be locked within minutes, long before the time required to find 100 DUers willing to rec it.

edit spelling

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Hey, wait a minute . . .

A lot of us do agree with what kentuck is saying here.

What makes YOU so arrogant as to think you're entitled to tell Kentuck who he does and doesn't speak for?

This thread answers the common rhetorical canard that progressives who criticize Obama therefore hate him, and do not have reasons for their critique but speak irrationally. (There's a reason that sounds familiar.)

Only thing I might say different is that it's not his judgment I don't trust. It's his commitment to critical progressive policy. I have been waiting for evidence of it but I've pretty much given up by now. Like you, I don't hate him, but I am not selling out my principles for anybody, and I won't be bullied into swearing allegiance to any politician. Also want to say I think you are very brave. Thank you for speaking our mutual truth.

so the usage of "we" is actually accurate.

As a Labor representative from Florida, I can only say that once again Obama has sold out the very union members who worked so tirelessly to get him elected. This comes not from a "hater", but from someone who is not blinded by the Obama mystique. It is not wrong for us to quite rightly point out when Obama does something that hurts working families. If we don't call him out when he works against the very people who elected him, we are no better than the Bushies who sat silently by for 8 long years while he destroyed the country, and only when he left office, half-heartedly criticized him. They are now known as Teabaggers.

I feel that he knows exactly what is needed, and I also feel he's falling short. What I don't totally understand is why he's doing it. Yeah, yeah. I know. But I don't buy that he's paid and bought. I simply don't. He could be making much more money and so could Michelle if they had stayed in the private sector. It's not like he'll make much more after being President.

I don't get it. And I'm also not stupid in understanding human motivations.

He thinks supply side economics works. He thinks Republican policy just needs tweaking, at most.

He buys the bipartisan nonsense in a deep and fundamental way.

He opposes the 60's counter-culture.

He believes in our broken institutions more than our people.

He is philosophically closer to the first President Bush than he is to either Roosevelt.

He is a technocrat.

He is a Constitutional Scholar with little attachment to civil liberties and a believer in civil rights with little in the way of passion for them.

He is a natural globalist.

doesn't he?

:sarcasm:

The antagonism is well justified and well deserved

We can argue about the details and the bits and pieces all we want.

But what you wrote sums up what is fundamentally wrong with how he is running his presidency.

It's one thing to not have control over congress.

It's another to say "Well what good would it do him to yell and scream...it won't change Republican minds."

And I don't know that I fundamentally disagree with any of that.

My problem is that he approaches every single issues, every single problem from a foundation of all the points you listed above.

that's complete nonsense. Actions speak louder than hyperbole.

"He thinks supply side economics works. He thinks Republican policy just needs tweaking, at most."

Absolute bullshit!

Obama: Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich Won’t Create ‘One Single Job’

And then expect us to buy it.

Good luck with that.

You expect to ignore his words and actions, and then consider hyperbole on the Internets to be fact?

Enjoy!

His words do not match his actions, and the hyperbole you question does.

does his words match these actions. Does the hyperbole?

The problem is that the only actions you want people to acknowledge are the ones you disagree with.

But, that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the big things that he's caved on. Which, in my opinion, will cause the greatest damage to our country.

"Bullshit. I've acknowledged his accomplishments every time I've agreed with them."

Is that why you responded to this with this?

"Bullshit" indeed!

Either he doesn't mean what he says or is just too weak to have the courage of his convictions.. Either way he is not helping America in it's time of desperate need..

He owns them now.

"The problem is, is that this is the single issue that the Republicans are willing to scotch the entire deal for. And in that circumstances — in that circumstance, we’ve got, basically, a very simple choice: Either I allow 2 million people who are currently getting unemployment insurance not to get it, either I allow the recovery that we’re on to be endangered or we make a compromise now."

I call bullshit.

The top tax cuts sucking vitality from the economy, going to the very richest, did far more damage to the recovery than losing unemployment benefits would. If those BILLIONS were injected into the economy, those people who lost their unemployment may well have JOBS.

The fact is, while he TALKED against the cuts, he went along with them. No fight at all. In fact, I believe Boehner would have caved on the unemployment benefits if Obama had held his ground - had Obama not pre-emptively surrendered that hill.

they come back with only accomplishments. He has accomplished many things but he is still less liberal than Nixon and is a better mediator than a leader. You can disagree with that all you want but calling bullshit on others never, ever works. Try seeing both sides just once because no one is right 100% of the time.

This is the spin zone and the spinning is coming fast and furiously and it comes frequently from your op's. Honestly, Prosense the President cannot walk on water.

What does that even mean? He opposes an era?

The GLBT rights movement was one of the counter culture developments of that era. Obama does not support the objectives of that movement, he thinks State's Rights should override human rights, if the humans are gay humans. So it means that, for one thing.

I noticed this because it made me laugh a little at the time. Obama is 50 years old, I believe. I think that he was born in 1961, which is toward the end of the Boomer generation but yes, still a Boomer. Yet during the primaries he made a point of distancing himself from Hilary Clinton, the Boomers, and what he described as 1960s type ideology. Obama described himself as a member of Gen X (which he is not, technically, but he's close), he expressed admiration for Ronald Reagan, he described himself generally as a pragmatist.

My impression overall is that Obama distanced himself from and defined himself as different from the 1960s counter-culture. Yes, I think that's a fair characterization.

Sorry sonny.

If I met him on the street, I would shake his hand and then......ask him, "What the f*** do you think your doing?"

But no I don't really hate him. I reserve my hate for the Supreme Court and the RpeubliCON party.

goes up on the scoreboard as a plus for the Republicans.
This either mutes criticism or creates divides. I come from a day when criticizing the president was expected.
I have lots of criticism for Obama; but his potential opponents are flat out idiots and clowns.

we did not get there overnight. We compromised our principles quite a few years ago just to win the White House because we did not want the Republicans to win. They would have been much worse back then also.

The flip side of that thought might be that Obama's high polling numbers might have less to do with strong approval of his performance than it does with stronger disapproval for anything the rethugs might dream up. I mention this though it is relevant to nothing, really. :)

It is here at DU, and after all this is where we are now.

Remember the primaries? If you criticized Hillary you were a Hillary-Hater, if you criticized Obama then you hated him (that still holds true).

I don't believe that "nobody" here hates Obama because "nobody" is not a useful term since one exception blows it out of the water. I'm sure that some here likely do hate Obama, but the blanket tag of "haters" on any who criticize somebody is largely untrue.

:hi:

among people who all they do is criticize and name call and smear the character of. Your own post, is just a way to blanket criticize all those who try to call out the hatred. As if there is very little hatred, just blind fans who think that all criticism is hatred. Yet I will jump in an call hatred when an OP writes, basically, Obama is a "stupid, worthless, no good, goddammned, freeloading SOB, big mouth, know-it-all, a$$hole, jerk" and then groups of people will deny that that expresses hatred, since, after all, it never specifically said "I hate Obama". Nor is it anywhere close to a substantive criticism of some Obama policy.

There really was a lot of Hillary hate and Obama hate here during the primaries and also a fair amount of hatred between Obama supporters and Hillary supporters. I still am a bit of a Hillary-hater. I considered Bill Clinton to be a DLC Republican-lite betrayer of Democratic Party values, and Hillary and Bill, unlike Obama and Gore, supported the war in Iraq.

But now from what I see, Obama is even more of a DLC Republican-lite betrayer of Democratic Party Values than even Bill Clinton. He's practically another Joe Lieberman, his mentor.

calling him 'stupid'. He is clearly a highly intelligent man who holds a few rather stupid views - which is rather sad, IMO.

just a list of hateful words quoting Bender from The Breakfast Club.

Sid

to be elected by choosing not to vote.

If others choose to be offended, that would be on them.

I am probably one of Pres Obamas loudest critics, but I will vote for him again. I also recognize the barriers he has faced, is facing and it's not hard to calculate what he Will be facing.
While, yes..the prez and I Disagree on many things, I still believe he is doing the best he can with what he has........


President McCain/Palin=
Where the Eff would we be now?

Pres Bachmann/Romney=
Where the Eff will That take us?

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He led the Republican opposition in a lot of instances. You are correct about the House under Pelosi.

The influx started in 2008, and they have been flying under the radar ever since.

Believe It.

when a post with several responses has been deleted, and it's pretty difficult/impossible to piece together

This was shot down yesterday, with no fanfare. The two conspirators gave a presser before the unveiling and danced all over with glee at how innovative they were, bragging about raising the age. But the bill was a no go, unacceptable to Democrats.

There is no reason for the President to weigh in on a bill that went down the tubes. The senate took care of it in swift fashion. Once again this has turned a non-Democratic bill into a bash of PBO. Why is that? Not looking into the results, but yelling fire long after it was put out?

Some, or many, progressives just don't get into the conspiracy theories that are raised daily on anything that can be twisted into the negative. Jeez!!!

______

Top Democrats reject new plan to cut Medicare spending
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Paul Kane, Tuesday, June 28, 5:05 PM

Leading Congressional Democrats immediately recoiled Tuesday from a new proposal to cut $600 billion in Medicare spending over the next decade — in part by raising the eligibility age.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/top-democrats-reject-new-plan-to-cut-medicare-spending/2011/06/28/AGoSmhpH_story.html

edited to take vote out of the comment, as it was pointed out to me they didn't vote.....but the bill was not acceptable to Democrats.

I don't think they voted on anything.

<..> Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) termed it 'a bad idea.' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called it 'unacceptable.'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-lieberman-coburn-enters-the-fray/2011/06/29/AGFSKTqH_blog.html

They just put it in the revolving file.

on this issue, then he gets some very well-deserved policy hate from Progressives. At some point (and I feel this would be it), he becomes as big a threat to our future as the GOPers. :(

It is a non-issue. Did he say he supported it? NO. But DU wants to run with this kind of baseless prognostication. By tommorrow DU'ers will say Obama authored the bill and has implemented it.

When you keep moving up the age on these things people are forced to work longer--not freeing up the jobs for the unemployed. If you want more jobs lower the Social Security age.

I happen to agree with you, but even if I didn't I would still appreciate your attempt to find common ground. That's something that has been missing from DU lately.

snarky criticism notwithstanding.

you can't ignore that -

and alleging that we disagree based on "hate" is perhaps even their way of hiding

the truth from themselves --

Those here who can deal with the issues honestly and truthfully will wake themselves up --

Otherwise, keep in mind ....

"You can't wake up a man who is pretending to be asleep" --

"You can't wake up a man who is pretending to be asleep"

There is a group that does not care, and pretend like they do.

Then there is a group that is miss informed but do care.

Then there is a group that cares and has thought about many things, or are more awake, not better, or worse, just have spent time thinking and reflecting on many things.


It is hard, but not impossible to relight someone that does not care, but they really are very few, it is really difficult for someone to completely burn out conscious, and they can find better thoughts and feelings.


However the real success for democracy is educating that middle group that is deceived, that want to help people, and do feel empathy, and also have balance of knowing helping should also be rewarding.



Most of the stuff is about how people are shown things, the only way bad, becuase most are more good then bad, can prosper is to hide things, becuase most wont accept those things if seen.

That is why so much of things is about light and truth, becuase that lets better systems prosper, as the better part of most people prevail.


But anyways, all that has been said before.


There are great feelings everywhere.

Olivia Newton John & ELO - Xanadu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA

Jessica Alba - Sin City Bar Scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpKjRitYdE


Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs

Bonnie Raitt - I Can't Make You Love Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW9Cu6GYqxo

Bonnie Raitt - Nick Of Time
http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=407128

Dire Straits - Walk of Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZxVC0GB838


Constantine - Bring me to life (Evanescence)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx8d3K_hngw





And I think the X is tilting the cross, to take those in hardship down from the cross. Or that is how I think on it. Since those are who we should help, as is said in many teachings.

And still standing :loveya:

So that is not a judgement on some film clip or group that statement is close to.

There are some that are Awake, that don't care, and some that are Awake that do care.

:thumbsup:

It's frustrating to have to deal with "You are with us, or against us" type of thinking. Obama himself said he wanted people to speak their minds and hold him accountable. Then when you do, you are accused of hating him? Confusing. Makes no sense. Which is it? I think you have said it best: "If you cannot take criticism, you do not deserve praise."

And thank you for saying it!

All this talk about medicare but we have troops in how many countries again? We shouldn't even have enough troops left in Iraq to staff the embassy. But, no, we have to maintain a 'presence' there. Why? So we can re-engage at the slightest provocation. It is just what a military society does.

so here's a kick in agreement. I can't remember when or if I've ever read a post by you that hasn't closely aligned with my thoughts and feelings.

Hate may be too strong a word but despise is probably good.

Sorry I ever voted for him and will not make that mistake again.